Keeping the unexpected just that?

[Nicholee]

*Potential Spoilers from TFW*

First, I apologize if this subject has been hashed out by previous posts or if it is so obvious that I am embarrassing myself by asking it. I will admit, I am very new to RPGing. In fact, I have never played one. Despite that, I am attempting to LM one with three players, one of which is experienced in DnD and has said I've done an impressive considering my lack of experience.

That being said, my biggest issue at this point is finding a happy medium in the Journeys section.

For example, my group is walking through the Don't Leave the Path quest from TFW. I use narrative time for bulks of the journey until we get to various scenes or encounters. I switched things up in this because my characters are woodmen and elves so I had the quest begin in the Woodland Hall and actually work the opposite direction from the written quest. I also added a stop in the town from the Kinslayer Quest of TFW.

Anyways, the non-surprise encoutners like stopping in a town or meeting the Hermit or what-have you are pretty easy to work in. Working in 'surprise encounters,' such as Baldor drinking from the enchanted stream, has been more difficult. When we're travelling through narrative time and 'nothing exciting' is happening then all of a sudden I describe them finding a camp-spot for a seemingly innocent evening, its pretty obvious to the players something is up.

I suppose my question is, do you have your characters role play every day of the journey, including specifically stating 'we are keeping watch' or 'we are exploring for a campsite?' I don't want my quests to always feel like me talking about the environment interspersed with bad things happening to them...

Thanks in advance for any help you may offer!!!

[Rich H]

Welcome to the forum Nicholee!

I agree with you that in all practicality you certainly can't describe a journey on a day-by-day basis as that would get tedious very quickly so what I tend to do as LM is understand what *could* happen on a journey and what *is* going to happen on a journey from your perspective as the LM and then focus in on those as and when I want to. An event could be something as simple as an interesting discussion between NPC and PC, some particular clue found along the road, as well as Baldor's Madness. With this in mind you could "group up" such events and present them sequentially, playing out the more positive event(s) and following it up with the more negative one(s).

So, taking your example, you could go a number of ways:

1) At a point during the journey ask for Explore rolls for the party to find a campsite. As they setup camp, request Fatigue Checks for that part of the journey. So, you've focussed on this particular night because you're asking for a couple of skill checks relating to the physical challenges of travelling through Wilderland. Then during the night you could have the Baldor's Madness event occur. In other words, you're presenting the unexpected event within the context of 'standard' journey actions.

2) Play out an interaction with Belgo and Baldor arguing or some other interaction. Let the players interact with them and succeeding (or not) in acting as peacemakers and mediators. That way they'll probably assume that the argument was the reason for you focusing on that particular evening. Then later (on the same night) you can play out the Baldor's Madness event.

3) You could even react to developments within the journey. When I ran Baldor's Madness in my campaign I had it happen while the players were sleeping. Belgo wanted to keep watch (ie, I was playing him as wanting to contribute equally to the watch responsibilities) so after a time the players started letting him. The first couple of watches went okay but later Belgo was on watch when his father drank from the stream. So the first thing the characters knew was being woken to the shouts and cries of Belgo and the distant ranting of Baldor as he fled into the forest.

Hope these give you some ideas.