How to Run Overland Travel in Dungeons and Dragons 5e 

The "Room 0" mentality is such a good tip. Wow. The idea of running travel as a "dungeon without walls" makes so much sense. It is also makes it less daunting to approach. Solid advice, guys. Thank you so much!

You can read the title as "How to Run: Overland Travel in D&D 5E".

Thank you guys, this was so useful, but in my mind you forgot one key element of travel - and that is weather, overlooked theme in 99% games

Polymorph... Those eagles aren’t gonna ride themselves

Literally just in time for a travel section of my home game. You guys are awesome!

"By 15th level, the ship has sailed on overland travel" ahahaha Monty, I don't know if you meant to do this but it was awesome!

As a Druid with "Goodberry" and "Create or Destroy Water", I had to keep my entire party alive for almost 2 weeks because we forgot how little food we actually packed when we decided to take a shortcut through an uninhabited desert to get to our destination in time.

Thank you for still making content throughout the quarantine!

I’m currently DMing a campaign (first time) where in the very beginning conflict, an ogre rams down the village gates and invades with an army of gnolls. When I described the entrance.. I might not have been as descriptive at the time and ALL the players thought I meant a Ram animal and not a battering Ram as I planned. After they asked what the Ram was doing and after the confusion set in I decided to go with it and allow it to exist. Based on the villain for the future this was a special undead Ram that didn’t require sleep, food or rest. One of my players wanted to befriend it and after two very very successful rolls (N20) I allowed it, they role played the encounter really well and I wasn’t about to take that opportunity away from them. Fast forward and they acquired a cart to ride in while the Ram pulled them. Because it doesn’t need to rest or sleep they can ride without stopping. They thought it would be easy but I added 3 things to “enhance” their experience. 1. If they wanted to continue past the 8hours of travel , one person needs to stay away to drive and by doing so receive an exhaustion point per extra 1-2 hours of travel. 2. I had everyone roll a d10 (5players) and depending on the terrain and speed of which they wanted to travel at, this roll would determine if and how bad the cart was damaged by natural wear and tear. (Or reckless driving) And third, if they decided to continue in the night but all take turns driving to minimized one person receiving all the exhaustion points, then “night encounters” would be rolled per hour by the group with a d20 and depending how how the rolls went it might cause them to fight or delay and cause everyone to gain exhaustion. Once they realized they could travel without stopping their first night the driver got lost (no dark vision) I mean idk whose idea it was to let they blind man drive but... they all got lost and backtracked an entire day (3x N1). When they spent the next couple days traveling normally and resting properly they now very carefully decided to rest or push. It’s been fun watching them weigh the options. A lot of us know what it’s like to drive into the night just that extra hour or two in order to reach a bed to rest in. Thank you for reading this if you took the time.

Thank you SO much, you are literally game saviours! I'm running Out of the Abyss, and those amounts of underland (ha-ha) travel are sometimes just overwhelming!

In fifteen years of asking the question "How the eff do I make travel interesting for my players?", this is far and away the best resource I have come across. This video truly demonstrates your experience and insight into DMing that few others can compete with. Seriously, this was a home run.

This woulda been really useful 20 years ago when I was running a Dark Sun campaign. 😀

Thanks guys. I´m from Brazil and me and my 2 best friends haven't played in 15 years. Now that we are stuck at home because of the Covid19, we have been playing again using roll20 and you guys help a lot!!! Anyways, this video was exactly what I needed to organize our session for this weekend. Thanks again!

What do you think of something like The Adventure Zone's approach where the dm literally just shoots them from a cannon to their destination?

I do a similar thing with the travel weariness, that isn’t so much about how tiring traveling is, but that, “hey guys, sleeping in a tent or on the ground will never be as good as sleeping in a bed at an inn or whatever.” But mechanically it’s pretty much the same outcome as your rule.

DD: Imagine how brutal spending 8 hours walking would be Me, a hiker: ... yeah, that sounds awful But Im about to run a survivalist campaign and the travel weariness sounds perfect

Nice, I have my players travelling around right now.

So at 2:50, the moment kelly says; "to seek out" he immediatedly adopts the Picard cadence, and i love that wholeheartedly.

I just watched 8 different of overland travel D&D advice from various channels. This was the BEST one by far! Because you specifically brought up the ideas of different styles of play! 5 of them no less! My point is: thinking about it this way helped me realize that my players and I intend for travel to be an adventure arc (option 4 out of 5). Impeccable advice, you guys! Thank you!!

Right now, we are actually having a hoot traveling in Tomb of Annihilation. We have managed to kill some big dinosaurs and now we have a wagon/boat hybrid made from an inverted Ankylosaurus shell with Tyrannosaur's rib bones for the ribs and cured dino hide as cloth to cover our wagon. We attached the two canoes we started with as balances and can lift them up and down for river/land travel. We even found some Raptor eggs we are incubating and are keeping our eyes out for more. We spend every night fishing and gathering and all in all, we just enjoy travelling. PS: Forge clerics DI is awesome for stuff like this. I know people rag on it as being weak compared to others, but we use it nightly to craft things for the party that would otherwise cost a lot or we don't have access too. Current project is dino sized caltrops and folding spiked bulwarks.

"How to Run Overland Travel," or "How to Run Tomb of Annihilation"

10:01 - i see what you did there, nice ;) But seriously, this video couldn't have come in a better time for me since this is exactly one of the campaigns i am currently planning!

I'm actually in the process of designing a "travel campaign arc" right now so this video came at a great time!

So helpful. Running hoard of the dragon Queen and looking forward to their trip from Baldur's Gate to Water deep. But the idea of running it was daunting.

I only bring in the survival element (acknowledging foraging, clothing) in extreme climates (desert, artic, etc.) which shifts the focus for a while and style of play, and is a nice change of pace. If I used it all the time it would slow things down too much and the group doesn't want to focus on hyper-realism.

Overland travel, players can do things like defeat a bridge of minotaur. :)

I've done a week-long trek, while carrying tents and stuff and I think the rules for having to rest 24hrs if you did more than 4hrs walking seems a little harsh. I imagine adventurers are tougher than I am.

I got in to dnd around a year ago at the start of 2023, so I've had a lot of dungeon dude's to catch up on. It's really funny watching videos like this one where you can tell that this video released in 2020.

I have my own take on travel and people loved it, so thank m sure this video will do great as usual for y’all! Travel can be so cool, we’re synced up there! Y’all have been a huge inspiration for me and thank you for that! Also great job adapting to this social distancing! 👍🏼

this video gave me a lot to think about for a world im building where travel via airship is one of the major things that has the interest of my play group.

I love your guys videos always helps me when I'm in a rut. And I always finding my self having to rewind cause you guys get my brain going on my own campaign. Thanks for the wonderful content.

Managed to stop by at three views total. Earliest to a video I’ve ever been

I very much like the travel fatigue house rule, but for my campaign, at least at first, I'm going to try it like this: short rest--overnight. at least 8 hours. long rest--36 hours--all night, take the next day off and rest the next night too. In other words, take a day off. Reversed for nighttime travel, of course.

Love your content and style. Thank you so much for keeping the content coming throughout lockdown.

You guys are great, have been watching your content from very beginning during the quarantine and the quality of, both, your campaings and 5e guides, are awesome ^^

Had a game where there was a main road the passed that had a goblin encounter. 2nd time, just bribery, 3rd time there was no surviving goblins... So fast travel was unlocked.

This came at the perfect time, I'm righting a three session horror arc and was debating how to get them to destination. Thank y'all so much 😁

Great video guys and thanks so much for all the advice, I just had the second session of my first campaign DMing ever and the story Im creating has a lot of travel in it. So this helps me a lot 🥰 thanks again

I swear you guys read my mind with the timing of your videos. Thank you!

This video saved me a ton of headache. I now need to find out how my players feel about extended over land travel

Yes! Perfect timing for this in my game!

Wow, a great video again! Your homebrew travel rule changes everything. Awesome! I tried to make my rests mechanics easy to remember simply using a gritty realism: 8 hour Short Rest, 24 Long Rest. I'm playing Storm King's Thunder so that's all doable. But I'm going to consider using your variant in some way or form. It's really easy as well.

Those time stamps are so helpful, as are you guys. Top tier content, keep it up men 😎😎😎

Your house rule is accurate. Sincerely, a light infantryman, who has walked for 16 hours or more in a day before

My party had gotten an item that a cult was after, they were going to throw it into a volcano. Closest one was a dwarf city about a ten days ride by wagon away, Due to real life stuff one of my players wouldn’t have been able to make it to the game for around two months. So each day of the trip, it allowed for the players to role play, have some light combat encounters. Came across a small village where they met a cleric (party didn’t have a healer) that had business in said dwarf city. Player got back shortly after the party arrived in the city. A dwarf city built in, on, and around a volcano.

I particularly love using a skill challenge during a one-shot. I don't want to waste too much time on the travel, but I feel like it gives everyone a fair chances to participate and succeed at something, even if they're not a combat focused character.

Came at an awesome time, running overland travel for the first time tonight, thanks guys!

Thank you for making these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D

Perfect timing! Was about to start a CoS campaign this weekend

I use a system of "energy" they have a pool of 200. Just "living" it consume a daily 50 points, running o travel in a more fast way consumes more energy, also fights or carry more stuff. Eating and resting help to fill that energy, so they have to manage time travel and resources to move around. Being below 100 points starts to have repercussions. (similar to extenuation points)

This is an excellent guide! I really like the travel weary house rule. I abandoned random encounters back in 2nd edition. They can take control of the game out of the hands of the DM and players, break the flow of the story, and create resource loss that weren't calculated into the overall balance of the adventure as constructed by the DM. If the players aren't role-playing or doing anything other than press forward, I just insert a brief montage narration until they reach the next point of interest.

Great home rule! I love the way it flavors the travel aspect and impacts the game/tactical elements as well.

I really appreciate the time stamps. Also I love a sandbox game and travel in it.

Gents, one of your best and most thought provoking videos. Awesome job and really liked those categories!

I love doing travel as an adventure. I have a similar house rule where I just say you can only get the benefits of a long rest if you’re somewhere relatively safe and comfortable, so not when camping in the wilderness. House rules like this are great because they let you run travel the way you run a dungeon instead of messing around with tracking supplies and stuff.

I love the travel weariness idea! I shall definitely be adopting that!

I’ve found skill challenges from 4E are a good way to handle travel. My players really seem to enjoy the sense of danger it provides without bogging them down in random encounters.

This was some really great advice! I am currently running a campaign that requires a lot of travel in a dangerous wilderness. The travel is a key component of the story. I really focused on the dangers of travel early on. Now the players know how deadly it is, so we skip over a lot of the travel and focus on key encounters or points of interest along the way. I think I'm going to try out the weariness rule though, because I do struggle with all the long rests.

This was perfect for my 'lost continent exploration' campaign, cheers dudes.

These videos have been UNBELIEVABLY helpful in figuring out how i want to run my campaign. Id been listening to more story based podcasts i was beginning to forget that dnd is a fun GAME

Hey I already use the travel weariness rule! I find it works extremely well in balancing long rest classes with short rest classes. Great video guys.

Star Trek Voyager was another example that came to mind with the travel campaign arc. These are great frameworks you've put together. I personally have always struggled balancing travel with pacing in my games, so these are great blueprints to draw from moving forward.

Omg I love the Wind Walk spell so much it's incredible 😍❤️

Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Journey before Destination

I love using travel as a regular component of my campaign, the 'unknown factors' of any journey are what keeps it interesting while helping inform them as they gather info along the way. I look at games like Skyrim where I actually had more fun doing side missions and exploring the unknown versus just getting to the next main mission.

Whatever camera you two use in the DD studio, it's amazing. The lighting as well. You should do a setup tour.

Just returning to game mastering after a hiatus of a few years(D&D was 3.5). After happily marrying my high school sweetheart…she brought with her bright, creative children who really want to roleplay. So advice on very real plagues to enjoyment, like travel time done poorly prepared, is very welcome to me. Thank you!!

Hey Dungeon Dudes, Love the show and always learn something from your episodes. I know that this episode is about overland travel, however would you consider doing an episode for how to run a Wilderness Campaign?

We just started a long trek that I felt like the start of was a little bland. Thanks for the timing. ;) Love you guys!

Airship travel can actually be really fun if you make it fun. Our airship had the party, a captain, a few allies and a few dozen faceless crew members who were only ever referred to as Francis. A personal favorite was, on a long trip, I tried to see how many Francises I could beat in a boxing match at once, and our alchemist, while trying to make a hangover cure, accidentally made a nigh-universal antidote Make your airship into a tiny town you can interact with and you never even have to run travel except route plotting. It works for caravan travel too

Love your content! You're the best! This is my obligatory comment to enhance your RU-vid algorithm performance.

I’m gonna be running Tomb of Annihilation soon, so this really came in at a perfect time

Currently running a campaign where the players are travelling to a mysterious river with magical properties. This was super helpful!

I’m about to start a new campaign where the players are conquistadors/explorers in a foreign land. So there will be a lot of overland travel and I have been thinking of many thorny problems lately. So this video was really helpful in giving a framework to think about. Thank you, Dudes!

Awesome video dudes!!

This really helped me out. Thanks!

Monty's travel weirdness rule seems to be a variation of the Rest Variant - Gritty Realism. Love it!

I tend to make a small list for travel encounters and have one decent event happen along the way depending on how the party is traveling. This list is never only combat encounters. For example in the last play through the party came across a group of children who where standing on a bridge playing bandit with sticks and toy weapons made by their parents. The gang of children demanded one silver piece and when asked why they replied “To fill our stomachs with honey cola!” This led to the party taking one of the kids with them as a guide to the village store where they then cleared the place out of all the cola and filled the gangs treehouse with 7-8 cases of it. It was a fun bit of world building and they here happy with it in the end. This same method is how the party ended up with their favourite companion. A talking bumblebee named Ned who is on a quest to find the most beautiful flower worthy of his queen. He can only attack once then he dies and has a 1d2 of damage, the target must then make a con saving throw to see if they’re allergic and on a fail dies after two rounds and becomes progressively weaker each round. There is also things like: a couple arguing over directions, a battle between two bugbear tribes that the players can either watch or take part in, a group of people bathing and washing their clothes in a nearby river, hunters following an elk, hail storms, drunkards, stuff like that. I love running travel time because it gives you so many options to build your world in the finer details. Makes it feel more alive.

This video, while initially coming out 5 months ago, is so relevant for me now as I prepare my next campaign. :) Really like your travel weariness house rule. Any thoughts on using rations/food?

Awesome tips!!! Thanks

Great topic! Thanks, guys!

I have had an idea of a jungle adventure where the party is a group of mercenaries protecting researchers as they explore an ancient legend of a gargantuan ape. This video has helped me a lot

I think this is one of, or perhaps even the best, video out of the series. This subject has been one of the biggest gaps in my campaigns. I like your house rule a lot and will incorporate it into mine. I find the published adventures skip over this subject or relegate it to a random encounter table which I just ignore over because it’s boring. I’ll definitely need to listen to this multiple times to make the most of it. Well done.

im starting a new campaing in a couple of days, so this video is super useful for me, thanks guys! btw. I would love if you'd make a Bloodhunter guide video. thx again

You can also treat a portion of your travel as a dungeon. I did that accidentially by doing that in reverse. I had my players traverse a haunted forrest which I designed in a way so they would would pass through different portions of the forrest like they would pass through rooms in a dungeon and made everything being forrest related and creepy. As final boss I had a hag living in a remote hut - they could have talked to her and with some luck she might have let them go and maybe even struck a deal with them to gain some magical item, but they decided to attack immediatly once they found out who / what she was and we had one last battle encounter and with the death of the hag the forrest reversed back to be a "normal" forrest without the creepy stuff inhabiting it. Pretty sure one could adjust that to be used in other terrain and to fit better for travelling.

If overland travel is a major component of your campaign then using the DMGs varient rule for Gritty Realism is a strong option for allowing full "adventuring days" it lets you challenge higher level parties with several encounters of what a low level party may encounter in the same area. 4 encounters with Orcs and Ogres in an area to challenge what may have been 2 fights with with a few orcs and a big boss of a single ogre.

I've recently experimented overland travel in a sort of Fighting Fantasy /Choose Your Own Adventure book style, with some success. I describe a sort of montage of the journey and stop at moments where there is a choice to be made: fork in the road, event happening nearby, specific landmark they might want to investigate, or even ambush. Then the players are free to make their choice and it might have an impact (or sometimes not) on the continuation of the journey. And to determine how much of these "moments" I have in a journey, I have 2 criteria: one is basically what you describe in the video (importance of the journey vs the destination) and the other is the kind of path the characters are taking, as I feel the less travelled the path is the more tense and uncertain it should be.

Cool just starting a new campaign, this will definitely help

I'm running a setting right now that has some "high risk" travel components. It's generally pretty safe to travel by road by day (no random bandits or things like that, doesn't fit the setting), but travel at night can be dangerous. Every hour they travel at night requires a perception check to avoid getting surrounded by 2d10 skeletal enemies (the enemies have 1hp, 12 AC, 15 ft movement, and hit with a d6, so not terribly dangerous but can hit some adrenaline for low level players). The players are currently traveling from town to town to figure out what is going on (can't wait to drop that bit on them, too), and are constantly having to evaluate whether to risk being attacked or risk running out of time to complete their quest.

This was really useful, thanks

Adventures in Middle Earth 5e has an absolutely amazing system for travel. It involves the players plotting the route and determines how dangerous the route is. The DCs on encounters and exhaustion is based on this. Every 20 mile grid squares has an assigned difficulty that is accumulative towards the DC. Each player takes on a role of forager, scout, navigator, planner, ext. these roles determine how easy or hard the journey is. Players can even die from exhaustion if they plan poorly or have too many encounters, that prevents them from safely camping. Once the players arrive, their condition determines how well they are received and condition modifiers on the adventure.

I incorporate the whole Survivalist aspect into things - they have to track their supplies, endure different types of terrain and weather, etc. I have been playing for decades, so I actually have kept that aspect in the games using the Wilderness Survival Guide from First Edition. Would be great if they would come up with something like that for 5E

Also, nomadic Giants, an encounter that they must and should avoid (two armies battling on the road and off to the side, they had to traverse the battle without engaging).

I'm running a nautical campaign where I have them travel about 1-2 sessions before they get to Boss battles that actually last a full session, then it takes them a full session to travel back and complete the quest. The idea is they are a bunch of traveling monster hunters who explore and role play through a archipeligo sandbox filled with monsters and small side quests to stack the deck against any monster battle.

We tend to do "travel as a whole session". Allows for PCs to find interesting things/people on the road, worry at least a little bit our of supplies & lets characters have 1-on-1 time during night watches. I've found that last part has been really important for our group, the players like the talk to other people's characters or an NPC when they don't feel like they're eating into the combat/questing time with their RP conversations. It's also coaxed a few non-RP'ers in our group to have some cool 1-on-1 conversations when they usually wouldn't have sought that out.

My traveling segment is mainly from level 1-5. These boios are in for a challenge.

My homebrew for long rest is that you get to choose: 1) Spend the night focused on meditation - get 1 level of exhaustion and restore all the spellslots. 2) Spend the night treating your wounds - get 1 level of exhaustion and restore full hp. 3) Sleep - restore 1 level of exhaustion without restoring hp and spellslots. And remember - you can only get bonuses of a long rest once a day. And it can get interrupted by an attack. This really makes travelling through hostile places more difficult. Tiny Hut is a little bit less op. I also like the image of a dead-eyed wizard, who just doesn't get enough sleep in his life.

If you're running a lights-in-the-dark style campaign then you could throw in a clause that teleportation magic is unreliable/unstable and requires consistent effort at a site so it acts a bit like the Astronomicon in 40k. Obviously, access to teleportation circles is heavily regulated to stop invading armies, disease and manage imports and exports. Works well if you regulate magic as well for a touch of verisimilitude. This way you can still teleport in a travel/exploration game but there are the hoops and tape of bureaucracy to limit, punish or reward your players with and teleporting as a hail Mary gives you options as a dm as to where to deposit them. You could set a DC, where failure is on a spectrum depending on things like distance, known or unknown area, magically protected or wild magic zones and depending on how much the pass or fail by they could get popped out in a random location, on the way to the destination, bang on target, dragged off course by a dimensional anchor or it could just fizzle. Problems create creative solutions which create new problems, so long as you make those problems fun and engaging for your players you've got an adventure.

Really dig the Travel Weariness rule. The two addendum I'm using are 8hr short rests, and the ability to expend a hit die to take a 1hr short rest.

Just noticed you guys have 192k subs! Holy shit!! You guys are doing awesome. Always loved your stuff since he start