(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I'm running a D&D game at Philcon this coming weekend and I'm really excited. I drew my map last week and wrote up most of the encounters over the weekend (Most, because there's lots of ways this could go, and there is the strong possibility I'll have to make up a new encounter on the fly).

One thing I'm thinking about is that the adventure takes place in a forest. My map has a series of paths through the forest, so it's possible for the adventure to run like a theme park forest, don't venture off the path. If that happens, the forest will effectively work like a dungeon, with various forking paths to explore. That would be fine with me- the paths are sufficiently Jacquayed, and the encounters are sufficiently dynamic that there's plenty of room for interesting exploration even while staying on the path. But since it's a forest, the 'walls' of the paths CAN actually be broken through. Players will take movement penalties and be at risk of getting lost if they go off into the woods, but there are substantial potential benefits. With the right jaunt into the woods, the players could skip about two thirds of the adventure.

I'm uncertain how to communicate that to players. I think it is possible for me to inadvertently steer players away from considering the off-road routes with the way I describe the scene, if I focus too much on the path. "You are on a forest path. It heads out straight in front of you, curving slightly to the right, and there is a split in the path in two hundred feet with one prong continuing straight and the other making a hard right." If I talk like that, I'd imagine most players wouldn't realize that actually at any time they could just go left into the woods, because the descriptive language only acknowledges the path forks as choices . But I definitely don't want to signpost it too obviously because I want it to be a realization on the players part. If I say, like "On your right side is forest, in front of you is a path, and on the left side is forest, which way do you go?" then either the players think I'm being obnoxiously patronizing or they realize that I am explicitly giving them the option of going into the forest, which I don't think is what I want either.

I think the middle ground is to feed subtler reminders of the forest into my descriptions. "As you walk along the path, slowly curving rightward, you notice that the trees on the left side of the path are getting thicker and more gnarled." Give the players reason to be curious about the forest, if they want to be, rather than directly inviting them to explore it, and do it using descriptions where if they're not interested, it just comes off as flavor. I also suspect a mechanical cue will help- if the first time they consider investigating some of the trees, I say "Okay, traveling in the woods will be at a movement penalty," I'll be giving them the information about traveling off-path at their instigation, rather than at my own. There are also a few places on the map marked where an interaction between on-path and off is cued- as the players pass a certain spot, they'll hear the rustling of deer in the woods, for example.

Comments

[jack]

Good question! I'm not sure.

One thought is, play up the physical description of the forest: how open is it, can you just walk between trees, or do you need to hack your way through underbrush? Describe most of the scene, and mention "possible" paths, or "likely" paths, so it does seem like a choice. But early enough before the players have a specific reason to have across the forest.

Another is, have a few things off the path to get players used to the idea that you can go that way but it's hard.

[seekingferret]

Thanks, these are good suggestions. And things that can benefit from preplanning- it's not like I want to generate a full topological and botanical survey of the whole map, but having some idea ahead of time of areas of thicker woods and thinner woods, and areas where specific trees are found, will make the forest seem more alive and make the players more interested in wanting to explore it, and probably also help a lot in navigating the adventure since there is the strong potential that backtracking to previously explored locations will be needed to finish the quest. It'd be great if the players could say, "I remember where we saw that, it was back in the area with heavy underbrush!"

[seekingferret]

Something else I'm juggling is how to DM on Shabbat. This adventure has a lot of features that if I were not running on Shabbat, I would not prep and would improvise on the spot, by my nature as a DM. But since I can't write, I have to prep some of those things in more detailed ways. I've pre-generated and typed up all the treasure and will be printing out little cards for each item to hand to players so they don't need to write anything down, which is not something I would ordinarily do. And that leads to potentially exciting effects, like magic items where I write the description on the outside of a folded paper and the mechanical crunch on the inside, and players can't read the inside until they attune to the item.

But it's only potentially exciting, because if the players go at the adventure from an unanticipated direction I may end up having way overprepped on useless gimmicks, and be limited in my ability to improvise along the new directions by being unable to create new magic items in similar ways.

[sanguinity]

Things that get me off the path when I'm in the woods: water and making camp. Around here, water sources are often downhill off the path a ways -- even stream crossings tend to be a good chunk below you. Re making camp, unless I'm in an area with pre-approved campsites, I'm often looking at the choice between camping on the trailbed itself (and risking being trampled by other traffic in the night) or finding some kind of suitable ground just off the trail. And when I'm camping off the trail, camp chores (water, fuel, bear bags, toilet arrangements) typically get me well out of sight of the path right darn quick. (Yes, I can and have gotten lost in the process of making camp. It's especially easy after dark.) It sounds like you want them to realize that off-path territory exists and is navigable, but that's another place where you can encourage them to think about the terrain itself as terrain.

Is there ever any uncertainty about the pathness of apparent paths? This probably heads into a different direction than you want, as it's closer to the DM dumping them into the woods instead of them choosing to explore the woods, but especially in forests that don't have people doing trail maintenance or a lot of human traffic there's often a whole lot of question about whether this is a human trail, a game trail, an abandoned road, or just a place where people nip off fifteen steps to look over the edge. It seems to me I've spent a lot of time in ungroomed forests going, "Is this a path? Is this going anywhere? Hm, maybe not."

[seekingferret]

Thanks, this is great help. I'd started thinking a little about the pathness of paths, inasmuch as one of the 'paths' is an illusion cast by a fairy and if the players are deceived by it they'll end up deep off the path and lost. But I hadn't though about it in terms of ambiguous paths, that's a great idea.

[sanguinity]

Game trails especially tend to look like overgrown human paths, in part because humans get confused and force their way a couple of hundred yards down them, making them look a lot like a path that humans have taken recently.

When we were first taking the dog hiking with us, we used to worry that he wouldn't understand about trails, but it turned out he was WAY better than we were at identifying what was a trail, which way the main trail went, etc. In general, though, different kinds of animals have different preferences about trails: there are a number of trails out here, especially in old-time mining/prospecting country, where the trails all go straight up and down hills, no switchbacking, because apparently mules HATE walking on tilty-sideways slopes? They'd rather climb some absurd number of vertical feet in a mile than switchback for a gentler -- but slantier -- grade. That knowledge is probably too specific for your needs, but different kinds/species of users are going to make different kinds of paths, which may or may not be interesting for your purposes.

Oh, one more thing that occurred to me: paths that maintain a fixed-ish elevation, winding in and out of hills and valleys, often give you a point where you can see the continuation of the path 'just over there.' It might be two or three miles away on the path, but if you 'just' nip down through this dip and up the other side you can apparently shortcut a couple of miles of trail. (Pro-tip: there's always always a reason the path didn't 'just' nip down this dip and up the other side. ALWAYS.)