Okay, it doesn't help you much as a DM, because you still need to know why the short route is dangerous and probably have different encounter tables prepared for both routes. But if the travel comes up at the end of a session, you might quickly improv a travel triangle choice that a) your players can decide for next time and b) you can flesh out in preparation for whatever decision they might make.
Let me explore the idea a little. The easy route may involve taxes, social interaction with guards, or other less dangerous costs of its own, but usually its just longer, takes more time to traverse. The short route is generally the shortest distance between the two points, but the difficulties it entails may actually make it take longer to travel. But what are the various reasons the short route might be treacherous:
- A named monster: giant spider, giant, dragon.
- Terrain: quicksand, swamps, lava, caverns, reefs, whirlpools, canyons, mountains.
- Climate/Weather: tornado alley, desert, frozen pass, glacier, ice cave, lava.
- Humanoids: cannibals, headhunters, orcs, berserkers, raiders, slavers.
- Architecture: ruins, gates, crumbling mines, crumbling bridges.
- Magic: fairy woods, bermuda triangle, blighted lands, demon halls.
It seems like the short route should be at least a third shorter to be tempting at all and maybe half the distance/time to travel as the other. As far as knowledge, the party might know nothing, thus stumbling into the dangers of the enticingly shorter route. But the real drama seems to be when they have at least ominous rumors for the iffy route. Too much knowledge and the choice might become a sort of dry accounting, but knowing something called the Blood Saint lives along that path: "Hmm, we might want to take the longer way."
Which makes me think of issue 3) what is at stake behind the decision. In literature/movies time is almost always a scarce commodity that forces the protagonists to take the route they know is more risky. I think I'd rather set up the geography of these triangles in my sandbox somewhere and then wait for players to get themselves embroiled in plots that put that time pressure on themselves.
I wonder if there are other dramatic travel choice patterns I'm not thinking of.
note: it would probably make more sense to draw this choice as a semi-circle, but Travel Triangle is just catchier :)
I love it. I'm a huge believer in player choice and your travel triangle presents the PCs with interesting choices. :)
ReplyDeleteThe Travel Knot: A circle with three paths spiraling to the center, all crossing each other in at least one place. The three paths then continue straight in the direction they were going when they arrived at the center, eventually becoming the outer boundary of its own Travel Knot.
ReplyDeletePut simply, I have come to pretty much the same conclusion. Even in a completely mapped and comprehensively landmarked sandbox, getting from point A to point B basically, as far as the PCs are concerned, depends on choosing between two (sometimes three)(SOMEtimes more) options about what to do -during a particular session-, and the shorter options HAS to have some drawback or else why not just take it?
ReplyDeleteI usually have at least 3 options (plus the always-implied option to fuck off and do something else or invent a hot-air balloon or whatever), myself, and if the PCs' travel takes more than one session, I try to drop in more information again after the first session/leg of the journey has been completed to make a new set of choices--like "you hear a yeti howl over the ridge along the path you intended to travel".
@C'nor--
I do not understand what a "travel knot" would imply, gamewise: if the paths overlap each other who cares? The PCs are only on one of the paths.
Geographically, the paths can overlap all they want--the only interesting part for the PCs making the decision is what makes the journeys different. Maybe I'm missing something.
"@C'nor--
ReplyDeleteI do not understand what a "travel knot" would imply, gamewise: if the paths overlap each other who cares? The PCs are only on one of the paths.
Geographically, the paths can overlap all they want--the only interesting part for the PCs making the decision is what makes the journeys different. Maybe I'm missing something."
I was thinking that it would allow them to change their path if they wanted to do so (for example if the party can't turn undead and they encounter a skeleton they aren't stuck with going along this path to somewhere that's likely going to have more, and tougher at the end) as well as, in some cases, possibly even switching without realizing that they had. I was planning to have the paths be equally dangerous, but in different ways also.
Thanks all, and especially for the confirmation Zak, the extraction and statement of what seems like a very few set of patterns underlying this game we play would have really helped me back when I was 10.
ReplyDeleteC'nor, it's meant to be an abstraction, the actual routes can be quite complex and winding, but you do bring up a good quality that is often associated with the shorter routes: no turning back. Good to think about: "If we enter the Whirlpool/Blackhole we are stuck with that choice live or die."