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FabulousFizban
2013-07-03, 08:31 PM
How would you go about creating a forest "dungeon" (or any outdoor dungeon) that PCs can work their way through? I'd like to have an actual layout instead of just saying, "you wander around the woods for four hours, here are some wolves," you know what I mean?

Basically, what is a good way to keep players moving through a prebuilt area that has "rooms" and "hallways" while they're outside and should have free reign to move about?

Just saying, "the foliage is impenatrably thick," would be seen as a challenge to undermine me (as it probably should).

Grinner
2013-07-03, 08:39 PM
I'd start by not drawing attention to the impenetrably thick foliage. Instead state something like "There is steam babbling before you. Across the stream, you can make out a thin path running around a hill, but downstream, the woods open up into a clearing."

It helps to give them some kind of objective and points of interest to move between.

Ozfer
2013-07-03, 09:37 PM
Never use impenetrable foliage. They will always burn it, and it totally ruins immersion. Just map out general points of interest and landmarks, describing it as they go.

Jay R
2013-07-03, 10:00 PM
Impenetrable foliage is no more problematic than dungeon walls, in a world with Passwall, Dimension Door, etc.

There's no reason for them not to follow the paths most of the time, but when there is, let them do so.

Also, only put fun stuff on the paths and in the clearings. Clear-cutting loses its charm pretty quickly if there are no potential rewards.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-03, 10:41 PM
Outdoor dungeon is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. :smalltongue: This is one place where you really ought to rely on realism rather than game logic: the forest is a god-damn forest, you can go to any one direction in there. Just don't expect to find anything particularly noteworthy if you stray away from known paths.

If your players want to turn the adventure in to "Lost in the Woods", let them. After 30 minutes of going around in circles around some rock, they'll be more than happy to stick to a trail.

Xeratos
2013-07-03, 11:38 PM
How would you go about creating a forest "dungeon" (or any outdoor dungeon) that PCs can work their way through? I'd like to have an actual layout instead of just saying, "you wander around the woods for four hours, here are some wolves," you know what I mean?

Basically, what is a good way to keep players moving through a prebuilt area that has "rooms" and "hallways" while they're outside and should have free reign to move about?

Just saying, "the foliage is impenatrably thick," would be seen as a challenge to undermine me (as it probably should).

First off, what level party are you creating it for? If they're relatively low level (read: don't have access to world-altering magic yet), you can do things like put toxic plants in the forest (think of them as natural, self-resetting traps), put in ravines and gullies that they can cross if they make some good climb checks, but there's a rickety old bridge 200 feet away.

You could take them off the ground level and have them working their way through the canopy itself. You'd probably have to build some artificial structures to connect them like rope bridges, but if the ground is covered in deadly choker vine (escape artist DC 20 to get free of, only to run into another patch in the next 5 foot square), then those balance checks as the bridges swing back and forth become that much more dramatic.

Then there's the wildlife ("Stay away from that patch of forest, there's a den of dire wolves that way). That tree over there has a nest with some nasty, territorial, murderous, giant bird. Basically, my point is to give them reasons to stay within the defined areas of your forest dungeon, but if they choose to go off-path, know what the consequences are going to be, and make sure they know them too. I'm not saying you can't surprise them with something, just make it clear that there's a reason there's a path right here and that almost everyone stays on it.

On the other hand, if they're higher level, a regular forest isn't going to cut it. You'd have to go with something along the lines of the ancient, spooky, magically enchanted forest that dampens fly spells, that you can't teleport into or out of, and so on.

-----

Side point: I don't think setting a forest on fire is as easy as "I light my torch and stick it into this tree." Live wood doesn't burn all that easily. Yes, you can do it with enough persistence and fuel, but it's a fair bit of effort.

Tridax
2013-07-04, 12:40 AM
...I thought you meant playing D&D outside.

But yeah, when the PCs end up in large areas, just give them objectives of where and how they go. The better if they have a map. If not, then you can describe the surroundings through their own POV and make assumptions of where they could go. On their way they may encounter some traps or animals. Or animals in traps. If a forest is big, it doesn't mean that the time spent on the jorney through it should be long. (Though the PCs may spend several nights camping)

Kazemi
2013-07-04, 02:06 AM
Rather than creating rooms and hallways with traps and monsters wandering them, you're going to want to focus on the actual scenery. You don't want it to turn into only impenetrable foliage. Make sure you have adequate descriptions. Saying "There are trees everywhere" does not have the texture (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/YUMiX2JPVjHIJ6h5VlD.html) that generates immersion and true improvisation. You may want to look some stuff up online about dangers of the wilderness. For some reason, thinking of this reminds me of Minecraft and falling into a random lava pit in a jungle :smallannoyed: (don't do this to them, they're your friends).

They have to have a goal (such as getting to a temple, another town, the Lost Elven City, etc). Providing them a path gives you a "hallway" (famously dangerous or hidden, your choice). You could have some branching pathways if you choose, but I'd make sure each one leads to a different route and set of encounters, if only to have a contingency for when they go through one and backtrack to the other. Alternatively, they could just be using Survival to determine the proper direction each day.

After that, your "rooms" would represent unique portions of the forest. This includes, but is not limited to:

Broken Path: Ravines, gaps, canyons, etc. These could have an intact bridge with a "toll" (or a "troll"), a falling apart bridge (a pitfall trap), or an outright broken bridge. Rivers also good, both with and without bridges. Keep in mind that they usually flow from high ground to low ground (depending on the latent magic in the area). This also gives the players a natural path with which they can find other creatures, since water will draw all sorts of living things.
Signs of Monsters: Heavy Spider webs come to mind first, but broken trees could hint at a Giant, carvings on trees may hint at a lizardman tribe whose territory you're entering, etc. These precede the actual event.
Resting Spots: such as springs, clearings, friendly wood-nymphs, etc. I try to include nice things for my players at a 1/3 or 1/4 odds (depending on how well they're doing). This can give them time to rest in actual peace. Of course, don't give them one every time. They should have to improvise in the jungle as well, especially if they leave the trail. Also keep in mind whether finding firewood should be difficult (who carries firewood in this game?)
Survival: Play out some Survival rolls, some low-level stuff for him usually. If they run out of food/water they're going to need to pause while the Ranger hunts/forages for food or they'll have to settle for random herbs and plants and such. Of course, if he secretly rolls Survival then failures become an event of their own. :smallbiggrin: Don't overdo it, though. Most of what they find should be all OK. Maybe 1-2 poisonings. If you want a "Poisoned Section" of the forest, make it obvious with bright blue mushrooms with thin purple stripes. Nobody would eat those and still have the right to complain.
Random Encounters: a wolf attack, forest goblins stumble across the PCs while hunting and panic with arrows, elvish guard, etc. You might even have someone following the party, such as a bounty hunter, who attempts to engage them. At CR if they do it at full strength, but a lone Rogue would rely on engaging after they take a beating (in that case, add the Rogue to the CR of the encounter he's attacking after - the encounter will be slightly smaller to compensate).
Fluff Encounters: These are things that literally have no form. A dozen eyes watching a player during his watch, but which vanish when he wakes up the party. A very loud roar coming from the jungle (different Listen rolls determine different directions and this may lure them off the path). Seeing a pair of way-above-your-CR Green Dragons duking it out overhead. By not giving them an answer to everything, it can add to the mystery of the jungle. When they try to chase something in this category down, give them something else instead (or nothing at all if that idiot charges blindly into the jungle without his party to attack the dozens of eyes - they just flee without sound and with preternatural agility).
They've-Left-The-Path Contingencies: Several things for them to run into if/when they try to get off the path. This can include things like a mad druid, a small town (nest? warren?) of jungle Kobalds (with traps, of course, and possibly a dragon depending on their ECL), a wild Ranger (great for catching a player with one of those dangle-you-from-one-leg traps), etc. You'll want several, but in particular you want to think of where those events would lead to. The mad druid may tell them he's bringing them to the center of the forest, but he's actually bringing them to the Cave of Gigantic Centipedes that he tends. :smalleek: The Ranger may actually give them the right directions and lead them partway, although he won't go too close and leaves them to travel in the right direction with a good fair well. :smallcool:
Moar Paths: If they're not on a path, then a path that does not quite travel in the right direction (NNE instead of plain North, for example). Traveling on a path is much easier and less accident/lava prone than traveling through even moderately thick foliage, but where does it lead? Is it worth it?


Also, I'd actually have the players roll their spot/listen checks in secret and in advance, rolling another set when you run out. Have them roll out of sight (into a box, for example) and record the numbers each person gets with their spot/listen modifiers. That way you don't alert them to "Make a Spot check!" warnings and you don't build up the paranoia that giving false alarms creates.

Edit: Also, keep in mind how thick the trees are. Does it count as Low Light? Full-blown Darkvision? I'd have it mostly normal during the day, but an Ominous Portion (spider webs and EVIL in the air) might drop down to Low Light.

PS: Hitting them with a thousand baby ballooning spiders would be interesting roleplay (they're like the size of a grain of sand, but they crawl everywhere). I'd make them harmless, since most of the players are likely to freak out.

PPS: I'd make the forest damp enough to be fire-resistant and I'd make it obvious enough (without spelling it out until they ask).

Thrudd
2013-07-04, 02:50 AM
How would you go about creating a forest "dungeon" (or any outdoor dungeon) that PCs can work their way through? I'd like to have an actual layout instead of just saying, "you wander around the woods for four hours, here are some wolves," you know what I mean?

Basically, what is a good way to keep players moving through a prebuilt area that has "rooms" and "hallways" while they're outside and should have free reign to move about?

Just saying, "the foliage is impenatrably thick," would be seen as a challenge to undermine me (as it probably should).

When traveling in difficult terrain without a road or path, I implement a mechanic for determining if the characters get lost or go off track using survival/wilderness skill checks at regular intervals as long as they are not following a path or feature like a stream. You need to track walking time and direction behind the screen, and when they fail a skill check you secretly point them in a randomly determined direction up to 90 degrees off of where they were going before depending on how much they fail the check (and don't tell them the result of their skill checks, that would defeat the whole purpose). If you've ever actually walked in a overgrown and pathless forest without a compass, especially if it is thick enough to obscure your vision of the sky or overcast, you know it is really easy to go off in a different direction than you intended to. It isn't impassable, but it is slow going, carrying lots of gear makes it even worse. Having a druid or ranger in the party or someone with high skill ranks should make it easier, but you can make the skill checks for going off path as difficult as you want. Make heavy use of random encounters to make it exciting and dangerous to go off path (if you even have a path), so they will want to reach their goal more urgently. The terrain itself can have dangers equivalent of traps, as was mentioned above, with tangle vines, spiky carnivorous plants, etc, which will also randomly be encountered. You don't need a detailed map of the whole forest, but a general one that shows the overall size of the forest and the relative locations of the primary features. There may be monster lairs, a special grove or clearing, a hunter or hermit's shack. These areas might have paths or tracks near them that can be followed. Maybe one of the lairs actually has an interior large enough to explore, so you have a small section or two of more conventional "dungeon". The path leading up to the lair of a band of intelligent monsters or bandits may be booby trapped or have an ambush depending on how quiet the party has been. A magical grove might have wards and magical traps around it.
The purpose for them going to this forest and the manner they are able to approach it will make a difference. The terrain needs to restrict their approach to the forest in some way, like with a cliff or canyon, so that it has a predictable "entrance" area, and the goal areas are further in and not accidentally accessible if they approach from an unexpected direction. Also, is there something in the forest they are trying to find or retrieve, or are they just passing through on their way to another destination? You'll have to think about these things.

FabulousFizban
2013-07-05, 04:55 PM
thanks guys, this is exactly the sort of stuff i was looking for and helps immensely.

Seharvepernfan
2013-07-05, 06:54 PM
The OP got what he wanted, but I have stuff to say.

If the "forest dungeon" you are building is just a small part of the forest, like a few hundred yards/meters to a side, then you can design it like an actual dungeon. It could be an area with especially thick, interconnected trees, where the underbrush is somehow dangerous, and canopy is either very hard to get to, or is dangerous as well.

So, the "rooms" of this dungeon are clearings with no especially dangerous underbrush. The "walls" are the thick trees (thick both in girth and in how close together they are) or the dangerous underbrush. The "hallways" can be paths between the trees, root tunnels, tree branches, or holes in the trees. The "ceiling" is just the increasingly thick canopy, which can be traversed by climbing or flying.

The underbrush can be dangerous for a number of reasons. It might be especially tough and resistant to fire (as some trees/plants are), as well as barbed and poisonous to the touch. The players can go through it, with effort and/or expended resources, but they probably won't be able to go through all the "walls" like this. This should be made clear to the players.

The canopy can either be just a pain in the ass via simple logistics (hard climb checks, too much distance between the branches of separate trees to jump, etc), or it can be dangerous due to aerial enemies (maybe flying predators that for some reason can't or won't attack the players on the ground, or shimmerling swarms, flowers that release poison dust if somebody gets too close, etc.). Maybe dryads in the trees take offense to anybody climbing them, and attack the players unless defeated or persuaded not to.

Now, your players are going to think that you're just forcing them into playing through a "dungeon" in the normal way. So, only this small part of the forest should be like this, and there should be a reason for it that is known to the players (like, this area is home to fey lords/druids/elves who built it this way to keep people out). Also, if the players actually are capable of going through the "walls" or traversing through the "ceiling", you should let them - they gave their characters the right abilities or items to make this possible, so they should reap the benefits.

The "rooms" could contain land-bound animals/beasts/fey/plants/whatever, and treasure could be found on the corpses of those who came earlier, or in secret hidey holes and camouflaged caches left by the fey/druids/elves.

Alternatively, the "dungeon" could be the bottom of a chasm or valley in a forested area, so that the "walls" are the cliffs that lead out. You could also make a grid/hex map where each square/hex is a certain distance, and then you could populate each one with specific enemies/events/challenges/places/etc.

Toofey
2013-07-05, 08:39 PM
I just wanted to throw in the classic Elvin Dungeon, the giant tree with platforms built throughout, linked by branches, elvin footbridges, tightropes, or less, impossibly high up. If there's areas you need to shield from access by flight you can do so with anything from dead magic zones, to razorsharp sword sized leaves blowing in the breeze around sensitive areas.

Canyons, perhaps with messas throughout make a good one as well, for check out some old westerns or "Red Dead Redemption" for some inspiration as to how this would work.

Another favorite of mine when I DM is a very hilly area, that in a flood becomes a bunch of isolated island, separated from each other by surging waters. So you can see the other "zones" of the dungeon but you can't reach them. It's a good one for lower levels but it breaks down pretty quickly once the party gains movement capabilities.

FabulousFizban
2013-07-06, 09:56 PM
These are great guys, my campaign is on a forest/jungle heavy island, so ideas for specialized areas are very useful to me. It's a low level party now but we'll see where it goes

(the place is infused with chaos as im just flat out stealing the graygem, so radical terrain differances are fine & make sense)

Kazemi
2013-07-06, 11:00 PM
The OP got what he wanted, but I have stuff to say.

If the "forest dungeon" you are building is just a small part of the forest, like a few hundred yards/meters to a side, then you can design it like an actual dungeon. It could be an area with especially thick, interconnected trees, where the underbrush is somehow dangerous, and canopy is either very hard to get to, or is dangerous as well.
/snip

This is actually kind of neat. It's going into my bucket of PC concepts: A druid whose goal is to make an effective Natural Fortress or Dungeon.

Also, keep us posted, Fizban! I'm curious to see how your group reacts to the various ideas. The more you know!

Knaight
2013-07-09, 02:10 AM
Regarding dungeons - they are basically just points of interest connected in a particular way, and that can be duplicated easily enough for a forest. The town at the edge leads to the outskirts, the outskirts lead to a grove and a pond, the grove leads down into a ravine and into a deeper forest while the pond leads into the deeper forest and also a stream, so on and so forth. Then, transitioning between the areas requires various checks for movement.

nedz
2013-07-09, 03:43 AM
A Druids glade with defensive planting which has been taken over. The Druids would like it cleared, but not by fire. This could have a maze like set of paths through dense forest and small 'rooms' off the side.

Heavy rain will dampen your PCs notions about burning the forest down any way.

A Fey type setting where locations can get surreal fast.

A series of passages inside a mountain peak with high ledges, rope bridges across chasms open to the elements, ledges covered in snow and ice, ...

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 04:23 AM
Anyone who has ever hiked will tell you, cutting through off-track can be a real pain - you can be crawling along at literally a quarter speed in some places, depending on vegetation etc.

The foting can be soft, clumpy, tangled roots, brush, soggy and uneven, which not only slows you down but can make you trip and injure yourself.

The mid level plants can be poisonous, thorned/barbed, tangled, thick enough to need cutting through, conceal predators and block lines of sight disorienting many experienced walkers.

The weather and conditions can make it worse - for example if it's raining, all you'll hear is the rain, snow will conceal everything underfoot, wind can drop all manner or canopy-level objects on you etc.

Following the natural game trails and clearings is a great idea, that's why most hikers and animals do it.

Jay R
2013-07-09, 10:40 AM
I'm enjoying one fact about this thread immensely.

In every other area, the more recent versions of D&D have far more information. But the original white-box D&D had more pages devoted to designing the wilderness than the dungeon.

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 11:00 AM
Does anyone remember the adventure pack:

Set in the woods, there was a big mountain with a green dragon and a banshee (or something similar), i think you were looking for a daughter that had been abducted by a woodsman's boy (they'd actually run off together), and there was some involvement of some brownies or pixies or something (perhaps the woodsboy was a shapechanged one?), and they were trying to prevent a village/species war?

EDIT: you could travel anywhere you wanted, there was a massive area all hexmaped out and nudges towards the locations but all sorts of stuff out in the woods ( i think in one hex i heard banjos... back to the canoes!)

nedz
2013-07-09, 11:28 AM
Anyone who has ever hiked will tell you, cutting through off-track can be a real pain - you can be crawling along at literally a quarter speed in some places, depending on vegetation etc.

The footing can be soft, clumpy, tangled roots, brush, soggy and uneven, which not only slows you down but can make you trip and injure yourself.

The mid level plants can be poisonous, thorned/barbed, tangled, thick enough to need cutting through, conceal predators and block lines of sight disorienting many experienced walkers.

The weather and conditions can make it worse - for example if it's raining, all you'll hear is the rain, snow will conceal everything underfoot, wind can drop all manner or canopy-level objects on you etc.

Following the natural game trails and clearings is a great idea, that's why most hikers and animals do it.

Yes, I'm sure you're right; but anyone who has ever run a game involving PCs will tell you that none of that stuff matters.
"The trees are very close, the underbrush dense and there are many thorns"
"We press on"
"It's very difficult"
"I'm very strong, I push my way through the thorns"

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 11:42 AM
Yeah, there is something of a difference between saying your character does something and actually putting yourself through it

"I can take a fireball, even at full damage roll i'd have x hp left"
vs.
"I can't drink that cup of tea yet, it's too hot!"

DigoDragon
2013-07-09, 12:48 PM
There's no reason for them not to follow the paths most of the time, but when there is, let them do so.

Also, only put fun stuff on the paths and in the clearings. Clear-cutting loses its charm pretty quickly if there are no potential rewards.

This is how I'd construct an outdoor dungeon. Another neat idea is changing up what would be perceived as "treasure chests". A nice hollow in a tree, or a hole under a strangely marked rock make great points for the party to poke around to find goodies.

The party I DM'd through a forest had a warlock with fell flight. Maybe the warlock had an easy time getting over the dungeon to each clearing, but the rest of the party couldn't fly and they missed out on loads of secret treasures.

TheStranger
2013-07-09, 03:36 PM
Some thoughts, most of which echo things that have already been posted, based primarily on a lot of backcountry and wilderness experience.

Start by mapping out the relevant section of forest. Place streams, swamps, cliffs, etc. in the relevant places. If you have trouble with geography, a quick and fun option is to go to google maps and pick an interesting section of the world to use (modified as needed). If possible, pick a spot you've been to but your player's haven't; that will make it really easy to create evocative descriptions and understand how everything relates spatially, and it's much easier to modify real-world places as needed than to make something up entirely. It's also kind of fun to create supernatural encounters that fit the feel of places you're familiar with. If you do it right, you'll get a very detailed, "realistic," and internally consistent place, and there's no reason for your players to suspect it's based on a real place. And there's absolutely zero chance of your players going somewhere you haven't "mapped out" yet.

Place your encounter areas within the forest, according to whatever logic you like.

Think about how your forest and its inhabitants interact. The goblins trekking from their camp to the pool under the waterfall have beaten down a path. The stream below the waterfall flows through the dryad's grove. There's a faint game trail leading from the grove into the cedar swamp.

Edit your map to connect encounter areas in other interesting ways. There's a dry streambed running from the mushroom circle up to the wolf's den. There's a crumbling stone wall near the ruins; if the characters follow it, they'll end up at the old well. The watchtower is on a ridge; if they follow the ridgeline they'll end up at the enchanted spring in the col. Most groups, if you put them in a clearing with a stream, a game trail, and a beaten path, will choose to follow one of those things - as long as you don't point out that the undergrowth is impenetrable everywhere else.

The undergrowth isn't actually impenetrable everywhere else. If they arbitrarily decide to march off through the underbrush to the east, look at your map; after struggling through mosquito-infested unpleasantness and maybe a random encounter, drop them into the next relevant area to the east. If they wander off your map (not a problem if you use the real-place method), presumably they're going east for a reason - roll with it.

That said, you can use cliffs, swamps, or other natural barriers to constrain your players somewhat, but only if you use them sparingly and make it clear that they're not absolute; you can struggle through the swamp if you're willing to move at a crawl, make some swim checks, and fight the occasional alligator, and you can climb the cliff if you're a good enough climber and want to fight the giant eagle that's nesting up there. You said they're on an island; that puts at least some outer limits on where they can go (though you can never rule out your players reenacting their favorite Gilligan's Island escape plans).

If they decide to fly (or climb the watchtower), tell them what they see. They'll probably aim for one of the interesting points anyway.

Since it's not an indoor dungeon, there's no way to guarantee that your players will go through it in any particular order, or that they'll visit everything. In a dungeon you can set things up so your players always get to read the inscription on the statue before they have to solve the riddle of the sphinx; you just can't do that outdoors. Don't assume that they'll find the diary in the abandoned cottage before they run into the amorous pixie. Accept that they might never stumble across the encounter with the polymorphed bear, no matter how much fun it was to design (but feel free to reuse it later on). It's hard to railroad outdoors; your encounters should interact in interesting ways, but they can't be dependent on each other unless it makes thematic sense for the characters to backtrack.

This also makes it hard to have a "boss" or "final" encounter to an outdoor dungeon, since your players might head there straight off, either by luck or design, and skip the vast majority of the "dungeon". One way around that is to have the paths, streams, ridges, and other "connectors" in the early part of the forest be very "spiderwebby," but have a few encounters in a remote part of the forest that are somewhat linear. Hopefully by the time your players get there, they'll be in the habit of following the paths you give them. Alternately, make a multi-part goal, so that they're likely to get through a big chunk of the forest before they get it all done.

This is a fun question, and I've always wanted D&D to support wilderness exploration better; I'll be watching this thread with interest.

Edit: Wow, that turned into a giant wall of text.

Jay R
2013-07-09, 04:03 PM
Yes, I'm sure you're right; but anyone who has ever run a game involving PCs will tell you that none of that stuff matters.
"The trees are very close, the underbrush dense and there are many thorns"
"We press on"
"It's very difficult"
"I'm very strong, I push my way through the thorns"

"Fine you push through, getting caught on your clothes. They are slowly getting ripped to shreds, and you're moving very slowly. There is a hornet's nest ahead. If you keep going, you will disturb them and not be able to move away quickly. Something slithers past your foot; you can't see what kind of snake it is. Your boot gets caught in a tangle. Your sword is caught in a bramble, and will take a moment to get free. You see a rabbit foaming at the mouth."

et cetera.

If you've ever bushwhacked through rough country, you can easily keep inventing valid annoyances. If the first few hints don't work, go ahead and up the ante. The next hornets nest is on the other side of the tree, unseen until disturbed. I almost stepped on a timber rattler once, which cured me of bushwhacking.

Kazemi
2013-07-09, 04:09 PM
"Fine you push through, getting caught on your clothes. They are slowly getting ripped to shreds, and you're moving very slowly. There is a hornet's nest ahead. If you keep going, you will disturb them and not be able to move away quickly. Something slithers past your foot; you can't see what kind of snake it is. Your boot gets caught in a tangle. Your sword is caught in a bramble, and will take a moment to get free. You see a rabbit foaming at the mouth."

et cetera.

If you've ever bushwhacked through rough country, you can easily keep inventing valid annoyances. If the first few hints don't work, go ahead and up the ante. The next hornets nest is on the other side of the tree, unseen until disturbed. I almost stepped on a timber rattler once, which cured me of bushwhacking.

I, for one, have never bushwhacked. Could you give a few more short examples of the stupid and annoying things that you have to deal with? If you have the time, of course.

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 04:37 PM
Not a massively relevant example, but kind of extreme:

On a military exercise, there was a guy we knew who drove the fuel truck, so he was often in and out of our location and on the road, living out of his cab. We got two days of maintenance, where the exercise stopped and everything got fixed, so he didn't have to go anywhere. He parked up next to a cosy looking hollow/depression with a big rock on one side, whic hhe proceeded to make into a little shelter/den, putting out his rollmat, sleeping bag, mosquito net, camp chair, poncho sheet etc.etc.etc. - it was a nice little homeyhouse for him. He stayed there for two days, and returned to the position repeatedly afterwards because he liked it so much. about 4-5 days later, we were moving on from the location so everything got packed up ready to move out, and as he is packing the last of his kit into his truck, a massive (5-6 foot? it was all curly and not near a tape measure) rattlesnake slithered out from under the rock he'd lived by for nearly a week!

TheStranger
2013-07-09, 04:52 PM
I've bushwhacked plenty. The annoyances depend on terrain; in my part of the country, there are no rattlesnakes. However, there are more than enough waist-deep swamps for anybody. There are also hornets, dense, thorny areas, small cliffs, and so on.

The thing is, none of these things is an impassable obstacle. In the real world, most reasonable people follow trails because it's a lot quicker and more enjoyable. But in most cases, a sufficiently determined person can go around, over, or through most obstacles and continue on their way. This is especially true when the only hardship involved is saying that you do it.

Player: "I wade through the chest-deep, leech-infested, foul-smelling mire."
DM: "Are you sure? You'll have to make Survival checks to avoid sinkholes under the water, and it's going to be really slow going. And there are alligators."
Player: "Yeah, I've got +25 to Survival, and I can take an alligator."
DM: "Don't forget the poisonous snakes."
Player: "Good fort save. Oh, and if it's chest deep, can't I just swim?"
DM: "It smells like a sewer."
Player: "I'm a barbarian. Nobody will notice the difference."
DM: "No reasonable person would do something like that."
Player: "Duly noted. Can we start now?"

At which point, the DM has to either flat out say "no" or go forward with the appropriate skill checks and/or combats. Sure, most people would wisely take the path around the swamp in real life. But only by DM fiat can you make it an absolute barrier.

EDIT: And that's completely leaving out things like the woodland stride ability, which explicitly remove some of the obstacles to real-world bushwhacking.

Wardog
2013-07-09, 05:28 PM
"Fine you push through, getting caught on your clothes. They are slowly getting ripped to shreds, and you're moving very slowly. There is a hornet's nest ahead. If you keep going, you will disturb them and not be able to move away quickly. Something slithers past your foot; you can't see what kind of snake it is. Your boot gets caught in a tangle. Your sword is caught in a bramble, and will take a moment to get free. You see a rabbit foaming at the mouth."

et cetera.

If you've ever bushwhacked through rough country, you can easily keep inventing valid annoyances. If the first few hints don't work, go ahead and up the ante. The next hornets nest is on the other side of the tree, unseen until disturbed. I almost stepped on a timber rattler once, which cured me of bushwhacking.

If the going is that tricky, and if their wilderness skills are not high enough, then it will probably be quite difficult for them to keep going in a perfect straight line. Whether because they simply can't navigate, or because the undergrowth is slighly less dense, or the ground slightly leveler in one direction. Which means you can probably "steer" them back towards the direction you want them to go, without them them even necessarily being aware you are doing it.

(Besides, "we spent ages tramping/hacking through the forest, and ended up back where we started" has been a trope since forever).

nedz
2013-07-09, 05:54 PM
"Fine you push through, getting caught on your clothes. They are slowly getting ripped to shreds, and you're moving very slowly. There is a hornet's nest ahead. If you keep going, you will disturb them and not be able to move away quickly. Something slithers past your foot; you can't see what kind of snake it is. Your boot gets caught in a tangle. Your sword is caught in a bramble, and will take a moment to get free. You see a rabbit foaming at the mouth."

et cetera.

If you've ever bushwhacked through rough country, you can easily keep inventing valid annoyances. If the first few hints don't work, go ahead and up the ante. The next hornets nest is on the other side of the tree, unseen until disturbed. I almost stepped on a timber rattler once, which cured me of bushwhacking.
We have very benign wildlife in this part of the world but I have almost broken my leg on a couple of occasions when I suddenly sank to my knee in a hidden hole.


(Besides, "we spent ages tramping/hacking through the forest, and ended up back where we started" has been a trope since forever).
It's not just a trope: It is very common in Forests.

TheStranger
2013-07-09, 06:17 PM
If the going is that tricky, and if their wilderness skills are not high enough, then it will probably be quite difficult for them to keep going in a perfect straight line. Whether because they simply can't navigate, or because the undergrowth is slighly less dense, or the ground slightly leveler in one direction. Which means you can probably "steer" them back towards the direction you want them to go, without them them even necessarily being aware you are doing it.

(Besides, "we spent ages tramping/hacking through the forest, and ended up back where we started" has been a trope since forever).

The DC to not get lost in the woods is only 15. Almost any wilderness-oriented character can make it by taking 10, often from level 1. Even with a few circumstance penalties, it's a pretty trivial check anywhere above first or second level, especially with synergy bonuses. As it should be; getting lost just shouldn't be a worry for any halfway competent ranger or druid. If nobody put any ranks in survival, it's a valid concern, though.

I'm not saying there aren't difficulties associated with bushwhacking, but in D&D these tend to be abstracted down to skill checks. I'm all for making the players make those checks, or having backcountry encounters, or slowing down travel time, or whatever. But for all but the lowest-level parties, these aren't insurmountable obstacles, and the PCs are probably capable of going off-trail if they choose unless the DM makes bushwhacking arbitrarily hard in ways that, IMO, amount to DM fiat.

JusticeZero
2013-07-09, 06:36 PM
It's important to not worry about the party crashing through the woods. Just don't design things in a way that sequence breaking will be a show stopper. If they go off of a trail, they find another trail. The actual "rooms" are small little points or nodes on the map connected by paths, creeks, and so on. The paths get description and fluff. The rest of the woods will just be sort've implied, as long as the players aren't crashing through them. As the players cannot know or infer where exactly the encounters are without taking the paths, they cannot sequence break straight to the end, just reroute within the network of paths.

Jay R
2013-07-09, 11:51 PM
The DC to not get lost in the woods is only 15.

Average woods, yes. Overgrown forests, less so. Rain forest, even harder.

And of course, if somebody made a roll to avoid getting lost, I'd say, "Congratulations. Using your woodlore, you remember that the best way to avoid getting lost is to stay on the trail."


I'm not saying there aren't difficulties associated with bushwhacking, but in D&D these tend to be abstracted down to skill checks

When D&D is played with little imagination, yes.


IBut for all but the lowest-level parties, these aren't insurmountable obstacles, and the PCs are probably capable of going off-trail if they choose unless the DM makes bushwhacking arbitrarily hard in ways that, IMO, amount to DM fiat.

No, in deep jungle or rain forest you can't go off trail without slowing pulling out machetes, chopping down trees, branches and other detritus, and slowing down to an absurd speed - perhaps less than a mile a day in some cases. And if a flying monster appears, you're stuck in underbrush and can't attack easily.

You often can't see your feet for the foliage, which makes normally annoying hazards dangerous - stepping in holes and breaking your ankle, stepping on poisonous snakes, tripping over branches or rocks, etc.


I, for one, have never bushwhacked. Could you give a few more short examples of the stupid and annoying things that you have to deal with? If you have the time, of course.

You can go anywhere you want in an open forest with little ground cover. It's the overgrown areas that are difficult.

Anything on the ground you can't see in time - snakes, armadillo holes, sharp rocks, branches to trip on.

Vermin - hornets, ant hills, yellowjackets, ticks, etc.

It's easy to get lost. Without a compass or a consistent view of the sun, most people do go in circles.

Stones covered with slippery moss. Holes covered by leafy plants. Rotting trees about to fall over if you pull on the vine hanging down from them.

Ponds covered with green scum the same color as the lichen on rocks. Walking through ponds or over creeks and stepping on rocks that twist under your foot.

Paths tend to take the best route, avoiding ridges, gullies, and other stoppers.

But mostly, it's not dangerous as much as tedious. If I need a machete, I'm not taking a walk; I'm working.

Thrudd
2013-07-10, 12:57 AM
The DC to not get lost in the woods is only 15. Almost any wilderness-oriented character can make it by taking 10, often from level 1. Even with a few circumstance penalties, it's a pretty trivial check anywhere above first or second level, especially with synergy bonuses. As it should be; getting lost just shouldn't be a worry for any halfway competent ranger or druid. If nobody put any ranks in survival, it's a valid concern, though.

I'm not saying there aren't difficulties associated with bushwhacking, but in D&D these tend to be abstracted down to skill checks. I'm all for making the players make those checks, or having backcountry encounters, or slowing down travel time, or whatever. But for all but the lowest-level parties, these aren't insurmountable obstacles, and the PCs are probably capable of going off-trail if they choose unless the DM makes bushwhacking arbitrarily hard in ways that, IMO, amount to DM fiat.

As long as you set the rules and expectations for these things at the beginning of the campaign, then no problem. Homebrew some more detailed or realistic/difficult wilderness travelling rules at the beginning of the campaign, if you want this type of travel to be more realistic in your campaign. In addition, a forest/wilderness adventure crafted correctly will ensure players don't need to be explicitly restricted by DM fiat. And the OP is talking about a low level party in a heavily forested jungle environment, so addressing the myriad ways you can get lost or impeded by traveling through the thick undergrowth is certainly something that can work into play. Yes, when the players are higher level and have all sorts of abilities and better skills the nature of the adventures will have to change, as they always do.
Also, being significantly slowed by going off path can be something that seriously affects the outcome the players face. If you make a point to include such rules in your campaign, being slowed by the terrain should have consequences of some sort for the adventure. If you don't get to your goal in time, the captives have been killed already, or the town has been destroyed by attackers, or the main bad guy has already escaped. Following the path may take you through some dangerous encounters, but it will still get you to your goal in time. Pushing through the undergrowth may be a more direct path to your goal and require less fighting, but it will take too long. If there is no timer on the adventure, and the players are just trying to circumvent the monster lairs (which is a reasonable thing to do), then random encounters at regular intervals may make them reconsider, especially if they are only able to move at half speed or less bushwhacking through the undergrowth. It will be a viable option to follow the path and get through the forest more quickly.
If we are just talking about travel between two points with no adventure going on, then it doesn't matter and I wouldn't bother tracking what path they take or doing encounters, just decide how long it takes them to get where they are going. That's when you can take 10 and not bother with it.

Ashtagon
2013-07-10, 02:21 AM
Rather than preparing a series of mapped locations, prepare a sequence of encounters. Have notes on where you expect the PCs to meet each encounter, but if they go off-trail, let them. They burn through fatigue levels, hit points, etc. when they fail the inevitable Survival checks at ridiculously high DCs. Then they simply meet your planned encounter by a different route. The different terrain or entry point to the new encounter location might even be less favourable for the party.

Yeah, it's railroady as hell.

PersonMan
2013-07-10, 04:10 AM
Yeah, it's railroady as hell.

In this case, just be honest and say "look, either you take the path or you get to fight the same monsters but you lose some HP and get debuffed first, your choices honestly don't matter at all here, just do as I say and fight the monsters like I planned".

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-10, 04:25 AM
And of course, if somebody made a roll to avoid getting lost, I'd say, "Congratulations. Using your woodlore, you remember that the best way to avoid getting lost is to stay on the trail."

This needs to happen.

Ashtagon
2013-07-10, 05:49 AM
In this case, just be honest and say "look, either you take the path or you get to fight the same monsters but you lose some HP and get debuffed first, your choices honestly don't matter at all here, just do as I say and fight the monsters like I planned".

Sometimes, the only way to keep the party going in the right direction for the adventure to progress, is to put the right direction in front of them.

TheStranger
2013-07-10, 06:59 AM
No, in deep jungle or rain forest you can't go off trail without slowing pulling out machetes, chopping down trees, branches and other detritus, and slowing down to an absurd speed - perhaps less than a mile a day in some cases. And if a flying monster appears, you're stuck in underbrush and can't attack easily.

You often can't see your feet for the foliage, which makes normally annoying hazards dangerous - stepping in holes and breaking your ankle, stepping on poisonous snakes, tripping over branches or rocks, etc.

Like I said, slow travel time is one of the reasonable consequences of going off-trail. But again, everything you mentioned is mostly abstracted down to skill checks in D&D, because nobody really wants to roleplay tripping over roots, and as a player, I would object to taking arbitrary damage for walking, no matter how difficult the terrain was. And any ranger or druid can ignore any non-magical undergrowth, no matter how dense.

We're in agreement that most sane people in the real world don't go bushwhacking through difficult terrain without some reason. However, I'll point out that many real-world people have done it, and many of them were quite sane. They had a reason to get somewhere there wasn't a trail to, so they went there. In some cases, "to see what's over there" was the primary reason. It was slow going, sometimes it was dangerous, and more than a few have died in the process, but they did it. There's no reason PCs can't do it too.

In my earlier posts, I pointed out that if you give players trails to follow, and those trails get them somewhere interesting, they'll probably follow the trails. All I'm saying is that, if they decide not to, I'd rather say, "ok, here's what happens," instead of, "no, the undergrowth is too thick." And I count making Survival DCs arbitrarily high or throwing impossible combats at your players as being more-complicated ways of saying "no." Like I keep saying, most natural obstacles aren't insurmountable, even for low-level parties. Skill checks may be required, and combat may happen, and that's fair game. If the group wants to drain their resources and slow their progress to a crawl so they can hack their way through a jungle, that's their business.

In my first post, I recommended mapping out an entire wilderness area so that you always know what the players will find if they go in any direction. More often than not, that would be another planned encounter anyway - just drop them in that after an appropriate period of bushwhacking. If your map really does have a sheer cliff there, fine. If the players decide to take all day climbing down it, you know what's at the bottom, too.


Sometimes, the only way to keep the party going in the right direction for the adventure to progress, is to put the right direction in front of them.
Sometimes, wandering around in the woods is part of the adventure. If the players have an in-game reason to hurry, they'll stay on the trail as soon as they realize it's quicker. Again, there should always be an intuitive trail to follow, and most groups will follow it. If they don't have any particular reason to rush, though, let them cure their desire to see what's over the ridge. Chances are, they'll get tired of it anyway and start following trails. If you let the players see the rails, some groups will try to get off them just to see if they can.

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-10, 07:54 AM
I remember seing on a tv show a while back some tribe, er, somewhere, had 'engineered' the forest around them into some really cool village with walkways and bridges and stuff. I can't seem to find anything about it though - although if you google image search 'living root bridge' you get some sense of what they did, only there seems to be the one bridge over and over and nothing else.

Anyone know more? It looks properly inspiring for some ewok/elven forest city affair.

FabulousFizban
2013-07-10, 08:26 AM
Drat, my group cancelled this week & i'm out of town next week, so i won't be able to implement these ideas until after then. Oh well, more time to prepare i suppose...

TheStranger
2013-07-10, 08:56 AM
I remember seing on a tv show a while back some tribe, er, somewhere, had 'engineered' the forest around them into some really cool village with walkways and bridges and stuff. I can't seem to find anything about it though - although if you google image search 'living root bridge' you get some sense of what they did, only there seems to be the one bridge over and over and nothing else.

Anyone know more? It looks properly inspiring for some ewok/elven forest city affair.

There's some really neat examples of that sort of thing on here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping), including some discussion of root bridges. Trees are pretty cool.

Jay R
2013-07-10, 10:17 AM
Like I said, slow travel time is one of the reasonable consequences of going off-trail. But again, everything you mentioned is mostly abstracted down to skill checks in D&D, because nobody really wants to roleplay tripping over roots, and as a player, I would object to taking arbitrary damage for walking, no matter how difficult the terrain was. And any ranger or druid can ignore any non-magical undergrowth, no matter how dense.

Oh, I agree about it being abstracted down to skill checks, and I agree that nobody wants to roleplay tripping over roots. That's why I recommend not bushwhacking. If you don't want to roleplay crawling through a narrow attic, don't go into the attic. If you don't want to roleplay working through dozens of bureaucratic forms, don't go to city hall. If you don't want to roleplay slowly carving a hole through a wall, go through the gate. Why would this be any different?

(I also agree that a party composed solely of druids and rangers would have much less difficulty off the trail, but I've never seen such a party.)


We're in agreement that most sane people in the real world don't go bushwhacking through difficult terrain without some reason. However, I'll point out that many real-world people have done it, and many of them were quite sane. They had a reason to get somewhere there wasn't a trail to, so they went there. In some cases, "to see what's over there" was the primary reason. It was slow going, sometimes it was dangerous, and more than a few have died in the process, but they did it. There's no reason PCs can't do it too.

Absolutely, and on the same terms. It will be slow, dangerous, and some of them might die. I started in this conversation saying that going through it was no worse than using passwall, dimension door and the like in a standard dungeon.


In my earlier posts, I pointed out that if you give players trails to follow, and those trails get them somewhere interesting, they'll probably follow the trails. All I'm saying is that, if they decide not to, I'd rather say, "ok, here's what happens," instead of, "no, the undergrowth is too thick." And I count making Survival DCs arbitrarily high or throwing impossible combats at your players as being more-complicated ways of saying "no."

I think that our only real disagreement is that you think tripping over hidden roots and facing beasts while caught in underbrush like a tanglefoot field are "making Survival DCs arbitrarily high or throwing impossible combats at your players", while I think that they are saying, "ok, here's what happens."


Sometimes, wandering around in the woods is part of the adventure.

Sometimes. And other times there's nothing there to find. I think my job as a DM includes finding ways to keep them from wasting time looking where there's nothing to find. I've been in my share of adventures in which the DM was perfectly willing for us to spend the entire afternoon not finding the adventures.

So after five minutes of bushwhacking, detailing why it's no fun for the characters or the players, I'm trying to convince them to get back on the trails where the potential adventures are. But if they insist on going through dense forest, I have to find something for them to do.

TheStranger
2013-07-10, 01:02 PM
Sometimes. And other times there's nothing there to find. I think my job as a DM includes finding ways to keep them from wasting time looking where there's nothing to find. I've been in my share of adventures in which the DM was perfectly willing for us to spend the entire afternoon not finding the adventures.

So after five minutes of bushwhacking, detailing why it's no fun for the characters or the players, I'm trying to convince them to get back on the trails where the potential adventures are. But if they insist on going through dense forest, I have to find something for them to do.

Again, most of the time bushwhacking should eventually dump them in another encounter area, as long as you've got your region mapped out. If the players are at the stone circle and decide to wander off east instead of taking the obvious trail north, look at your map. It turns out the waterfall is roughly east of the stone circle, so after tripping over roots for a few hours, they hear the sound of running water. So they have an encounter with the orc maiden bathing under the waterfall, and then you tell them there's a trail to the northwest and the south. Sooner or later their desire to test the limits of your mapping will be satisfied, and they'll decide they want to know what's down the trail. Which may result in them finding themselves back at the stone circle and realizing how much time they wasted by bushwhacking.

Now, if the stone circle is on the western edge of your map, and the players decide to wander off to the west, you have a slightly bigger problem. But you can easily use natural boundaries to constrain your players a little bit. For instance, if they know that the necromancer is raising zombie moose east of the river, going west of the river isn't going to help them, even if they could cross it easily. If your players go west of the river in that situation, it's because they don't care about the plot you've given them, which is an entirely different problem. Or you simply do what OP did and put them on an island.

Back on the topic of helping the OP instead of arguing with each other, here's a good resource (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl) for outdoor adventuring. You could easily modify the hexes down to a much smaller size for dungeon-scale wilderness exploration.

Actually, I think you're right that we're mostly in agreement, except for two things. First, you're more worried about the impact of bushwhacking on an adventure than I am. I think bushwhacking is a fairly easy eventuality to plan for and incorporate into an adventure, as long as you've done the work to figure out the spatial relationships between your encounter areas. Second, we have different ideas of how dangerous and difficult bushwhacking actually is in real life. I feel like it's not all that difficult or dangerous in most situations if you know what you're doing, and I don't think it should be life-threatening for any party above 1st or 2nd level that has a ranger/druid unless you're getting into some exceptionally inhospitable areas.

I suspect some of that is due to different wilderness experiences in different environments, though. I've logged literally thousands of backcountry hours (not all bushwhacking, but a fair bit) in the mountains/forests of the northeastern U.S., so that's my touchstone for wilderness exploration. Objectively, I think it's pretty rugged terrain, but I've never had too much trouble with it, so I figure what I've done probably doesn't deserve a DC over 15. That's been my starting point on trying to figure out what some of that stuff would look like in game terms. If you've had different experiences in areas that are more inherently dangerous, you may have a different opinion.

Deepbluediver
2013-07-10, 01:21 PM
First off, what level party are you creating it for? If they're relatively low level (read: don't have access to world-altering magic yet), you can do things like put toxic plants in the forest (think of them as natural, self-resetting traps), put in ravines and gullies that they can cross if they make some good climb checks, but there's a rickety old bridge 200 feet away.

This, mostly.

Assuming they can't just fly over it, natural terrain can make for good dividing lines. Even if they can, feel free to fill the cannopy with predatory birds or something, to make flying just a pain.

Depending on how the setting is already established, feel free to make terrain actually out of the trees themselves. Homebrew some plants that grow hundreds of feet tall, with 50-ft trunks (and that's barely exagerating some species of redwoods) and lay out "paths" along the branches. So rather than a tunnel with walls, you've got to navigate along the tree's limbs, watching out for thin or rotted ones that can't hold your weight. You can restrict flying between trees with heavy-duty vines, which are destructable, but might be home to swarms of deadly moquitos or other hard-to-fight nasty creatures.

Seharvepernfan
2013-07-10, 01:33 PM
swarms of deadly moquitos

I was recently considering statting up a swarm of baby stirges.

Scow2
2013-07-10, 02:48 PM
I wish there were good procedural/fractal map generators, so you could create and form forests on a hex-map, with each hex having a number of unique characteristics/random encounter chances/etc. Unless there ARE, which could allow for extensive and colorful wilderness-based games that have concrete exploration rules (And computer assistance so terrain generation isn't a slog. Or maybe I'm just a lazy GM)

PersonMan
2013-07-10, 03:04 PM
Sometimes, the only way to keep the party going in the right direction for the adventure to progress, is to put the right direction in front of them.

If the only way you can come up with to keep the party "going in the right direction" is to take away their ability to make meaningful decisions and basically pre-script everything, you need to worry about more than getting the party from A to B.

TheStranger
2013-07-10, 03:49 PM
I wish there were good procedural/fractal map generators, so you could create and form forests on a hex-map, with each hex having a number of unique characteristics/random encounter chances/etc. Unless there ARE, which could allow for extensive and colorful wilderness-based games that have concrete exploration rules (And computer assistance so terrain generation isn't a slog. Or maybe I'm just a lazy GM)

I mentioned this upthread, but it was buried in one of several walls of text. I suggest getting a map of a real place and working from that. Preferably a place you've been, and that your players haven't (although even if they have, they probably won't realize it if you keep the map behind the DM screen). Then you make a few changes if you want to, slap on a hex map, and add encounters, either from a random generator or from the first thing that comes to mind when you think of specific locations.

I think the advantage of doing this is that it gives you realistic and detailed terrain, and you can give very detailed descriptions of both the overall landscape and specific locations. As long as you populate it with interesting encounters, I don't think your players will get too mad at you for "cheating" like that.

Admiral Squish
2013-07-10, 04:00 PM
One DM I played with did a cool thing with hexes. First, you draw a big map of the milderness area. Then you draw a bunch of large hexes, each one representing about a day's worth of travel to cross. Then you come up with about three encounters per hex. The group determines their path through the hexes, representing planning your path on a map, and then you go through. Sometimes you can avoid the encounter by moving around it, but it doesn't always work.

Blightedmarsh
2013-07-10, 11:02 PM
Two thoughts.

1) They are tracking something. If they go off trail they loose the trail of what ever it is that they are tracking.

2)They are being hunted by something really nasty in the undergrowth. If they go off trail they may become separated and picked off one by one.

Jay R
2013-07-10, 11:46 PM
Actually, I think you're right that we're mostly in agreement, except for two things. First, you're more worried about the impact of bushwhacking on an adventure than I am. I think bushwhacking is a fairly easy eventuality to plan for and incorporate into an adventure, as long as you've done the work to figure out the spatial relationships between your encounter areas.

Easy? Yes, most places, but also boring, frustrating and slow - in both real time and in game time. That's why I would try to discourage it.

Planning for it and incorporating it into the adventure is what I'm doing.


Second, we have different ideas of how dangerous and difficult bushwhacking actually is in real life. I feel like it's not all that difficult or dangerous in most situations if you know what you're doing, and I don't think it should be life-threatening for any party above 1st or 2nd level that has a ranger/druid unless you're getting into some exceptionally inhospitable areas.

It's not all that dangerous mostly (although I did almost step on a rattler). Mostly it slows progress, and would thereby hurt the game. So I want to discourage it.


I suspect some of that is due to different wilderness experiences in different environments, though. I've logged literally thousands of backcountry hours (not all bushwhacking, but a fair bit) in the mountains/forests of the northeastern U.S., so that's my touchstone for wilderness exploration. Objectively, I think it's pretty rugged terrain, but I've never had too much trouble with it, so I figure what I've done probably doesn't deserve a DC over 15. That's been my starting point on trying to figure out what some of that stuff would look like in game terms. If you've had different experiences in areas that are more inherently dangerous, you may have a different opinion.

My experience is in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico (where my job title really was "Ranger"). I quickly learned that bushwhacking can be anywhere on the continuum from easy and interesting to boring and frustrating to nearly impossible without a machete.

Anywhere it's easy I don't think you're bushwhacking; you're strolling through the forest. You seem to be talking about those places, while I'm talking about the overgrown places it's hard to walk through.

TheStranger
2013-07-11, 07:51 AM
My experience is in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico (where my job title really was "Ranger"). I quickly learned that bushwhacking can be anywhere on the continuum from easy and interesting to boring and frustrating to nearly impossible without a machete.

Anywhere it's easy I don't think you're bushwhacking; you're strolling through the forest. You seem to be talking about those places, while I'm talking about the overgrown places it's hard to walk through.

Ok, I think part of the problem is that we're working on different definitions of easy. I've done a lot of what you call strolling through the forest, and I've done my share of what you call bushwhacking as well (I've been using bushwhacking to refer to both, but that's just semantics). Because I consider myself a fairly reasonable person, I try to do the former rather than the latter when I have the chance. But in game terms, they're both "easy" in that I can probably get where I'm going without getting lost or hurt. If I'm tired, sweaty, muddy, bug-bitten, and scratched up, and it's taken me all day to cover 5 miles, that's par for the course. It might not have been fun, and it might not have been the most efficient way of getting around, but if I'm running an adventure, it's not going to have any mechanical effect other than the slow travel time and a DC 15-20 Survival check to not get lost.

Overall, I think our experiences are about even in terms of the general difficulty of off-trail travel, but in somewhat different ways. It seems like we mostly disagree about what makes for a good game, which is fine. There's more than one way to do these things.