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Dave S's avatar

I absolutely love this. You're doing God's work.

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Robert Conley's avatar

Appreciate you taking the time to review and comment on my Travel Rules.

At one point you state, "Then use GM fiat to place them along the journey where it seems fictionally/narratively appropriate."

I focus on running sandbox campaign where the players can experience life as the characters they make. As a result, I never consider what is narratively appropriate. Instead, I look at the circumstances and, based on my decision, what could happen as if you were there witnessing the action.

However, your comments did highlight that I didn't do a good job explaining how to place encounters. I explain the flexibility in the process but not some of the factors the referee should consider when placing encounters.

My intention is that after the referee has the list of encounters in hand. They look at the travel route and what surrounds it in terms of geography, creatures, and inhabitants. Then place those encounters in a way that make sense given that.

My advice for using something like Enemy Abroad would to be look for threatening creatures or NPCs near the route of travel. And those would wind up being the Enemy mentioned in the encounter description.

One the main reasons I created these rules is come up with a way to account for the actual landscape (natural, fauna, and human) that the party will be traveling through. Rather than rely on a generalized depiction used by traditional random encounter systems.

I also need to add if a result doesn't make sense for the route. If there is nothing that would count as a Enemy Abroad or any of the other results then reroll until you get something that does fit the route.

Hope that clarifies thing and appreciate the lengthy review and assessment.

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