Travel 2 / Campaign Diary: Archipelago Adventures - Pt. 9
Last week we journeyed for 3 days and had a whirlwind of excitement! Encounters for days, and we had a fantastic time on the high seas… and now we have a few more days until we get to our discovered island off in the distance. Today, let’s go over a few more days and who knows… we may even get lost by the end of it!
Day 4… Or-So-You-Think
First thing we do for any day is look at our weather… but oh look we ran out of our 3-Day Forecast… So let’s take a quick detour and revisit our weather.
Now before, we rolled for each day to have a different weather pattern, but that doesn’t seem quite accurate. Weather tends to stick around for a little bit, and it’s a very rare occurrence to have beautiful amazing skies one day, and then a massive typhoon that will destroy your pathetic wooden ship on the next with no warning. And here is where I think it might be quite useful for the GM to roll for weather ahead of time.
When the GM knows that the good weather will turn foul on the next day, they can intertwine that into the travel description for the players. They can say things like, “As the sun sets in sky, you can see dark storms off in the distance.” This will help the players move between the days of travel a bit more cohesively, and is less jaring from a point of immersion. There are certainly days where foul weather appears out of nowhere, but you can sometimes sense how the weather will turn for the next day.
So, now how does that work mechanic wise? I’ll go ahead and throw up our Weather chart from before:
Now, we can see what a d100 result gets us, but let’s go one step further and give a certain number of days that will have that weather as part of the weather’s description. The rarer something is, the less days that it will show up. This does mean that I will be adjusting a few descriptions that already have a number of days to roll for.
Now, that we know how many days are for each different weather, I strongly urge for you to go ahead and roll for the next month or so of weather. This way you don’t have to worry about doing it everyday during the session, and you can add it into your flavor text when describing your characters on the islands (when you probably will forget about weather for the day).
As you can see, we mostly have Favorable Weather, which I think is ideal. We don’t want our players hating the weather, we want the weather to add flavor and challenge… not be an annoying slog they have to deal with all the time. So let’s go ahead and say that Day 4 of our travels happens on the 1st of this new month. That means we have Favorable Weather for 7 more days… plenty of time to get over to our new island!
Day 4… This-Time-For-Real
Weather: Favorable Winds
# of Encounters: 15, 3, 16
(16) Encounter Time: (3) / 9am - 12pm / Late Morning, sun is fully up, Bright Light
Encounter: TBD
Navigation DC: 15
Just a quick reminder, encounters are on a 16 or higher for Undiscovered Hexes, our single encounter will happen in Late Morning, when we finish building out our encounters we will know what they face, and because the party is in an Undiscovered Hex, the Navigation DC is set to 15.
On a side note, after the party successfully navigates an Undiscovered Hex, it becomes a Discovered Hex for the purpose of Navigation DC and rolling for Encounters!
Day 5
Weather: Favorable Winds
# of Encounters: 2, 8, 4
Encounter: None
Navigation DC: 15
Our first quiet day on the open seas! Our party can finally relax as we are more than half of the way to our final destination!
Day 6
Weather: Favorable Winds
# of Encounters: 4, 8, 5
Encounter: None
Navigation DC: 15
A second quiet day… who knows what horrors might await our party once they arrive on this new island… also… who gets to name it? I vote for Nepu-Nepu-Nepu (so good they named it thrice!)
Day 7
Weather: Favorable Winds
# of Encounters: 13, 2, 10
Encounter: None
Navigation DC: 15
Man… 3 days of quiet on the open ocean, by now the players are just skating along these waves and making plenty good time… probably.
Day 8
Weather: Favorable Winds
# of Encounters: 16, 3, 7
(16) Encounter Time: (5) / 5pm - 8pm / Early Evening, sun begins to set, Dim Light
Encounter: TBD
Navigation DC: 15
Wow… on the next day of sailing they are going to arrive at their soon-to-be-named-island, Nepu-Nepu-Nepu! But hold up… I’ve been too easy on these guys. Not only did the last few days have no encounters, I haven’t rolled their Navigation check for any of those days… well let’s go ahead and change that for this last day… on this last day our Navigator is rolling… and how about that…
They got a 1.
Well, we are officially lost on the high seas! Next week we are going to have to figure out what being lost at sea means, and we will see if they can ever get to our wonderful new paradise, Nepu-Nepu-Nepu! … Hmm… On second thought… Maybe that name is a bit ridiculous, if you have an idea, leave it in the comments!
As for right now… let’s go ahead and make our next encounter! Here is our new encounter chart:
A Rowboat From A Capsized Ship
As you stare out across the ocean, you see a small rowboat drifting aimlessly over the waves. From this distance, you aren’t sure if there is anyone in it.
Roll a d6
1 - The rowboat is empty and devoid of any signs of life. It is missing both oars, but the rowboat seems in good enough condition.
2 - The rowboat is devoid of anyone, but there is enough supplies on board to create an Explorer’s Pack though there are no rations and the waterskin is empty.
3 - The rowboat is home to 1d6 humanoids who were on a merchant vessel that sank not just two days ago when attacked by a hobgoblin war ship. They are ecstatic to join your crew, but severely dehydrated and will need to spend a 1d4 days of rest before fit for duty. They only have enough rations for 2 more days for each of them.
4 - The rowboat is home to 1 humanoid who has gone mad from isolation and the sun. He will gladly accept any help, and that night will kill a member of the crew(and throw them overboard), sacrificing the crewmember to an ocean god that brought him safe deliverance to the ship. He will not kill anyone else after that.
5 - The rowboat has 1d6 goblins who were part of a hobgoblin war ship before it was sunk in a foul storm. They are happy to join your crew if given a chance, but will cause a bit of problems where ever they work for 1d6 days. They may also affect the morale of the ship. They know nothing about navigation.
6 - An empty rowboat with what looks like a crudely drawn map of an island. There is a red X marked on what looks like a beach. (Roll for an island that the map represents.) This treasure map has a hoard of treasure in a chest buried on that beach, roll on the Tier 1 - Treasure Hoard 0-4 (pg 137, DMG).
Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date on everything we talk about!
