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| Day 29. |
Some players really find their ride important. I found this in Traveller, where the entire raison d'être for a campaign was paying for the starship that enabled them to travel across the Imperium from star system to star system. It gave me reasons for plot ('your ship has a problem you need to fix', 'someone has stowed away', 'a patron wants you to go to Dinomn to carry out a mission') but it also generated the story. Some players are of the mindset where they love to manage all the starship economics and trading, and that in itself drives the story. They chase cargos and passengers. They look for the opportunity. Gold dust for a games master.
Some games really make the ride important. In the One Ring, the journey is really significant. That's makes sense, as the two key sources for the game are travelogues. The journey becomes significant; developing your party to the point that it can handle travel well is important. In Dr Mitch's extended campaign we nearly died at least once crossing Mirkwood, and the death march across the remains of Angmar scarred our characters forever. It's fair to say that the elements have always been there from the earliest days of gaming. The early D&D modules like B2 Keep on the Borderlands had a wilderness sandbox to explore, and hex-crawling a sandbox was a thing. Arguably, Traveller codified this into the star maps of its sectors and subsectors from the start.
So the ride can be a good thing; however, sometimes it's cool just to say 'after a week's uneventful travel, you arrive safely'.
29 August 2020
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