Back On The Road With My Latest Supplement Release! (Which is ALMOST To Copper Already)

It's been a... rough couple of months for me professionally. Trying to guess what it is players and Game Masters will actually check out is a roll of fate's dice at the best of times, and just like when I'm at the table on Thursday nights, I seem to have been hitting all low numbers. So I thought it was time to get back to basics... and it seems that for once my instincts were on the money!

At least for how the market is going in today's gaming economy...

Seriously... come check it out if you haven't yet!

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Filling in Those Empty Places On The Map

For folks who weren't there at the start of my career as a TTRPG writer, the supplement 100 Random Encounters For On The Road Or In The Wilderness was one of the first things I wrote for Azukail Games. In addition to the game-neutral version, the supplement has a version for Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons 5E, Castles and Crusades (OSR), and Savage Worlds, and most of them have earned at least a few metal levels on Drive Thru RPG. And though I've written probably a hundred or so supplements since this one left my desk (and likely more, if I stopped and took the time to count), it's one of my bestsellers that folks still pick up from time to time.

So, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I figured I'd try an experiment and write something of a companion piece for this older, still-popular supplement. And that is why I put together 100 NPCs To Meet On The Road Or In The Wilderness!

You never know who you'll run into out here...

The idea behind this supplement was to give Game Masters all sorts of folks to populate the highways, byways, and trackless wilds with so that you don't just have a whole bunch of nothing happening between towns, villages, dungeons, and ruins. From bandits and bounty hunters to merchants, rangers, farmers, and even a ghost or two, these NPCs come with their own descriptions, possible plot hooks, and the sorts of places you're most likely to find them. And while you can use them as agents of your plot, you can just as easily sprinkle them in for background flavor to make the world feel more organic.

My goal was simply to save all the Game Masters out there a little time and energy, and to make a fresh tool that could be combined with an older one that would help the folks running games save their creative energies for where it's really needed!

If this seems like the sort of thing you'd find particularly useful, then grab a copy of one (or both) of these supplements today! And if you have a particular edition you'd like to see this one translated to, make sure you leave that in the comments down below.

Additional Supplement Recommendations

So, I took a break from writing NPC lists for a while, but if this supplement is something you think you'll get some use out of, I'd suggest checking out some of the other so-called "blue book" supplements I've put out that cover other, similar lists. Supplements like:

- 100 Helpful Hirelings: Folks that you can bring with on your journey, or who can provide additional services.

- 100 Town Guards: The watchmen who guard the walls, and arrest adventurers when they get a little out of hand.

- 100 Merchants to Encounter: The people who sell the things adventurers need, this list will help you make quicker work of any shopping trip.

- 100 Prisoners For A Fantasy Jail: The best and the brightest of the bottom of the barrel, there are all kinds of dangerous persons in this supplement for allies, enemies, and everything in between!

- 100 Random Bandits To Meet: Much the same as the above supplement, but these folk are still at-large (and might be found out in the wilderness, as well).

- 100 Nobles To Encounter: From useless fops, to cunning patrons, to dangerous enemies, nobles come in many forms. All of them can be found in this supplement!

- 100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern: My bestselling supplement of all-time (I'm pretty sure, at least), this one went Platinum for a reason!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

What Keeps Your Character Traveling?

There's a reason so many tales begin in the tavern... it's usually the one place that travelers gather to wile away the evening hours before they have to get back out on the road. And while there are some games where the party members are local to the area, those tend to be fairly few and far between. Heroes (and villains, for evil games) tend to come from afar, walking into whatever danger and adventure awaits them in the place where their adventure begins.

Before you put together another traveling adventurer with worn down bootheels and a cloak that's just getting ragged around the edges, take a moment to consider just how many reasons there are to be on the road. Because a lot of us only seem to think of the same handful to be from home when the plot thickens.

Also, road is sort of a loose term in this instance.

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Professional Reasons

The most common reasons you find PCs located far away from home when we first meet them is because they're looking for work... but that work is almost universally A) as a wandering sellsword, or B) as a traveling bard.

And there are some characters who tend to be a bit of both.

While there's nothing wrong with either of these reasons (and you can improve them by lifting some content from 100 Random Mercenary Companies as well as 100 Fantasy Bands by yours truly if you'd like), there are so many other options out there!

For example, consider the fantasy teamster. With her wagon and her mule she runs goods all over the region, and any trouble she meets out on the road gets a quarrel between the eyes from the crossbow she keeps locked up by her seat. Traveling peddlers, river boatmen, and sailors can also fall into this category. Or consider the barber surgeon, who can cut hair, stitch wounds, set bones, and pull teeth, but who tends to make rounds to a wider area in order to help as many people as possible while collecting modest fees. There's the treasure hunter who's always looking for that next big score, the forest ranger acting as a freelance guide, the cartographer who is making new, updated maps of the region, and the historian who's attempting to piece together parts of the past to provide a window onto what came before.

The key for characters who are traveling for professional reasons is that you need to give them a pressing enough reason to be on the move, but not something so pressing that they end up ignoring the adventure hook in favor of their personal travel plans. If the drunken master monk is a roadie/bodyguard for touring musicians, for example, you don't want them to be so committed to that role that they refuse to go check out the troll caves, or to stick around and help protect the town against bandit raids.

It's all about balance, and flexibility.

Personal Reasons

Much like the above section we see plenty of personal reasons for travel among PCs... but a lot of them tend to fall into the same, very broad categories. The most common examples I've seen of this are, A) Looking for revenge, B) Running from debts/commitments C) Some kind of rite of passage.

You met a man with three fingers on his left hand? Which way did he go?

Again, because I cannot stress this enough, there is nothing wrong with those reasons. They're old fall back positions, the same as the paladin that's a knight in shining armor, or the wizard that's an old gray-bearded sage. But they aren't the only options you have, and you can get a lot out of stretching your creativity in this case.

For instance, is your character having a mid-life crisis, so they decide to leave behind a steady trade or a growing business to go out and make their name as a hero? Are they hounded by visions and prophecies, driven toward certain places by the will of inscrutable gods (whether or not they're divine caster classes)? Did they want to get out of their small town to see the world before settling down to have kids? Are they looking for a long-lost friend, family member, or rightful owner of a strange ring they found that draws them on like an iron filing to a lodestone? Are they a really dedicated foodie determined to try all the strange dishes and unusual customs found in 100 Fantasy Foods?

There are hundreds of different reasons someone might find themselves on the road, far away from home. The advantage of personal reasons to travel, though, is that a good GM can take them, and weave them into the ongoing plot in order to hook a PC into said plot to satisfy the player's personal arc. Whether it's deciding to Don Quixote their way through a goblin siege on their old plow horse, or traveling to the capitol to taste the finest viands while also solving the murder of the duchess, players with personal reasons to be out and about can often be easily directed toward the plot with a dangling carrot.

Additional Resources and Inspiration

If you're going to be running a game that takes place out in the open world, and your PCs are going to be doing a great deal of traveling, then I would suggest checking out some of the following supplements for extra inspiration!

- 100 Random Taverns: One of my bestselling supplements, it's gone Electrum at time of writing. Whether you need a sports bar hung with regalia of tourney knights, a clockwork brewery, or a hole-in-the-wall run by kobolds, this supplement has you covered!

- 10 Fantasy Villages: Whether you need a place for your PC to be from, or you need unique locations for the party to stop in, this supplement has everything you need. Maps, histories, rumors, notable places, NPCs, and more can be found between these pages.

- 100 Encounters in a Fey Forest: Traveling through a fey forest is a unique kind of danger... people who are actually from such places might be seen as touched in the head by the rest of the world. For those looking for specific lists there's both a Pathfinder Classic version as well as a DND 5E version.

- 100 Encounters For on The Road or in The Wilderness: From road construction, to guard patrols, to mating wolves, and strange discoveries, there's no reason your PCs should ever have a dull moment when getting from point A to point B. And like the previous supplement this one comes in both a Pathfinder Classic version as well as a DND 5E version.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my alley cat thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

5 Tips For Travel in RPGs

There's a saying when it comes to RPGs. That a 5-day journey can be completed in seconds, but a 5-minute combat takes half the night to get through. However, as any experienced player can tell you, an average game gives you three to four times as much time traveling as it does slinking through dungeons, or battling dark forces.

Man... I am gonna stroll all OVER that thing...

So how do you make sure your players don't zone out when it comes to travel in your game? Especially if you're following the advice in For Tighter Games, Consider Nixing Random Encounters, and doing away with seeing how many wolves harass the party on their way from Point A to Point B?

Well, every game is going to have a unique solution. However, the following tips might make things a little easier on you as a DM, and more interesting for your table.

Tip #1: Sprinkle The Route With Lore

It's one thing to walk down a road for four days, but it's another thing to give your players a guided tour of the realm's history. For example, there might be an ancient stone highway made of colossal slabs of perfectly-planed granite. No one in the region knows who built the road, but there are wild tales of an empire of giants lost to history. Have the occasional statue on the path, or have the party rest at notable sites like the Countess's Crown; a ring of standing stones that's said to offer protection to those who sleep within them.

If you're going to go through the journey, actually give your players things to see, and let them roll a check from time to time to get more information. These things don't necessarily have to be connected to your campaign quest, but it helps if they are.

For a place to get started, you could check out A Baker's Dozen of Rumours (And The Truth Behind Them) as well as A Baker's Dozen Pieces of Lore.

Tip #2: Examine Alternative Transportation

If you're seeking the ruins of a forgotten fortress in the middle of the desert, chances are you have no option but to hoof it into the dunes. Maybe, if you're smart, you'll buy some camels. However, you can often spice up the rest of the journey by offering your party some alternative methods of travel.

For instance, rather than just making the journey from where you start to the center of the desert one long, hard ride, offer other options. Does the party take a ship, making their way around the coastline on the open ocean? Do they travel via river raft through the slower moving waterways? Do they take an airship? Or, if they're wealthy enough, can they afford to have a wizard simply teleport them to a pre-determined landing pad near where they wish to be?

If players are asked to participate in the planning process, and they have more options than, "we start walking," you get more opportunities for engagement. And to bring in fresh NPCs, since it won't just be the players walking alone through the forest until something happens.

You might want to take a look at Hoardreach: The City of Wyrms for some ideas. This city built atop a mountain, which is ruled over by 5 dragons, is the center of airship travel in Sundara. It's available both for Pathfinder Classic, as well as for Dungeons and Dragons 5E.

Tip #3: Have Things Happen

I said no random encounters earlier, and I mean that. However, you should design regular old encounters and incidents for your party to get embroiled in as they travel. For example, did the party book passage on a clockpunk train trekking across the northlands? Well, have a murder happen onboard. The party can get involved in finding the killer, giving them a chance to use their abilities to clear themselves of any possible wrongdoing. If they're on a ship, run a small side scene where the captain attempts to sell his passengers into slavery. Now the party can smash the slavers, and continue their journey as heroes. It also sends up a flare to any shadowy villains who might be keeping track of their progress from afar. Even if the party opts to just ride down the King's Highway, have them meet up with patrols, exchange news, and hear about potential threats on the road. As long as something is happening, it keeps players involved. It also has the added benefit of making the journey feel like it took time, which can be helpful if you don't just want to fast travel all over the map.

If you're looking for encounters to use as inspiration here, you should take a look at:

- 100 Pieces of Flotsam and Jetsam to Find on a Beach
- 100 Encounters in a Fey Forest
- 100 Random Encounters For on The Road or in The Wilderness

Tip #4: Make It A Challenge (If Players Wish)

Travel is usually hand-waved away because if there's no potential threat to the party as they go, then why spend time on pure narration? However, if you have the sort of group that watches how much weight PCs carry, and keeps track of how many arrows the archer brings with, then making travel through the wilderness a potentially hazardous thing might increase player involvement. While magic can make environmental penalties and dangers trivial after low levels, the potential of getting lost, running out of food, or dying of exposure can be thrilling for the right group. This tip has a chance to backfire, though, so make sure your group is down for it before insisting they count their daily calories, and carry enough water.

Tip #5: Don't Linger If There's No Point

Presenting side quests and additional RP, as well as getting the players wrist-deep in the lore of the world, are all well and good. However, sometimes it can feel more like a burden than an opportunity. Just like how it's possible to create unique NPC merchants, to name their stores, and decide what inventory they do or don't have can turn shopping for gear into a fun experience, but there are going to be some tables who just want to buy fresh bolts and alchemist fire before getting back on the trail.

If that's what your group wants, let them do that. It will save everyone frustration down the road.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my cat noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!