Make an easy d66 table for exploration
I believe that travel and exploration can be an entertaining part of your TTRPG. And most RPG and OSR systems are woefully lacking with fun, playable mechanics for effective travel and hex crawls. It takes a little organization, planning, and flexibility.
I have always enjoyed GMing for a party crossing country and different terrain types, probably because of my fondness for Lord of the Rings, Conan, Elric, Arthurian quest legends, and similar fantasy classics. So much of the action and mystery in these adventures takes place on long overland journeys through mountains, deserts, jungles, forests, or even on stormy seas. Who says you can only have fun in these games down a deep dark hole in the ground? Travel needs to be an option in your game to mix up the setting and tone between dungeon dives and city sessions. It takes all of these backdrops to make a well-rounded RPG campaign.
Here are my three keys to improving travel and exploration in Shadowdark, D&D, or whatever fantasy RPG you’re into.
- Find the right fit – Travel can be as much or little as you and your friends desire. Dig into resources and gear, terrain and weather, fatigue and mounts, or handwave it all and just get to the next dungeon. But agree before you begin how much travel and overland adventure sounds fun for everyone. Communication and consensus are critical.
- Organization & Planning – What kind of trip will it be? How many days or weeks, even? How far? Best route? Are there roads and villages en route, or will it be hazardous terrain where there are no roads, uncharted and dangerous lands?
How will you keep track of changing weather, season of the year, lunar cycles and evening light, or wandering monsters and general innocuous travel encounters? Start planning. Ask questions and make good notes. - Make it immersive – Get the players involved at the get-go. Let them choose roles: the Scout, the navigator or Mapper, and the Quartermaster, can all take some of the onus of burdensome notes and gear tracking or mapping off your proverbial plate, and… it gives them more to do!
Lastly, find good random tables for hex crawling and encounters, NPC and monster development, etc. Shadowdark RPG has excellent tables as does Knave 2e, and even lighter Cairn 2e by Yochai Gal has fun tables. Better still, create your own thematic tables for unexpected and unpredictable points of interest, encounters, or landmarks that the party discovers on the journey. You can download this easy d66 table for landmarks I generated in a few minutes. It is FREE!
Meet the Simple d66 Table
To make overland treks more exciting for you as GM and your players, create your own quick d66 table. The one I am sharing for FREE here on the site was composed in about five minutes. To begin, draw six small boxes with six lines or results for each box. Mine is for random landmarks the party might encounter when traveling off the beaten path, and each die roll result is meant to spark an imaginative or figurative idea to share with the players as the journey unfolds.
To use the d66 table, roll d6 and go to the corresponding box. Then roll another d6 and count down the table to your result. Simple!
The value of these random tables is that the GM and the players both get to share on the spot and collaborate in making their own adventure without everything being static or overly pre-planned.
Watch my YouTube video on improving your RPG travel with useful, quick tables.
You can follow me on YouTube: @EruditeDM, or on X: @EruditeDM. Feel free to email me at EruditeDM@gmail.com.
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