Wandering Monsters were supposed to be used when players became indecisive about what to do. It was a way for a DM to jumpstart the adventure, either in a particular direction or to get the players motivated to do something other than being indecisive. The other function was for XP. The important thing with both of these was to make sure it made some kind of sense for a particular monster to be there in the first place. Your ideas are sound and great to use to add flavor to a campaign or adventure. I never just skip scenes, for, like you said, in the Lord of the Rings, most of the adventure was centered on travel.

The best advice I've heard is to treat wilderness travel as a decompressed dungeon. There are multiple decision points, descriptive locations, and potential encounters along the way.

Good ideas! I tend to either use a random encounter table, or just have the players describe what the others learn about their character along the way. I like the idea of them finding backstory-related things along the way too.

I think most travel encounters shouldn't be just random monsters spawning, in my opinion. Made have a wandering trader, a friendly mercenary, someone who's lost and needs help, a Mob of townsfolk off to hunt a beast? A campfire is a great time to exchange rumors and information. Maybe add a valuable quest hook. Travel could be a good way to introduce direction in the form of information or leads.

I understand the travel flavoring being somewhat distracting. I’m in a pirate sea focused campaign and half of our sessions have been dealing with the consequences of rolling a 4, 3, and now a 2 on random encounter d100 rolls. That being said, they have all been very interesting moments and have lead to important points in the campaign and to our characters

Love these ideas! As a very very new DM, I really like the options you offered; it’s helped me think through how to be a better DM and weave a more involved tale with my players. So, thanks!

Travel should be about discovery and risk reward management.

A fun way to use combat encounters during travel is to combine them with a ticking clock. If the party has a good perception score then they’ll be able to spot potential enemies from a distance to route around them at the cost of time or just fight their way through to meet a deadline. An example could be the party trying to get into contact with a group of allied NPCs to help with a coming attack on their home town. As they travel they find a number of roaming platoons of enemy soldiers and traps. Will they fight through to ensure they’re able to reach the cavalry in time or will they try to sneak out to keep themselves safe?

Love these tips. I had to juggle this JUST last night and this is very useful and surprisingly comprehensive advice!

Im shocked this doesnt have more views! It's really well made

These suggestions (and the caveats around when to use and not use them) are all very good advice. I tend to look at random encounter tables and pick the one or two I think my players would have most fun with, and run those at suitable points during the travel.

Are you describing a "sandbox" adventure? There's also a similar thing called a "Point Crawl"

My plan is to run a hex crawl system and each hex has an encounter that is always optional, each hex is about a weeks travel and at most the players will beed to travel 12-14 hex’s without seeing a village (very much a particular bit of my world and they could travel by boat and get there in 4 days) but my world is all about agency and they will encounter fights, random things, interesting things, magical things. But the players have the choice of “do I pick up the pulsating flower?” “Do we fight the wandering band of orcs?” “Do we trust this random grandma in the middle of the forest” Most complicated part of this is going to be creating it though

I wish I could make the choice prep in a way nothing gets wasted. I don't enjoy recycling that much, but the alternative is leaning super hard into improv and random tables.

Traveling is a great way to drop lore and clues of what monsters are near by. My question is how to use resources like food or water.

If i ever get the chance to dm, i will keep these ideas in mind. The most helpful tip was just bringing up if "travel scenes" are necessary for the party's fun. Thank you for your videos!

Thanks for the video! I will give this a go in my next session.

In my current game we are in a smaller homebrew world. We have a totem barbarian with the the Elk totem as his second feature and we travel super fast. We aren't out looking for random encounters, so this works well for us. We have had a few minor encounters, but they were either ones we were looking for, or something as a plot hook for later. at higher level transport via plant and teleport circles help you get to the major issues and not bother with random encounters except in dungeons.

Mount the Barbarian and ride like the wind...

The game is about adventuring, so yes, let's adventure our way from A to B. I always start my PC as a Druid with Criminal/spy background. For the rest of the Druid's life, the PC can cast guidance (always useful) and druidcraft (start a fire and tell the weather for the next 24 hours). In addition, with a wisdom of 16 I get four Ritual spells like Guiding Hand (find the quest location), Wild Cunning (track something, find food & drink, set up and break camp), Speak with animals (RAW, what creatures and interesting locations are nearby) and Purify Food & Drink. These can be cast over and over. Finally, the Druid is proficient in Arcana (craft magic items), survival (to fill in anything not covered by the above), herbalism kit (make potions and antitoxin) and thieve's tools for traps. Let's roll!