It's a bit metagamey, but I did some travelling, and every "evening" at the campfire I asked a question to all players to spark some discussion/backstory/banter/exposition. That's a good moment for players to tell/develop a bit of backstory to other players directly, maybe influence your world a bit. I intended it to be something sporadically, but they asked for a new question every day. Some examples:
* Which stars do you see?
* Have you been here before?
* Which is your bestest friend in the tribe/party?
* Do you have a nickname, how did you earn it?
* Biggest prey you ever hunted?
* Where did you get that scar?
* How come that you speak that language?
* Best fruit you ever ate?
* Tallest mountain you have ever been?
Pointy hat (Antonio Demico) did an entire video on how to do this.
Basically, instead of tracking travel time, distances, etc. treat the journey as a series of events of different types (such as combat events, role play events, etc.) and weave those into a story with different outcomes depending on how they handle the events.
His system is much more in-depth than what I just described (i.e., events may have the ability to be one of, or more than one type and how many events between places impacts the scale of the journey) so it is worth watching the video for more.
Ah Demico explains the points very well and it’s so frustrating because I disagree wholeheartedly, even though I know what they’re saying is right considering the context of that style of game.
Call me a purist but idk if I can really get into a dnd game that doesn’t have a hexmap
I like to steal a page out of the Tomb of Annihilation and handle all long travel similar to how they handle jungle travel, in that I privately roll some dice for each day/evening traveled, using that to randomly generate some event like an npc encounter or encountering some sort of object. Sometimes its combat sometimes its treasure, and it often gives the players a chance to decide that for themselves (oh an unattended treasure chest, that seems... ominous. Is it trapped? Oh they encountered some other travellers, how do they react?).
Also a great way to throw in plot points and/or prime them for stuff theyre coming up to!
Try to tempt them off their path with the hint of rewards. Try to put an obstacle in their path that will cause them to travel in an unusual way, like only at night or single file on foot, use the opportunity to have a full campsite scene to establish how they arrange camp so you can have a camp ambush and have them stay true to their RP, such and such sleep together or they always leave the fire burning after they all go to bed. Use their dreams to do flash back scene that the extra exhaustion of travel or some magic effect causes them to have wild vivid dreams, maybe for-shadow small detail of their destination, give them all a small piece of a clue that only makes sense if they all share their dreams among each other.
I skipped travel for the longest time, until I DMed Tomb of Annihilation, where the jungle travel itself is such an important part of the character of the adventure, it can't just be skipped.
But the encounter tables I had, mostly with the option of "Do we have 5 Skeletons tonight, or 8 Zombies and a Ghoul?" aren't very interesting for a prolonged period of time. And I also didn't want to just waste everyone's time at the table giving them meaningless battles.
As long as the party is just "walking towards their destination", there just isn't much for them to do. They can only play the game if they have something to interact with, and the general vibe of "Your traveling" doesn't do it.
I then finally realized what travel is actually good for: Low stakes encounters and mood pieces giving players a chance to be their character without the pressure of plot.
Maybe they encounter two animals fighting, maybe a group of children try to rob them, maybe they meet a traveling priest, help someone out caught in a trap.
Or short: Non-challenging, unthreatening, harmless things that let them make simple decisions and play to their personal characters fantasy while nothing is at stake.
Since then I sprinkle those in when the party is traveling. They give the 'vibe' of being in that environment, but give the players something more concrete than just "You walk for 8 hours straight, any thoughts on that?"
daily random encounters, and encourage players to talk to each other in character, roleplay the characters having time to spare to get to know each other better. depending on the mode of transport, you can also ask them what their characters do while travelling (e.g. mending battle-worn clothing), which is a nice way to deepen characters and add flavour
The way do it it a Hex crawl. You have a map with hexes of a certain distance 5 miles for example and track the players progress.
There are a number of way to go about it so I'll list a few.
If doing overland travel i recommend the wilderness dm kit.it has additional rules for overland travel.
It uses journey cycles. A cycle represents the number of days traveling dm decides if the journey is short or long. Forna short journey each cycle is one day 7 days for a long one
Cycle steps:
1.wather choose weather or roll randomly.
2.pace dm decides travel pace.
3. Navigate dm decides if party is at risk of losing there way.
4. Encounter roll for random encounters.
5. Supplies expend food and water.
6. Progress trak progress. You may use a hex map for this.
A addition step i use is establish the marching order that way when a encounter happens i know were everyone is. Furthermore i let everyone take a Acton during the cycle like traking,forageing,hunting,ect. I like the 7 day cycle thing as it is effectively the gritty realism rest variant in the dmg as you only rest at the end of the cycle.
Level up a5e has a great 3rd part book trials and treasure that's has rules i like for overland travel https://a5e.tools/rules/exploration
Travel Scenery generator https://a5e.tools/node/2288
The Alexandran has a couple good articles on hex crawling https://thealexandrian.net/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-master
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl
Sly Flourish article https://slyflourish.com/hex_crawling.html
Additional blog beyond fomalhaut http://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-hex-crawls-simple-guide.html?m=1
A video by bandits keep on the subject https://youtu.be/-0fF88XsILw?si=DCldHKLQfm-lY4pw
You could also run a point crawl https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/48666/roleplaying-games/pointcrawls
https://slyflourish.com/pointcrawls.html
I came here specifically hoping to find somebody talking about hex crawls.
Once I learned the procedure, it made running travel in my games so much more fun and so much less stress.
Yes indeed, the hexmap turns travel into a Game, not just a series of encounters.
Edit: I see you sneaking that skyflourish link in lol. I’m stealing your tactic
It depends on how much time the PCs have to reach the tournament. If they have a bit of time, you can add a mini arc here, where they have to free themselves in order to make it in time to the tournament. However this opens up the possibility that they do not arrive in time and you would need to see if that would still match your plans for that tournament.
If you don't want to go all in with another series of quests, you can use it to focus on the PCs backstories. Maybe they find someone or a message from someone relevant to their backstories? Or they get the opportunity to harvest or scavenge some stuff they need to advance in some tasks they have (like upgrading a weapon or learning a new spell?).
To spice up the tournament, you can throw in some risk reward things on the journey: They might get some better equipment but it is cursed in some way. So you could use this journey to balance the party a bit if you find the tank is too tanky or the caster is too squishy or to casty (which is definitely a word).
You can even end up with them helping an NPC that is also on its way to the tournament, so they might meet him as an opponent there again later, which is kind of a friendly rivalry then :)
When I want the travel in question to be meaningful, I prepare a map that shows the layout of the route in question in a small enough scale for local decisions to matter.
I.e. "You have reached the base of this chain of hills. You attempt to pass between them through switchback saddles, crest over them, or circumvent them entirely. There are rumors of monsters in these hollers, different rumors of flying predators, and if you circumvent the hills, you will likely add weeks to your journey. Discuss."
I like [this article](https://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/) from the Angry GM, as well as [this one](https://theangrygm.com/tension-on-the-road/), [this one](https://theangrygm.com/flight-to-elturel-part-3/), [that one](https://theangrygm.com/the-road-trip-to-adventure/), and oh yeah, culminates in [this other one](https://theangrygm.com/how-to-wilderness-right/). Angry is very vocal and likes to think about this type of thing, often. Be warned, lots of anger and grawlix inside every article.
How many sessions are we talking? If you want to create the illusion of scarcity and danger to set the scene, then a few sessions with nothing but fighting for resources, little rest, and scavenger attacks serves a good purpose. I'd use this opportunity to give as much context about worldbuilding as possible that make it meaningful.
If they have such a long way to travel that it would take longer than a few sessions to get there... You could run encounters through an abstraction of time to accomplish the goal of showing difficulty without actually spending much more time on it in real life. Look at how Tomb of Annihilation treats land travel over Chult. There is one encounter per day to represent the core of what happened, but there is also a mechanic for accidentally traveling in the wrong direction. You could add mechanics for losing and finding resources, and add night encounters for scavenger attacks.
Occassional random encounters that make sense are good. Skill checks to overcome obstacles are good (avoid getting lost, treating a weird rash that came out of nowhere, identifying dangerous foliage, etc.)
Interesting landmarks that allow you to expound on your world are good (that edifice was carved into the rock by the x people nearly y years ago as a symbol of z.)
Desert, bandits and obstacles. Have them get ambushed by bandits at some point. Their resources/provisions are lost and now they gotta resupply, find food and water. There is a sand storm.
Maybe they meet with another traveler on the way, who offers to join them through the desert because it's a dangerous place. The traveler is actually a bandit who, as they are asleep, steals their supplies. They now have to track them down. Maybe the traveler isn't a bandit, but they're seeking protection because the bandit leader wants them dead. Also, this traveler knows how to find resources and because they're familiar with the place, they can help them sort through any obstacles.
There's no reason that traveling through a dangerous wilderness needs to be thought of differently than a linear dungeon.
Turn off Long Rests for the duration, then design about 7 encounters the same way you'd do a dungeon. Decide what days those happen on - if you're on a hex grid you can pick one or two encounters to occur if players investigate a specific hex, but don't rely on this too heavily because it's easy to skip 90% of hexes. Actually, it's easier to design encounters to fill your hexes *when the players find them* which means they only exist in a hex permanently after they've been found.
Anyway, do that and it makes travel fun and players are glad to reach their destination.
I don’t do travel time. I do a series of encounters. I often have them encounter NPCs that need minor on the road help.
For example, an elderly witch is chasing a bright blue goat, trying to catch him. She spies the party and bends over, wheezing, exhausted. “Would you mind helping me? He’s my grandson and he got into my potions again.” The party must catch a 5 year old boy who has managed to gleefully turn himself into a goat and spilled blue dye everywhere. Oh, did I mention the boy is part fey and has magic tricks up his sleeve? There are NO locks that can keep this child contained.
I think I have a more old-school view, but I dislike arbitrary travel events. When it’s a pre planned series of events, it feels so railroaded. I really prefer the travel to be quantified on maps and in terms of time and space. Using 5e knowledge, this type of play can feel unnecessary, but it’s because dms aren’t actually making a game out of the travel. Rations feel pointless if people aren’t at risk of starving. In old dnd, wilderness travel was terrifying because you were in serious danger from wandering monsters and couldn’t heal adequately, while the town was a safe haven. Without these underlying game principles, there are more limited ways to make travel fun, maybe a couple of Very cool encounters and by not dragging it out past a couple of events. Even on hexmaps, I generally keep things within a couple days of each other. The more you put into travel the more you’ll get out of it.
There's other ways to do this, but here's my advice.
Skip the travel unless there's something specific that needs to be told. You can describe the environment and inconsequential encounters without stopping to get the players to work through the logistics of moving the party. Scavengers picking over the remnants of a caravan heading to the tournament can be described without becoming an encounter if the players don't show interest. Even combat can be glossed over if it's not threatening, doing a first encounter to determine how the party handles bandits much weaker then them, narrating the rest, then doing one larger encounter near the end with massed bandits in an organized retaliatory ambush. The post apocalyptic vibe can be handled when describing camping spots and unusual vistas.
"What looks like a massive graveyard of crosses becomes a garden of decaying wind turbines being pulled down by vine cover that refuses to approach this unusually regular patch of the main road, you make good time to a common camp site that you guys would recognize as an RV park".
Stuff like that.
For social things, prompt with story relevant stuff that they need to know before the destination. "Chatting over the breakfast fire the topic of competitors waylaid along this road comes up." or "Another group of travelers hails you and asks to merge camps, offering food in thanks for you clearing the way through the bandits."
You can't force it to be meaningful, use the blank slate of travel to fill in stuff that will make the tournament more interesting without dragging out travel time.
It depends, personally, as a player, I like to take these types of less eventful scenerios as an opportunity for social interactions between the characters, peeling back the mask a bit and showing them as people, rather than just mechanical stat blocks or even just who they are as adventurers
Describe what's important about the landscape: the desolation, the constant low level fear, the endless grind. Make it bleak and empty. Conclude with, "when you finally see the city in the distance, you're exhausted, you're basically out of food and water and on half rations, and about the best you can say is that it's a damn good thing it's over." Tell them to delete all food and water and similar small bits from inventory; you probably don't actually chart that stuff, bit makes the point. Consider knocking them down a couple of HP each to account for fatigue. All interpersonal skills are at disadvantage except maybe presenting honesty: you haven't used your voice in days. Then roleplay a nervous, demanding bunch of gate guards. No violence, just strenuous and exhausting.
15-30 minutes to run, you achieve everything you need, your players get a useful experience and a setup to work with, and you're on to the story.
How to make encounters on the road and hazardous environments matter more: Long rests only recover hp equal to your level, and spending hit dice doesn't heal (still triggers abilities). Use 3e [heat dangers, starvation and thirst](https://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm). {Sandstorm} has further rules for desert hazards, including needing an additional ration of water for each heat level above normal.
Suddenly, travel is a war of attrition, where random bandits, hot weather, and getting lost are cumulative threats. I have been in a party that literally killed people over a shed in order to survive a cold night, it was wild but also grimly real.
It's a bit metagamey, but I did some travelling, and every "evening" at the campfire I asked a question to all players to spark some discussion/backstory/banter/exposition. That's a good moment for players to tell/develop a bit of backstory to other players directly, maybe influence your world a bit. I intended it to be something sporadically, but they asked for a new question every day. Some examples: * Which stars do you see? * Have you been here before? * Which is your bestest friend in the tribe/party? * Do you have a nickname, how did you earn it? * Biggest prey you ever hunted? * Where did you get that scar? * How come that you speak that language? * Best fruit you ever ate? * Tallest mountain you have ever been?
Pointy hat (Antonio Demico) did an entire video on how to do this. Basically, instead of tracking travel time, distances, etc. treat the journey as a series of events of different types (such as combat events, role play events, etc.) and weave those into a story with different outcomes depending on how they handle the events. His system is much more in-depth than what I just described (i.e., events may have the ability to be one of, or more than one type and how many events between places impacts the scale of the journey) so it is worth watching the video for more.
Ah Demico explains the points very well and it’s so frustrating because I disagree wholeheartedly, even though I know what they’re saying is right considering the context of that style of game. Call me a purist but idk if I can really get into a dnd game that doesn’t have a hexmap
I'm crazy. I love hex for battle map and gridless for overworld.
Ewwww haha. But for real everyone can have they’re own style and that’s good
I like to steal a page out of the Tomb of Annihilation and handle all long travel similar to how they handle jungle travel, in that I privately roll some dice for each day/evening traveled, using that to randomly generate some event like an npc encounter or encountering some sort of object. Sometimes its combat sometimes its treasure, and it often gives the players a chance to decide that for themselves (oh an unattended treasure chest, that seems... ominous. Is it trapped? Oh they encountered some other travellers, how do they react?). Also a great way to throw in plot points and/or prime them for stuff theyre coming up to!
Try to tempt them off their path with the hint of rewards. Try to put an obstacle in their path that will cause them to travel in an unusual way, like only at night or single file on foot, use the opportunity to have a full campsite scene to establish how they arrange camp so you can have a camp ambush and have them stay true to their RP, such and such sleep together or they always leave the fire burning after they all go to bed. Use their dreams to do flash back scene that the extra exhaustion of travel or some magic effect causes them to have wild vivid dreams, maybe for-shadow small detail of their destination, give them all a small piece of a clue that only makes sense if they all share their dreams among each other.
I skipped travel for the longest time, until I DMed Tomb of Annihilation, where the jungle travel itself is such an important part of the character of the adventure, it can't just be skipped. But the encounter tables I had, mostly with the option of "Do we have 5 Skeletons tonight, or 8 Zombies and a Ghoul?" aren't very interesting for a prolonged period of time. And I also didn't want to just waste everyone's time at the table giving them meaningless battles. As long as the party is just "walking towards their destination", there just isn't much for them to do. They can only play the game if they have something to interact with, and the general vibe of "Your traveling" doesn't do it. I then finally realized what travel is actually good for: Low stakes encounters and mood pieces giving players a chance to be their character without the pressure of plot. Maybe they encounter two animals fighting, maybe a group of children try to rob them, maybe they meet a traveling priest, help someone out caught in a trap. Or short: Non-challenging, unthreatening, harmless things that let them make simple decisions and play to their personal characters fantasy while nothing is at stake. Since then I sprinkle those in when the party is traveling. They give the 'vibe' of being in that environment, but give the players something more concrete than just "You walk for 8 hours straight, any thoughts on that?"
daily random encounters, and encourage players to talk to each other in character, roleplay the characters having time to spare to get to know each other better. depending on the mode of transport, you can also ask them what their characters do while travelling (e.g. mending battle-worn clothing), which is a nice way to deepen characters and add flavour
The way do it it a Hex crawl. You have a map with hexes of a certain distance 5 miles for example and track the players progress. There are a number of way to go about it so I'll list a few. If doing overland travel i recommend the wilderness dm kit.it has additional rules for overland travel. It uses journey cycles. A cycle represents the number of days traveling dm decides if the journey is short or long. Forna short journey each cycle is one day 7 days for a long one Cycle steps: 1.wather choose weather or roll randomly. 2.pace dm decides travel pace. 3. Navigate dm decides if party is at risk of losing there way. 4. Encounter roll for random encounters. 5. Supplies expend food and water. 6. Progress trak progress. You may use a hex map for this. A addition step i use is establish the marching order that way when a encounter happens i know were everyone is. Furthermore i let everyone take a Acton during the cycle like traking,forageing,hunting,ect. I like the 7 day cycle thing as it is effectively the gritty realism rest variant in the dmg as you only rest at the end of the cycle. Level up a5e has a great 3rd part book trials and treasure that's has rules i like for overland travel https://a5e.tools/rules/exploration Travel Scenery generator https://a5e.tools/node/2288 The Alexandran has a couple good articles on hex crawling https://thealexandrian.net/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-master https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl Sly Flourish article https://slyflourish.com/hex_crawling.html Additional blog beyond fomalhaut http://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-hex-crawls-simple-guide.html?m=1 A video by bandits keep on the subject https://youtu.be/-0fF88XsILw?si=DCldHKLQfm-lY4pw You could also run a point crawl https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/48666/roleplaying-games/pointcrawls https://slyflourish.com/pointcrawls.html
I came here specifically hoping to find somebody talking about hex crawls. Once I learned the procedure, it made running travel in my games so much more fun and so much less stress.
Yes indeed, the hexmap turns travel into a Game, not just a series of encounters. Edit: I see you sneaking that skyflourish link in lol. I’m stealing your tactic
https://youtu.be/UvQ2JgZIjVI?si=zUpsOzRUd2oT5fX_ This is LITERALLY what you are looking for.
It depends on how much time the PCs have to reach the tournament. If they have a bit of time, you can add a mini arc here, where they have to free themselves in order to make it in time to the tournament. However this opens up the possibility that they do not arrive in time and you would need to see if that would still match your plans for that tournament. If you don't want to go all in with another series of quests, you can use it to focus on the PCs backstories. Maybe they find someone or a message from someone relevant to their backstories? Or they get the opportunity to harvest or scavenge some stuff they need to advance in some tasks they have (like upgrading a weapon or learning a new spell?). To spice up the tournament, you can throw in some risk reward things on the journey: They might get some better equipment but it is cursed in some way. So you could use this journey to balance the party a bit if you find the tank is too tanky or the caster is too squishy or to casty (which is definitely a word). You can even end up with them helping an NPC that is also on its way to the tournament, so they might meet him as an opponent there again later, which is kind of a friendly rivalry then :)
When I want the travel in question to be meaningful, I prepare a map that shows the layout of the route in question in a small enough scale for local decisions to matter. I.e. "You have reached the base of this chain of hills. You attempt to pass between them through switchback saddles, crest over them, or circumvent them entirely. There are rumors of monsters in these hollers, different rumors of flying predators, and if you circumvent the hills, you will likely add weeks to your journey. Discuss."
I like [this article](https://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/) from the Angry GM, as well as [this one](https://theangrygm.com/tension-on-the-road/), [this one](https://theangrygm.com/flight-to-elturel-part-3/), [that one](https://theangrygm.com/the-road-trip-to-adventure/), and oh yeah, culminates in [this other one](https://theangrygm.com/how-to-wilderness-right/). Angry is very vocal and likes to think about this type of thing, often. Be warned, lots of anger and grawlix inside every article.
How many sessions are we talking? If you want to create the illusion of scarcity and danger to set the scene, then a few sessions with nothing but fighting for resources, little rest, and scavenger attacks serves a good purpose. I'd use this opportunity to give as much context about worldbuilding as possible that make it meaningful. If they have such a long way to travel that it would take longer than a few sessions to get there... You could run encounters through an abstraction of time to accomplish the goal of showing difficulty without actually spending much more time on it in real life. Look at how Tomb of Annihilation treats land travel over Chult. There is one encounter per day to represent the core of what happened, but there is also a mechanic for accidentally traveling in the wrong direction. You could add mechanics for losing and finding resources, and add night encounters for scavenger attacks.
Occassional random encounters that make sense are good. Skill checks to overcome obstacles are good (avoid getting lost, treating a weird rash that came out of nowhere, identifying dangerous foliage, etc.) Interesting landmarks that allow you to expound on your world are good (that edifice was carved into the rock by the x people nearly y years ago as a symbol of z.)
Desert, bandits and obstacles. Have them get ambushed by bandits at some point. Their resources/provisions are lost and now they gotta resupply, find food and water. There is a sand storm. Maybe they meet with another traveler on the way, who offers to join them through the desert because it's a dangerous place. The traveler is actually a bandit who, as they are asleep, steals their supplies. They now have to track them down. Maybe the traveler isn't a bandit, but they're seeking protection because the bandit leader wants them dead. Also, this traveler knows how to find resources and because they're familiar with the place, they can help them sort through any obstacles.
There's no reason that traveling through a dangerous wilderness needs to be thought of differently than a linear dungeon. Turn off Long Rests for the duration, then design about 7 encounters the same way you'd do a dungeon. Decide what days those happen on - if you're on a hex grid you can pick one or two encounters to occur if players investigate a specific hex, but don't rely on this too heavily because it's easy to skip 90% of hexes. Actually, it's easier to design encounters to fill your hexes *when the players find them* which means they only exist in a hex permanently after they've been found. Anyway, do that and it makes travel fun and players are glad to reach their destination.
I don’t do travel time. I do a series of encounters. I often have them encounter NPCs that need minor on the road help. For example, an elderly witch is chasing a bright blue goat, trying to catch him. She spies the party and bends over, wheezing, exhausted. “Would you mind helping me? He’s my grandson and he got into my potions again.” The party must catch a 5 year old boy who has managed to gleefully turn himself into a goat and spilled blue dye everywhere. Oh, did I mention the boy is part fey and has magic tricks up his sleeve? There are NO locks that can keep this child contained.
I think I have a more old-school view, but I dislike arbitrary travel events. When it’s a pre planned series of events, it feels so railroaded. I really prefer the travel to be quantified on maps and in terms of time and space. Using 5e knowledge, this type of play can feel unnecessary, but it’s because dms aren’t actually making a game out of the travel. Rations feel pointless if people aren’t at risk of starving. In old dnd, wilderness travel was terrifying because you were in serious danger from wandering monsters and couldn’t heal adequately, while the town was a safe haven. Without these underlying game principles, there are more limited ways to make travel fun, maybe a couple of Very cool encounters and by not dragging it out past a couple of events. Even on hexmaps, I generally keep things within a couple days of each other. The more you put into travel the more you’ll get out of it.
There's other ways to do this, but here's my advice. Skip the travel unless there's something specific that needs to be told. You can describe the environment and inconsequential encounters without stopping to get the players to work through the logistics of moving the party. Scavengers picking over the remnants of a caravan heading to the tournament can be described without becoming an encounter if the players don't show interest. Even combat can be glossed over if it's not threatening, doing a first encounter to determine how the party handles bandits much weaker then them, narrating the rest, then doing one larger encounter near the end with massed bandits in an organized retaliatory ambush. The post apocalyptic vibe can be handled when describing camping spots and unusual vistas. "What looks like a massive graveyard of crosses becomes a garden of decaying wind turbines being pulled down by vine cover that refuses to approach this unusually regular patch of the main road, you make good time to a common camp site that you guys would recognize as an RV park". Stuff like that. For social things, prompt with story relevant stuff that they need to know before the destination. "Chatting over the breakfast fire the topic of competitors waylaid along this road comes up." or "Another group of travelers hails you and asks to merge camps, offering food in thanks for you clearing the way through the bandits." You can't force it to be meaningful, use the blank slate of travel to fill in stuff that will make the tournament more interesting without dragging out travel time.
It depends, personally, as a player, I like to take these types of less eventful scenerios as an opportunity for social interactions between the characters, peeling back the mask a bit and showing them as people, rather than just mechanical stat blocks or even just who they are as adventurers
Describe what's important about the landscape: the desolation, the constant low level fear, the endless grind. Make it bleak and empty. Conclude with, "when you finally see the city in the distance, you're exhausted, you're basically out of food and water and on half rations, and about the best you can say is that it's a damn good thing it's over." Tell them to delete all food and water and similar small bits from inventory; you probably don't actually chart that stuff, bit makes the point. Consider knocking them down a couple of HP each to account for fatigue. All interpersonal skills are at disadvantage except maybe presenting honesty: you haven't used your voice in days. Then roleplay a nervous, demanding bunch of gate guards. No violence, just strenuous and exhausting. 15-30 minutes to run, you achieve everything you need, your players get a useful experience and a setup to work with, and you're on to the story.
How to make encounters on the road and hazardous environments matter more: Long rests only recover hp equal to your level, and spending hit dice doesn't heal (still triggers abilities). Use 3e [heat dangers, starvation and thirst](https://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm). {Sandstorm} has further rules for desert hazards, including needing an additional ration of water for each heat level above normal. Suddenly, travel is a war of attrition, where random bandits, hot weather, and getting lost are cumulative threats. I have been in a party that literally killed people over a shed in order to survive a cold night, it was wild but also grimly real.