Pretty short and sweet, how do you successfully narrate travel between points of interest as a GM without it being all hurky-jerky?
I’m imagining attempting to narrate the epic travel scenes in Lord of the Rings, where they travel for days in fast-forward with nothing really interesting happening, only to then suddenly have time reel down to normal when something is about to happen. Every time I try this in a game though it just feels awkward and abrupt, while also clearly indicating to the players that something is going to happen.
Is there a way to make this a more smooth and natural transition?
I like point crawls for this. I mark a few points of interest and how long it takes to get there. Travel is fairly abstract until they get to a point of interest. Once they get to the point of interest, things slow down so that they can find cool things, meet npcs, fight monsters or some combination of those things
If the area is hard to navigate then a failed survival check might send them to a different point of interest