Two days after a snowstorm and we were hiking out of a Nepali village. It had been clear all night for our predawn mountain climbing, and by the time we were moving on the sun was out. We left our jackets on our packs and tramped through the snow.

Crunch crunch crunch.

"There been any signs since Ghorepani?"

Crunch crunch.

"Not that I remember. But we've got these footprints to follow. We're all good."

Crunch crunch crunch.

"Yeah, but there's no path. What if we're just following this guy to his grandma's house? It's only one set of tracks. He could be going anywhere."

Crunch crunch.

"OK let's climb that ridge and see if there's anything more pathlike."

Crunch crunch crunch (for three hours).

"Ah. Here we are. The path. Sweet."

I think one of the things I've been most annoyed to learn about travelling is that the roads don't necessarily take you where you want to go. And often they don't even take you where you're supposed to be (in that sense that getting lost is the best goal for any traveller).

I'm trying not to complain about this, but roads are made for locals and not for those of us who are off looking for inspiration for their games (or other more legitimate experiences). This can take a few forms.

Sometimes it means things are way less accessible than you'd expect. When my buddy and I were hitching our way back from the Dead Sea to Amman we got a ride to Madaba which wasn't far from where we were, but since the road had to get to all the little tiny towns between us it snaked around.

This problem gets even worse when you start dealing with public transportation. Without a bit of work buses don't go to the places you want to go. This one hit me the last time I was travelling back to my adopted Chinese city from a friend's place. There's a huge red temple complex perched on the side of this green mountain right next to the freeway. It's right there and there's no way for me to get to it. There is a village sort of nearby that I might be able to find a bus to from one of the nearby small cities. In any case it's frustrating.

The point here is that if your players are used to getting in a car and going somewhere by whatever route they want, you might want to highlight the challenges sometimes. Especially if they are doing travel on the cheap. It's way slower to do these things independently than it is for Indiana Jones to hop on that big red moving dot of his.

There are also laws about who is allowed to drive different places. I cannot drive in China. You can bring that in when your adventurers visit some place that has a very persuasive taxi/carriage cartel, disallowing private vehicles of any sort.

That of course assumes that your characters would want to drive/ride their own horses whatever. I've run games set in New York City and the characters wanted to drive. Like three individual vehicles in Manhattan. Even though I've never been, I know that's pretty ridiculous. I handwaved the parking difficulties because it wasn't part of the story and I knew I'd have trouble being specific in my vetoes.

What I do know is that I wouldn't want to drive in China, or India or most of the other places I've been. Especially since there are more and more private vehicles hitting the roads and frankly, a lot of people who've bought their licenses.

If you're dealing with a society that is in a socio/technological shift one of the places that it could become very obvious is a place with much laxer driving laws. Think about your Blade Runner-esque world complete with flying cars. Sure, in the big cities people are used to them, but what about on the fringes, where the tech is a lot more expensive (or the people are poorer)? You'll have people who don't quite get the tech operating it, often unsafely. This can be colour for your aircar chases or it can be enforced ruleswise with penalties.

The other problem with roads and all that is when they go places you wish they wouldn't. Remember that good roads bring people (or more accurately the popular places will get better roads sooner). This is something most adventurers seem to instinctually know in their insistence to go through the forest instead of the time saving path to the castle. But it's still a frustrating phenomenon in real life.

Getting up to a beautiful lake in Xinjiang (northwest China) through the back entrance cut down on some of the hordes of people. But when we got to the lake itself we had piles and piles of people. You have to walk around the lake on a nice new road, which also lets buses and private cars tear around. When you've gone somewhere for natural scenery a snaking ribbon of asphalt becomes your hated enemy. Or at least it did for me.

But that's the point. These roads aren't constructed for the convenience of adventurers. We just have to make use of what we can.

J Unrau
Hungry J Propaganda
www.djs5.com/hjp