Free tables Travel — encounters by terrain

Random Road Encounters and Travel Events — d20 Tables

Free d20 tables for road travel in 5e: twenty things to pass and twenty encounters, half of them not fights.

Most campaigns skip the road with "three days later, you arrive", because making up three days of it on the spot is work. These two tables do that work: something to see every day, and something that occasionally finds the party.

Each day, roll d20 on the first column for something the party passes. Then roll a d20 encounter check: on a 17 or higher, something finds them, so roll d20 on the second column. Make it 19 or higher on a quiet, patrolled road and 15 or higher somewhere nobody sensible goes. That works out to 10%, 20% or 30% a day.

About half the encounters aren't fights. A broken bridge or a lost traveller changes a journey just as much as wolves do, and it doesn't cost a spell slot. The fights use SRD creatures only, with their counts and challenge ratings, so you can rate them before anyone rolls initiative.

For the weather, don't roll fresh each day: that gives blizzard, sunshine, blizzard. Start somewhere mild and move it at most one step a day (better, the same, or worse on a d6: 1–2, 3–4, 5–6). Four days then read as a journey rather than a slot machine.

The table

20 results. Roll d20.

d20	On the way	If something finds them
1	A milestone with the distance to the next town scratched out and rewritten, shorter.	Bandits have felled a tree across the road and wait in the ditches on either side. — 2d4 × Bandit (CR 1/8); 1 × Bandit Captain (CR 2)
2	An empty gibbet at a crossroads, its chains still swinging.	Hired thugs are shaking down travellers at a bridge and calling it a toll. — 3 × Thug (CR 1/2)
3	A merchant's wagon pulled over, the driver asleep on the seat.	Wolves, driven close to the road by a hard season, follow the party at dusk. — 2d4 × Wolf (CR 1/4)
4	A roadside shrine with fresh flowers, though there's no house for miles.	Goblins have strung a tripwire across the road and wait in the hedgerow. — 1d6+2 × Goblin (CR 1/4)
5	Cart ruts that leave the road and head straight into a field.	A hobgoblin patrol marches down the road in formation and does not step aside. — 1d4+2 × Hobgoblin (CR 1/2)
6	An unmanned toll post with its barrier left up.	Ghouls are at the graves of a roadside cemetery, and still there at dusk. — 1d4 × Ghoul (CR 1)
7	A line of pilgrims walking the same way, all of them barefoot.	A disgraced knight holds a bridge and demands a duel from anyone who would cross. — 1 × Knight (CR 3)
8	A burned-out inn with a new sign already nailed to what's left of it.	Desperate deserters try to rob the party's camp at night. — 1d6 × Bandit (CR 1/8); 1 × Veteran (CR 3)
9	A dead horse in the ditch, still saddled.	Worgs shadow the road at a distance, waiting for the party to make camp. — 1d4+1 × Worg (CR 1/2)
10	A boy herding geese who asks where the party is going, and writes it down.	A merchant's guards, warned about bandits, decide the party are the bandits. — 1d4+2 × Guard (CR 1/8)
11	A bridge crew who stop work to watch the party pass.	A merchant caravan offers to travel together for safety, and pays in advance.
12	A signpost turned to point the wrong way.	The bridge is down. The river is fast, and the nearest ford is half a day upstream.
13	A noble's coach with a broken axle and a very impatient passenger.	A tax collector and his escort insist on a road tax that may not be real.
14	A soldier's helmet on a fencepost, full of rainwater.	A runaway horse gallops past with a message tube still strapped to the saddle.
15	A tinker's cart jangling past in the other direction.	A family's cart is stuck in the mud, with a sick child aboard.
16	A crossroads well with a bucket and no rope.	An old woman at a crossroads tells the party's fortune for a copper, and gets one detail exactly right.
17	A field of scarecrows, one more than there should be.	Soldiers have closed the road ahead and won't say why.
18	A notice nailed to a tree promising a reward, in a hand nobody can read.	A dying man in the ditch presses a key into the nearest hand.
19	Smoke on the horizon, from a village that should be just ahead.	A troupe of actors asks to share the fire, and performs in return.
20	Two young lovers walking the road, arguing about whose family to tell first.	A wedding procession fills the road and insists the party join the toast.

Questions

How often should I check for random encounters?

Once a day of travel is plenty for a montage. Checking every few hours is for when the journey IS the adventure, and it slows the table down fast.

Should every random encounter be a fight?

No. A road where everything is a fight teaches the players that travel is a tax. Half the results here are people, obstacles and discoveries for that reason.