We're going to talk about travel, it's common that the location of the mission is not immediately at the beginning of the scenario, especially if the players have a fixed place of residence, or if you have to travel several times over significant distances, or if the plot is the beginning of a long odyssey.
It is useful to fill in these moments between research or combat phases to bring depth to your world, so that crossing a realm is not as brief as travelling a few underground stations.
It is important to define :
-the time that the planned journey will normally take (and if they stop along the way, visit, increase this travel time)
- the route the players intend to take (especially if they are wanted, a diversion will be safer),
-the necessary provisions, supplemented by buying or hunting phases if necessary, it is possible to intervene by having the provisions devoured by the animals, whether the provisions are of poor quality because sold by a dishonest trader, insufficient because the rain or the abundant sun were not foreseen and have delayed the progress of the journey...
Places and non-player characters encountered that could lead or lose players ....
-places where an orientation test must be done (after a storm, in a deep wood, in a desert, after a goblin found it funny to change the signs ...)
-the mode of transport, if the players all have one (horse, carriage), in which case you will have to find one or share it, join an itinerant group of pilgrims or showmen to go unnoticed, with all the inconveniences and surprises that this implies (the horse injures a leg, the pilgrims chase you as heretics, the bearded woman director of the circus challenges you to a duel with your refusal to join the troupe...)
The players will discover regions that are difficult to locate on the map and often empty of population, it is useful to give them all the necessary depth, to specify what the players could smell (smells, a wet or very dry climate...), to feel, to see, if the way is laborious with uneven stones for example, to tell so that they feel if this way is easy or painful.
It is obvious that many universes have random tables of encounters during travel, but not to be used systematically, or the travel days will look like a game of coin toss, quiet or danger.
Many scenarios might neglect these phases of the game, but it is quite possible to start an investigation, or even discover the real scenario, the journey being basically a pretext.
-the necessary provisions, supplemented by buying or hunting phases if necessary, it is possible to intervene by having the provisions devoured by the animals, whether the provisions are of poor quality because sold by a dishonest trader, insufficient because the DRAFTJS_BLOCK_KEY:e2a28rain or the abundant sun were not foreseen and have delayed the progress of the journey...