Travelling in RP

Argent Dawn
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Hello everyone, I’ve been playing WoW since a few years and while I enjoy giving my characters backstories and do a little “RP” in my head, I never dared to actually roll on a RP server. With Shadowlands I’d like to give it a try. I’m currently working on character concepts and got some questions in regards to travelling and would like to know how other people are handeling it and if there’s some kind of “custom” maybe? I don’t want to sit in the city all day, si I’d like to make travelling part of my RP.

By mount
If using a mount, is it better to walk or use its full speed (I’d assume this is better suited for being in a hurry or for a chase)?
Since the maps ingame are a lot smaller than in “reality” and it doesn’t take several hours/days to get somewhere, how do you handle travelling across the map? Do you pick points on the map to take breaks or stay for the night, acting like several hours have passed?

By ship
This question is mostly for cities that don’t have an ingame ship connection, like Gadgetzan. According to Traveler there was at least one ship that sailed to Stormwind each week. Would it be okay to assume it has a busy harbor with more trade ships sailing there regulary?
If I want to rp my ship journey a bit would it be fine to take the ship from Booty Bay to Ratchet and then act like there’s a ship going to Gadgetzan, using the flight master mount as a “substitute”? Or would that be odd?

Flight master, portals
Talking about the flight master, do they even get used ic?
What about portals? How does one get to Silvermoon for example? Or how does a Horde player get to the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms in general now that the zeppelin to Tirisfal doesn’t exist anymore?

I hope my questions aren’t too weird and I’m probably putting way too much thought into a small thing, but I’m very much looking forward to start roleplaying and these question are piling up in my head, so I’m interested in the opinion of more experienced roleplayers.

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Usually people just use two seater mounts to get around long distances. In cities people mainly use horses, they walk inside the cities and gallop outside (depending on the scenario they are playing).

There are different kind or roleplayers tho, some take it very seriously and actually run around the entire map with horses

It really just depends who you are roleplaying with

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We actually have some canonical details for what a certain distance by mount or foot can be.
According to Warlord Goretooth he claims “It fills me with rage that our enemies sit in a fortress, less than a day’s ride from Kargath, plotting against us” The fortress in question, as his quests direct you there - are related to Blackrock Mountain.

Which means it is roughly a day’s ride to Blackrock Mountain and Kargath, roughly on the border with the Badlands.

Curiously Joanna Blueheart later on in Cataclysm states that

“With war raging across the entire world, the last thing we need is a Horde settlement [Stonard] right in our backyard. Redridge, Duskwood, even Elwynn itself are all a day’s march from here [Swamp of Sorrows].”

You can take what interpretations you want from this but it generally suggests that the terrain in the Searing Gorge may be a lot more dangerous, not unreasonable considering the ash covered, molten wasteland it is - compared to the relatively unpleasant but still navigable terrain that makes up the Swamp of Sorrows.

Gadgetzan did have a port before Cataclysm, no boats went to and from in game but it was clear it was a hub. As for your scenario you suggested its completely feasible, the Goblin ports are all likely well connected.

If it’s in the game world its completely fine to consider it a canonical thing, even if others don’t. Flight masters exist and are referred to in quests, with express orders being given for some quests to ensure you get to places quickly. I suspect that its not for everyone though, you are flying high in the sky on a gryphon or similar beast.

As for portals, people have different interpretations on them but as long as it serves the plot there is nothing wrong with using them. The portal hubs should be for all intents and purposes considered an active thing, it’s more how you use it rather than its mere presence.

People in general have different interpretations on how travel should be done in roleplay but there are that many different ways to do it there is no “right” way or “wrong” way. You can easily adapt the various methods to help prolong (terrain, environment, weather) or to speed up (portals, flight masters) your journey in rp.

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Go for whatever makes the most sense to your character at a given moment. Alternatively, especially if you’re with others, go for what makes for the the better story for you.

If you have a capable mage on hand and your character desperately has to cross a considerable distance, portals are a viable means to get there.

RP on the road is seriously underrated however, so if you and a few friends have to head around Azeroth IC (in character) and there’s no OOC (out of character) reason for you to hurry, saddle up on ground mounts and make the journey there together!

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While we were active, Primalsong usualy traveled from Zone to Zone, staying roughly a couple of days to an entire week in each, depending on the circumstances, though we were also a nomadic bunch and created RP, all from the mundane wood cutting and Hunter-gatherer events to cultist killing and Rival Tribal conflicts

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Portals are cool. I use portals.

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Magical travel is the best way to travel, though as tempting as it is to bippity boppity boo yourself away while mocking the normies with a “So long, peasants!”, it does mean you miss out on the RP aspects of traveling.

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OMG Road RP! Perhaps we could liven up the zones with “Road/Travel RP”. I have seen people RP walk the road in Duskwood, and we just bump into each other and RP. Same could be done on the Horde with Northern Barrens roads.

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It just depends a lot on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. If I’m travelling on foot (with or without a mount), I usually stop after a few zones and don’t (for example) ride from Eastern Plaguelands to Booty Bay in one RP session. If I need to get somewhere quickly, I don’t mind using portals. If I need to use a boat or zeppelin somewhere I’d rather suspend my disbelief and go with the in-game travel time, but do sometimes do normal ship RP. If I’m RPing that I’m stranded somewhere, even if there’s a mage present, I usually figure out a reason why we don’t just portal out of there so as to not end the RP prematurely.

It’s basically a combination of what’ll be the most fun in the moment (if I want to attend something far away for an evening, sure, let’s do it) and what’ll work best in the context of the story. Realistic travel times shouldn’t hinder your enjoyment, essentially.

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It depends on the situation, the scale in game of the zones is clearly tiny compared to how the real scale would be. But do you want to have to spend several RP sessions of travel RP every time you want to move somewhere else for an RP event? Probably not, so sometimes you just have to either just pretend time passed or use a quick travel method. i.e portal.

Travel RP can of course in itself be rewarding, depending on the style of guild you are in, it allows for plenty of character building RP between different characters in a more casual setting than during an event where this is often other more pressing matters RP wise for your character to be paying attention to.

Really its best to just find a good balance , portal somewhere close to where you need to be and then walk, ride the rest of the way, meaning a little travel RP happens just at the start and end of an event, rather than taking up an entire RP session.

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Thank you everyone for your answers. I can just make it dependent on the situation then and be creative how to get somewhere :slight_smile:

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Most people tend to OOC the travel away, either through mounting and flying away or using a portal. I usually like to steer towards the low-fantasy end of RP and the guilds i’ve been in would usually march on a zone-a-day rule of thumb, if it was right across the world we might have used something to get us closer, like the deeprun tram for example. Ultimately it all comes down to the preference of you and the people you’re RP’ing with.

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It’s perfectly lore-plausible to zip yourself halfway across the world at a moment’s notice, I guess, but I don’t see much fun in it.

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I shamelessly use portals a lot, unless the travel is story-relevant or could provide meaningful RP. There’s no point to waste time just for the sake of continuity/realism, think of it as a fade between scenes in a show.

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Travel RP is best RP, especially with a lovely DM if you’re on a boat who will do ship events and stuff <3

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Personally I’ll always lean to travel rp over portals or instant travel where possible, though the game world -does- make that harder nowadays.

I mean it does have to be acknowledged that, even in lore seperate from the game mecahnics themselves, portals have become a ton more prominent but I do find them an incredibly boring way of handling things.

Just find it weird that roleplayers so willingly throw away an RP oppertunity just to ‘fade between scenes’ as if rp is some set, pre written book you just skip pages in. But I can also understand that travel rp can feel slow and tedious with the wrong people so meh and the lore does say ‘there’s a portal for that’. Stupid lore grumbles.

Different styles.

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By mount…
Walking around cities usually, unless you want to run the risk of running someone over or your character’s the type to just not give a damn. Running everywhere else but it depends on if you’re with a group of people or on your own. Mount speed differs based on OOC and you may want to walk it if in a large group so people don’t get left behind.
In game maps are much smaller, yes. I do a one zone per day limit for my characters, and it’s also what my Guild do when on the run or otherwise travelling around the world or continent for campaigns. The one zone per day also means that when you’re not logged in, you can have done part of the travel for those hours you’re not there. We can’t obviously justify travelling around for months on end even when it would logically take that long to travel places IC, so I find having a zone limitation helps give the best of both worlds.

By ship…
It’s best to go by what ships you can find in lore and what places are lore wise ports rather than doing guesswork. This can be using what ships are there in game, or researching specific ports/places to see if there would logically speaking be ships that go from place to place even if Blizzard doesn’t give us this in game.

Portals/Flight Master…
Coin to pay for them, usually, except for the ones in Orgrimmar/Stormwind that are standard for adventurers. It’s up to your own discretion, but I at least personally treat portal/flight master costs as being as costly as a real life aeroplane trip. It depends on what coin system you then like to give to your characters (our guilds is 1g = £100/$100/100 euros) as to how costly that would be. Silvermoon through the portal room, and then walking/flightmaster/mounted to where you need to go in EK. Or if you’re wanting to go the Southern border, a ship from Ratchet to Booty Bay and then travel, or acknowledging the Cataclysm portals and then doing the same walk/fly/mount for the rest of the journey as I still believe they’re here IC.

It’s better to think about your RP than not, so there’s nothing wrong with going in depth about simple things like this.

Keep in mind that we typically like to do things in this method and this isn’t me saying other methods are wrong, but as crooks, we like to give people the opportunity to chase us down (law enforcement) and have very realistic travel times and dislike using portals all the time. You don’t have to do as we do, but these are simple suggestions and hopefully it can at least give you some ideas as to what you can do to represent your own travel time! Heck, I know some people who have it so when they’re mounted or on a high speed flying mount they do 2-3 zones rather than the 1 we do, but they still apply an appropriate limit.

I’ve had some amazing interactions with people out and about when I do IC travel. I’ve ran into goblins with broken down trikes, I’ve had Chiel yelled at for drunk driving, I’ve ran into vulpera caravans and been involved in travelling with them on their journeys, amongst other interesting scenes. I love travel RP personally, it can add so much seeing other RPers out and about and having some naturally informed RP from that, even if it can sometimes be rare. And it means you get to actually go in depth into the zones and explore, too, rather than going zone to zone in just a few hours halfway across the map.

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I personally just wing it, especially since outside of your usual RP hubs, there is very little going on sadly. It’s a genuine surprise when you encounter someone who dares to venture into the wilds, but it’s very unlikely.

If you have the patience for it, walking is a good way to get those uncommon encounters going, like that one fella who happens to be playing a bandit just dropping by for your coin pouch.
Else, if you want to get to somewhere, you’re better off just going there on the OOC end to save time, and go IC when you’re near your destination.

Of course, if you’re one for immersion and the likes, and the lack of… Well, anything really, isn’t a deterrent, then don’t do this. My experiences with trying it out, utterly boring, sadly.

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