The Gamer Traveler has posted a round up of the “Games & Travel” blog carnival from January 2010 (Internet Archive). This was a cool topic, and one I wish I’d taken the time to participate in (perhaps I will, retroactively).
While I think many campaigns tend to hand-wave away travel (perhaps after one too many random wilderness encounters during their Advanced Dungeons & Dragons days) it can make for some great adventures. Heck, one of our most memorable Star Wars campaign arcs involved our heroes bouncing out of hyperspace into a protostar nebula. They barely escaped the nebula with their lives, the ship’s outer hull having been melted into what we’re now calling “star-forged armor”.
When they arrived at the remote world of Maltern’s Folly, their enemies found it impossible to get into the ship because the outer hull had been fused solid (save for an opening cut in a single escape hatch. On the way back from their destination, their battered ship’s hyperdrive went bad, forcing them to visit a shadowport for parts. The aftereffects of that journey stayed with us for months (in game and out) as we riffed on the ship’s increasing fallibility, ultimately ending up with it being placed on blocks in an Outer Rim starport while it waited for repairs.
It was a great arc … and it goes to show that sometimes its the journey, not the destination, that matters.