Random Travel

I've been checking some of the wilderness travel details for Tomb of Annihilation. Basically, a party can move one hex (10 miles) per day in the jungle. The DM is expected to make three rolls on the random encounter chart for each hex traveled - for morning, midday, and night.

This feels borderline unplayable. I've always had trouble incorporating random monsters encounters into my games. I remember 1st edition, with its wandering monster checks. We used to roll those when we started... but that lasted a few months (maybe a few weeks). When you sit down to play, you want to play - not watch the DM roll for a random encounter, cross reference it for information, then improvise a scenario. It stops the action, when good table play seems to be best served by extending or expanding the action.

The solution to this is to make the rolls before play begins... but then, you don't have random encounters, you have structure and pre-determined encounters. In other words, you do a lot of work to prep and detail "random" encounters that you can intersperse with the action. This is counter to the point of a module or adventure book.

Add in the possibilities of getting lost, and your party is in for long sessions of random encounter checks. I guess the key is keeping it fast and loose. Roll the dice all at once, then spin something out by the seat of your pants, thinking ahead to any later encounters while playing out the first. I suppose that as long as the random encounters are given out as exposition and narrative, they can be quickly embedded.

I think it will be necessary to play a few days (in-game) in order to work out the kinks. It just feels like an awkward system at face value.