Our D&D party received a major transportation upgrade last weekend.

Once upon a time, we walked over land. (Uphill, both ways.) Then, not long ago we upgraded to a large flying carpet, which are somewhat lame in 3E and only get under 100 miles per day, worse with more than four passengers. Still, when you’ve been walking, that’s a huge upgrade.

Still, it didn’t seem enough. We’re grappling with some sizable outdoor distances, and spending a couple weeks to get from A to B would still be a drag, even if we could bring ourselves to just shut up and say “two weeks later…”, which we apparently can’t seem to do!

Then we made 11th level, and the party cleric (yours truly) picked up 6th-level spells, including Wind Walk. Which gets a party of four 60 miles per hour at one hour per caster level. So suddenly we can go 660 miles in a day, and the world became a much smaller place. We got some really good things done last session as a result, and felt the wind in our hair for sure.

(The kicker for us that makes it nice is that we’re presently involved in an intrigue between four different cities, each aligned to a different elemental force, and so far it looks like only the “air” city is really good and decent. So now it turns out that our party, with no real previous elemental affinities to speak of, is suddenly whooshing around the countryside on wind power, basically trying to help out the “air” city. A nice touch, and entirely unexpected.)

In another level the party sorcerer might have access to teleport, and then we’ll look back on these wagon-covered wind-walking days and laugh at how quaint it all was. But for now it’s super shiny.

In 4E we have these teleportation circles to help a party with its long distance voyages, and I think I’m cool with that. If there’s any aesthetic to 4E, it’s one of putting fun and games in front of realism, whatever that would be in a fantasy gaming world.

What we have here is the core rules attempting to provide a common solution to a common problem, and why not? You can make teleportation circles more or less available in your world to suit taste, but the basic mechanics are simple to grasp for DM and player alike, and if you’re a bit Ultima fan there’s no reason why you can’t make them moon gates instead. I can already imagine the absurd Zelda-like puzzles you can make based on teleportation circles, but no, I think restraint will be the key to making them work right in a campaign.

Another instance of this new thinking in 4E is the establishment of common high-value (and thus easily transportable) currencies. Both of these things smack of video-gamism, but there’s no reason why that should be taken as a slam. You know how many times it’s fun to play an adventure who’s major hook is that you’ve got all this treasure and no way to bring it home? That’s right – once. At most. A common high-end currency seems jarring at first expressly because previous editions had no such thing, and once you make that realization, and one the one after it (you know, where you realize that you won’t ever have to think so hard about gems and jewelry again), your conclusion should be: “what took you all so long!?”

The truth is that if the core rules didn’t provide for such things, everyone would create their own house rules to address the situation anyway. Just like we’ve always done. By making it part of the common language, I think it improves things overall.

See, I do have some nice things to say about the 4E DMG after all. More on this as I now start to use it as directed: as a cookbook for making encounters and adventures that are supposedly balanced and fun, and yet with variety. That’s a tall order, so we’ll see how it goes!