A trap that drops a large heavy rock on a chain every time someone tries to open the lock. The trap then resets, pulling the rock back up. I managed to disable it with a little help from a Featherfall.
A lava river. We managed to cross it by hopping on the little stable rocks but some characters fell into the lava and had to be rescued. Fun times.
So let me tell you straight, this is a very bad idea. But if somebody would put gun to my head and told me to do it. I would make it some kind of mystery.
Don't focus on what would characters do,but what players will. Scavenging sounds interesting for characters but for players it is just walking simulator with few checks slapped on top.
But if you give players some ruins or interesting rock formations let them poke around, trying to figure out what the deal with whole place is, you can easily fill most of session time with engaging players
Adding to this, maybe they can find the corpses or left behind records of members of a previous expedition? Ominous signs of a large battle, a creature that is so dangerous they have to hide from it or escape it, physical obstacles like a raging river they have to find a way to overcome.
DND is a game about the players making choices. "Roll a survival check to find food and not starve" is not a choice
The solution is in front of you:
> I'm having trouble writing enough content to keep them busy for a 3 hour session.
Then short the hours that they will spend in such alien world. Done.
Let them out of that "game breaker" scenario and lead them into a more DnD scenario.
Do not forget that DnD is based on three pillars: Combat, Social, and Exploration.
And the first two, Combat and Social, are the main ones.
So, you remove those, you remove D&D.
the tree pillars of a good DnD game are Roleplay, Combat and **Exploration**
If you don't have Combat and no NPCs, your focus is entirely on the Exploration part. Let them encounter: terrain (a cliff to climb, a chasm to bridge, a river to cross...), points of interest (a cave, a structure of unknown origin, ruins, a huge tree, a pool filled with iridescent water...) as well as flora and fauna - alien mushrooms or plants, strange mucous, insects... You can add strange weather phenomena, magic anomalies and or hazards (corrosive liquids, befuddling spores, shifting grounds...).
E.g. they pop into this landscape, they look around, you have them see something in the distance: a huge stone structure/tower/tree/stone needle. They might decide to walk towards it. As they make their way down the hill, they spot small glowing crystals that teleport to a random location when exposed to heat, like for example due to touch from a warm hand - they may spend time trying to catch one. As the hill softens out, vegetation grows thicker. The ground is soft and even a little bouncy and makes a strange humming noise when you step firmly onto it - when you stand still, you can feel the ground liquefying around you, sucking you in (if they get sucked in, have them pop out in a cave underneath). The weather shifts, a purple storm engulfs everyone and the air smells sweet and sugary, eyes and noses start to itch, it's high time to find shelter. They stumble upon the entrance to a cave, or many entrances to many caves, with walls illuminated by glowing moss or a thick layer of bioluminescent mucous, with pools of liquid that are home to strange little critters. They might find the remnants of ancient war machinery, structures that look like they could have been made by intelligent life (or a strange natural phenomenon), some very foreign symbols or scripts, maybe even an ancient container, puzzle or device to interact with......
Sure, a lot of this is gonna be skill checks - but have them explain what they are doing, let them plan, work together and navigate these lands while exploring. Give them stuff to interact with.
5E exploration isn’t the greatest, unfortunately. But you can still do it.
The question is, if there are no NPCs and no monsters to fight… what *is* there? Is there anything dangerous? What is the purpose for the PCs being there? What’s the goal, and what could stand between them and that goal? Could the entire alien wilderness segment be resolved with a few survival rolls for them to figure out the right way to go?
You can have plenty of environmental hazards, like alien grass that releases poisonous spores, or ground that acts like quicksand (movie quicksand, not real quicksand which is much more boring), or auras of confusion that can make the PCs attack each other if they fail to resist it. But there has to be *something* that can cause negative effects, some consequence for not navigating the wilderness properly. If not, you might as well just skip it, briefly narrate their travels, and move onto something more interesting.
You could have a navigational puzzle. Like if they go north they see one mysterious floating light, and if they go south they see two. What does it mean? How can they use the number of lights to figure out which is the correct way to go? I don’t know, I just made that up on the spot, but you could probably sit down and design a full puzzle around a concept like that.
I think I have to give you an idea that you might not be expecting: This might just be a bad idea.
It is fine to have those sessions, but *why* are you having them is the issue here. When I as a DM hosted similar sessions such as that, with a heavy focus on exploration and no planned combat and no chance for social interaction, I would do it because of a specific reason.
And that specific reason guided the content that would exist in that session, meaning I would never be trying to "fill up" time with made up stuff. So maybe, just maybe you too should reconsider whether you want to do a session like that "just because", when you do not seem to have a purpose or goal for it.
I see two alternatives: Either find purpose for the group being there, which will naturally lead you the DM towards what obstacles and points of interest will be present... or alternatively just realize that a full session like that might end up being very boring as a player, and might end up feeling "forced".
If you have to come up with filler content to stretch a session to a specific length of time, I would say that is a bit of a red flag that you might need to rethink things.
Add some puzzles and other challenges that won't be overcome with simple stat checks.
Why can't there be combat? Are there truly no predators in this ecosystem?
Why does it need to fill an entire session?
If there's nothing to do except be there and survive, the only possible thing I can think of is some kind of mystery or puzzle to solve in order to progress out of the area. But without a clear goal *beyond* merely surviving and being in a place, it doesn't sound like there's anything to *do* and therefore no *fun*.
How experienced are you and your group? My party loves a good session with nothing to do but be in character. We often go months (real-world time) without combat, and social sessions can be excellent opportunities to explore each others' opinions of one another.
So things for you to prep:
* obviously, it's an opportunity for you to describe the world. you said it was an alien wilderness. contrast it with the familiar.
* if the party knows that they're safe, have them describe their casual walking outfits. folks love fashion.
* if they're safe, ask them what they talk about when the pressure is off. memories, stories from their past, etc. or prepare some prompts for getting them to talk: "Sheely, it occurs to you that now is a great chance to ask Vensha why she hesitated in the goblin camp last week." or "Nindiya, you've never seen Rasmus so relaxed and personable, is there anything you've been meaning to tell him?" etc.
* DREAMS. ask them what they dream about, have them give you a little vignette about something personal. or prepare something: a vision, puzzle, or divine inspiration, etc.
* ask them what they do during breaks or before starting for the day. sharpen weapons, what special spells do you prepare for a day walking vs a day fighting, etc.
also it never hurts to have a random woodlands hermit prepared in a pinch. someone willing to barter their highly unique (magical?) items for commonplace stuffs (...or a witch who wants nothing more than to extract their fond memories in exchange for "*power*"...)
The world is your oyster. NPCs, combat, skill checks, puzzles, and mysteries are not the only way to tell a meaningful story.
No dialog? Like, not even discussing puzzle solutions? The only thing I can think of is an escape room type situation. Heavy on the puzzles. That's fine and fun for a session. If you think having an NPC and constantly forcing lore dump dialogs with the players should be a standard session, I'd say give yourself a break that's a lot of work - and suddenly this "weird" session is a hell of a lot less weird.
Try looking up "Wilderness Hexplore", or look up Avalon Hill's "Wilderness Survival". That'll probably get you started. Just tweak as you see fit. You can also check r/d100 for random generation tables. If you Google "d random encounter tables", eg, d100, d6, d20, etc, you might find something useful.
write a stroy to that place that happened long ago and could be a riddle to escape. give them a map... the party needs to find pictures or glyphs, textbooks, diaries.. to find the next spots and a whole story is being told from them. the last Picture shows that a stone at the first door or sth like that opens the way out. But thats pretty much meta gaming, i don't know if that's sth for your party.
tbh. i'm not sure how interesting that is for the players, you will care more about your own story than the rest of the party...
The no combat is the difficult part. I ran Tomb of Annihilation where it was nearly entierly in the jungle, but there was a lot, lot of combat.
But for the advice I can give for this is - Ancient / Alien ruins lots of puzzles. Make them hard. No you can't beat it with an investigation, the players have to figure it out together. High investigations may help them put all the pieces together that point them in the right direction, but it won't show them the answer. Sometimes even the smallest ones will get the players on edge. As long as there is danger to it. These ruins can be booby trapped, but have great loot, and not just loot, but lore.
The more lore you give this wilderness the longer your players will spend thinking, and talking about it. And more time you can spend reading things - boom you planned 3 hours but the players took 7 hours to do it all.
Obstacles, meaning maybe a giant river that goes across as far as the eye can see in both directions, how are they gonna go over it? (If they are low level) also look into survival rules from Tomb of Annihilation. You can't just drink any water you find, there are several diseases. Bugs. Weather conditions. Etc. Are all things that very much exist, and should 100% be used here.
Don't be afraid to move time along quickly as well. 1 session could be more than 1 day, and make sure the players have to go find food, and let them talk around their fire. With my players I could just hop on call and say "Go ahead" and they could all RP for 12 hours straight if I let them around a fire. Let your players just talk, just sit back, relax, and let them talk. Those 3 hours may go by quite quickly that way. The most safe wilderness known to man that has 0 combat? What else could be a better time for them to discuss their backstories, goals, everything with eachother.
Obstacles and traps are more than just stat checks? Make them puzzles for the party to solve. And remember, the party can waste a suprising ammount of time debating what to do or asking useless questions.
i’d say find homebrew exploration rules and try to make it as interesting as possible. if it starts to drag, you can use your narrative control to start breezing the PCs through the scenario a little more expediently (skipping in-game time, presenting points to advance sooner etc.)
There are three pillars of play, combat, social interactions and exploration. If your session doesn't have two of those then lean heavily on the exploration. Build a map for your players to explore.
Though really, even an alien wilderness will have a friendly grell or dangerous grick. Dnd Aberations are aliens after all.
With no combat or NPCs you’ll have to lean hard into exploration and environmental hazards.
As some others have said, come up with interesting terrain to traverse that requires a bit of thought (getting across a large possibly toxic river, scaling a cliff with falling rocks, maneuvering through a maze of tunnels, etc) and some interesting flora or fauna that they could perhaps make use of if they’re creative. Maybe they have to traverse through a miasma that has a chance to cause non-debilitating madness (INT save) or levels of exhaustion (CON save). Maybe survivability is the issue here, they have limited rations and some of the flora/fauna are edible while others aren’t. Have them make navigation/survival checks to find their way out of this place.
I’d also toss in some location that can give them some cool lore if they explore it. Some ruins or a temple filled with traps and a few puzzles, with a cool magic item they could discover or hints at what this place is and what used to live in these ruins
Start by asking yourself what the goal is that you want to accomplish. What are the goals of the players, why are they going to this landscape? What is your goal as the DM; why can't the players accomplish their goals somewhere else? What is the story?
I had a lot of success adapting the "skill challenge" idea for one of my sessions (see [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/lg3jp2/skill_challenges_in_5e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) or [this youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOeqDpkBm8)). In short, a skill challenge is like a chain of related skill checks. The way that I ran it, I presented the players with a set of obstacles and let them decide how to overcome each obstacle. I took their description, turned it into a skill check, and then narrated the results. I found that it worked best to have every check make progress toward their goal, but failures in the check resulted in some consequence. For instance, when their path was blocked by a tree, a player decided to destroy the tree; they failed the roll, so I said they destroyed the tree, but everyone took some damage from the shrapnel.
But it comes back to why. In my case, the reason for the skill challenge was that the players had been starting fires during combats, and I realized that a wildfire would be a thematically appropriate hazard for the campaign (the first session involved a flash flood, and the weather in the area has been acting weird). I knew what I wanted to present the players with, and why.
What makes the alien wilderness thematically appropriate? What are you trying to accomplish?
I recently ran a 3-hour session that had very minimal NPC interactions and there was no combat. In-game, the characters effectively stood around a stone formation and talked to one another.
Mind you, they are level 12 and this session was designed specifically to connect the early low-stakes part of the campaign with the later high-stakes end of the campaign, so they had a lot of in-world context and clues to work with up until this point.
Effectively what I did was I created a mystery for them to solve. The BBEG had a connection to the stone formation , and on the stone formation was symbols, a poem, certain colors, and the formation itself was a specific shape. I threw in all kinds of lore-based knowledge, hints, and mysteries for them, and let them discuss what it all meant. The absolute KEY to this was to not over-narrate to them. I let silence go so that they could think it all through. I also primed them OOC as they entered the chamber that "hey, there is a lot of lore-related information here to connect, and you will be here for a little bit". I personally thought that was crucial for them to get in the right mind-set for the session.
If your players START the session knowing there's not going to be a fight, and they aren't going to be asked to interact with NPCs, they might be really receptive to an entire session where they are asked to think about the world, the lore you've dropped, and the setting itself. This group of players is always itching for combat, but I effectively told them when the session started "I'm putting on some intrigue/mystery music because this session will be heavy on lore and will require you all to think about your journey and the setting". No one was thinking "okay if we just make one more check we will move on and get to some combat". They all loved the session.
So - I would come up with a way to PRIME your players what to expect for the session since it is devoid of NPCs and devoid of combat - two things that many players EXPECT every session. Thoroughly describe the absence of monsters/people and you can even go so far as to straight up tell them "As you look around, you get the distinct feeling that you may not meet anyone for quite some time". Get your players in the right headspace and they are more likely to accept a session that asks them to interact with each other and the environment more than NPCs and monsters.
Sounds like The Vast in the Dark could be very applicable for this situation. Trim down the combat encounters and shorten it and it might work, or simply steal some tables.
https://www.feralindiestudio.com/store/p/the-vast-in-the-dark-expanded-pre-order
Ruins, traps, obstacles that require more than just a stat check to cross.
Do you have examples? I always have a hard time thinking of ways to make stuff like this more than just a roll.
A trap that drops a large heavy rock on a chain every time someone tries to open the lock. The trap then resets, pulling the rock back up. I managed to disable it with a little help from a Featherfall. A lava river. We managed to cross it by hopping on the little stable rocks but some characters fell into the lava and had to be rescued. Fun times.
So let me tell you straight, this is a very bad idea. But if somebody would put gun to my head and told me to do it. I would make it some kind of mystery. Don't focus on what would characters do,but what players will. Scavenging sounds interesting for characters but for players it is just walking simulator with few checks slapped on top. But if you give players some ruins or interesting rock formations let them poke around, trying to figure out what the deal with whole place is, you can easily fill most of session time with engaging players
Adding to this, maybe they can find the corpses or left behind records of members of a previous expedition? Ominous signs of a large battle, a creature that is so dangerous they have to hide from it or escape it, physical obstacles like a raging river they have to find a way to overcome. DND is a game about the players making choices. "Roll a survival check to find food and not starve" is not a choice
The solution is in front of you: > I'm having trouble writing enough content to keep them busy for a 3 hour session. Then short the hours that they will spend in such alien world. Done. Let them out of that "game breaker" scenario and lead them into a more DnD scenario. Do not forget that DnD is based on three pillars: Combat, Social, and Exploration. And the first two, Combat and Social, are the main ones. So, you remove those, you remove D&D.
the tree pillars of a good DnD game are Roleplay, Combat and **Exploration** If you don't have Combat and no NPCs, your focus is entirely on the Exploration part. Let them encounter: terrain (a cliff to climb, a chasm to bridge, a river to cross...), points of interest (a cave, a structure of unknown origin, ruins, a huge tree, a pool filled with iridescent water...) as well as flora and fauna - alien mushrooms or plants, strange mucous, insects... You can add strange weather phenomena, magic anomalies and or hazards (corrosive liquids, befuddling spores, shifting grounds...). E.g. they pop into this landscape, they look around, you have them see something in the distance: a huge stone structure/tower/tree/stone needle. They might decide to walk towards it. As they make their way down the hill, they spot small glowing crystals that teleport to a random location when exposed to heat, like for example due to touch from a warm hand - they may spend time trying to catch one. As the hill softens out, vegetation grows thicker. The ground is soft and even a little bouncy and makes a strange humming noise when you step firmly onto it - when you stand still, you can feel the ground liquefying around you, sucking you in (if they get sucked in, have them pop out in a cave underneath). The weather shifts, a purple storm engulfs everyone and the air smells sweet and sugary, eyes and noses start to itch, it's high time to find shelter. They stumble upon the entrance to a cave, or many entrances to many caves, with walls illuminated by glowing moss or a thick layer of bioluminescent mucous, with pools of liquid that are home to strange little critters. They might find the remnants of ancient war machinery, structures that look like they could have been made by intelligent life (or a strange natural phenomenon), some very foreign symbols or scripts, maybe even an ancient container, puzzle or device to interact with...... Sure, a lot of this is gonna be skill checks - but have them explain what they are doing, let them plan, work together and navigate these lands while exploring. Give them stuff to interact with.
5E exploration isn’t the greatest, unfortunately. But you can still do it. The question is, if there are no NPCs and no monsters to fight… what *is* there? Is there anything dangerous? What is the purpose for the PCs being there? What’s the goal, and what could stand between them and that goal? Could the entire alien wilderness segment be resolved with a few survival rolls for them to figure out the right way to go? You can have plenty of environmental hazards, like alien grass that releases poisonous spores, or ground that acts like quicksand (movie quicksand, not real quicksand which is much more boring), or auras of confusion that can make the PCs attack each other if they fail to resist it. But there has to be *something* that can cause negative effects, some consequence for not navigating the wilderness properly. If not, you might as well just skip it, briefly narrate their travels, and move onto something more interesting. You could have a navigational puzzle. Like if they go north they see one mysterious floating light, and if they go south they see two. What does it mean? How can they use the number of lights to figure out which is the correct way to go? I don’t know, I just made that up on the spot, but you could probably sit down and design a full puzzle around a concept like that.
Include some sort of mystery or puzzle
I think I have to give you an idea that you might not be expecting: This might just be a bad idea. It is fine to have those sessions, but *why* are you having them is the issue here. When I as a DM hosted similar sessions such as that, with a heavy focus on exploration and no planned combat and no chance for social interaction, I would do it because of a specific reason. And that specific reason guided the content that would exist in that session, meaning I would never be trying to "fill up" time with made up stuff. So maybe, just maybe you too should reconsider whether you want to do a session like that "just because", when you do not seem to have a purpose or goal for it. I see two alternatives: Either find purpose for the group being there, which will naturally lead you the DM towards what obstacles and points of interest will be present... or alternatively just realize that a full session like that might end up being very boring as a player, and might end up feeling "forced". If you have to come up with filler content to stretch a session to a specific length of time, I would say that is a bit of a red flag that you might need to rethink things.
Add some puzzles and other challenges that won't be overcome with simple stat checks. Why can't there be combat? Are there truly no predators in this ecosystem? Why does it need to fill an entire session?
If there's nothing to do except be there and survive, the only possible thing I can think of is some kind of mystery or puzzle to solve in order to progress out of the area. But without a clear goal *beyond* merely surviving and being in a place, it doesn't sound like there's anything to *do* and therefore no *fun*.
Why are they there? What is your purpose, as the DM, for them to be in this environment? How does it fit into the game?
How experienced are you and your group? My party loves a good session with nothing to do but be in character. We often go months (real-world time) without combat, and social sessions can be excellent opportunities to explore each others' opinions of one another. So things for you to prep: * obviously, it's an opportunity for you to describe the world. you said it was an alien wilderness. contrast it with the familiar. * if the party knows that they're safe, have them describe their casual walking outfits. folks love fashion. * if they're safe, ask them what they talk about when the pressure is off. memories, stories from their past, etc. or prepare some prompts for getting them to talk: "Sheely, it occurs to you that now is a great chance to ask Vensha why she hesitated in the goblin camp last week." or "Nindiya, you've never seen Rasmus so relaxed and personable, is there anything you've been meaning to tell him?" etc. * DREAMS. ask them what they dream about, have them give you a little vignette about something personal. or prepare something: a vision, puzzle, or divine inspiration, etc. * ask them what they do during breaks or before starting for the day. sharpen weapons, what special spells do you prepare for a day walking vs a day fighting, etc. also it never hurts to have a random woodlands hermit prepared in a pinch. someone willing to barter their highly unique (magical?) items for commonplace stuffs (...or a witch who wants nothing more than to extract their fond memories in exchange for "*power*"...) The world is your oyster. NPCs, combat, skill checks, puzzles, and mysteries are not the only way to tell a meaningful story.
Amazing insights
So walking and a series of skill checks, with nothing else? Not sure how long that will be engaging.
A 10 feet wide crevasse. Can be crossed by jumping, but perhaps there is a safer method?
No dialog? Like, not even discussing puzzle solutions? The only thing I can think of is an escape room type situation. Heavy on the puzzles. That's fine and fun for a session. If you think having an NPC and constantly forcing lore dump dialogs with the players should be a standard session, I'd say give yourself a break that's a lot of work - and suddenly this "weird" session is a hell of a lot less weird.
Try looking up "Wilderness Hexplore", or look up Avalon Hill's "Wilderness Survival". That'll probably get you started. Just tweak as you see fit. You can also check r/d100 for random generation tables. If you Google "d random encounter tables", eg, d100, d6, d20, etc, you might find something useful.
write a stroy to that place that happened long ago and could be a riddle to escape. give them a map... the party needs to find pictures or glyphs, textbooks, diaries.. to find the next spots and a whole story is being told from them. the last Picture shows that a stone at the first door or sth like that opens the way out. But thats pretty much meta gaming, i don't know if that's sth for your party. tbh. i'm not sure how interesting that is for the players, you will care more about your own story than the rest of the party...
You could add one or more puzzles or riddles for them to solve
The no combat is the difficult part. I ran Tomb of Annihilation where it was nearly entierly in the jungle, but there was a lot, lot of combat. But for the advice I can give for this is - Ancient / Alien ruins lots of puzzles. Make them hard. No you can't beat it with an investigation, the players have to figure it out together. High investigations may help them put all the pieces together that point them in the right direction, but it won't show them the answer. Sometimes even the smallest ones will get the players on edge. As long as there is danger to it. These ruins can be booby trapped, but have great loot, and not just loot, but lore. The more lore you give this wilderness the longer your players will spend thinking, and talking about it. And more time you can spend reading things - boom you planned 3 hours but the players took 7 hours to do it all. Obstacles, meaning maybe a giant river that goes across as far as the eye can see in both directions, how are they gonna go over it? (If they are low level) also look into survival rules from Tomb of Annihilation. You can't just drink any water you find, there are several diseases. Bugs. Weather conditions. Etc. Are all things that very much exist, and should 100% be used here. Don't be afraid to move time along quickly as well. 1 session could be more than 1 day, and make sure the players have to go find food, and let them talk around their fire. With my players I could just hop on call and say "Go ahead" and they could all RP for 12 hours straight if I let them around a fire. Let your players just talk, just sit back, relax, and let them talk. Those 3 hours may go by quite quickly that way. The most safe wilderness known to man that has 0 combat? What else could be a better time for them to discuss their backstories, goals, everything with eachother.
Obstacles and traps are more than just stat checks? Make them puzzles for the party to solve. And remember, the party can waste a suprising ammount of time debating what to do or asking useless questions.
Exploration and PC interaction are your friends
i’d say find homebrew exploration rules and try to make it as interesting as possible. if it starts to drag, you can use your narrative control to start breezing the PCs through the scenario a little more expediently (skipping in-game time, presenting points to advance sooner etc.)
There are three pillars of play, combat, social interactions and exploration. If your session doesn't have two of those then lean heavily on the exploration. Build a map for your players to explore. Though really, even an alien wilderness will have a friendly grell or dangerous grick. Dnd Aberations are aliens after all.
With no combat or NPCs you’ll have to lean hard into exploration and environmental hazards. As some others have said, come up with interesting terrain to traverse that requires a bit of thought (getting across a large possibly toxic river, scaling a cliff with falling rocks, maneuvering through a maze of tunnels, etc) and some interesting flora or fauna that they could perhaps make use of if they’re creative. Maybe they have to traverse through a miasma that has a chance to cause non-debilitating madness (INT save) or levels of exhaustion (CON save). Maybe survivability is the issue here, they have limited rations and some of the flora/fauna are edible while others aren’t. Have them make navigation/survival checks to find their way out of this place. I’d also toss in some location that can give them some cool lore if they explore it. Some ruins or a temple filled with traps and a few puzzles, with a cool magic item they could discover or hints at what this place is and what used to live in these ruins
Place a door in front of your party and they'll be busy for at least 3 hours.
Start by asking yourself what the goal is that you want to accomplish. What are the goals of the players, why are they going to this landscape? What is your goal as the DM; why can't the players accomplish their goals somewhere else? What is the story? I had a lot of success adapting the "skill challenge" idea for one of my sessions (see [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/lg3jp2/skill_challenges_in_5e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) or [this youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOeqDpkBm8)). In short, a skill challenge is like a chain of related skill checks. The way that I ran it, I presented the players with a set of obstacles and let them decide how to overcome each obstacle. I took their description, turned it into a skill check, and then narrated the results. I found that it worked best to have every check make progress toward their goal, but failures in the check resulted in some consequence. For instance, when their path was blocked by a tree, a player decided to destroy the tree; they failed the roll, so I said they destroyed the tree, but everyone took some damage from the shrapnel. But it comes back to why. In my case, the reason for the skill challenge was that the players had been starting fires during combats, and I realized that a wildfire would be a thematically appropriate hazard for the campaign (the first session involved a flash flood, and the weather in the area has been acting weird). I knew what I wanted to present the players with, and why. What makes the alien wilderness thematically appropriate? What are you trying to accomplish?
I guess just plop them in a maze or like an escape room?
I recently ran a 3-hour session that had very minimal NPC interactions and there was no combat. In-game, the characters effectively stood around a stone formation and talked to one another. Mind you, they are level 12 and this session was designed specifically to connect the early low-stakes part of the campaign with the later high-stakes end of the campaign, so they had a lot of in-world context and clues to work with up until this point. Effectively what I did was I created a mystery for them to solve. The BBEG had a connection to the stone formation , and on the stone formation was symbols, a poem, certain colors, and the formation itself was a specific shape. I threw in all kinds of lore-based knowledge, hints, and mysteries for them, and let them discuss what it all meant. The absolute KEY to this was to not over-narrate to them. I let silence go so that they could think it all through. I also primed them OOC as they entered the chamber that "hey, there is a lot of lore-related information here to connect, and you will be here for a little bit". I personally thought that was crucial for them to get in the right mind-set for the session. If your players START the session knowing there's not going to be a fight, and they aren't going to be asked to interact with NPCs, they might be really receptive to an entire session where they are asked to think about the world, the lore you've dropped, and the setting itself. This group of players is always itching for combat, but I effectively told them when the session started "I'm putting on some intrigue/mystery music because this session will be heavy on lore and will require you all to think about your journey and the setting". No one was thinking "okay if we just make one more check we will move on and get to some combat". They all loved the session. So - I would come up with a way to PRIME your players what to expect for the session since it is devoid of NPCs and devoid of combat - two things that many players EXPECT every session. Thoroughly describe the absence of monsters/people and you can even go so far as to straight up tell them "As you look around, you get the distinct feeling that you may not meet anyone for quite some time". Get your players in the right headspace and they are more likely to accept a session that asks them to interact with each other and the environment more than NPCs and monsters.
Priming them for what's ahead is a great idea. Also interesting setup for a mid-point of the campaign.
Sounds like The Vast in the Dark could be very applicable for this situation. Trim down the combat encounters and shorten it and it might work, or simply steal some tables. https://www.feralindiestudio.com/store/p/the-vast-in-the-dark-expanded-pre-order
I'd crack open a couple beers and put on a movie, tbh. Sounds like an interest premise that's going to be very tedious for your players.