Distance and Time

Over the past years, going back decades, I have tried to produce various versions of the table shown, here provided by dungeonbot.  And while the effort here is at least somewhat gritty, I must admit that numbers alone are simply not adequate.  Somehow, the structure proposed, exactly the sort I've made myself over and over again, fails to capture any meaningful nuance of what happens when players move from one part of the world to another.  And this is a problem, as any quick search of "make D&D travel more interesting" on youtube will show.  There are no satisfying answers to this question that I've found.  All the pundits that I've found advise the DM to do things that will probably work only once, without addressing the fundamental problem of a game world: it is too big to effectively fill if the party is going to travel distances requiring more than a week.

I have always tried to solve the problem of space with descriptive paragraphs intended to capture a mood.  For example, with the Juvenis campaign, I described the party's approach to their first adventure thusly:

It is not a long walk around the south edge of the lake, and now that it looks like the brewing storm has melted away and given to clear ~ if somewhat crisp ~ skies, you make fair time. Those who have been playing with the clothing insulation calculator will notice they have to take off some of their clothing to avoid taking damage today, as it is hot climbing over deadfall and not tripping over roots.

There is a lot of snow on the ground around the lake, in trenches and low places, but these are easily avoided. The lake, however, is completely clear of ice. The party rounds a hill on the west side of the lake and begins across a flat boggy meadow plain that slowly tilts upwards as they go northwest, into the wind. Occasionally you have to cover your noses with a hand to warm the skin, but it is not cold enough to cause much distress.

In light of such efforts, it may seem incongruous to insert some number to determine how far the party actually gets, but of course that information (whether we state it or not) is relevant to the matter of investigating into a wilderness.  As any one who has done some serious back country hiking will tell you, hours matter.  You can't spend too many of them on the way out, or you will find yourself in trouble before you can get back.  And every pound you hoist on your back will slow you down and bring fatigue ... whereas not enough equipment can mean a very unpleasant night, even if the weather doesn't turn bad.  Time is a critical factor in any travel ... and however poetical the passage above sounds, I'm deliberately glossing over how much time the trip takes because, factually, I don't actually have an answer.

Oh, sure, I can pull up a number for distance/time like shown on the table above ~ but is that number really accurate?  Or is it just a flat number that is automatically applied to every wilderness, as though wildernesses are all alike?  Obviously, they're not ... and such numbers never take into sincere account matters like the party's knowledge of the area, the knowledge of wilderness spaces, how much is carried and how believable it is that a mage can keep up with a ranger over such country.  I have hiked with people who were not up to it; not everyone is and such resolve does not exist in everyone.

So, in fact, the number is pretty nigh useless, if we really want to grasp the matter of travelling.  And if we want to make players feel the travelling that they ask their characters to do.

This is my headspace at the moment, where I am thinking the problem of travel through from end to end.  It is the reason why I find myself reaching to make the combat round shorter, because that is the one change I can make that doesn't call for a drastic restructure of the entire combat system.  The adjustment to a shorter time span for the round may seem rushed ~ but it aligns with actual walking speed, which is the more important matter here.  And while I don't want to get absurdly gritty with the travel system I'm considering, I must admit, ANY system I design must align with what other systems I've previously built.  At this time, I may be unready to incorporate how well your dinner is settling on your stomach with how far you can walk or ride today, the rational approach at this time is to make room for that becoming a thing at some point.  There is NO point in my building a deepened travel system that doesn't account for all the directions that travel system might eventually go.  Otherwise, I'm only creating headaches for myself further down the road.  Who knows what I might wish to add in 10 years?

[incidentally, my daughter has been playtesting the nutrition rules with her campaign for a couple of months now, and says her party loves them; most reassuring]

I haven't put something on the wiki yet because, even scratching the surface, I'm waist-deep in a river that just looks to get deeper.  Starting out with the question of how far can a person walk given the number of action points (AP) they have, I realized that the difference between the road and the wilderness isn't enough.  One road is very not like another, so that I found myself settling in to make categories for every sort of route the party is likely to travel, short of untracked wilderness.  It made sense to tag the route-type to a 20-mile hex's infrastructure, which then brought up the subject of crossing rivers, whether by ford, ferry or transshipment, depending on the width and depth of the obstruction.  Obviously, the existence of these would be tagged by the infrastructure also ... and having resolved upon that, I found myself thinking about tolls and costs for such things, leading to the table below.

table may be subject to change before appearing
on the wiki.

The various sorts of routes, eight in all, would be progressively more difficult to walk, include less drainage, have more bends and deviations around topography, more tight places, a greater likelihood of being washed out or flooded, etcetera ... reducing the straight-line distance between two points and the time it would take to get there.  But though I had originally intended to include the road's effect on foot travel based on the encumbrance of the traveller, I realized I only have encumbrance numbers for walking ... because until now, I've not applied encumbrance to how loaded down an animal is, considering both that which is carried by the animal and that which can be pulled by the animal.

And this is a problem also, because while a horse, say, can carry a rider a greater distance in a shorter amount of time, a horse becomes tired after six hours of being ridden.  This means that some of the distance the animal travels will be while it is led ... and that speed will depend on how much the rider chooses to carry while leading the animal.  Which, in turn, makes it very difficult to produce a simple table.

And, of course, the categorization of various route surfaces is child's play to the possible types of wilderness to be crossed in absence of a road.  And I would also like to take into account such things as weather, orientation, pathfinding, supplies, the discovery of resources such as fresh water, matters relating to camping and how much free time a day a character can find while all these other things are going on.  After all, not every minute is spent in travelling.

All of that is pretty gritty ~ and for some, definitely not the way they'd want to go with their world.  But I think most of that resistance results from the fear of whatever work might be involved in calculating out the specific details.  Which is why, as I'm doing the work, I will have an eye for how to save it where it comes to calculations.

However, I think in the long term, the greater win will be in having a more definite idea of the space being crossed, and explored, if the method of exploration isn't limited to merely distance versus time.  There needs to be a clear understanding of what that distance is, and just exactly why this amount of time passes when crossing it, all of this being wrapped up in a deeper understanding of what it means when the party decides to leave the trail and see where that takes them.

P.S.,

I had meant to post this on my closed blog ... but as long as I've posted it here, it can stand.  Further content about travel, an encumbrance table for animals drawing or carrying loads, and more as I create it, can be had by donating $3 to my Patreon account.