Assisted Travel Overland

Further content on the Authentic Wiki.

Mounted Travel

Travelling by mount allow many possibilities, including travel by horse, camel, donkey, mule, flying mount, elephant and underwater mount. Further details on these choices can be found through the links given; speed of movement in all cases is calculated in AP. With flying and underwater mounts, because of the surface being ridden upon, base movement rates must be specially calculated.

Riding any animal requires knowledge; those who do not know how must either be assisted or be allowed to ride behind those with ability. There may not be enough people in a party to enable everyone to ride; however, as players increase in level, more sage abilities are accumulated, as well as additional party members. Riding is also a skill that can be taught by characters with instruction, players and non-players alike. Taking the right steps, a group of player characters can eventually get everyone mounted, enabling greater distances covered in a day, while carrying more gear and enjoying greater comfort.

Most animals cannot be ridden continuously for ten hours, however. Excepting camels, most must be watered two or three times a day; depending on the mount, between 1 and 4 hours of the day must be spent leading the animal, resting it's back and slowing travel to a walk. Details can be found by researching the mount used. Horses are the most common mount; they need to be walked four hours out of every ten.

Many unusual animals that can be ridden, such as kailla, giant striders, axe beak or the titanothere pictured, require skills that cannot be found in the usual collection of player character sage abilities. To learn how to ride these creatures, the players must seek out cultural humanoids for whom those sage abilities are native. Druids as they achieve greater knowledge in animals do learn how to ride unusual beasts, including lions, bears, tigers, zebras and more — but this ability involves a symbiotic relationship between the druid class and the animal; such animals cannot be ridden by those of other character classes.

Vehicle Travel

Like with travel on foot and mount, vehicles are also limited by encumbrance to determine their total action points, but their movement is likewise taken into account with the movement table above. Carts need at minimum a cart path or better form of route — though in some landscapes, such as steppe, savanna, veldt and tundra, carts can be navigated through the wild. Wagons need a dirt road or better; sometimes, to enable the passage of these vehicles into hinterland mines and camps, corduroy roads are built as an alternative; these are parallel logs laid side-by-side to make a passable trackway. Carriages can ride on dirt roads but will not stand up to the punishment of corduroy roads.

The best roads are easy on a vehicle's wheels. Break rolls are checks that must be made each day to see whether the vehicle's progress has caused an event such as an axle break, cracked hub or failed wheel brake. These are made once per day. High roads are so easy on wagons that when travelling on them for any part of the day, for game purposes no break roll needs to be made. The break roll on a low road is 1 in 100; on a cobbled road, 1 in 80; on a dirt road, 1 in 60; and on a cart track, 1 in 36 (snake eyes). Cart paths are very hard on carts, with a break roll of 1 in 16 per day (two 1s on 2d4).

Passengers aboard vehicles contribute to their encumbrance, so in some cases speed can be improved by having some of the travelling party walk, or ride animals if they're able, to reduce the load carried.

Fords, Bridges & Ferries

Fords, bridges and ferries represent places where a route crosses over a river, although occasionally a ferry will cross a narrow part of a lake. The appearance of each depends on the type of road being travelled and the size of the river being crossed. River dimensions are expressed as a number of points, with streams having 1-6 points and rivers having seven or more. Very large rivers may have thousands of point. Each point represents a discharge of 1 cubic yard per second; this may represent a stream-bed that 3 yards wide and 1 foot deep, or 1½ yards wide and 2 feet deep. Discharge is used as the measure because streams and rivers will have differently formed beds in different regions.

Fords

Fords are shallow places with good footing where a river or stream may be crossed by wading, in water potentially as shallow as several inches. They may be impassable during high water. Fords tend to be found in low-infrastructure areas, because where infrastructure is high, the one-time ford was used as the best place to build a bridge. Places with the suffix -ford, -furt, -voorde or -brod, as well as other examples, are usually named after a ford that existed there at one time, or still exists. Tolls are not charged on fords.

Some high, low or cobbled roads will be laid below the water level of a stream (up to 6 pts), making these easy places for wagons to cross. Called a Watersplash, they may be exposed or nearly so during the dry season, and are deeper than 18 inches perhaps once a century. Some tidal crossings are also called by this name. Watersplashes are found only in England, Italy and Finland.

Bridges

Bridges are wooden or stone structures built to span a physical obstacle, most commonly a river or gorge. They provide passage for roads where it is otherwise difficult or impossible to cross. Wooden bridges outside of towns are usually private; inside towns, wooden bridges are preferred because of the number needed. Bridges across rivers with 7 or more points on travel routes are built of stone 19 times out of 20, because they need to be reliable in times of war and once built allow for long periods between maintenance. Bridges over streams (1-6 pts.) will be wooden 19 times out of 20.

Where infrastructure is high there will be many free bridges where no toll is charged; these are maintained by the kingdom or republic and are free access because it promotes the movement of trade. Bridges over larger river courses are more expensive and therefore charge tolls. Tolls are also charged on in less infrastructured areas because less resources leave only this option to provide coin for maintenance. A bridge toll is calculated as 1 copper piece (c.p.) per point of river or stream crossed, per person or animal.

Though occasionally bridges are obstructed by traffic, or closed for damage, or experience a broken vehicle which causes delays that may last hours, these things are rare enough they don't need checking. Perhaps 1 in 100 if the DM feels compelled.

Ferries

These are typically barges able to support weights up to ten tons, including wagons, carriages, animals and so forth. They operate by a line that's stretched across the river or stream, which may be a heavy cable as thick as three inches; this rests at water level, enabling river traffic to cross over it. On small streams, where the rope is light, the ferry can be pulled across the river by hand, usually by the ferryman taking hold of the rope at one end and walking the length of the boat. Heavier cables on larger rivers must be pulled by a capstan, which lifts the rope onto the ferry drawing it through a groove in the deck and laying it back into the river. The ferry will usually have a fin rudder that's set to edge the front of the boat towards the current, but usually ferries are set at river locations where the surface current is slow-moving. It is not uncommon to have two ferry barges operating at the same time to speed movement. Typically, a party will wait 2 minutes per river or stream pt. when crossing by this method.

The cost for a ferry is set at 1½ c.p. per stream point per person or animal, regardless of how much is carried (fractions are rounded up).

Boat Docks for Transshipment

When a river is too wide to be crossed any other way, on the most important roads there will be docks where boats or barges can be loaded. The method is inconvenient and costs time, particularly when hauling goods or driving animals. Because use of the watercraft is at a premium, they are competed for — and usually merchants who are part of a guild, and have crossed the river many times before, receive attention before strangers crossing for the first time. Riverboats will work from first light until dusk.

Presume that it takes 1-3 hours to hire a boat, usually because all the boats this side of the river are engaged, and the party must wait for a boat to arrive. It will require 2 man-hours per ton of goods and animals to load a boat; some boats will have harnesses and netting that will allow animals to swim alongside a boat while supported so they do not drown. Players may engage as many boats as they wish, and up to 6 persons may be engaged in loading a boat (so that six persons can load a ton of goods in about 20 minutes). It is not only a matter of getting the goods onto the boat; these must be arranged, balanced and secured carefully for the journey. For game purposes, it also requires 2 man-hours per ton to unload a boat and ready all goods to be road-ready for leaving the river.

Crossings without Services

Some roads leading down to large rivers will offer no services whatsoever for crossing. Merchants who know the journey will plan for this by bringing along materials for building rafts, or carrying actual boats with them to cross this obstacle. A party must make whatever provisions they can, or travel up river until they can find a suitable place to cross.