Realistic Travel Speed

I do six-mile hexes and the party should average 3 a day. What about you?

Overland Movement Points

Fresh and fully-supplied men, in new chariots, pulled by fresh horses, along good Roman roads, in good weather, with no potential for banditry or dragon attacks, could travel 24 miles in a day, and 30 if they hustle. 

Therefore, medieval fantasy gamers have long presumed a 24-mile travel day overland. 

On a long sojourn, with horses who need to graze and men who need to forage, carrying armor and gear, through dreadful unknown country, under changeable skies, in fear of unknown monsters around every dog leg, possibly transporting wounded men, and setting camp each night catch-as-catch-can, that 24-mile assumption looks like, well, a fantasy. 

You can see where I’m going with this. 

My assumption for overland travel speed is 12 miles a day, and even that is pushing it a little. Twelve miles of walking and climbing through unknown wilderlands with a moderate burden would be a challenge for most folks, even those who are prepared for the task. 

Twelve miles is a good round number though, because we measure off wilderlands in six-mile hexes. (Remember that means center-to-center or edge-to-edge is six miles, center-to-edge is three miles and center-to-vertex is 3.5 miles.) 

So we will say that through light forest and over farmland and the like, a party will move about twelve miles a day or 18 on a really good day. But through dense forest, through swamps, over a mountain, or through bare desert, it will be impossible to make any more than 12 miles in a day under most conditions. 

How shall we model this? 

Like the rest of the rules in Crown & Valor, I sought a compromise between precision, speed and ease. The solution I found was to forget miles (sorta) and assign movement points. Here is how it works:

The party gets three movement points per day. Entering a new hex costs some number of those movement points. Easy terrain costs one point, while harder terrains cost more. That means a day on good roads will net three hexes, or about 16-20 miles. 

Furthermore, if the party uses zero, one or two points on one day, they carry one extra point over to the next day, for a maximum of four movement points. They can’t save up more than four at a time. 

The next task is to assign each kind of terrain the cost of 1, 2 or 3 movement points. It’s easy to eyeball which gets which. 

These numbers are just for overland movement on foot. Traveling by water or, as adventurous men sometimes do, through the thin air, will obviate terrain of course and be more dependent on weather. 

Slot-Based Encumbrance

Encumbrance is important. 

Encumbrance is the word we use to mean “all the stuff I am carrying,” in terms of its weight and its bulk. The more you are encumbered, the more effort it takes to move and therefore the slower you will do it. 

In the oldest versions of these games, encumbrance was measured coin-by coin, as a coins-weight is conveniently set at 1/10 of a lb. With the encumbrance of everything denominated in multiples of a  coin, you will only have to track the changes in one number over time. On the down side, keeping track of what you’re carrying is very fiddly and time-consuming at the table, the time when knowing the number is most important. 

The dungeoneering part of the Great Game, the part featured first in its name, is a game of prudence, judgment and fortitude. 

We have some idea of the peril our characters will face. In newer games, we handle a lot of the challenge with skills and powers on our sheet. Character skill trumps player skill. But in older games, there are no character builds; one fighting-man is much like another. Life and death are in your hands, not the character’s.

In part, preparing for the perils he may face means bringing the right equipment;!pert of the puzzle is exercising prudence before the delving begins. In an ideal world, we could bring everything we need for every situation.  Gear costs money - and more importantly, gear takes up space. What is critical and what you can (probably) afford to leave behind. 

When our figures are in the mythic underworld, we use our judgment about which dangers may lurk in the immediate future. Are you going to kick in the door and slay the orc, or are you going to sneak past? Will you bet your hit points against that blade trap, or will you attempt to disable it? Did your man bring the right tool to do that?

When you find a hoard of gold, how much do you pick up? Do you take so much that you need to leave your armor behind? I mean, hey, that’s a lot of gold, and behind you, you think you cleared a path to daylight. What could possibly go wrong?

Finally, dungeoneering is a game of fortitude. When you have run low in those resources, how much more are you willing to risk? If you had to run, could you do it holding all this stuff? 

Note well that in each case, you’re working against another, invisible, inscrutable element: Lady Fortuna, whether today be she grim or be she gay. That is, the game is swingy and things can go sideways very quickly. Balancing risk and reward are important. Minimizing the effects of luck are important. One key to maintaining that balance is tracking your encumbrance. 

Throughout the evolution of the game, some folks have tried to adhere to the encumbrance rules that Gary dictated. Some have outright ignored encumbrance. This is unsatisfactory for all the reasons we’ve mentioned. Others have  faced the challenge and looked for better ways to manage encumbrance (among other game systems.) 

Surprisingly, video games have given us a hand tracking encumbrance with the innovation of slot-based inventory. Slot-based inventory turns a chore into a fun puzzle. 

How to do it:

Each figure has six containers and each container holds three slots. Don’t worry about what the containers are called. These can be abstracted under most circumstances. These could be a backpack, a sack, a bandolier, belt pouch, a scabbard or frog, or anything else that seems reasonable. Smaller objects take up one slot while larger or heavier ones take up more. These slot encumbrance figures are listed for each item along with their price on Tables 12, 14 and 15.

There are three special rules though. 

The first one has to do with strength scores. Characters who take a strength penalty can only carry 5 containers; characters with a strength bonus can carry 7. A magic item which boosts your strength above 18 grants an 8th container, while a condition which lowers your strength below 3 removes two containers (leaving you with four.)

The second one has to do with armor. 

The bulkiest item you carry is your armor. Leather fills one “container,” chain fills two, and plate fills a third. A helmet fills one slot and a shield fills two slots, so the more heavily armored character already has four of his six containers filled by armor. 

The final one is special for dwarfs. Dwarfs move slowly but they are built to carry more. They can carry a whole extra container without collapsing under the burden, but they can only gain access to the ability when each of their other slots is completely full. 

Encumbrance and movement:

Wearing leather armor doesn’t slow you down. Wearing chain armor drops your move speed to 9”. Plate drops it to 6”. 

Regardless of armor level, having less than nine slots open drops your move to 9”. Having less than six slots open drops you to 6”. Having less than three open drops you to 3” of movement. Having every slot filled means you lose your DEX bonus to all appropriate rolls. 

Dwarfs, again, are a special case. Their base move is 9” so they can wear chain armor without slowing. Furthermore, once they are fully burdened, an additional container becomes available with three more item slots. Thus a dwarf with exceptional strength has access to 24 item slots, if he doesn’t mind crawling along. 

Tiny items:

Some items are so small that even a handful of them won’t fill up a slot. We can assume they go in pockets. Chalk, needle and thread, a lucky cockatrice foot, a piece of coal. These don’t take up an item slot, but be reasonable about how many your figure can carry. 

Coins: 

Adventurers collect coins. It’s kind of their thing. 100 coins can fit in your pockets, but more than that need to go into item slots. Each 100 coins above your free 100 fill an item slot. 300 of them would fill a sack, for instance. Also true for a like number of loose gems. Part of that encumbrance is their bulk, but most of it is their weight. 

NEXT TIME: let’s talk about magical jewelry and body adornment. 

Perception, Searching, Stealth and Surprise

The easiest way to handle this, and I’m surprised that I haven’t seen it done, is to unify these mechanics in your head. 

The first step is to make them actually unified. For me, I chose to say that any of these things happen on a base roll of 1-2 on d6. 

Perception is passive information-gathering. It relies on your eyes and ears and sometimes other senses. The Referee rolls this for you in the presence of stimuli. 

Searching is active information-gathering. You “do” this rather than it happening to you. 

Hiding and Sneaking are also active activities (even though hiding is usually stationary.) These are things you are doing to someone else. 

Surprise is a function of someone else’s hiding and sneaking or of happenstance. It is most similar to a Perception check. 

You see something, find something, sneak by/hide from something or surprise someone on a 1-2 on d6. With 1-point modifiers.

Here are their modifiers. 

For perception and searching: 

We start with 1-2 on 1d6. 

We modify by Wisdom, +1/-1.

Perception includes being surprised in combat. Subtract your wisdom modifier from the other man’s roll, just as if you are making a perception check. 

For searching:

We further modify by any tool you might use, such as a 10’ pole or silvered hand mirror. 

There are some modifiers to search and perception based on race. 

For hiding and sneaking: 

We start at 1-2 on 1d6. 

We modify for metal armor: -1.

There are additional racial modifiers for Hobbits. 

For sneaking: 

We further modify for Dexterity. Apply your Dexterity modifier, +1/-1. 

 

 

Move Rate Underground

It seems like you could go quite fast through a dungeon. This is true, you could, except that it is completely dark, full of monsters and traps, and miles beneath sweet, clean, precious open air. 

Therefore the party actually travels at a very slow rate. They are sneaking, hiding, probing, being very quiet, and, importantly, mapping. 

So the actual speed the party moves through a space is is equal to double the base scale inches of its slowest member per Turn (10 minutes.)

If your slowest man moves at 9”, you’re going to make 18” in ten minutes. This is common: 9” move rate. As soon as you have one dwarf or someone becomes encumbered, you go to 9”. 

A scale inch is 10’ underground and 10 yds above ground. For now, let’s just talk underground. So in the dungeon, you’re moving 180’, 18 squares, in ten minutes. Five such moves are all you can manage in an hour because you have to stop to rest. That’s 1/6th of a mile per hour, much slower than even a casual walking pace. 

Let’s keep that 9” in mind. An adventuring day of 8 hours permits 8/6 of a mile of movement - presuming the figures don’t stop to search or fight. 

That’s 4/6 mile in and then 4/6 mile out again. About 353 squares each way. (Again this presumes 8 hours and absolutely no other activity besides moving and resting.)

In that time, each character will empty two water skins and consume a day of rations. There will be approximately 8 torches or 8 pints of oil used per instance of light. Even the best nonmagical light sources only shed enough light for three people so you’re going to be going through two, three, four instances at once. That’s a lot of fire. Did I mention you’re miles away from fresh air?

In that time, just from wandering monsters alone, you will have approximately 8 encounters. That doesn’t include traps or doors or any other weirdness. Just from being in there, 8 chances to fight to the death. 

Encumbrance, supplies, hit points. 

This is why you bring henchmen. This is why you bring porters. Why you bring an elf or dwarf. This is why you use flaming oil and holy water and by God someone play the cleric please. 

This is why it’s a thrill. It’s why we do it. 

The clock is always ticking and the torch is always burning down. Where will you be when the oil runs out?