Cross-country travel, by the book.
Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 11:09 am
Note: this isn't for situations where the party simply wishes to strike out through the wilderness but, rather, when the DM knows the party is going from point A to point B. The notes in this (truncated) email I sent to a friend indicate Greyhawk distances (30 mi./hex) and movement rates horsed, but in the overall, it is generally applicable to other campaigns.
In brief, what I recommended our burgeoning DM do is to roll encounters along the path of travel before the game; to create a mini-module, that rather outlines the individual encounters instead of rolling, rolling, rolling every few minutes. My character, a Ranger, will escort the group and helpfully suggest two main routes - one cross-country and another on well-traveled roads, so the DM can roll a set of encounters for each route of travel.
Of course if we get lost her "module" kind of goes out the window but I'm sure she'll be prepared for that, too...!
So, without further ado, my advice to her...
Distances:
A single hexagon on the World of Greyhawk map is 30 miles edge to edge. There are differing rates of travel, depending on whether or not you travel by foot, on horseback, by cart, etc., and whether or not you're going across country or on a road or through marshes or mountains, and so on. Again, roads are the fastest method of normal travel. For example, on horseback, down a road or track, movement is at a rate of 60 miles per day (or two hexes).
On the other hand, going on horseback through untracked swamp, the movement rate is 5 miles per day. Much, much slower.
Encounters
Remember in Oblivion when you'd find an Imperial Patrol and he'd say something about "For the Divines' sake, stay on the road!". Then you'd go trucking across country and run headlong into something terrible that forced you to reload to your last save? Yeah, same thing applies here: roads are safer and have patrols, cross country, less so. If you look on page 47 of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, there's a table labeled "Chance of Encounter". Roads I always treat as "moderate to sparse/patrolled". Kingdoms and even city states have a vested interest in keeping roads clear of monsters, etc. Depending on the type of terrain (See the "Frequency of encounter chance time checks" table underneath that one, same page), you'd roll a 1d20, d12 or d10, with a "1" indicating an encounter at the given times of day regardless whether or not we were traveling.
Examples
So what does all this mean? Here's an example to help you out. If our party cuts across country rather than sticking with the roads, we'll have to cross the Hool Marshes, which at it's narrowest point is 4 hexes (120 miles) across. On horseback, through swamp, we'll only manage 5 miles a day. The swamp is well away from cities and towns. A journey across it, then, would take 24 days.
Looking at the table, that's a check for encounter every "period" of a day's cycle. In other words, 6 days per hex (remember, in swamp we can only move 5 miles per day, and each hex is 30 miles across), times four hexes (or 120 miles) = 24 days, or 144 checks for encounters! That's not counting if you want us to find some ruin or something, and explore that for a day or two, or if we get lost.
What I strongly recommend is determine which track we are going to take and before the game, roll all the encounter possibilities first. Wulfgar will recommend one of two ways to the party: follow the road around to the Yeomanry, or cut across country (thru the swamps, etc.)
I can tell you exactly what terrain types and how long it will take to navigate each route we take, then that way you can roll the dice for each day of travel and determine what kind of encounters we have, if any.
Then, you can craft each encounter rather than having to roll hit points and treasure and whether or not the creature(s) we encounter are in their lair when we find them, etc. While it's easy to roll the dice for a hill giant or 3 on the fly, if we run in to say an Orc war party (anywhere up to 300!) it's nice to have all that pre-rolled, yeah?
SO...
Going by the roads, we'll be traveling across plains and grassland for 21 hexes, or ten days on horseback. There's a 1-in-12 (1 on 1d12) chance for encounter, check Morning, Evening and Midnight. That's 3 times per day, or 30 rolls total. Then, we reach an eastern spur of the Hellfurnaces Mountains and must briefly cross. However there is a road through. This will take a day-and-a-half to cross, so that's a total of 3 1d12 rolls, one Morning, one Night and another Morning. Then we're back down in the plains, and from there it's 7 hexes - or 3-and-a-half-days travel to Loftwick, capital of the Yeomanry, across Plains, and again checking 1d12, 3 times daily, for 3 days.
After that, the going gets rough. Regardless whether we followed the road or came cross country (see below), we now have to cross plains, mountains, wastes, then plains again before we reach Lago.
It's 60 miles from Loftwick to the foothills of the Crystalmist mountains, or 2 hexes. Since there's no road, that's about one-and-a-half-days travel, which is 5 encounter rolls on 1d10 (again, a 1 = encounter). Morning, Evening, Night, then Morning and Evening again. Then we're at the Crystalmist mountains...
Travel through the mountains isn't easy, but it can be done. Rate of travel is 20 miles per day. It's 210 miles, or 7 hexes, across the Crystalmists. That's ten-and-a-half days. However, that's only 11 encounter checks, one each morning and another each night, and a final morning check.
The barren Dry Steppes that lead to the grass plains surrounding Lago is 13 hexes away, or 390 miles. Movement rate on horseback is 20 miles per day, or 19.5 days of travel, or 59 checks on 1d10 (3 checks per day, morning, evening and midnight, then a morning and evening check when we're almost to the town) until we reach the safe haven of Lago...
Going by cross-country:
1 day's travel (2 hexes) on the plains road from Monmurg. So, 3 encounters rolled on 1d12 (morning, noon, evening). 1.5 days travel on plains to the Hool Marshes, 5 encounters rolled, call it 3 on 1d12 and 2 on 1d10.
Now we're in the Hool Marshes proper; as I mentioned above, crossing the Hool Marshes is a 24 day journey. You can stick all kinds of encountery stuff in there for us! Half-sunken castles, forgotten dragon lairs, etc. The encounters are 1 on a 1d10, check six times per day: morning, noon, evening, night, midnight and pre-dawn. That's dragons we could meet, groups of evil men, bandits, friendly elves, (unicorns!), lots of stuff to potentially encounter. Almost a month's worth of adventuring to cross the marshes.
Once we exit the Hool Marshes, it's 11 hexes or 330 miles from there to Loftwick in the Yeomanry. The last 2 hexes are road hexes, so that's only 1 day's travel (and due to the fact that it's on the road near the capital, perhaps only use a d20 roll rather than d12 for encounters).
However, that's 13.5 days of travel across the plains, or 41 chances for encounters, on a d10 (or d12).
SO...
Now you know how frequently you'll have to roll the dice, but once you've checked for an encounter, what table will you roll on?
On page 184 of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, there is a table, "Temperate and Sub-Tropical Conditions" and "Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas". Once you roll a "1", then roll percentile dice to see what we encounter, depending on where we are (plains/scrub, use whichever suits you for Plains), then check the chart. So, say we're Marsh, so you roll 1d100...
...and you roll a 76...
...Sphinx!
There's a sub-table on the next page that tells you what type of sphinx, so you check it...
15 - criosphinx.
Now, in the MONSTER MANUAL you check that monster type - how many? 1-4.
Rolled a 4! A whole pack of them!
There's a 30% chance we stumbled on a lair of them in the wilderness...
45 - not this time. They're out in the wild. So (again, all before hand) you roll up hit points, decide what their motive is, etc., and you've got an encounter created.
...
Hope someone finds this useful!
In brief, what I recommended our burgeoning DM do is to roll encounters along the path of travel before the game; to create a mini-module, that rather outlines the individual encounters instead of rolling, rolling, rolling every few minutes. My character, a Ranger, will escort the group and helpfully suggest two main routes - one cross-country and another on well-traveled roads, so the DM can roll a set of encounters for each route of travel.
Of course if we get lost her "module" kind of goes out the window but I'm sure she'll be prepared for that, too...!
So, without further ado, my advice to her...
Distances:
A single hexagon on the World of Greyhawk map is 30 miles edge to edge. There are differing rates of travel, depending on whether or not you travel by foot, on horseback, by cart, etc., and whether or not you're going across country or on a road or through marshes or mountains, and so on. Again, roads are the fastest method of normal travel. For example, on horseback, down a road or track, movement is at a rate of 60 miles per day (or two hexes).
On the other hand, going on horseback through untracked swamp, the movement rate is 5 miles per day. Much, much slower.
Encounters
Remember in Oblivion when you'd find an Imperial Patrol and he'd say something about "For the Divines' sake, stay on the road!". Then you'd go trucking across country and run headlong into something terrible that forced you to reload to your last save? Yeah, same thing applies here: roads are safer and have patrols, cross country, less so. If you look on page 47 of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, there's a table labeled "Chance of Encounter". Roads I always treat as "moderate to sparse/patrolled". Kingdoms and even city states have a vested interest in keeping roads clear of monsters, etc. Depending on the type of terrain (See the "Frequency of encounter chance time checks" table underneath that one, same page), you'd roll a 1d20, d12 or d10, with a "1" indicating an encounter at the given times of day regardless whether or not we were traveling.
Examples
So what does all this mean? Here's an example to help you out. If our party cuts across country rather than sticking with the roads, we'll have to cross the Hool Marshes, which at it's narrowest point is 4 hexes (120 miles) across. On horseback, through swamp, we'll only manage 5 miles a day. The swamp is well away from cities and towns. A journey across it, then, would take 24 days.
Looking at the table, that's a check for encounter every "period" of a day's cycle. In other words, 6 days per hex (remember, in swamp we can only move 5 miles per day, and each hex is 30 miles across), times four hexes (or 120 miles) = 24 days, or 144 checks for encounters! That's not counting if you want us to find some ruin or something, and explore that for a day or two, or if we get lost.
What I strongly recommend is determine which track we are going to take and before the game, roll all the encounter possibilities first. Wulfgar will recommend one of two ways to the party: follow the road around to the Yeomanry, or cut across country (thru the swamps, etc.)
I can tell you exactly what terrain types and how long it will take to navigate each route we take, then that way you can roll the dice for each day of travel and determine what kind of encounters we have, if any.
Then, you can craft each encounter rather than having to roll hit points and treasure and whether or not the creature(s) we encounter are in their lair when we find them, etc. While it's easy to roll the dice for a hill giant or 3 on the fly, if we run in to say an Orc war party (anywhere up to 300!) it's nice to have all that pre-rolled, yeah?
SO...
Going by the roads, we'll be traveling across plains and grassland for 21 hexes, or ten days on horseback. There's a 1-in-12 (1 on 1d12) chance for encounter, check Morning, Evening and Midnight. That's 3 times per day, or 30 rolls total. Then, we reach an eastern spur of the Hellfurnaces Mountains and must briefly cross. However there is a road through. This will take a day-and-a-half to cross, so that's a total of 3 1d12 rolls, one Morning, one Night and another Morning. Then we're back down in the plains, and from there it's 7 hexes - or 3-and-a-half-days travel to Loftwick, capital of the Yeomanry, across Plains, and again checking 1d12, 3 times daily, for 3 days.
After that, the going gets rough. Regardless whether we followed the road or came cross country (see below), we now have to cross plains, mountains, wastes, then plains again before we reach Lago.
It's 60 miles from Loftwick to the foothills of the Crystalmist mountains, or 2 hexes. Since there's no road, that's about one-and-a-half-days travel, which is 5 encounter rolls on 1d10 (again, a 1 = encounter). Morning, Evening, Night, then Morning and Evening again. Then we're at the Crystalmist mountains...
Travel through the mountains isn't easy, but it can be done. Rate of travel is 20 miles per day. It's 210 miles, or 7 hexes, across the Crystalmists. That's ten-and-a-half days. However, that's only 11 encounter checks, one each morning and another each night, and a final morning check.
The barren Dry Steppes that lead to the grass plains surrounding Lago is 13 hexes away, or 390 miles. Movement rate on horseback is 20 miles per day, or 19.5 days of travel, or 59 checks on 1d10 (3 checks per day, morning, evening and midnight, then a morning and evening check when we're almost to the town) until we reach the safe haven of Lago...
Going by cross-country:
1 day's travel (2 hexes) on the plains road from Monmurg. So, 3 encounters rolled on 1d12 (morning, noon, evening). 1.5 days travel on plains to the Hool Marshes, 5 encounters rolled, call it 3 on 1d12 and 2 on 1d10.
Now we're in the Hool Marshes proper; as I mentioned above, crossing the Hool Marshes is a 24 day journey. You can stick all kinds of encountery stuff in there for us! Half-sunken castles, forgotten dragon lairs, etc. The encounters are 1 on a 1d10, check six times per day: morning, noon, evening, night, midnight and pre-dawn. That's dragons we could meet, groups of evil men, bandits, friendly elves, (unicorns!), lots of stuff to potentially encounter. Almost a month's worth of adventuring to cross the marshes.
Once we exit the Hool Marshes, it's 11 hexes or 330 miles from there to Loftwick in the Yeomanry. The last 2 hexes are road hexes, so that's only 1 day's travel (and due to the fact that it's on the road near the capital, perhaps only use a d20 roll rather than d12 for encounters).
However, that's 13.5 days of travel across the plains, or 41 chances for encounters, on a d10 (or d12).
SO...
Now you know how frequently you'll have to roll the dice, but once you've checked for an encounter, what table will you roll on?
On page 184 of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, there is a table, "Temperate and Sub-Tropical Conditions" and "Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas". Once you roll a "1", then roll percentile dice to see what we encounter, depending on where we are (plains/scrub, use whichever suits you for Plains), then check the chart. So, say we're Marsh, so you roll 1d100...
...and you roll a 76...
...Sphinx!
There's a sub-table on the next page that tells you what type of sphinx, so you check it...
15 - criosphinx.
Now, in the MONSTER MANUAL you check that monster type - how many? 1-4.
Rolled a 4! A whole pack of them!
There's a 30% chance we stumbled on a lair of them in the wilderness...
45 - not this time. They're out in the wild. So (again, all before hand) you roll up hit points, decide what their motive is, etc., and you've got an encounter created.
...
Hope someone finds this useful!
