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Hey guys. Thought I would start a discussion on this and see if anyone else has some ideas or just get some feedback on the ideas I have had floating around my head. This is mostly about the idea of overland travel and trying to remove some of the monotony of a Hex Crawl in which the guy with the highest relevant skill makes all the checks while everyone else sits back and waits while making for a more dynamic and engaging kind of experience for everyone at the table.

The game I have been playing the most recently is heavily based on a Hex Crawl.

To summarize it's rules for this...

The game breaks up the day into 1/4 days.
During a 1/4 day you can hunt/forage/travel/explore/rest/sleep/make camp.

Make Camp means you don't need to roll endurance to get rest and provides fire for heat so you don't suffer from the elements.
Rest lets you recover attributes.
Sleep is needed or you become tired (which can have mechanical impacts).
Forage for plants and/or water.
Hunt for food.
Explore can trigger events or find adventure sites within a hex.
And travel moving on to new hexes.

On plains grass lands you can travel 2 6 mile hexes in 1/4. With a horse it's 3 hexes. In more difficult terrain it's 1 (for the horse as well).

So my first thought is I want this to be more of a Path Crawl than a Hex Crawl. It's less about the current terrain you are in then the path you are trying to take through it. Are you on a road? Then it doesn't really matter as much about the rest of it does it?

But I also don't want to make the path crawl really complex with a ton of markers and indicators on the edges of the hexes. If there is a hidden path through the mountains... a Mines of Moria... the players shouldn't just look at the map and see that. That might need to be something they discover or learn about through contacts. I don't mind them placing indicators like that on the map when they learn about them, but am opposed to the map becoming bogged down with this information from the get go.

This kind of started getting me thinking about a system I devised for mazes awhile ago. (Anyone not familiar here is a link to a discussion I had about it on another forum - https://forum.frialigan.se/viewtopic.php?t=6823 )

I feel like the point crawl nature of the maze system I devised could work well being adapted into a path crawl. With events at each progress check resulting in random things the players need to do based on terrain type. Trying to traverse a mountain range? You may come to a cliff face that needs to be scaled. Everyone has to make climb checks for +1 progress or else look for another way around wasting the rest of the 1/4 day and making no progress as an example.

So to get my (very) rough thoughts down on paper I am thinking of something like...

You have the type of path you are taking to travel through the hex. The type of path sets difficulty on the roll.
You have the type of terrain you are traversing. Type of terrain sets the number of successes you need to get through the hex.
Each Check takes (insert increment of time).

So something like...
Open Terrain (plains) requires 2-3 successes
Difficult Terrain (wetlands, forests) requires 4-6 successes.
"Impassible" Terrain (High Mountains) requires 8-12 successes.

Road/Trail is easy (a +1 or +2 to the roll).
Pathfinding through open terrain would be a -1 to -2
Pathfinding through Difficult Terrain would be a -3 to -4.
Pathfinding "Impassible" would be a -5 to -6.

Certain equipment (including mounts or pack animals) can add bonuses or penalties depending on situation. A wagon on a road is no problems, but an issue when pathfinding in the forest. A horse in open grass lands is a bonus as they can cover a lot of ground faster. A horse in a desert is a liability. A camel however is a bonus. etc...

So you would be able to chose a path you want to take. Knowing you would need to pathfind across the plains, you make a roll. You get 1 success. and so progress across the hex has been made. Random event. Maybe that event results in discovering a trail? You can choose to take the trail that seems to be heading in the right direction to ease your progress. New roll. With the bonus from the trail you get another 2 successes and make it to the next hex.

Again rough thoughts...

Anyone have thoughts on this? Experiences with your own overland travel systems?

Gonna be honest, there seems to be a lot of redundancy there.

With make camp and rest and sleep and hunt and forage all each taking up 1/4 of a day, I'm not sure when any of the travel or exploration is supposed to happen- the day ended more than a 1/4 day ago!

Make camp feels like it shouldn't take 6 frikkin' hours. rest/sleep seems to be the same thing, same for hunt/forage. Mechanically, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to the distinctions beyond eating time units.

Voss wrote:
Gonna be honest, there seems to be a lot of redundancy there.

With make camp and rest and sleep and hunt and forage all each taking up 1/4 of a day, I'm not sure when any of the travel or exploration is supposed to happen- the day ended more than a 1/4 day ago!

Make camp feels like it shouldn't take 6 frikkin' hours. rest/sleep seems to be the same thing, same for hunt/forage. Mechanically, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to the distinctions beyond eating time units.

#

IMHO it's all extremely mechanistic for little to no 'dramatic' gain - it's okay if the map-exploring part is what your players want to do, but if it's just 'filler' content between dungeons and setpieces it seems very overwhelming for ultimately boring stuff.

Again rough thoughts...

Anyone have thoughts on this? Experiences with your own overland travel systems?

If you have a chance to do so, take a look at 'Journeys and Maps' for the One Ring Roleplaying game, it does all of what you want to do very very elegantly and very accurate to the feeling of epic voyages in middle earth, if nothing else it will inspire you.

Voss wrote:
Gonna be honest, there seems to be a lot of redundancy there.

With make camp and rest and sleep and hunt and forage all each taking up 1/4 of a day, I'm not sure when any of the travel or exploration is supposed to happen- the day ended more than a 1/4 day ago!

Make camp feels like it shouldn't take 6 frikkin' hours. rest/sleep seems to be the same thing, same for hunt/forage. Mechanically, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to the distinctions beyond eating time units.

I am not in any real disagreement with this. That is more of what Forbidden Lands does.

They seemed to have divided the day into 1/4 days as a simple distinction and then fit everything into it. Making camp shouldn't take 6 hours. But I supposed they include foraging for dry wood in that time period.

I do get why they say rest/sleep are slightly different. When you rest you can do other non stressful activities. Repair some equipment. Read a book. Spend experience etc... Sleep specifically fulfills the requirement of sleep and obviously you cannot do anything while sleeping.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:

Voss wrote:
Gonna be honest, there seems to be a lot of redundancy there.

With make camp and rest and sleep and hunt and forage all each taking up 1/4 of a day, I'm not sure when any of the travel or exploration is supposed to happen- the day ended more than a 1/4 day ago!

Make camp feels like it shouldn't take 6 frikkin' hours. rest/sleep seems to be the same thing, same for hunt/forage. Mechanically, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to the distinctions beyond eating time units.

#

IMHO it's all extremely mechanistic for little to no 'dramatic' gain - it's okay if the map-exploring part is what your players want to do, but if it's just 'filler' content between dungeons and setpieces it seems very overwhelming for ultimately boring stuff.

Again rough thoughts...

Anyone have thoughts on this? Experiences with your own overland travel systems?

If you have a chance to do so, take a look at 'Journeys and Maps' for the One Ring Roleplaying game, it does all of what you want to do very very elegantly and very accurate to the feeling of epic voyages in middle earth, if nothing else it will inspire you.

I've read through the One Ring (latest free league edition).

 Lance845 wrote:


You have the type of path you are taking to travel through the hex. The type of path sets difficulty on the roll.
You have the type of terrain you are traversing. Type of terrain sets the number of successes you need to get through the hex.
Each Check takes (insert increment of time).

So something like...
Open Terrain (plains) requires 2-3 successes
Difficult Terrain (wetlands, forests) requires 4-6 successes.
"Impassible" Terrain (High Mountains) requires 8-12 successes.

Road/Trail is easy (a +1 or +2 to the roll).
Pathfinding through open terrain would be a -1 to -2
Pathfinding through Difficult Terrain would be a -3 to -4.
Pathfinding "Impassible" would be a -5 to -6.

Certain equipment (including mounts or pack animals) can add bonuses or penalties depending on situation. A wagon on a road is no problems, but an issue when pathfinding in the forest. A horse in open grass lands is a bonus as they can cover a lot of ground faster. A horse in a desert is a liability. A camel however is a bonus. etc...

So you would be able to chose a path you want to take. Knowing you would need to pathfind across the plains, you make a roll. You get 1 success. and so progress across the hex has been made. Random event. Maybe that event results in discovering a trail? You can choose to take the trail that seems to be heading in the right direction to ease your progress. New roll. With the bonus from the trail you get another 2 successes and make it to the next hex.

Again rough thoughts...

Anyone have thoughts on this? Experiences with your own overland travel systems?

What proportion of the party have to make those rolls? Does the entire party individually make pathfinding rolls and you add up the successes? Or is it a single primary roll with helpers adding to the primary roll?

 warboss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:


You have the type of path you are taking to travel through the hex. The type of path sets difficulty on the roll.
You have the type of terrain you are traversing. Type of terrain sets the number of successes you need to get through the hex.
Each Check takes (insert increment of time).

So something like...
Open Terrain (plains) requires 2-3 successes
Difficult Terrain (wetlands, forests) requires 4-6 successes.
"Impassible" Terrain (High Mountains) requires 8-12 successes.

Road/Trail is easy (a +1 or +2 to the roll).
Pathfinding through open terrain would be a -1 to -2
Pathfinding through Difficult Terrain would be a -3 to -4.
Pathfinding "Impassible" would be a -5 to -6.

Certain equipment (including mounts or pack animals) can add bonuses or penalties depending on situation. A wagon on a road is no problems, but an issue when pathfinding in the forest. A horse in open grass lands is a bonus as they can cover a lot of ground faster. A horse in a desert is a liability. A camel however is a bonus. etc...

So you would be able to chose a path you want to take. Knowing you would need to pathfind across the plains, you make a roll. You get 1 success. and so progress across the hex has been made. Random event. Maybe that event results in discovering a trail? You can choose to take the trail that seems to be heading in the right direction to ease your progress. New roll. With the bonus from the trail you get another 2 successes and make it to the next hex.

Again rough thoughts...

Anyone have thoughts on this? Experiences with your own overland travel systems?

What proportion of the party have to make those rolls? Does the entire party individually make pathfinding rolls and you add up the successes? Or is it a single primary roll with helpers adding to the primary roll?

Right now the idea is that the pathfinding roll would be done by the one individual (potential groups of people working together for bonuses? Dunno yet). But each encounter that happens because you didn't finish the progress to would require the group doing things to progress. In the case of climbing the cliff everyone needs to make climb checks and circumvent the cliff. If there is an encounter with a creature everyone is negotiating/combat. So a really good pathfinder can make the trip take less time and make a lot of progress quickly. But each of their one check is interspersed with a group encounter that can result in further progress.

Thanks. The reason I was asking was the number of successes required to succeed for each hex is on average 4-6 which, depending on the exact mechanic you're using to roll, might require alot of rolls/quarter days for one person.

 warboss wrote:
Thanks. The reason I was asking was the number of successes required to succeed for each hex is on average 4-6 which, depending on the exact mechanic you're using to roll, might require alot of rolls/quarter days for one person.

I agree with this too. I think the number of successes needs to go through some heavy review and revision to strike the right balance between travel is interesting and travel is tedious. Though to be fair, 4-6 is in difficult to travel areas. Swamps and dense woodlands and such. In "open ground" so to speak the travel is much shorter and generally speaking people should be either traveling in those open areas or following trails/paths/roads which makes it easier (numbers for bonuses for being on paths/roads should be adjusted as well).

I also don't think quarter days is the right time frame any more. With Forbidden lands breaking the travel time into quater days make sense because you make a single check and traverse multiple hexes. With this, you are making checks to determine leaving the hex you are in. In that respect it's more like...

6 hours = 2 hexes on foot.

2-3 successes per hex.

6/4 or 6 = roughly an hour per roll? Making better or worse time depending on how well your rolls go which can be a hand waved you found good flat even easily traversable terrain or you ran into some rough patches that slowed you down.

Still rough ideas. Nothing I would call usable yet.

It's hard for me to say (regarding the time split) since I have zero practical experience with the original Forbidden Lands. In theory, I'd personally shoot for open land's difficulty being what a pathfinding trained starting character can accomplish in a single roll with above average results. Not fully minmaxed rolling all top results but rather competent rolling above average on one roll for open terrain at worst. You don't want to make crossing an open field for starting characters especially when they're supposedly competent specifically at that task. Then work your way up from there in terms of how many rolls it should take based on difficulty. Maybe two rolls for the same type of character for difficult and four for impassable? Start with the end goal (player experience) and work backwards.

 warboss wrote:
It's hard for me to say (regarding the time split) since I have zero practical experience with the original Forbidden Lands. In theory, I'd personally shoot for open land's difficulty being what a pathfinding trained starting character can accomplish in a single roll with above average results. Not fully minmaxed rolling all top results but rather competent rolling above average on one roll for open terrain at worst. You don't want to make crossing an open field for starting characters especially when they're supposedly competent specifically at that task. Then work your way up from there in terms of how many rolls it should take based on difficulty. Maybe two rolls for the same type of character for difficult and four for impassable? Start with the end goal (player experience) and work backwards.

Not a bad idea. I think I am going to approach it this way and then do it again through time. How long should it take to cross a hex of grasslands? How long should it take to cross mountains? And then see if the numbers match or what the difference between the 2 is and try to find a happy medium.