Typical length of travel

[GWJ]

Hi!
How should I gauge travel distance to adventure's place? For example in the book there is in given example 30 or 40 days. I want skills like Hiking and Navigation to be good and useful, but not overpowered. I thought about d6d6d6 days, what are you thinking?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by GWJ

Hi!
How should I gauge travel distance to adventure's place? For example in the book there is in given example 30 or 40 days. I want skills like Hiking and Navigation to be good and useful, but not overpowered. I thought about d6d6d6 days, what are you thinking?

Long enough to have exactly one random encounter of course.

Seriously unless the trip is supposed to *be* the adventure you don't want to waste too much valuable playing time on it, so one or two scenes you actually play out is about the limit, and while you can do a long string of die rolls relatively quickly, they're also fairly boring - which is also why you aren't going to be able to make Navigation, or especially Hiking, too useful no matter what you do, they largely don't do anything but participate in those strings of boring die rolls.

There's also the problem of if it's weeks away, nobody around here is likely to care very much, which makes it difficult to supply plausible adventure hooks - nobody is talking about it in the rumors, or hiring people or offering a reward to do something about it.

For DF, if you put the dungeon more than one night away from Town it's difficult to avoid spending a lot of play time on the trip (you feel like something has to happen every day), and the resource requirements of the journey will start to be significant compared to what you expend in the dungeon, and cut into how much the PCs can do on each trip - they *have* to keep a reserve - its the difference between "if we lose the supplies we may be down a few FP for being cold and hungry for a night should we have that one random encounter" vs. "if we lose the supplies we'll die before we can get back to Town".

[GWJ]

It's not what I'm asking about :) Exploits p. 17-18. Usefulness of these skills (mainly to "Getting There Quickly" and "Foraging") strongly depends from travel length. It determines how much carrying capacity (and money of course) should be spent before adventure's start. But I don't know what is fair average distance (optimally - recommended by authors). I'm not going to roleplay whole trip - just encounters and describe background of travel ;) in that situation, resource management is my point of view :) longer travel = more resources needed (money, carrying capacity) and greater chance of random encounter = skills capable to shortening travel timr, are more powerful. The same with abilities to avoid eating necessity

[Rasputin]

Let me point out that it takes two weeks to walk from Brest, France to Vienna, Austria. I seriously doubt your trips will be that far and thus take that long. More like a week, if you’re caring. In terms of random encounters, a week there and back is an average of about five encounters, round trip.

EDIT: See below, it really should be 45 days for that trip.

[ArchonShiva]

The largest effect will be hireling salaries, since travel will take longer than dungeoneering. If you want more or less hirelings, tweak travel times.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

The largest effect will be hireling salaries, since travel will take longer than dungeoneering. If you want more or less hirelings, tweak travel times.

Also how much resources they expend on outfitting. For a two week trip, that's minimum 4 weeks* of food per party member, and if it's inhospitable terrain, probably 4 weeks of water†.

Note, this doesn't cover having food or water during the delve... so if a 'dungeon' will take more than one day in and out, they need to carry more food.

And note, we aren't even talking fodder for pack animals, food for hirelings, camping supplies, etc.



* That's $56, 14 pounds per person.
† That's half a gallon per day, or 14 gallons round trip. Per person.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Let me point out that it takes two weeks to walk from Brest, France to Vienna, Austria. I seriously doubt your trips will be that far and thus take that long. More lik a week, if you’re caring. In terms of random encounters, a week there and back is an average of about five encounters, round trip.

Few people, if any, can hike 120km per day for 2 week straight... I think your numbers are a bit optimistic.

On one hand, you can have "The Hobbit: There and Back Again": the trip to the Dungeon is longer than the actual heist.
On the opposite, “The trip back home was uneventful and over in only twelve words.” ― Jasper Fforde

It also depend on the size/reputation of the Dungeon. A couple giant rats terrorizing the local farmers will be right outside of the village, an elder Dragon lair can be on the other side of the continent.

[GWJ]

Additionally, we should look at this as an optimal route - with good navigation, good weather preaparation, etc. That's why I'm asking about time, not distance :) And from meta-gaming point of view, not the realistic one: longer trip makes these skills more useful and worthy, shorter trip makes these skills less useful and worthy - all I need is the golden balance ;)

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by GWJ

(optimally - recommended by authors)

This author treats it as a dramatic and tactical factor separate from what I regard as a particularly tedious bit of bookkeeping. Food supplies are, I find, secondary to proximity to Town for recharging, extra healing, and more dungeoneering-specific forms of resupply. If the dungeon is the sewers under the Town, delvers can pop back up when they like. The longer the trip back, the harder that gets. Once you get past several days, the distance becomes less of a logistical obstacle and more the point of the adventure (and at any rate not finding other perfectly good towns along the way becomes less plausible).

I also keep the composition of the party in mind. If people have built a bunch of druids, barbarians, and scouts, they want to spend time on the road, so it doesn't really matter, from a rations point of view, where I put dungeons because they'll always be able to hunt their own food.

As for making Navigation and Hiking useful, don't look for that utility in having an idealized perfect distance between Town and dungeon. That's boring. Rather, find uses for those skills where it makes a meaningful difference in the emerging narrative. Make timing matter: The heroes have to head off a shambling zombie horde before it reaches town. They need to get an antidote to a poison to the Grand High Poohbah before it kills him. They're racing against another group of delvers to reach the far off caves of Faroffia to recover a valuable treasure. That's way more exciting than yet another round of "We top off the ration supply to our usual amount again before heading out..."

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Few people, if any, can hike 120km per day for 2 week straight... I think your numbers are a bit optimistic.

Ah, you're right. It should be about threefold this, so 45 days.