[DF] 40 Days Travel Time?

[JMason]

Ignoring the rules in Wilderness Adventures for the moment, DF2 offers up using a set amount of time for travel. The example given is 40 days and nights.

This has always struck me as very long. Does anyone actually run games that include this length of travel? I had my PCs go on a 20 day trip and it has been a logistical nightmare to get all the food they need. They ended up buying a wagon and 2 horses! And with random encounters, we only got 1/2 way there in our last session (and they are using quick march to shorten this to 10 days!)

I'm not planning on altering my game to make travel longer, I was just curious where this time came from. Is there some president in "old school" games?

[Phantasm]

One (non-DF) game I ran had a sea voyage of two months between ports of call. Not much happened during that down-time; the voyage was basically circumnavigating an Africa-expy continent.

[Anaraxes]

The phrase in DF2 is an example of a GM just picking a time for off-screen travel; it's not a calculation for a specific trip from counting hexes on some map.

I imagine the particular number 40 came up in the author's mind because of its use in Hebrew idioms, well-known to Western cultures thanks to Bible stories. (Rain for 40 days and 40 nights for Noah's flood; 40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai receiving the law; 40 days of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness; 40 years of wandering in the desert post-Exodus.) In this case, "40" isn't meant to be an exact number, but just an idiom for "a long time", sort of like the modern English number "bajillion" for "a lot". And while the author might not have been consciously echoing this particular usage, the number in the DF quote is still just an arbitrary value to represent "a good while" just for the sake of approximating the trip costs.

It would be unusual for a medieval-style trip to require 40 days in isolation without any possibility of stopping anywhere for supplies. If you're expecting to travel in complete wilderness, you're probably planning on doing a lot of hunting and locating your water on the way, with your carrying capacity devoted to things you can't do without and can't find or make.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

It would be unusual for a medieval-style trip to require 40 days in isolation without any possibility of stopping anywhere for supplies. If you're expecting to travel in complete wilderness, you're probably planning on doing a lot of hunting and locating your water on the way, with your carrying capacity devoted to things you can't do without and can't find or make.

Was there much area in Medieval Europe that you could walk for 40 days without passing a significant town, to say nothing of villages? Of course, DF-land isn't actually Medieval Europe (not even close*) so you can't go by that.

* DF is about as close to Medieval Europe as Star Wars is to the Apollo Program.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Was there much area in Medieval Europe that you could walk for 40 days without passing a significant town, to say nothing of villages?

Exactly my point. But even Lewis and Clark (two and a half years) didn't buy all their supplies for the whole trip at their starting point. There were plenty of humans where they were headed, even if there weren't any European cities. I can't think of any expeditions offhand other than the polar expeditions that involve true desolation, and even they weren't packing all their water. So, the calculated cost for the entire trip can usually be assumed to be spread throughout the journey. You don't have to have a wagon train at the start that can carry one big stack of everything you're going to consume in the extended trip.

(Though I agree with Ransom that a cart or wagon and pack animals would be fairly routine for an extended journey. One of the main things that the animals carry is yourself, so you don't have to walk... Murder-hobo parties in the games I've been in have had wagons as often as not, and nearly always at least a mule.)

40 days of horse-and-wagon travel is probably somewhere between 500 and 1000 miles. So for Europe, Lisbon to Paris, or Calais to Vienna, hard to imagine being devoid of any opportunity to resupply. Or, since I like the LOTR reference, about 800 miles from Lorien to Mount Doom, or Hobbiton to Lorien, neither segment being devoid of friendly stops even with fantasy-scale desolation like Eregion. (Mordor wasn't at all desolate, even though you might not like the local cuisine.)

LOTR time-and-distance chart

[simply Nathan]

I tend to either build dungeons into towns (sewer level) or place them fairly close (graveyard, forest) and maybe up to a week of travel between town and dungeon (Conveniently Nearby Dungeon).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Was there much area in Medieval Europe that you could walk for 40 days without passing a significant town, to say nothing of villages? Of course, DF-land isn't actually Medieval Europe (not even close*) so you can't go by that.

There aren't very many places on Earth after the Ice Age where a few people can travel for 40 days overland without possible resupply. Maybe some big deserts, or jungles where the locals already hate you enough to hide. Big expeditions might exceed what you could trade from the local hunter-gatherers, but a small party of ethically challenged adventurers only needs to kill and loot the winter food cache of one family living around here full time to feed themselves for another month.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by JMason

And with random encounters, we only got 1/2 way there in our last session (and they are using quick march to shorten this to 10 days!)

Why did you use that many Random Encounters?


My rule of thumb for Random Encounters #s are "Only if the PCs are dithering" and "No More Than 3", otherwise you really bog things down for no real benefit.

[JMason]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Why did you use that many Random Encounters?

Because I was trying out running DF "by the book", and:

DF2, 20:

assigning each outdoor area or dungeon level odds of an encounter. [...] 9 or less is best for most wilderness [...] daily rolls work well when traveling outdoors. Also roll once per night when the party camps [...]

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Ransom

I think that is the main source of the disconnect in the OP: they want their party's travel to have the feel of fast couriers who ride out to respond to adventure hooks scattered across the countryside, but their campaign setting has the conditions that create a feel of a self-contained expedition.

That's not the impression I got.

Or rather his complaint was that (due to daily random encounters) it took more than one session for the travel time alone.


To be fair though, 40 days of travel should either be an adventure in itself or glossed over, which is what DF 2 suggests.

Originally Posted by JMason

Because I was trying out running DF "by the book"...

I'm a comin back to this. i think you're misinterpreting the 'rules'.

Those are suggestions, and in particular suggestions on Random Encounters during the adventure. Again, if you don;t want to set the travel as an adventure in itself, don't. Just say "It takes 40 days, you lost one horse to misadventure along the way and are down 3 fatigue from not sleeping well". Or whatever.

Daily (twice daily if you hit them every time they camp as well) for Encounters is unnecessary. Unless you and your group like that type thing, then go for it. Honestly, I really prefer the "Only Three Random Encounters"... unless it's meant to be a grueling trek through the wilderness aimed at testing the very limits of the Players patience.


Also take a page from some OSR guys (Peter Del'Orto's Felltower in particular):

Don't always make it Wandering Monsters. Make it hazards like "bad weather" (which costs FP), or pestering bugs (like mosquito, which also reduce FP from poor resting or prompt Ht rolls to avoid illness), or rolls against Survival to avoid poison oak or food spoilage from improper storage, or the road being washed out which increases the travel time, etc.

Not every "problem" needs to one that requires the combat map. Indeed, the worst problems tend to not involve combat at all.