Where are the most detailed & realistic travel rules to be found?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by trechriron

I am curious - what is your goal with these more detailed rules? Did your players ask for more detail on overland travel?

I am sincerely curious, not being snarky.

I and some of my players are quite interested in overland travel, exploration, mapping, and having rules to handle in interesting and detailed ways the various situations that can arise just from having a terrain map and having situations develop even as simple as a broken wagon, slain pack animals, search and pursuit decisions when there are multiple groups on people in multiple places, unexpected weather (or foolishly not bringing adequate clothing or gear, or losing it), getting lost and/or injured, trying to cross rivers, surviving when out of supplies or having just escaped someplace and not having what you'd want to travel & camp outside, etc etc. We're also interested in details such as how far people can realistically travel given different experience, condition, age, encumbrance, footwear, and different plans for how long and hard to march, when to take breaks, how much you can forage, how easy it is to track people or cover tracks, how hard it is to move undetected through a type of terrain with different patrollers on guard, etc. We often don't track such details, but sometimes the situation can suddenly get interesting and/or people want to try interesting techniques to make more time or catch up to someone or something, and so a solid foundation of the best travel rules seem like a very reasonable thing to want to have available.

My first RPG campaign was circa 1980 using The Fantasy Trip: In The Labyrinth, which despite being a fairly short book included the fundamental mode of play that the world is mapped with terrain types and roads and there are rules for how much you can carry and how your leader and other members' abilities affect your ability to not get lost when off-road, and survive outdoors. The details of getting from place to place (and acquiring and perfecting maps of the world, with the GM never showing the players the maps that were the actual accurate terrain) and finding new lands with new situations and opportunities was one of the most intriguing parts of play, and having good travel rules was part of it, and something that was a bit hard to find. With a reasonable map, the players have choices of not just where to go but how to get there, and it's far more interesting if there are appropriate rules that make sense for the challenges and outcomes of trying to travel through different terrain in different conditions. As one friend likes to say, "getting there is half the death!"