Below is an explanation of wilderness travel rules that begins with Sequence of Play. At the end is an explanation about DMing a wilderness travel phase of the game called How to Run Traveling and some tips about simplifying the game in a section called Abbreviating Redundant Wilderness Travel.
SEQUENCE OF PLAY
Step 1. The DM rolls on random encounters table twice each day; once for the day and once for the night. Encounters are presented to the players when applicable.
Step 2. Player Actions. DM asks players what they do while traveling including navigation, stealth, foraging, mapping, and searching for danger.
Step 3. DM Descriptions. DM determines outcome of player actions at the end of the day.
Step 4. End turn. Players track resources spent. DM updates time and determines exhaustion, distance remaining.
Time: Time in the wilderness is tracked as the day and the night. Players get one turn during the day and one turn at night. Players are assumed to use their move to travel for 8 hours either in the day or in the night. The DM does not need to track time hour by hour. Random encounters or arriving at the players destination can occur at vague times such as "by late morning," "at about mid-day," or "sometime early that evening."
Visibility: Players can see for 2 miles in any direction at sea level in clear weather. This is halved in poor weather or lighting conditions. Players can travel by moonlight or in the dark provided they have light sources.
Marching Order: Their marching order is how the party organized. Single file? Two by two? Scattered and loose? Players deciding the marching order helps the DM set up and present random encounters and helps the players understand who their character is probably chatting with all day.
Party Leader: The PC walking in front will be navigating. They will roll stealth and navigation for the party. The party leader cannot map the area they're traveling.
Pace: The party can travel at different speeds for 8 hours in a day.
-Slow pace: 18 miles in a day. +5 bonus to Perception and Stealth rolls.
-Normal pace: 24 miles in a day.
-Fast pace: 30 miles in a day. -5 penalty to Perception rolls. The party cannot stealth and the players cannot use their actions to forage or search.
Forced March: The party can travel longer than 8 hours in a day. Players
make a constitution roll each hour of a forced march. The DC increases
by 1 each hour. If they fail their roll, they become exhausted. The party can make additional progress for each hour based on their pace. Additional encounters may result from a forced march.
-Slow pace: 2 miles an hour. +5 bonus to Perception and Stealth rolls.
-Normal pace: 3 miles an hour.
-Fast pace: 4 miles an hour. -5 penalty to Perception rolls. The party cannot stealth and the players cannot use their actions to forage or search.
Difficult Terrain: Some types of terrain halve the party's movement speed such as thick grassy plains, dense forests, or hills.
Inclement Weather: Some types of weather reduce visibility or cause the players to consume their food and water faster. Hot climates, storms, and freezing weather can cause exhaustion more rapidly.
Traveling and Exploring: The party is assumed to be traveling to a predetermined destination. They may or may not know the exact location. As they travel, they may also keep an eye out for interesting landmarks, foraging for resources, signs of wild game, or shelter. Players can also discover new locations while traveling.
Random Encounters: Not all random encounters are combat encounters with monsters. Sometimes players discover an interesting landmark such as a cave or a lake, a hidden location like a lonely cabin with a garden or a clearing with strange ritualistic statues, wild game to track and hunt, another traveler or group of travelers. The random encounters table can also include weather.
Player Actions: Players can make one action for each 8 hour turn. While traveling, they can forage for wild edibles, water, or fire wood and kindling, search for signs of wild game to potentially track and hunt, search for spell components, random loot, keep an eye out for danger, they can map the area they're exploring to prevent them from getting lost in the future, or they can kill time.
Navigation: The party may travel confidently through familiar regions or if they have a map or a guide. If the party is traveling in unfamiliar regions where there are no roads, paths, or rivers to follow or no landmarks to reference, the party cannot confidently travel and must navigate. The lead party member will roll a navigation check once daily. On a failed roll, they party is lost. The effects of being lost are that the party has spent a half day traveling in the wrong direction. If the navigation check fails by more than 5, the party may not even realize they're lost. The party must either backtrack to familiar territory and try again or attempt to press onward and hope they find their way with a successful navigation roll. The consequences of getting lost are usually a lose of time and resources, and risk of additional monster encounters.
Resting: Players must take an uninterrupted 8 hour rest every 24 hours or they become exhausted. Camping has its share of dangers. Someone needs to keep watch while the party sleeps. The players characters can take turns keeping watch in one long rest.
Resources: Players require 1 lbs of food and 1 gallon of water per day. Failure to meet these requirements causes exhaustion. It is assumed that the players will consume their available resources each day. To attempt to conserve resources, players can consume half resources daily. If players consume half resources, they each make a constitution roll at the end of the day versus exhaustion. Players do not recover from exhaustion until they consume normal resources. Players require double resources in harsh environments or weather.
Disease: Sometimes, the party can make an unusual decision to sleep somewhere they shouldn't or they've made a decision to eat or drink something they should probably just have investigated better and now they've failed their constitution rolls and they're poisoned or sick. Maybe they've been stung or bitten by something venomous. Give them a penalty to their ability to travel or fight. Decide how long it lasts and what it takes to treat.
Exhaustion: PCs who are exhausted take a penalty to their actions while traveling. Penalties carry over to combat as well.
Encumbrance: Players have a limited carrying capacity. If they're carrying capacity is exceeded, they are encumbered and their movement is halved. If they march for one day while encumbered, they are automatically exhausted. (Optional rule for carrying capacity: Each player can carry a number of items equal to 20 + their strength modifier.)
Wagons, Beasts of Burden, and Mounts: Players can use a beasts of burden such as a pack mule to carry additional items or pull their wagons. Players can use wagons to carry additional items as well. Players can travel on a mount such as a horse. All these things can affect the travel pace or encounters. Animals need their own supply of food and water.
Key Region Features: Sometimes a region has a key feature such as a mountain, a river, a lake, a forest. These can help the players understand where they are in relation to anything else and should be mentioned in the descriptions of travel. Example: "The hooked peak of Mt. Doom is smaller and more bluish today than it was yesterday."
How to Run Traveling
-Set the scene: At the start of each traveling day, provide the players with a brief description of what they can see in the distance or on the horizon, which could just be a single feature like a named mountain, and let them know what type of environment they're currently in and what the weather looks like today. Tell them what if anything about the scenery has changed as they've traveled such as "you can no longer see the town of Goodburg."
-Ask the party what they do for the day if it isn't implied.
-Present day encounter. Ask the players for their actions. Adjudicate the results of player actions. Describe the results.
- Reset the scene: At the end of each traveling day, again provide the players with a
brief description of what they can see in the distance or on the
horizon, what type of environment they're in, and what the weather
looks like for the evening. What if anything about the scenery has changed since this morning. "You can now see a faint bluish peak of Mount Doom on the horizon."
-Present night encounter. Ask the players for their actions. Adjudicate the results of player actions. Describe the results.
-New travel day.
Abbreviating Redundant Wilderness Travel
The point of wilderness travel ultimately is about two things: resource management and discovering new stuff. If the party has limited resources, are in bad shape, and far from the safety of civilization, wilderness travel becomes tense. If the party discovers something useful when they need it, or something generally valuable, that's meaningful.
But sometimes wilderness travel is just about depleting the party's resources before they get to the dungeon, making their return trip a touch uncomfortable, and maybe playing a wild card. Sometimes the wilderness travel is just
not important
and it doesn't have to be eventful, especially if PCs are hardy and are traveling across a familiar area. Sometimes, the DM can just determine the number of days it will
take the PCs to reach their destination and tell the players to subtract their resources. Ask
the players if they do any foraging, what pace they're marching, and
whether they're consuming normal resources or half. Throw a random
encounter in there for good measure. Provide a simple narration about how they travel for a few days. Done. No, this doesn't trivialize
the three
pillars. The game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Marching and Marshes.
Player Actions
Players can choose to do nothing while traveling besides marching, or they can declare that their character will be responsible for something in particular during the traveling day. Examples below.
- Navigate (Wisdom roll)
- Map
- Forage (Wisdom roll) for food, water, random herbs, etc
- Search for wild game to encounter (Wisdom roll) for hunting
- Sing (affect reaction rolls and stealth)
- Search for danger (encounters, traps, ambushes) (avoid surprise, etc)
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