Travel times and distances

[Gilladian]

Various different incarnations of D&D have different overland travel rates, and distances covered under different circumstances. I'm wondering what people think of these varied rules/expectations, and which games might have the most realistic rates?

Actually, what I want to determine, is how long it would take to cover 120 miles, if you're traveling through trackless forest - with a largish group - 5 horsemen, 8 mules, 4 men each walking, leading 2 mules apiece; so really, you'd be going at human-walking-pace, for as long as the horses would travel in a day, I expect. The terrain is rolling temperate mountains (think Appalachians or Adirondacks), and very little traveled by anyone but orc tribes and the occasional fey. The season is mid-spring, if that makes a difference.

 

[Celebrim]

In general, over the long haul, it is difficult to average more than 20 miles per day even in good open terrain. If you really want to hustle, you could do 30 or 40 if you were quite fit. Indeed, if you force march and are fit and trained to it (in D&D terms, the endurance feat), covering a 100 miles in a day isn't out of the question. It's just at the end of the day your boots will be filled with blood, and you'll need several days to recover to full strength.

An unencumbered person might easily hike 15-20 miles in a day even in such arduous terrain as you describe. But the thing is, neither your PC's nor their mules are likely to be unencumbered. It's not unusual for a PC, much like all soldiers since antiquity, to be carrying 60 or even 80 pounds of gear. The mules are likely to also be encumbered. It's really the gear here that is the limiting factor. By your second or third 2000 ft. elevation gain and descent, if you are carrying a pack with that much gear, it really doesn't matter how fit you are. My expectation is that its only reasonable to cover 8-10 miles per day in trackless forested wilderness hills. They could force march a few hours a day to add to that, but only at the risk of fatigue and injury.

Remember also that real world travel over long distances isn't like a day hike. They need to make camp, break camp, eat meals, take care of hygiene, care for their equipment, see to the mules, and so forth. You've likely got wizards and clerics that have to do daily rituals to tend to their spells.

 

[Gilladian]

Yep, I just never know how much time to calculate devoting to those "other issues" even when I don't really want to dwell on them during the game. So 10 miles per day, so around 12 days, figuring they don't stop and rest for a day or two anywhere along the way. Hmmm.... I'd been letting them travel a good bit faster than that when they were traveling along a river, through countryside that was used by the local (friendly) tribes-folk, so they could follow hunting trails and had a good guide to avoid getting lost. I was actually presuming that a lot of the time they were rafting down the river, only traveling by land when they needed to go around river obstacles. They were making about 20-25 miles per day that way.

At this point, they've left the tribal lands behind, and are on their own as far as getting lost goes. Although, since they're skirting the edge of a magically-created barren zone, they do have a very clear-cut terrain feature to keep them on track. If they veer too far that way, I'll whip out my "barrens encounter tables" and we'll have fun that way! And in fact, they may choose to plunge into the barrens specifically. If so, they're going to discover that travel there is still VERY slow, because of dust, debris, potential pockets of poison gas and sinkholes, and of course, monsters.

 

[MoutonRustique]

If you're in virgin terrain like the Appalachians you... well, on average, you're not doing more than a mile a day...

There are no roads, and, in most instances, the trees will not allow you to pass at anything more than a very, very slow walking speed as you'll be shouldering your way through undergrowth, closely-set trees, very rocky terrain and etc.

If you don't know the path to take, you will be making many back-tracks as you are confronted with an impassible climb, rivers/gullies with very steep banks, etc, etc.

If you ever feel the need to be impressed by the original settlers (or really understand why water travel was the way to go), grab yourself a gps with extra-batteries and just set out cross country from a trail in a parc (don't get caught - you're not supposed to walk outside the trails, and they don't like it... not one bit.) Set yourself a simple goal like "2 km beyond this ridge" - it's impressive how hard it is to do...

In my personal experience, the furthest I've been able to walk in this kind of terrain is 5 km in about 6 hours of walking - and I was alone, on foot, with excellent trekking gear, no baggage/weight slowing me down, a excellent knowledge of the lay of the land, a map and a compass.

Take away my knowledge of the layout and the passes and I probably wouldn't have been able to get to my goal in less than 2 or 3 days - and I was walking through what would be termed "gentle hills".

Granted, I'm not an outdoors expert by any stretch, but I do have impressive resources when compared to your average "explorer" : pin-point accurate satellite maps with detailed topographical information. No need to carry any kind of weight beyond a few pounds of water. Very light clothing and shoes. A certainty of safety - I know where I am, where I'm going, no dangerous animals or orcs. The fact that I can yell and someone will probably hear me (always less than a few km away from someone). Very favorable weather - I'm not going hiking a day w/o sun, w/ too much sun, etc.

I'm guessing that all that counts for a fair bit...

Note : I'm talking about useful distance traveled - not the distance you actually traveled. Backtracking and detours are a very real thing and they will account for a very significant amount of your travel time - unless your blessed by the travel gods and always find the right path on the first try!

Also, if the object of the game is exploration and travel - don't use real-world conditions, it won't make for an exciting story (unless you play from a "larger" viewpoint.)

 

[Li Shenron]

Various different incarnations of D&D have different overland travel rates, and distances covered under different circumstances. I'm wondering what people think of these varied rules/expectations, and which games might have the most realistic rates?

If the game offers such rules I'd probably just trust them, but more generally I actually measure distances in time units to begin with.

Really, who cares if the city of Waterdeep is 100 miles away or the forbidden forest 1000 km wide? What matters is how long it takes to get there or traverse the area.

So rather than the distance/time conversions, I am more interested in the time rates of different travel options.

 

[S'mon]

If you're in virgin terrain like the Appalachians you... well, on average, you're not doing more than a mile a day...

I remember it once took my son and I about two hours to go about 100' through a bog, cross a stream and more bog...

If literally trackless woods, 1-3 miles seems reasonable, with chances for getting lost, so could be less or negative. 20-40 miles type rates are for travelling along an existing path.

Edit: I'd think the smart thing would be to hire a local guide?

 

[Gilladian]

I do think I will offer them a chance to meet and hire a guide, yes. But the folk who have BEEN acting as their guides are reaching the edge of the terrain they know anything about, and are turning back. The new guide will be someone who spends his time in this area watching for dangers for the Kingdom the PCs are from. He has been told to expect the PCs and is "waiting for them". The scene where the PCs meet him will entail them getting attacked, and him arriving in time to lend a hand at taking out the attackers; it won't be a huge "I saved your lives and you owe me" scene, but I hope it will make them respect him a bit. The PCs are actually more-or-less on a mission from their home kingdom to investigate something going on out here, and this man knows where they need to be to see what they need to see. Unfortunately, he's already known to the "bad guys" as a member of the kingdom's watchers, so he can't do much investigating, himself.


Not that this plays into the journey the PCs are on, much. It's just context. They're trying to reach a specific, known point, and they do have a potential guide that they don't know about. So that could help explain why they CAN travel 10 miles a day instead of 2-3. If they miss the guide, or refuse his help, I think I'll REALLY play up the rugged, densely wooded terrain and see what they do. One PC does have an owl familiar, which will help.

 

[MoutonRustique]

This all really depends upon what you want the situation to feel like :
- roads/trails/paths are a necessity or a simply "friendlier" travel
- this area is inhabited and traveled by someone/something or completely wild (humanoid-less)
- guides are an essential resource or just a useful perk to get there a bit faster
- etc.

As always, the most important thing is to make sure you and your players are on the same page and can accept and enjoy the game. I know it's in there, but "player buy-in" should really be advice numbers 1 through 25 in the "26 things you can do to improve your game!" lists.

 

[Celebrim]

In terms of the 3 miles a day theory, I have a couple of complaints/observations.

First, that's straight line distance, not the total distance travelled - what someone called the 'useful distance'. Yes, I grant you that sometimes it might require 6 miles of travel to go 3 miles because you have to deflect out your line of travel or you find yourself at a dead end or simply because you get a little bit lost and wander out of your way. But these are to my mind all problems of navigation and not problems related to physical endurance, and as such D&D has no good rules available for dealing with not going along the best route or not going where you intend. If you agree that some of these problems will be alleviated by having a guide familiar with the terrain, then I think you are also implicitly agreeing that there is some skill that you can have that lets you effectively travel farther for the same effort. I also think that in terms of long distance travel, useful distance might be defined differently than it would be when the goal is to see something specific and return from the trip. As long as it is vaguely in the right direction, it's all useful, and the added travel time is mostly measured in the extra hexes I add to the path.

I have such a skill, called 'navigation', that helps you travel in a straight line and not get lost. In general, it's impact on the campaign is only observed if the PC party neglects it. If a PC is skilled in navigation, by the time they are expected to travel in the trackless wilderness they are usually pretty good at it. For example, right now 7th level, 10 ranks + 1 wisdom + 3 enhancement bonus from a magic item + 2 circumstance from a PC that can assist = +16 bonus. They can navigate trackless wilderness with unfamiliar geography on a 2+ (18 DC) most of the time. Soon, it will be trivial. They can just do it. Yes, if they can't do this, they better hire a guide.

Secondly, I have hiked in the wilderness off trail and I'm familiar with some of the worst terrain in North America - swamps, pine tickets, blackberry brambles - where even walking can be next to impossible and if you had to force your way though it you'd be a very tough person to make even 4 miles in a day. But its actually rare for such terrain to be even 4 miles thick or to require a large deflection to avoid it. It's also rare for such terrain to be completely trackless. Deer for example use pine tickets as shelter, and blackberry brambles as feeding habitat. If you have large game animals in an area, you are going to have game trails. In the case of most D&D settings, you are also going to have trails used by aboriginal populations of some sort, even if these don't rise to the level of an improved trail or primitive road. If the goal was simply to be vaguely 8 miles away from where I started in a certain direction (NW) I can think of few places where I couldn't manage it if I were fit.

Which brings up what I think is a major problem in compare our own personal experience with that of the PC's. The PC's are supposed to be heroic persons. They don't have a desk job. They aren't generally out of shape or obese, and there are generally no rules for becoming either. D&D has very few rules for really dealing with fitness and endurance, and they mostly only come up when the PC's try do something above and beyond norms which are set by examples of very fit and very healthy persons to be begin with. I know what I'm capable of doing now, and what I was capable of doing when I was younger and even though when younger I was never super fit, what I could do then was vastly greater than what I can do now. D&D doesn't in general make the act of struggling on a journey have drama or granularity. You don't expend 'endurance' points for each mile you travel or each hill you climb, and track how much endurance you return by resting. It doesn't make the party take a 1 hour break to recover enough endurance that they'll be able to finish the days journey, it doesn't make them stop and take a full days rest because they haven't recovered from the exertions of the previous day or days. Personally, I'd be hard pressed to keep up 20 miles a day or 10 miles a day in rugged terrain over a long period as things are. A mere two miles up a hill at 1500' elevation change a mile and I'm heaving and collapsing these days, light pack or not. But D&D has no way of simulating this in detail, and I think that is by design.

If you look back historically, someone like Daniel Boone is not making just 3 miles a day headway exploring the frontier, and if he is, it's because he's mostly doing something else ('cilled a bar'). I'm not sure that I'm convinced by testimonies of what average persons can do when trail breaking, even those that are fairly fit. Perhaps if you told me that you compete in long distance wilderness travel and ultra-marathons and then told me that after 3 miles of trail breaking you were exhausted, I'd take that seriously and reconsider. But I've hiked a lot in the hills of the south-eastern United States, on and off trail because mostly I wasn't in park land, and I'm not sure 1-3 kilometers represents the output of a fit person doing anything except maybe attempting to summit a peak or pushing cave passage, much less superheroes like the PC. What the anecdote is useful for is countering claims that it's unrealistic that the PC's only managed 6-8 miles of travel in a days time while carrying gear in rugged terrain. If I tried to force one my players though 1-3 miles travel in a day, I'd expect sufficient revolt that I would have to create detailed endurance rules to justify it.

Much like the example with navigation, my expectation is that if you rigorously implemented endurance in your game, the PC's would simply have invested in the resource and it would only matter much in the game if they neglected it. And to the extent that they did neglect it, they'd remedy the situation by employing porters, mules, and even litters to carry that wizard in ill-health at low levels and at higher levels flying carpets and other extraordinary 'mounts' or just circumvent the difficult travel entirely with teleport (if they don't already). If that is what you are going for, then by all means implement that but it's not really going to arise out of the current rules regardless of how you set long distance travel per day.

 

[Greenfield]

When I was in the Boy Scouts, many many years ago, we did a week-long, 50 mile hike through a "wilderness" area, meaning no marked or maintained trails, no man made artifacts like prepared campsites etc. This was in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, on the California side.

The first day was 5 miles, and it was the longest five miles I'd ever walked. Uphill, broken terrain, no trails.

The last day we were looking at the map and laughed when we saw that the day was 10 miles, total. We were taking bets on who would get there first, and expected to get some fishing in before lunch, at our final destination.

Being "city kids", we weren't in anything like good shape when we started. By the end we'd each walked off 10 pounds of water weight (mostly) and could have handled a 25 mile day, in the kind of terrain you were describing, while carrying packs, and done it without a "forced march".

Don't know if that helps.