Traveling and exhaustion rules

[migo2154]

Hi everybody!, i'm trying to make a survival/exploration post apocalyptic campaign, so this is why i'm looking for some avises or sugestions about how to make this kind of campaigns. I'm not so good with english (i'm spanish) but i'll do my best, and i'm sorry if it's so much text, i'm trying to give you every detail i have to understand the context .

I want to run a wilderness campaign, where players are traveling constantly throught unknow territories, visiting ancient ruins of the pre-cataclysm civilization, fight with bandit organizations, unknow beasts and another kind of dangers. To make this kind of campaign, i choosed to use a hexcrawl map system, because it's very usefull to get track of the player's route, events, types of terrain and climatology.

I'm experienced with hexcrawl exploration in D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e (i've run campaigns like Storm king thunder, Tomb of anihilation, and my own hexcrawl campaign in D&D), so i'm very familiar with all rules refered to hexcrawl and traveling in those systems, but in those games is very dificult to play something that isn't high medieval fantasy, so i decided to try this campaign in hero, and because i love the customization in this system.

So i start to make all worbuilding of the game, and i decided to make 2 maps, a regional map (3Miles per hex), that will be used for normal  exploration sessions, and a continental map (30Miles per hex) that will be used to get geo-political info, get track of macro events, and for vehicle traveling (if players descovers how to build a vehicle ). But here's where i found my first problem: you'll see, in mentioned systems, players can choose how many time they wish to travel, and the velocity at they are traveling, so we have this:

Traveling times -> 1Hour travel, 4Hours travel (Half-journey) and 8Hours travel (Journey).
Traveling speeds -> Slow speed(2 hours per hex): advantage in ability checks rolls (advantage it's like a +4 or +5 to rolls); Normal speed (1 hour per hex): no penalties or benefits; Fast speed (half hour per hex): disadvantage in ability checks (like a -4 or -5 to rolls).

But there are some penalties in travel, for example: each time players make more than 8 hours of travel without rest, they will gain a exhaustion point, if players don't eat or drink water for a full day, they gain another point of exhaustion, and everytime they don't rest at least 8 hours of long rest, they gain another point. exhaustion points get penalties depending of the level:

Level 1: disadvantage in ability checks (-4 or -5 to skill rolls), Level 2: move speed halved, Level 3: disadvantage in attack rolls (-4 or -5 to attacks), Level 4: hit points halved, Level 5: move speed 0, Level 6: dead.

These rules are very simplystic, and somewhat... BORED!, but they are effectives in their functionality, and easy to track and understand, so they works.

Then i proceed to search into hero rules to find this kind of systems, and i found dehydration, starvation, and temperature levels rules, but i didn't find any rule to get track of players exhaustion or sleep, to get track of the players overextend. I found the LTE rules, but i have a problem with that: i have so much things to get track of, and i feel that make the LTE calculation for every player would be very headcache for me, so i'm thinking in a solution to get track of players exhaustion without the LTE calculation per turn.

And i was thinking in some solutions:

Method 1:

- Change the travel times to: 1Hour, 3hours and 6 hours, because i look that some rules (like dehydration) functions each 6 hours, and make the LTE and temperature levels calculation to every 1hour, 3 hours and 6 hours of travel respectively. This calculation i'll rename it as "Fatigue" and will be 3 hours worth of LTE. If players don't make a long rest (6 hours of sleep, to maintaint the 6 hours standard) they don't heal the fatigue accumulated. They can reduce 1 fatigue point with 1 hour of short rest, to make short rests usefull too.

- Maintain the starvation and dehydration rules as written.

- Make a house rule of travel speed: Players can travel at: Slow speed (speed halved): they gain 0 fatigue points, and have +1 to skill rolls; Normal speed: they gain 1 fatigue point for each 3 hours of travel; Fast travel (doubles speed): they gains 2 fatigue points, and -1 to skill rolls.

- Make some talents that can be usefull during short rest in exploration (Like rest skills in darkest dungeon) taht cost charges (recovers daily), this with te intention to make short rest usefull, and give players some tools to heal or recover from fatigue between travel. 

I like this solution, but i have 2 problems: 1) LTE calculation after battle will not be covered by that rules, and i don't know how solve it x.x, 2) this only penalizes END, but accumulated fatigue points (3+) would give another kind of penalization, what kind of penalization would i put in that case?.

Method 2:

- Make a whole new fatigue system throught DRAIN, with advantage (only dispel with rest or fatigue reduction powers), and make it acumulate in intervals of 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours of effort (multiples of 6, to maintain the system unified into the same times).

- Make talents for this Drain debuffs, appart of the previusly mentioned.

 

- Maintain the temperature levels, dehydration and starvation rules in the same way, but calculed in the intervals previously mentioned.

 

My problem with this solution is that i haven't any kind of system that i could use as basis, so that difficults me the work . I could use D&D exhaustion rules as basis, but i don't like it very much, so i'm looking for some suggestions.

i'm not considering characters SPD in the travel because i don't have any idea of how use it with travel speed, so i'm using the Fantasy hero (p. 386) suggestion of assuming 5km/h for normal travel speed.

What do you think about?




 

[dmjalund]

there is a version of Fantasy Hero which has these sort of rules and  LTE (Long Term Endurance)

[HeroGM]

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, the first thing you have to consider is whether or not this is the kind of game you want.  Do you want to be like LOTR where the main characters run for several days straight, then fight a huge battle with an Uruk Hai band, without any signs of fatigue?  Or do you want it to be Ben Affleck Daredevil where he's gasping and wheezing from a single fight and collapse in bed?  It reads like you want a more gritty campaign, which is fine as long as the players enjoy that kind of thing, too.

 

The second thing to consider is whether or not this idea will ever really come into play.  Is there ever going to be a situation where characters force march so much they become exhausted and started to suffer fatigue at this level?  Will they, if they start to suffer, just stop and say "OK we camp for a day and rest" then hit the fast forward button?  Will the Cleric come up with a spell to heal exhaustion and skip the entire process?  Will they refuse to travel much or at any speed, riding on caravans and such just to avoid the hassle, or just stay home?  "Sorry Princess Pinafore, we'd save you from the dragon but that's too far to travel."

 

Third, if you do end up using it, how much paperwork and detail do you want to put into it?  The Long Term END system in Fantasy Hero covers this pretty well, but you can get even grittier, assigning impairing wounds to characters who overexert.  You can get super crunchy like you mention having the environment use drain effects on characters that represents fatigue, etc.

 

The bottom line is, how much work is it worth to you as the GM, and how much will your players enjoy or take advantage of such a system?

[migo2154]

10 hours ago, dmjalund said:

there is a version of Fantasy Hero which has these sort of rules and  LTE (Long Term Endurance)

I have 6e fantasy hero, so i'll look for it, thank you very much :3

 

 

10 hours ago, HeroGM said:

 

I don't have this :O, it's for 6th Edition? i'm playing 6e.

 

 

10 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Well, the first thing you have to consider is whether or not this is the kind of game you want.  Do you want to be like LOTR where the main characters run for several days straight, then fight a huge battle with an Uruk Hai band, without any signs of fatigue?  Or do you want it to be Ben Affleck Daredevil where he's gasping and wheezing from a single fight and collapse in bed?  It reads like you want a more gritty campaign, which is fine as long as the players enjoy that kind of thing, too.

 

The second thing to consider is whether or not this idea will ever really come into play.  Is there ever going to be a situation where characters force march so much they become exhausted and started to suffer fatigue at this level?  Will they, if they start to suffer, just stop and say "OK we camp for a day and rest" then hit the fast forward button?  Will the Cleric come up with a spell to heal exhaustion and skip the entire process?  Will they refuse to travel much or at any speed, riding on caravans and such just to avoid the hassle, or just stay home?  "Sorry Princess Pinafore, we'd save you from the dragon but that's too far to travel."

 

Third, if you do end up using it, how much paperwork and detail do you want to put into it?  The Long Term END system in Fantasy Hero covers this pretty well, but you can get even grittier, assigning impairing wounds to characters who overexert.  You can get super crunchy like you mention having the environment use drain effects on characters that represents fatigue, etc.

 

The bottom line is, how much work is it worth to you as the GM, and how much will your players enjoy or take advantage of such a system?

Well, travel speed and travel time are very important features for hexcrawl, because it's the way that players can control their travel and direction. Examples:

1 - Players ended getting lost in the North forest, and are running out of food!, so they decided to travel at low speed for a half journey (3 hours) to not get exhausted, and to get bonus in their survival (to find food) and navigation checks (to get oriented again).

2 - Players have descovered an ancient medic facilitie, but they don't have enough resources to enforce another possible battle, so they decided to retreat to base, restock their ammo, and get back to the ruins, but they don't want to get engaged into battles while travel. So they decided to go low speed to have bonus in their survival and stealth checks.

3 - Players are in middle of enemy territory, and have been discovered!!. They can't fight back because of the numeric disadvantage, so they decided to go back at fast speed (double travel speed) until they get lost the enemies.

Travel times are usefull for me, because in hexcrawl games, the GM must use it to calculate how many events will the players have in a day. These events are detailed for region and based on the travel speed. For example, each half journey of travel, (each 3 hours in hero, 4 hours in D20 systems) GM rolls in the events table to determine if there is something, so, if player are in, let's say, the main road region, each half journey of travel players have 25% to find a beast (sleeping, eating, hunting, or making a surprise attack against players!), 30% to find a harmless event (dead corpse, an npc traveling, abandoned camp, etc.), 15% of bandits camping near of the area, or attacking people, and 30% of nothing happening.

 

I have made encounters and locations for every region, i made a calendar with stations, temperature and climate variations during the year, based on the biome (for templated regions, artic regions, desert regions, etc), i made all encounters and locations based on each region, factions that acts and make events to occur in determined times of the year, and all stuff that a sandbox hexcrawl needs. What i only need is a system that allows me to get track of the exhaustion for players based on the travel time (1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12hours, etc), that players can use to get track of their exhaustion, and to tell them when they need to get rest, and find a good place for camping.

 

 

[migo2154]

The problem i have with LTE is that LTE is calculated at rate of END/RECOVERY per turn (12 seconds), but in my hexcrawl campaign, the minimun travel time that players can do is 1 hour of travel (1 hex), because it's a hexcrawl game, so the map is divided into hexes, and each hex have 3 Miles of size, that represents 1 hour of travel using the standart speed of 5km/h.

So, i'm looking for a way to calculate the exhaustion by the minimum travel time posible (1 hour), or at least, each half journey of travel (3 hours).

[dmjalund]

44 minutes ago, migo2154 said:

I have 6e fantasy hero, so i'll look for it, thank you very much :3

i think the version is 4e

[HeroGM]

Ok, the Post-Apoc book is for 5e. Not enough differences in the game so both should be usable.

 

LTE can go for how long you want IMHO. Just figure out the ratio and go from there. Will they only recover X END every 1 hour (or two or...) and set it at that.

 

12 x 5 x 60.....

[dsatow]

To figure out LTE costs for overland travel, this is how I would do it.

 

Figure out the shortest distance moved by all the player characters in a single turn.  Then determine how much endurance is spent by each player going that distance.  This gives you LTE end loss.  For most players this will be about 3 LTE per turn since the minimum burn is 1 LTE per 20 minutes.  Most normals will last 5-7 hours.  Normal Heroes (not super) will probably last about 11-16 hours.  This is not modified for rules regard sleep or food, so you might want to look that up as well.  If you have a character that is burning more than 1 LTE per 20 minutes, most travelers would probably slow down to accommodate a rate of speed for them that would be 1 LTE/20 minutes.

 

In 5e, multiple this distance by 0.6 to get kph travel.  

In 6e, multiple this distance by 0.3 to get kph travel.

Multiply kph by 0.621371 or .62 to get mph.  This will give you distance travelled.  Approximate movement modifiers to shorten the distance travelled due to "road conditions" in your campaign.

[migo2154]

19 hours ago, dmjalund said:

i think the version is 4e

Ok, understood 

 

 

15 hours ago, HeroGM said:

Ok, the Post-Apoc book is for 5e. Not enough differences in the game so both should be usable.

 

LTE can go for how long you want IMHO. Just figure out the ratio and go from there. Will they only recover X END every 1 hour (or two or...) and set it at that.

 

12 x 5 x 60.....

Alright then, thank you ^ ^

 

 

13 hours ago, dsatow said:

To figure out LTE costs for overland travel, this is how I would do it.

 

Figure out the shortest distance moved by all the player characters in a single turn.  Then determine how much endurance is spent by each player going that distance.  This gives you LTE end loss.  For most players this will be about 3 LTE per turn since the minimum burn is 1 LTE per 20 minutes.  Most normals will last 5-7 hours.  Normal Heroes (not super) will probably last about 11-16 hours.  This is not modified for rules regard sleep or food, so you might want to look that up as well.  If you have a character that is burning more than 1 LTE per 20 minutes, most travelers would probably slow down to accommodate a rate of speed for them that would be 1 LTE/20 minutes.

 

In 5e, multiple this distance by 0.6 to get kph travel.  

In 6e, multiple this distance by 0.3 to get kph travel.

Multiply kph by 0.621371 or .62 to get mph.  This will give you distance travelled.  Approximate movement modifiers to shorten the distance travelled due to "road conditions" in your campaign.

That sounds good to me, and with the Christopher's info i could do something good hehehe... Thank you very much! 

[Hugh Neilson]

On 1/7/2022 at 9:25 AM, migo2154 said:

I have 6e fantasy hero, so i'll look for it, thank you very much
Well, travel speed and travel time are very important features for hexcrawl, because it's the way that players can control their travel and direction. Examples:

 

Is it?  What is the impact on actual game play?

 

On 1/7/2022 at 9:25 AM, migo2154 said:

1 - Players ended getting lost in the North forest, and are running out of food!, so they decided to travel at low speed for a half journey (3 hours) to not get exhausted, and to get bonus in their survival (to find food) and navigation checks (to get oriented again).

 

OK, so it takes 3 hours longer to get to where they were going.  Maybe it takes twice as long as they make the whole trip at half speed.  What impact does this have on the actual game?  Will they arrive at the Evil Wizard's Tower too late to find he has already sacrificed Princess Pinafore to the Dread Dark Deity and is now Omnipotent - end of campaign?  Or do they arrive just as the Dark Mage raises his dagger above the Princess on the altar as the stars align for her sacrifice, whether they arrive in a single day by teleportation, or take weeks trudging through the forest at half speed?

 

Unless I have a reason to be in a hurry, I'll slow down and reduce/avoid the risk of getting lost, starving and/or becoming exhausted.

 

On 1/7/2022 at 9:25 AM, migo2154 said:

2 - Players have descovered an ancient medic facilitie, but they don't have enough resources to enforce another possible battle, so they decided to retreat to base, restock their ammo, and get back to the ruins, but they don't want to get engaged into battles while travel. So they decided to go low speed to have bonus in their survival and stealth checks.

 

Again, what detrimental impact does taking twice as long to return to base have?

 

On 1/7/2022 at 9:25 AM, migo2154 said:

3 - Players are in middle of enemy territory, and have been discovered!!. They can't fight back because of the numeric disadvantage, so they decided to go back at fast speed (double travel speed) until they get lost the enemies.

 

Now they are forcing the enemy to either incur the same drawbacks of rapid movement, or give up the chase.  Here there is some potential impact.

 

On 1/7/2022 at 9:25 AM, migo2154 said:

Travel times are usefull for me, because in hexcrawl games, the GM must use it to calculate how many events will the players have in a day. These events are detailed for region and based on the travel speed. For example, each half journey of travel, (each 3 hours in hero, 4 hours in D20 systems) GM rolls in the events table to determine if there is something, so, if player are in, let's say, the main road region, each half journey of travel players have 25% to find a beast (sleeping, eating, hunting, or making a surprise attack against players!), 30% to find a harmless event (dead corpse, an npc traveling, abandoned camp, etc.), 15% of bandits camping near of the area, or attacking people, and 30% of nothing happening.

 

I have made encounters and locations for every region, i made a calendar with stations, temperature and climate variations during the year, based on the biome (for templated regions, artic regions, desert regions, etc), i made all encounters and locations based on each region, factions that acts and make events to occur in determined times of the year, and all stuff that a sandbox hexcrawl needs. What i only need is a system that allows me to get track of the exhaustion for players based on the travel time (1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12hours, etc), that players can use to get track of their exhaustion, and to tell them when they need to get rest, and find a good place for camping.

 

Are events based on time or distance?  It seems like I would find more location-dependent encounters if I move fast than if I move slow.  That beast, corpse, NPC, abandoned camp, bandit camp, etc. is not going to be encountered until I travel through its location, so if I move half as fast, I should only have half as many encounters a day.  How often will I have a good, in-game reason to be in a hurry?

[migo2154]

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

OK, so it takes 3 hours longer to get to where they were going.  Maybe it takes twice as long as they make the whole trip at half speed.  What impact does this have on the actual game?  Will they arrive at the Evil Wizard's Tower too late to find he has already sacrificed Princess Pinafore to the Dread Dark Deity and is now Omnipotent - end of campaign?  Or do they arrive just as the Dark Mage raises his dagger above the Princess on the altar as the stars align for her sacrifice, whether they arrive in a single day by teleportation, or take weeks trudging through the forest at half speed?

 

I finished to make this response to your post, and was just making corrections, where accidentally missclicked the MOUSE'S BACK BUTTON, and i lost all i writted :'c. I... wanna... die...

But, life is hard anyway, so here i go again: 

 

Well, low speed is half speed, so yeah, get oriented and find food could takes 1-3 hours at half speed, because they are very aware of their arounds, and more than that at normal speed, but i'm still making the maths to get the best results.
 

That example of the princess could work, yeah, but not everytime will be something so epic, players just would want to go to the location as fas a possible, explore  it and go back to the city before gets dark because nights can be very dangerous in wilderness, and they don't want to affort that kind of danger. In anycase, we don't want to play a so epic game, we want to play a game where trained, heroic, but normal people are trying to survive in a post-cataclismyc world, developing their city by using the ancient artifacts and technology earned from ruins, finding resources to survive and make new gear, and defend their city from exterior enemies. Players can have some kind of mutations, or Psychic powers, but that will be some kind of anomalies (30 active cost or less), and not something powerfull.

 

The speed and traveling rules that i mentioned in my first post are maded for the D20 hexcrawl gamerules, but since they are simple and effective, they are used by another hexcrawls like Symbaorum, Mutant Year Zero, or Forbbiden lands, and some generic systems like Gurps or Savage worlds have some adaptations too. But we want to play it in hero because hero it's a incredible and customizable game, and our actual favorite so far! :3, so i'm trying to make adaptations, but, maybe there are hexcrawl and hextraveling rules in hero that i didn't find?.

 

8 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Are events based on time or distance?  It seems like I would find more location-dependent encounters if I move fast than if I move slow.  That beast, corpse, NPC, abandoned camp, bandit camp, etc. is not going to be encountered until I travel through its location, so if I move half as fast, I should only have half as many encounters a day.  How often will I have a good, in-game reason to be in a hurry?

Well, for practicity, Hexcrawl systems tends to roll encounters in periods of 1 hour, half journey, or a entire journey (i can decide how many times is a journy, but its normally based on the maximun distance that players can travel without get exhaustion levels, what i explained in my first post). However, since this is hero, and for the way that LTE works, i'm thinking of get rid of the journey concept, and let players decide directly how many hours they wants to travel. Im thinking on how to handle the speed, taking into account the responses i get in previous posts.
 

There are  mainly 2 types of events: Locations and encounters.

 

• Locations are sites with static positions, and can be considered mayor events, with its own quests or plots, and yeah, players must reach the place in order to find it. However, i can change the place of any location if i want, as long as i relocate it into another hex of the same region, but i have a limit of how many big locations can be in a same region.
• Encounters, on the another hand, can be used as minor event that can be static or mobile, but the important thing is that encounters can be resolved in one session or less. (Ex: The players group have found a camp of merchant travelers). A bandit camp can be a minor event too, but a bandit's den isn't, because this could be a large dungeon that can have it's own quests (people kidnapped and hidded, or a wanted bandit is living here), and surely will be resolved in more than one session, so i consider it a Location.

 

There are some considerations:
 

• Encounters and Locations are maded in base of the region witch belongs, and those regions have 2 mainly things to consider: Their level of danger and their level of activity.
• The regions that are nearest of the main city are tipically safest, and have more npc activity, so the only possible dangers that can appear there will be things like minor beasts hunting, or small bandit groups trying to assault weak people.
• Regions that are farest of the city are more dangerous, and tends to have a high activity of dangerous enemies, dangerous locations (and better rewards), and such.
• Players can detect a encounter before it reaches them. Ex: player group travels throught the Dead forest and one of them sees a bandit patrol camping, so the group can decide to go far away from there, or plan a ambush. However, players can be surprised too, especially when they are camping without vigilance.
• Factions activities can alter the events of a region, so if, for example, a new faction takes the control of the main road, this region can become more dangerous, or safest than before, depending of the faction's desires.
• Players can alter the events too. If they destroys a enemy band that was ruling a region, that region can becomes safest. But players can become the new criminal band of that region if they want.
• Climatology events can occur based on the calendar's climate, so, if it's a rainy-heavy climate, natural desasters or events can occur (beasts can migrate from an zone into another because of an natural disaster and elevates the danger of the new region, and can be resulting into a whole new quest of beast subjugation).

I can modify my event tables of each region based on all this considerations, and fill it with new events whenever i see that some results will change that region. So, i can have control over what kind of enemies and events players can face in each region.

 

In order to help players to decide what to do, i have a rumor's table that can give some advices about what can they encounter in each region, so they can berely know the level of danger they will face there, and the factions of the game can give players some quests to start, in the case of they don't know what to do in a session of game. They can Join into that factions and rank up by making quests, or they can make their own faction (their own mercenary companie, for example).

 

However, taking into account all this situations, i can't assure what players will face in a session, because i don't have control over every encounter that will occur in a session (i can control the encounter's difficult by creating levels of danger by region, however), so what i think i must do is give the players all tools that they need to make decisions, even if they ends to not using it, because someday they will need it.

For my hexcrawl games, i normally use the guides and references of these websites:

 

• https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl
• https://welshpiper.com/hex-based-campaign-design-part-2/
• https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/09/fantasy-sandbox-in-detail-part-i.html

And i use this book's as complementary materials too:

 

• Dragon magazine 136 - Fantasy cities and merchants
• Dragon magazine 137 - Wildernes, plants and beast
• Old school adventures - D30 sandbox companion
• GM's Miscellany - Wilderness dressing, by Ragin Swain Press

Although, since this is a post-apocaliptic game, not a fantasy game, some of the resources are no so usefull, but i can adapt another ones too. ^ ^
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

OK, so it takes 3 hours longer to get to where they were going.  Maybe it takes twice as long as they make the whole trip at half speed.  What impact does this have on the actual game?

 

This is the key.  How involved will the players be with this, will it make things more entertaining for them or is it just a fascination for you as the GM?  Will all the extra bookkeeping and time management matter for the game or not?

[migo2154]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

This is the key.  How involved will the players be with this, will it make things more entertaining for them or is it just a fascination for you as the GM?  Will all the extra bookkeeping and time management matter for the game or not?

 

Ok, i understand... while players and me were preparing their characters, we have talked about how many gritty or realistic they want to play a game, and they want a game where they can manage resources like drink, food and exhaustion (need to sleep or rest). They want to play a survival game, but they don't want to play with so realistic rules that they characters would have to be in bed for 2 weeks because a injury...

So, i can say that they want enough bookeping to make decisions like camping, travel, search for resources to survive, to craft items and to descover things while adventuring. They want the climate important, but not so realistic to the point of simulate every aspect of life, so they want realism until some exent.

And i am looking for system rules that allows me to run the game and encounters with certain level of practicity to me and to the players, but taking into account the survival management of the game.

[Hugh Neilson]

So, when the characters are exploring, why do they care how quickly they move?  Inmost of the examples you provided, they slow down to reduce the risk of hostile encounters.  In a hexcrawl sandbox, time is seldom of the essence, so if moving slower is safer, why would the PCs rush?

 

You mention rolling for encounters every half day regardless of how fast they travel, but most of your sample encounters seem pretty static.  Why would there be twice as many beasts (sleeping, eating, hunting, or making a surprise attack against players), harmless events (dead corpse, an npc traveling, abandoned camp, etc.) and bandits camping near of the area, or attacking people if they travel through the area at half speed?  If I take two weeks, instead of one, to get between two settlements, I will encounter twice as many bandit camps and find twice as many dead bodies on the road?

[migo2154]

5 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So, when the characters are exploring, why do they care how quickly they move?  Inmost of the examples you provided, they slow down to reduce the risk of hostile encounters.  In a hexcrawl sandbox, time is seldom of the essence, so if moving slower is safer, why would the PCs rush?

 

You mention rolling for encounters every half day regardless of how fast they travel, but most of your sample encounters seem pretty static.  Why would there be twice as many beasts (sleeping, eating, hunting, or making a surprise attack against players), harmless events (dead corpse, an npc traveling, abandoned camp, etc.) and bandits camping near of the area, or attacking people if they travel through the area at half speed?  If I take two weeks, instead of one, to get between two settlements, I will encounter twice as many bandit camps and find twice as many dead bodies on the road?

Well, i can give another examples: 
 

• Players must go to a place that is will take more than 7 days of travel, but their resources are limited, and of course, they can hunt and find more resources in the wilderness, but that's something that not happens everytime, so they decided to go at normal speed, so their resources will endure all travel, and they will not have skill penalties by going too fast.
• Players can be tracking someone, and they can't go so fast because they need to be concentrated in the traces, but they cannot go slow either, because his target is going fast too and they could lost him.
• A beast can be actively hunting, and players could not be aware of it, because: a) players are distracted making their camp. b) The beast was very good hiding his prescense ( beast's stealth check vs players perception).
• they can be exploring a abandoned house, and suddenly notice that another group of people is approaching. Players cannot know if they're enemies or not, so they decides to be very cautions until they reveals their identity (abandoned house encounter + people encounter).

But, again, all this situations aren't builded deliberately by me, is a result of the game itself, so i cannot prevent what will be the most used mechanic, or the most tipyc situation in a game session. What we want is a way to use that posibilities without the need of ingame calculations...

So if players wants to go faster, we don't want to make a in game calculation based on our actual speed and movement per hour. We want to develop a rule to have this already maded, so we can enfoque all our concentration in the roleplay and consult our speed charts whenever we need it. 

Now, as for the penalizations or bonuses based on speed, this is a DnD mechanic that is maked because DnD is a very simplistic game, and they assumes a static speed for everyone, and in order to have variety of options, they do this kind of things. But we don't have any intention on mantain it because we know that hero is a very different game with endless possibilities, but that endless posibilities are very intimidating for us , so we didn't know who to make this approach.

What we're trying to do is a equivalence in hero that help us to simplify the mathematics. It's the same for LTE rules, we don't want to be actively calculating how many LTE we are consuming, we are trying to make a rule that help us to simply consult how many LTE was consumed.

And, of course, i don't have any problems to recalculate this rules once players upgrades their characters... I only want to have it precalculated in order to use all my concentration to roleplaying and improvising the encounters. This is why this is a good initial solution for us:

 

On 1/7/2022 at 7:14 PM, dsatow said:

To figure out LTE costs for overland travel, this is how I would do it.

 

Figure out the shortest distance moved by all the player characters in a single turn.  Then determine how much endurance is spent by each player going that distance.  This gives you LTE end loss.  For most players this will be about 3 LTE per turn since the minimum burn is 1 LTE per 20 minutes.  Most normals will last 5-7 hours.  Normal Heroes (not super) will probably last about 11-16 hours.  This is not modified for rules regard sleep or food, so you might want to look that up as well.  If you have a character that is burning more than 1 LTE per 20 minutes, most travelers would probably slow down to accommodate a rate of speed for them that would be 1 LTE/20 minutes.

 

In 5e, multiple this distance by 0.6 to get kph travel.  

In 6e, multiple this distance by 0.3 to get kph travel.

Multiply kph by 0.621371 or .62 to get mph.  This will give you distance travelled.  Approximate movement modifiers to shorten the distance travelled due to "road conditions" in your campaign.

 

[Hugh Neilson]

18 hours ago, migo2154 said:

Well, i can give another examples: 

 

All of your examples seem focused on "what might happen in the game" without "what impact will these rules have on the game?".  For example:

 

18 hours ago, migo2154 said:

• Players must go to a place that is will take more than 7 days of travel, but their resources are limited, and of course, they can hunt and find more resources in the wilderness, but that's something that not happens everytime, so they decided to go at normal speed, so their resources will endure all travel, and they will not have skill penalties by going too fast.

 

Sounds like there was no compelling reason to slow down or speed up, so they engaged in normal travel and these rules would not even come into play.

 

18 hours ago, migo2154 said:

• Players can be tracking someone, and they can't go so fast because they need to be concentrated in the traces, but they cannot go slow either, because his target is going fast too and they could lost him.

 

Again, these fatigue rules do not seem to be entering into the equation.  Is there a reason for them to push to go faster, or want to go slower?  Does he move faster (baseline) than them? Is he pushing himself to the point of exhaustion in haste to escape the players?  If the players lose the trail, what happens?  Again, are these rules having an impact, and how often will they have that impact?

 

18 hours ago, migo2154 said:

• A beast can be actively hunting, and players could not be aware of it, because: a) players are distracted making their camp. b) The beast was very good hiding his prescense ( beast's stealth check vs players perception)

 

Sure could.  How is the players' decision on how fast to travel based on a beast they don't know exists, much less is hunting them?

 

18 hours ago, migo2154 said:

• they can be exploring a abandoned house, and suddenly notice that another group of people is approaching. Players cannot know if they're enemies or not, so they decides to be very cautions until they reveals their identity (abandoned house encounter + people encounter).

 

What does that have to do with how fast they decide to travel?

 

I could invest hundreds of hours into designing random charts to determine the weather every day, but if all it will ever mean in-game is "It's sunny today."  "That's nice."; "it's drizzly and a bit chilly today" "we pull the hoods up on our cloaks and soldier on" or "it's a blizzard out there" "OK, we'll remain in camp and get to our location a day later than we planned - who cares, there's no rush", then why did I bother?

 

Unless the players have to make meaningful choices on how fast they will travel, this all seems like wasted effort to me.

 

[migo2154]

On 1/12/2022 at 10:51 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

All of your examples seem focused on "what might happen in the game" without "what impact will these rules have on the game?".  For example:

 

Sounds like there was no compelling reason to slow down or speed up, so they engaged in normal travel and these rules would not even come into play.

 

Again, these fatigue rules do not seem to be entering into the equation.  Is there a reason for them to push to go faster, or want to go slower?  Does he move faster (baseline) than them? Is he pushing himself to the point of exhaustion in haste to escape the players?  If the players lose the trail, what happens?  Again, are these rules having an impact, and how often will they have that impact?

You're right, these are mainly "What if" scenarios.

 

On 1/12/2022 at 10:51 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

Sure could.  How is the players' decision on how fast to travel based on a beast they don't know exists, much less is hunting them?

 

What does that have to do with how fast they decide to travel?

 

I could invest hundreds of hours into designing random charts to determine the weather every day, but if all it will ever mean in-game is "It's sunny today."  "That's nice."; "it's drizzly and a bit chilly today" "we pull the hoods up on our cloaks and soldier on" or "it's a blizzard out there" "OK, we'll remain in camp and get to our location a day later than we planned - who cares, there's no rush", then why did I bother?

 

Unless the players have to make meaningful choices on how fast they will travel, this all seems like wasted effort to me.

 

I understand, i'll focus on that then. 

Thank you very much ^ ^