A days journey

[quozaxx]

I am starting to build my Dannabar campaign. I want one kingdom to be approximately a 5 days journey from the other kingdom. How many meters should I put kingdom A from kingdom B?

 

How many meters can a horse travel in a day? That's normal travel without the need to push it or hurry it.

 

Note: A warhorse, is 24m/48m (non combat), SPD 3. END 40. I have never worked with long-term END.

 

Also, would you have a horse go full speed if you are "just" riding it?

[mayapuppies]

Re: A days journey

 

A casual days journey is the same for a man or a horse, about 20 miles or so. There are many variables, however, road conditions, weather, pace, encumbrance...etc.

[dmjalund]

Re: A days journey

 

I took a casual walk for 22km, took me 4 1/2 hours. I'd imagine If I count a lunch break, and increasing tiredness at the end of the day, I could have made it 30 odd in in a day - but that was on good footpath with modern footware

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

Yeah, but you did it without a significant amount of gear - which usually cuts a person or horses' speed by almost half, and you didn't try to do it for several days in a row, which tends to degrade your speed over time as well. Move onto slightly poorer footing and you'll reduce your speed even further. We have a lot of evidence from real life that 25 kms a day is a pretty good pace for strong healthy men or horses carrying supplies, over decent terrain, when they are moving at a sustainable speed.

 

cheers, Mark

[dmjalund]

Re: A days journey

 

I was carrying a carrybag holding about 5kg of stuff, but I get your meaning

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: A days journey

 

It also helps to know the route. There's nothing like a river, lake, mountain, marsh, forest, desert, wall, hedge, city or drunk road surveyor to add distance to the route. That said, there's actually a way of modelling the likely distance between polities of different orders. Central Place Theory is not uncontroversial, but archaeologists use it a great deal. My hunch is that 100 miles between centres implies a four-level hierarchy, something higher than a "kingdom" in a Gygaxian world. (It depends on whether you take a kingdom to be Mercia, or England.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory

[mayapuppies]

Re: A days journey

 

It also helps to know the route. There's nothing like a river, lake, mountain, marsh, forest, desert, wall, hedge, city or drunk road surveyor to add distance to the route. That said, there's actually a way of modelling the likely distance between polities of different orders. Central Place Theory is not uncontroversial, but archaeologists use it a great deal. My hunch is that 100 miles between centres implies a four-level hierarchy, something higher than a "kingdom" in a Gygaxian world. (It depends on whether you take a kingdom to be Mercia, or England.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_place_theory

Oh very cool, you know, this could be plugged into a program with some added variables for terrain and climate, combined with a fractal mapper and you have a random generator that would be very cool.

[Alcamtar]

Re: A days journey

 

We used to do about 25 km a day, backpacking in heavily forested mountains following good trails. I would guess that you could do maybe 40 km a day on level terrain but I have no experience to back that up.

 

From what I've read, loaded horses (whether ridden or packing) can go about the same distance as a man on foot. Horses are faster over short distances, but humans actually have better endurance over distance. A day on foot would be a couple hours to break camp and eat breakfast, maybe eight hours or so of hiking, and a few hours making camp and eating. Horses need more time in the morning and evening to eat, they need time after eating before exercise, and time after exercise before eating, and they get tired faster. So you only get maybe four hours of travel time with a horse, the rest of the day is used for feed and resting, but in those four hours the horse covers the same ground a man covers in eight hours of steady hiking. As a point of reference Pony express stations were located at intervals of 8 to 32 km, averaging 15 km. Wells Fargo stagecoaches traveled 5 mph and changed horses every 20 km.

[Alibear]

Re: A days journey

 

In the army you should be able to quickly traverse rough terrain with full gear and arrive fit enough to fight.

 

Stolen from wikiwotsit for British Comando Training Selection

 

The 30 miler. This is a 30 mile (48 km) march across upland Dartmoor, wearing full fighting order, and additional safety equipment carried by the recruit in a daysack. It must be completed in eight hours for recruits and seven hours for Royal Marine officers, who must also navigate the route themselves, rather than following a DS (a trained Royal Marine) with the rest of a syndicate and carry their own equipment.

 

 

I reckon 25km a day would be normal... but a fit man or small group of very, very fit men*, could cover double, triple or even quadruple that much as that and still arrive combat ready but not often.

 

*I'm thinking 15-18 Con range.

[Yansuf]

Re: A days journey

 

Pre 20th century, when infantry really marched to battle, normal speed on a decent road was 2.5 mph (marching 50 minutes and a 10 minute break) and 8 hours the standard time of march per day, so 20 miles per day was normal. Bad terrain would slow you down of course.

With a "forced march" 30 miles a day was plausible, but that exhausts the troops.

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

In the army you should be able to quickly traverse rough terrain with full gear and arrive fit enough to fight.

 

Stolen from wikiwotsit for British Comando Training Selection

 

The 30 miler. This is a 30 mile (48 km) march across upland Dartmoor, wearing full fighting order, and additional safety equipment carried by the recruit in a daysack. It must be completed in eight hours for recruits and seven hours for Royal Marine officers, who must also navigate the route themselves, rather than following a DS (a trained Royal Marine) with the rest of a syndicate and carry their own equipment.

 

 

I reckon 25km a day would be normal... but a fit man or small group of very, very fit men*, could cover double, triple or even quadruple that much as that and still arrive combat ready but not often.

 

*I'm thinking 15-18 Con range.

 

It should be pointed out that the 30 miler is a test - designed to weed out young, very very fit men who have been training for it. And even if you select only young, very, very fit men ('cos no-one else actually makes it into Commando training) and even if you train them for 39 weeks prior to throwing them into the 30 miler .... 60% of them fail. It's not an example of what people, by and large can do - it's an endurance test showing what the fittest of the fit can do if they push themselves.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

Pre 20th century, when infantry really marched to battle, normal speed on a decent road was 2.5 mph (marching 50 minutes and a 10 minute break) and 8 hours the standard time of march per day, so 20 miles per day was normal. Bad terrain would slow you down of course.

With a "forced march" 30 miles a day was plausible, but that exhausts the troops.

 

Yup. It's interesting: the standard roman legion march speed was 2.5 MPH. The modern US infantry march speed is - you guessed it - 2.5 MPH.

 

cheers, Mark

[LordGhee]

Re: A days journey

 

accourding to Vegetius in his work De Ri Militari

 

in five summer hours using the common military step make 20 miles, full step 24 miles.

 

Now for armies planning a 5 or 6 hours march in summer was standard the romans set the tone as they marched a 1/2 day then fortified thier camp. nobody likes marching in the afternoon sun.

 

but at times you had to. In northern Europe the day in summer could start at 3 (predawn up eat)am and end at 10pm. As long as you have food and water you can work all day ask any farmer so at times troops marched for 18 hours and made 50 miles plus.

Horses usllay double the speed of troops but they must be allowed to graze as volume is just as important as food value. This is why over long run Cavarly units and foot make the same distances as a man can carry 3 to 4 days food with him. this is also why commanders talk of fatten up thier troops for once you start marching and the needs of the campain set in your troops burn that fat off instead of carrying food. A mordern example of this is during the Falkins war the Gaurds tryed to march over land loaded with a modern load of 50 plus pounds and broke down and had to be recalled and shipped around the Island. where the Gurkas and the home Gaurd who had more body fat made the marches. Low body fat make for a pretty solider on parade but has no reserves.

Most armies now figure troops march at 4 miles an hour (they are young fit and traing) with light combat load with 6 mph forced (double time for 10 minutes)

 

 

some histroy

 

Thumoses army made about 15 miles a day which is about the same rate of Alexander's.

Rames the II issude shoes to his army

Pheidippides runs to Sparta from Athens (240km) 150 miles in 2 days. he is a professional long distance herald

Pheidippides after fighting the battle of Marathon throws off his armor and runs 26 miles to Athens exlaims "we have won" and dies

2000 Spartan hoplites marched the same distance in from Sparta to Athens in 3 days

Alexander uses mules to carry food and act as an emergency ration for his army. (porters where the norm before this ) averages 15 miles a day with a one day burst of 52 recored from the town of Rahagae to the Cispin gates.

Alexanders army in pursit averages 36miles per day in pursuit of Darius (he was going faster, movtivated lol).

Hannibal move from spain to Italy in 218 a distance of 962 miles in 180 days, for a rate of 5 miles a day

Herny army before Agincourt averages 15 miles a day over 260 miles. Elizabeth I expected her army to do the same.

Fredrick the Great warned that an army travelled effectively but fifteen miles a day

Dauvout III corp arrived at Austerlitz after marching 2 day and covering 70 miles to save the day

The British light Brigade covered 42 miles in 26 hours and is consider by the Guinness book of world record to be the most rapid ever.

In India in 1857 a combined force marched 580 mile in 22 days for over 26 miles a day in hot weather

In WWII a US Army infantry battalion marched 54 miles in 33 hours.

 

So

2.5 miles an hour over a trail is good start

double if you are on a horse

double if on a road.

you will walk 5 to 6 hours casue you want to miss the heat of the afternoon or make it to shelter before winter night fall

if hilly terrian have again and lack of food can slow you down.

at least for 2 days you may march double hours in summer

 

Lord Ghee

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: A days journey

 

It would be nice for adventurers, as opposed to armies, that if they are going through civilized country that there would be many villages or towns along the way. A relatively comfortable bed at the end of the day makes a huge difference in a comfortable journey. Of course, this makes travel more expensive as opposed to camping out each night, but you're relatively comfortable and relatively safe at the end of the day.

 

Wagons and carriages have not been mentioned yet. They don't move any faster than characters on foot or horses (after all, they're pulled by horses or, in some cases, people), but allow you to carry a good deal more provisions, equipment, loot,etc. Carriages also allow a modicum of privacy, which makes them popular among nobility and the rich. But carriages and wagons need both creatures to pull them and skilled drivers, meaning that if PCs are going to travel by wagon and don't want to hire drivers they'd better have Transport Familiarity (and PS: Teamster will help with loading and packing). They also need at least marginal roads and are useless in certain kinds of terrain, and are prone to mechanical failure if not maintained properly.

 

Of course, you can have all sorts of interruptions while walking from place to place.

 

In an RPG, for practical purposes travel moves at "the speed of plot". Whenever you set out for a place, you arrive just in time for something interesting to happen. the question is whether you really want to micromanage travel.

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

accourding to Vegetius in his work De Ri Militari

 

in five summer hours using the common military step make 20 miles, full step 24 miles.

 

Now for armies planning a 5 or 6 hours march in summer was standard the romans set the tone as they marched a 1/2 day then fortified thier camp. nobody likes marching in the afternoon sun.

 

but at times you had to. In northern Europe the day in summer could start at 3 (predawn up eat)am and end at 10pm. As long as you have food and water you can work all day ask any farmer so at times troops marched for 18 hours and made 50 miles plus.

Horses usllay double the speed of troops but they must be allowed to graze as volume is just as important as food value. This is why over long run Cavarly units and foot make the same distances as a man can carry 3 to 4 days food with him. this is also why commanders talk of fatten up thier troops for once you start marching and the needs of the campain set in your troops burn that fat off instead of carrying food. A mordern example of this is during the Falkins war the Gaurds tryed to march over land loaded with a modern load of 50 plus pounds and broke down and had to be recalled and shipped around the Island. where the Gurkas and the home Gaurd who had more body fat made the marches. Low body fat make for a pretty solider on parade but has no reserves.

Most armies now figure troops march at 4 miles an hour (they are young fit and traing) with light combat load with 6 mph forced (double time for 10 minutes)

 

 

some histroy

 

Thumoses army made about 15 miles a day which is about the same rate of Alexander's.

Rames the II issude shoes to his army

Pheidippides runs to Sparta from Athens (240km) 150 miles in 2 days. he is a professional long distance herald

Pheidippides after fighting the battle of Marathon throws off his armor and runs 26 miles to Athens exlaims "we have won" and dies

2000 Spartan hoplites marched the same distance in from Sparta to Athens in 3 days

Alexander uses mules to carry food and act as an emergency ration for his army. (porters where the norm before this ) averages 15 miles a day with a one day burst of 52 recored from the town of Rahagae to the Cispin gates.

Alexanders army in pursit averages 36miles per day in pursuit of Darius (he was going faster, movtivated lol).

Hannibal move from spain to Italy in 218 a distance of 962 miles in 180 days, for a rate of 5 miles a day

Herny army before Agincourt averages 15 miles a day over 260 miles. Elizabeth I expected her army to do the same.

Fredrick the Great warned that an army travelled effectively but fifteen miles a day

Dauvout III corp arrived at Austerlitz after marching 2 day and covering 70 miles to save the day

The British light Brigade covered 42 miles in 26 hours and is consider by the Guinness book of world record to be the most rapid ever.

In India in 1857 a combined force marched 580 mile in 22 days for over 26 miles a day in hot weather

In WWII a US Army infantry battalion marched 54 miles in 33 hours.

 

So

2.5 miles an hour over a trail is good start

double if you are on a horse

double if on a road.

you will walk 5 to 6 hours casue you want to miss the heat of the afternoon or make it to shelter before winter night fall

if hilly terrian have again and lack of food can slow you down.

at least for 2 days you may march double hours in summer

 

Lord Ghee

 

It should be pointed out that Pheidippides was a myth - ie: there's no evidence that he ever existed. Plutarch cobbled the story of the sparta-athens-marathon-athens run together out of other stories nearly 600 years after the event supposedly happened.

 

If you look at the list you have given you have multiple people at multiple period of history, suggesting that an army travels 15 miles a day on roads - mixed in with some legendary force marches where some participants literally died from exhaustion. I really doubt the latter is a good indicator of how fast people usually travel. And have a look at those numbers - the famous forced march of the British light infantry to Talavera - which you note is considered something an endurance record - covered 67 kilometres in 26 hours - for an average speed of less than 3 kilometres an hour. Heres' what one of the oficers who were there wrote: "'Our men suffered dreadfully on the route, chiefly from excessive fatigue and the heat of the weather. The brain fever soon commenced, making fearful ravages in our ranks, and many dropped by the roadside and died.'"

 

Seriously. Fit, well trained veterans of hundreds of marches falling down and dying from trying to maintain a speed of less than 2 MPH, or just over 2.5 KPH.

 

So suggesting double normal pace on road - 5 km an hour - puts your suggestion for a standard day's travel right up there with legendary marches of history. C'mon - we know what the standard pace for soldiers or warriors is: about 2.5 mph or about 4 kph in decent going. That speed is consistent across history for 2000 years. Bad going can halve that or more, and good going can pick it up by maybe 25%. Forced marches typically mean moving at that speed slower - but going for more hours at a stretch.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

It would be nice for adventurers' date=' as opposed to armies, that if they are going through civilized country that there would be many villages or towns along the way. A relatively comfortable bed at the end of the day makes a huge difference in a comfortable journey. Of course, this makes travel more expensive as opposed to camping out each night, but you're relatively comfortable and relatively safe at the end of the day.[/quote']

 

It also saves you a lot of time - in the days when tents weren't made of light nylon with spring-loaded poles, finding a place, setting up camp, building a fire and cooking food took a significant amount of time. Typically it trims at least an hour or two off your travel day.

 

Wagons and carriages have not been mentioned yet. They don't move any faster than characters on foot or horses (after all' date=' they're pulled by horses or, in some cases, people), but allow you to carry a good deal more provisions, equipment, loot,etc. Carriages also allow a modicum of privacy, which makes them popular among nobility and the rich. But carriages and wagons need both creatures to pull them and skilled drivers, meaning that if PCs are going to travel by wagon and don't want to hire drivers they'd better have Transport Familiarity (and [i']PS: Teamster[/i] will help with loading and packing). They also need at least marginal roads and are useless in certain kinds of terrain, and are prone to mechanical failure if not maintained properly.

 

Actually wagons move slower than people on foot or horseback - that is why the 15 miles an hour for large armies estimated by so many journals is lower than the speed of the legions who typically carried everything themselves or on mules, and far less than the speed of the lightest forces. They are also limited entirely to travel by road, which means they have to form up in long lines.

 

In an RPG' date=' for practical purposes travel moves at "the speed of plot". Whenever you set out for a place, you arrive just in time for something interesting to happen. the question is whether you really want to micromanage travel.[/quote']

 

While that's true, players notice of the trip to Old Ford takes three weeks and the trip home along the same road takes 4 days. It's useful also to be able to answer the players when they ask "How long will it take us to get to Old Ford?"

 

cheers, Mark

[Alibear]

Re: A days journey

 

It should be pointed out that the 30 miler is a test - designed to weed out young' date=' very very fit men who have been training for it. And even if you select [b']only[/b] young, very, very fit men ('cos no-one else actually makes it into Commando training) and even if you train them for 39 weeks prior to throwing them into the 30 miler .... 60% of them fail. It's not an example of what people, by and large can do - it's an endurance test showing what the fittest of the fit can do if they push themselves.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Which is why I put the bit about the 15-18 con at the bottom. After commando training the are expected to be able to do that and more and be fighting fit ready at the end of it. We are talking amateur marathon runner fitness levels and doing it carrying 40lbs of weapons and kit.

 

I'm thinking many PCs are going to be of a similar levels of fitness. Some might have superhuman levels of fitness, because of spells, racial abilities, magical items Blood of the Old Gods or what have you.

 

A normal fit army of today travels on foot much as they alway have.

[LordGhee]

Re: A days journey

 

Marching

 

In 319 B. C. Antigonus Monophthalmus (“The One-Eyed”), one of Alexander the Great’s Successors, marched over 40,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and a number of elephants from Cappadocia to Cretopolis in Pisidia, covering about 310 miles in seven days and seven nights to surprise his rival Alcetas, for an average march rate of about 44 miles a day.

 

Nofi cic

 

Got this off the stragey.com web page the march was through the mountains

 

Lord Ghee

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: A days journey

 

Marching

 

In 319 B. C. Antigonus Monophthalmus (“The One-Eyed”), one of Alexander the Great’s Successors, marched over 40,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and a number of elephants from Cappadocia to Cretopolis in Pisidia, covering about 310 miles in seven days and seven nights to surprise his rival Alcetas, for an average march rate of about 44 miles a day.

 

I rather doubt the veracity of that account, because you have to be insane to put fighting men through that unless it was a massive emergency -- and no emergency would have been that massive.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: A days journey

 

This is probably only single-sourced, from Diodorus Siculus. Hans Delbrueck, admittedly often wrong in his criticism, believes that Diodorus' numbers are not credible for this period. And in particular, at another point in the same account of the battle at Psidian Cretopolis, the numbers in Antigonus One-Eyed's army falls to 28,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 45 elephants.

[Yansuf]

Re: A days journey

 

This is probably only single-sourced' date=' from Diodorus Siculus. Hans Delbrueck, admittedly often wrong in his criticism, believes that Diodorus' numbers are not credible for this period. And in particular, at another point in the same account of the battle at Psidian Cretopolis, the numbers in Antigonus One-Eyed's army falls to 28,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 45 elephants.[/quote']

 

I'm not sure if I believe it either, but the reduced number seems reasonable for what might be left out of an army that size after a week long forced march.

Of course, if there were not reasonably good roads (trails) that speed through mountains does not seem plausible for a single day, let alone a week.

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

I'm pretty dubious myself. As you note, Diodurus is pretty flexible with his numbers and he was writing more than 250 years after the events he describes. Here's what he wrote:

"Therefore Antigonus set out with all his forces from Cappadocia and pushed on toward Pisidia, where Alcetas and his army were staying. Making a forced march that strained the endurance of his men to the utmost, he traversed two thousand five hundred stades in seven days and the same number of nights, reaching Cretopolis, as it is called." (a Stade is about 620 feet, so that that's about 300 miles). Although he states that Antigonus took all his forces he also states that he left a part of his forces to besiege Nora.

Plutarch, writing around the same time, discusses the siege of Nora, but doesn't mention this famous march at all, saying simply that Antigonus "drew off his army" though to be fair, he's not a very reliable historian either

Cornelius Nepos likewise makes no mention of the forced march: pretty odd, if true, since it would be one of the greatest feats in military history.

 

All in all, I'd put the 44 miles a day march in the same category as the claim that the phalanx of the silver of the Silver shields contained no men under sixty years of age and few less than 70 - they must have been pretty spritely old gentlemen considering they are claimed to have killed 5000 enemy pikemen in a day without suffering a single casualty!

 

Edit: less sarcastically, you have to be really careful taking the writers of antiquity seriously, when it comes to specific numbers. Their tales are full things like this - a 70-year soldiers killing thousands without any loses, marches across deserts in record-beating time (Scipo's march from Mt Ebro, for example - if it was true his men would have doing near 50 miles a day), the fact that Chinese live on average 300 years, etc. These sort of tales always turn up with the "historian" is describing events that happened far away and/or hundreds of years ago.

 

cheers, Mark

[LordGhee]

Re: A days journey

 

Now I have to say that in general I will side with the accounts. You get up at 5 and start to march at 6 march to 1 take a long lunch march from 3 to 10. hard pace of 3mph but do able with people that have done it all thier lives as in i go over to Hector's house i have to walk it. As long as you have to food and water it is possible. You are not making camp and hot meals to prep meat would be the challange.

 

 

Lord Ghee

[Markdoc]

Re: A days journey

 

Now I have to say that in general I will side with the accounts. You get up at 5 and start to march at 6 march to 1 take a long lunch march from 3 to 10. hard pace of 3mph but do able with people that have done it all thier lives as in i go over to Hector's house i have to walk it. As long as you have to food and water it is possible. You are not making camp and hot meals to prep meat would be the challange.

 

Yeah. Except that you are not doing it double time, carrying 90 pounds of gear. Try that and see if you can hold 3 MPH for 10 hours. We already know the answer. You can't. Really fit guys with years of experience die trying to hold that kind of pace for very long. The Roman legions were probably the world's fastest marchers and they believed it was impossible.

 

I'm sorry, "I walk to my friend's place" is not really a convincing argument. April this year, I did 23 km through mountains and ruins under the hot middle eastern sun in one day. I was actually in good enough shape to hit the mountains again the next day for another 12 km. Pretty good going, eh? I was carrying two water bottles, some sunscreen, a camera and a hat. Load me up with a week's food, my armour, a spear, a shield, a sword, my bedroll or a heavy cloak and a couple of day's water (Hint: in 300 BC you couldn't stop at the local 7-11 and order "water and snacks for 40,000 - to go". An army that couldn't carry it's own food and water disintegrated fast.)

 

Now try it. I'd be lucky to have made it 5 km before collapsing. Add to that you are suggesting marching until 10 pm (when it's dark - and your speed goes right down: you try marching over rough ground in the pitch dark) and you are moving out of "Oh my god that's tough" to "That's f***in' impossible") I don't know a single military historian who believes that account: everything I have read about the Diadochi wars has the historians arguing about "How could Diodorus have gotten it so wrong?" Nobody argues that he got it right.

 

As for believing the accounts, do you also believe that the elite unit of Eumenes' army - the best fighters in the whole middle east at the time - was made up of 70 year old men? Seriously?

 

cheers, Mark