To this day, I don't think I've ever seen overland travel covered in a game in a way that doesn't either slow sessions to a crawl, doesn't boil down to handwaving how PCs get somewhere with maybe 1-2 random encounters, or wasn't literally an entire system about wandering out in the wilderness. I'm interested in hearing /tg/'s opinion on what rules they've encountered and how much they liked/hated them, though.
>>96648898>handwaving>an entire systemWhat other options could there be? It's either a system, or it's not and you handwave it.
>>96648898you just roll on a table behind a screen while the players are teleporting to a destination and you're describing the geography as it elapses
>>96648951It could technically be a subsystem—a specific application of general rules used elsewhere in the game that has one or two distinct elements. Or it could be something that doesn’t discretely exist in the rules, but effectively emerges as an intersection of multiple different subsystems that are relevant to the situation (you have one set of rules governing supplies, one set of rules governing travel time and speed, one set of rules governing weather, and so on).
>>96648898What do you want overland travel to do? Like mechanically and narratively, what is the purpose of gameifying this part of the experience?
>>96649141Allowing travel-based adventures instead of site-based adventures.Sometimes the hard part is getting to where you need to be in the first place.>rescuing someone who is lost in he wilderness>finding ancient ruins>running away from an enemy army in unknown territoryetcthere's lots of wilderness adventures to be had that involve mostly traveling.
>>96648898Systems don't capture travel well. Descriptions do.It helps if you've done a lot of backpacking. Barring that, read Hemmingway who was particularly good at evoking the feeling of travel in the wilderness. For Whom the Bell Tolls, in mind at least, has some of the best descriptions of travel I've ever read. If you prefer fantasy novels then read some Robin Hobb--she's almost as good at it, particularly in Soldier Son.Give a one-to-two sentence description of the terrain they start in. Sights, sounds, smells, people and wildlife. Give a one sentence description of the traveling. Mosquito clouds and dusty trails or afternoon showers that leave everyone walking faster to escape their shiver until their clothing starts to steam with perspiration. Then a sentence or two of where they arrive when you throw some non-combat challenge at them.And do throw non-combat challenges and encounters. By afternoon the morning's misty rain has become a soupy downpour and your trail is cut in half by ten foot gorge of rushing water that carried the trail off with it. How will you get your wagon and animals across? Simple challenges that just need a description from your players to get them engaged in having to think about the act of travelling. Don't spend more than half a minute on these things. Just long enough to let the players know where they are, what their characters are going through, and some simple decision making that requires them to actively engage with the landscape as they travel.
There are two ways to do travel1. Autistic / Engaged playersHave rules for logistics, constant environmental threats and random encounters based on the area being traveled2. Normie playersJust have them bump into a minor adventure or two along the way. A spooky cave with rumors of gold, a beast from local myth, stumble into a fight between two warring factions
>>96649333Everything you described is a site based adventure, just a site that exists between you and the destination site you set out for.
>>96648898>bunch of low IQ faggots enter the hobby>collectively agree that bookkeeping and timekeeping are boring and handwave away tracking anything that isn't HP or spell slots>"Wow overland travel and exploring dungeons is fucking boring! We're just handwaving through everything! Why do people even talk about these things like they're important?"The problem, OP, is that when you remove the stakes, even something as small as running out or rations, or being exposed to the elements for too long, you end up with Skyrim in tabletop form. Travel costs nothing and maybe there's one or two fights in between your and your destination if you can't just fast travel (handwave) your way there.
>>96649333Play a video game or go outside. You're trying to milk a duck.
>>96649888>THE classic adventure hook of finding a lost temple is not a gameable adventure according to /tg//tg/ will just use any excuse to shut down discussion these days.>>96649487You don't know what site based adventure is. I recommend you google it before embarrassing yourself further.
>>96649333Check out Into the Wyrd and Wild for wilderness exploration and tracking. Its point crawlish with interesting additions for navigation, types of trails, tracking, getting lost, finding shit, etc. The real problem you're going to have is that most travel is not very engaging gameplay, its notes or points when something happens, otherwise its just low level situational awareness and semi regular checks with tools. Every gameable aspect is either a skill check sort of deal or becomes a site where an event occurs. You can add extra steps for the skill check equivalents or turn them into minigames but because its for things like looking at your compass or making a fire its not much fun to do frequently. Gardens of Ynn has an interesting exploration procedural generation mode but is largely suited to a magical and nonsensical area. Might be worth checking out, its more or less osr. On the other end but still procedural, The Perilous Wilds for Dungeon World does exploration and world building. Not my thing but was interesting to look at. UVG (1st ed, haven't looked at 2nd) has a mixed narrative and granular travel set up, but the locations are very evocative which helps with generation of locations and improvisational building. The currency as bags of stuff for trade system is interesting, not sure if I like it. The actual mechanics for the game pasted onto the art is ass but I doubt that was ever the point.
>>96649888>You're trying to milk a duck.Need an inverse corkscrew for that.
>>96648898Check out this new game called the original dungeons and dragons: rules for fantastic medieval wargames.
>>96649427This is good advice. When I was younger I did a lot of backpacking and orienteering. Those experiences have defined how I run over land travel and exploration. When you are running overland portions of the game you have to keep players in the drivers seat, They decide the route they take. You can not nudge them along and not turn it into handwaving. You should also resist giving players a map, especially not an accurate map, that should be for the GM alone.
>>96650135>Into the Wyrd and WildI'll take a look, thanks bro
Unless the game is specifically about travel and exploration, I think the move is to just a quick vignette; either something like "here is an obstacle you run into, how do you overcome it," or, in my current deadlands game, we've done a couple of travel scenes at night around the campfire where they do a little roleplaying.
>>96648898My opinion is "I don't give a single flying fuck about travel rules, but I'm sick and tired of the bi-weekly thread asking for them". At this point I have a Pavlovian reaction - someone mentions "travel rules" and I'm instantly agitated.
>>96649333Nothing you've listed would require rules to survive long distance travel. All those would serve to do would be as a brake or range limit on said wilderness adventures.
>>96650640Its surprisingly ok for a direct veins of the earth ripoff. The city one after it is quite bad.
>>96650715>Nothing you've listed would require rules to survive long distance travel.How exactly are you going to find someone lost in the wilderness without rules for wilderness exploration?
>>96649105Is that meaningfully different from the system intending those systems to be used for overland travel?
take your players on an actual hike
>>96649427>Systems don't capture travel well.wrong
>>96649858Sad part about this is, is there are people in the hobby who want to handwave HP and spell slots in addition to the other stuff.They're glad to subject their characters to however the DM thinks the story should go. They don't want to play a game, they just want to sit there and listen to someone preach to them.
>>96648898I strike a compromise that works for me, with my games."Overland travel" is most of the game; characters are heroes on a journey to eliminate as many monster bandits, undead and their dark lords, and extraplanar dinosaurs as possible.The zone map is opened up "tile" by "tile" as zones are discovered, and the distance between zones is abstracted. It is assumed that, during this time, the party does any hunting, bathing, eating, etc. and is also when perks are spent and gear is repaired.When a zone is discovered, it is random what the contents will be, adjusted by the previous zone and the current danger rating; did the party enter a new biome? Did they find a ruined temple or other kind of dungeon? Did they enter the edge of a Necropolis, or onto the telltale scorched lands of tyrant territory?Then, once the zone is entered, the map is generated as the party explores its rooms/cells, representing how they progress through the expedition and any combat situation that may pop up as a result.Of course, this is too much for people who hate "bookkeeping" or anything that requires them to build a functional character, but it's my game, made for me, because you're supposed to rewrite what you don't like.
>>96653160>People take part in the activity known as "being told a story"Yeah no shit we've been doing that since before agriculture.>>96650755NAYRT but conceivably a normal pointcrawl/node based adventure where you interpret clues and signs at each discrete location and light upon the correct info to "unlock" a last location with your quarry in it. Ignore the actual journeys between nodes, just read greybox description of walking/sailing/space travel. Not how I'd do it, but totally a way it could be done.
>>96653334Listening to a story isn't a game, anon.
>>96653382And? Fully aside from whether or not you (or I, for that matter) like it, listening to stories with or without audience participation is an activity humans have been doing since forever. If you're instead going to get snitty about the semantics of the term "role playing game" then I hate to tell you this but sometimes early terms stick despite being completely inaccurate. Look at the way we talk about positive and negative in circuits compared to how electrons actually move. Look at the number of visual novels people think are video games. Look at American "food."
>>96653382>>96653403The crossover and contention is because of the word and ideas around >play We play games. We play pretend. Sometimes we play games of pretend. Not all play is a game, all games have play. Not all play has playfulness. Its unlikely there are many cases of exclusively one or the other although conventions in playing pretend or playfully telling stories may not be hard rules so much as informal understood moors but negotiated and rexamined through practice. Most games with rules will also have these conventions although some can be played with few of them.
>>96653160Haha yeah there is definitely a contingent of "players" that are perfectly happy to sit around a table for a few hours and listen to the GM tell stories about how cool their PC's are, and occasionally get to roll some dice when the GM gives them permission. The truth is these "players" are completely unnecessary to the GM's solo session, they are mere helpers to roll dice and look up stats on the character sheet.
>>96653403>And?A lot of people seem to think it is a game.
>>96653403>semanticsFATAL is the plane's best doorstop, bar none. When you get the cats to truck over, the time is great, and their apples will prime to very often. I just don't want anyone fish like salad wrenches, know what I mean? The FATAL PbtA coffee table decoration was one of, if not THE, definitive icon of the quantum space.Agreement, or die.
>>96649105Ironsworn's travel fits that pretty well. It's not a full blown AD&D hexcrawl, but it's got a solid procedure that mostly follows the pattern set by the rest of the game, albeit tweaked to evoke the flow of travel and survival (and play off the supply mechanic).
>>96650705Then don't go in the thread retard
This is something I need to get autistic about again since I realized my campaign has reached the point where I want to send the group into Not-The Zone.Especially since I want a hexcrawl where you move multiple hexes per "turn" but it seems like every example I see is about moving 1 hex a turn, maybe 2.
>>96653382Strawman?
I don't know how to break this to you, but no one really wants a grainy 'you're walking...you're walking...you're walking...you got a blister...you're walking...you got a rock in your boot..." filler session. No one wants or needs rules on taking a shit, either.
>>96655672This anon can't conceptualize the apple.
Here's my travel procedure>Travel is handled in increments of week-long Campaign Turns. 1. Consume Rations. 2. Pay Henchmen Wages 3. Determine Weather. a. If in a harsh Climate (too cold or too hot), make appropriate resistance checks. 4. Planning: prepare your plans for the turn. 5. Move Rate: Calculate Weekly Move Rate and make any checks to reduce travel time. 6. Determine Activities: Make any skill checks for side-activities. a. Scouting - One party member who can move faster than the rest of the party may scout ahead. b. Hunting - Any party members may attempt to hunt on the way. c. Foraging - Any party members may attempt to forage on the way. d. Prospecting - Any party members may attempt to search for minerals to mine. 7. Check if the Party Gets Lost. 8. Make a Camping Roll. 9. Travel: Make a Travel Roll: Roll 1d100 on the Travel Events Table. 10. Move: Move to the destination.
>>96655665No, because if you're sitting around doing nothing, and somebody is talking to you, or you're just listening to other people talk, that isn't a game.
>>96653427Okay, but games are sets of challenges resolved through player strength, skill, and/or luck according to consistent rules, and this board is one for the discussion of games.So I'm talking about games.
>>96655906Okay, so would you say you play games?
