Overland travel can vary in many ways, but let's focus on three descriptors:
- Distance (roughly time spent traveling)
- Risk (chance of bad things happening)
- Danger (how bad the bad things can be)
Examples:
- Long and protected road: high distance, low risk, low danger
- Long road near the edge of a cliff: high distance, low risk, high danger
- Walk to the neighboring town during enemy occupation: low distance, high risk, high danger
- Walk to the neighboring town through a rat nest: low distance, high risk, low danger
- Walk to the neighboring town through a sleeping dragon's lair: low distance, low risk, high danger
- Walk to the neighboring town past a belligerent drunk: low distance, high risk, low danger
- Unmarked path through goblin infested jungle: unknown distance, high risk, low danger
- Unmarked path through dragon infested jungle: unknown distance, high risk, high danger
So how can we make this playable? A skill challenge with a scaled result could match this quite well. In a skill challenge, the players can choose a skill they are proficient in, explain how they use it to help the party along, and roll against a DC based on the difficulty of the described task. A skill challenge is passed if a number of skill checks succeed (S) before reaching a number of failures (F). If zero failures are encountered, then the PCs arrive without consequence. If at least 1 failure occurs, then the PCs have a consequence C along the way. C may be an encounter with adversaries or an environment challenge. Note that C scales based on the number of failures (more failures -> more difficult encounter), so the number of failures still matters.
Let's modify this to match overland travel. Suppose the distance is linked with S, the risk is linked to F, and the danger is linked to C. What would be an acceptable range for S and F? An "average" skill challenge sets S and F to 3, making 3 as good a starting point as any. Something trivially easy could require only 1 success. The original definition of a skill challenge in D&D 4e always set F to 3 (three strikes!), so let's try to not stray far from that. Also, keeping F consistent would help the DM build these on-the-fly. Maybe F = 3 in the vast majority of cases, but let it vary to 2 or 4 in some particularly dangerous or peaceful environments, respectively.
What would happen as S gets large? Undoubtedly, the players would get bored. Our table has 6 players, so let's somewhat arbitrarily cap S at 6.
To summarize: S is in {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} and F is in {2, 3, 4}
Now to calibrate!
| S |
Description |
| 6 |
Cross-world journey |
| 5 |
Cross-isle journey |
| 4 |
Three-quarter-isle journey |
| 3 |
Half-isle journey |
| 2 |
Quarter-isle journey |
| 1 |
Neighboring towns |
| F |
Description |
| 4 |
Journeying through a very low adversary area
(goblins are known to exist here but rarely attack passerby, walking on a well-guarded road at midday) |
| 3 |
Journeying through a medium adversary area
(most adventuring destinations) |
| 2 |
Journeying through a very high adversary area
(Mordor, The Fire Swamp, The Nine Hells; encounter is practically guaranteed) |
C can roughly translate to the expected encounter, but it should be able to scale based on the number of actual failures. Traveling across grasslands known to be roamed by goblins? Then C is a goblin encounter, with more failures leading to more goblins, hobgoblins, or bugbears. Traveling down a river? Then C is river rapids, or an attack from the banks, or a trap laid in the river. Traveling down a main road? Then C is bandits, or heat/cold/rain depending on the season.
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