Overland Travel Rates

[Earl Aubec]

Table 5.1 lists travel times for various terrain types. Yet what if you're traveling through the mountains on a trail or path? Shouldn't trails, paths and roads each modifiy the distance traveled? I'm thinking add the two numbers and divide by two. This way the trail mitigates the overland penalty somewhat, but you still take a hit due to switchbacks, indirect routes around impassable areas, etc.

Example: I'm traveling on a trial through a mountain pass with a Move Score of 6. I add 18 (trail, path)+6 (Mountain)=24. Divide 24 by two gives me a net distance of 12.

I'm not much of a hiker! Is this a logical/realistic conclusion? Or are the occurence of roads already accounted for? Surely traveling on a mountain road is not the same as traveling on a road through the flat plains!

Earl

[deltadave]

Sure, twelve miles is pretty reasonable actually. you just have to realize that is not distance as the crow flies, but rather that most of it is winding, weaving and climbing.

I hike lots and can do about 20 miles during a day with a 30lb pack, straight line distance for that would be between 8-15 miles depending on the ruggedness of the mountains.

[Edge]

20 miles...I can pump out 35 km without to much of an effort in a day with 40kg on my back... is this about the same?
That would be on poor trail as well

[Earl Aubec]

35 KM = 21.74 miles, so yeah, they're comparable. You guys obviously have a higher Move Score than 6 which is the stated average, and the rate I used in my example.

Earl

[Valamir]

There's a lot of factors that go into overland movement rates that are simply impossible to do anything but grossly abstract in a game (unless you're making Hiking: The RPG)

Conditioning plays a BIG part in it.  This goes beyond being merely in or out of shape, but being in shape specifically for hiking, the right muscle groups, the right breathing technique, the right stride.  Take two people of equivelent fitness, one a practiced hiker and one who's never hiked cross country in his life and the difference will be notable.

The vast majority of Wyerth citizens are going to have spent a good deal of time walking (to and from the fields, following the flocks, etc) but few are going to have much experience with dedicated overland meaningful travel.  It would not be completely unreasonable to allow a character who does specialize is such activity to have a bonus to Move for this purpose.


Other factors include technology.  Serious modern hikers have some pretty high technology in their shoes, and often in breathable clothes as well.  And one can't underestimate the benefit of modern packs and harness which are extremely efficient at distributing weight (well, the good ones are).  Put a modern hiker in crappy period shoes and a basic ruck sack and I think you'll find the rate of travel declines notably.


Also you'd have to account for time.  A hiker may be able to cover 20 miles in a day.  But could they cover 20 miles every day for a month?  In bad shoes?  Without the benefit of energy drinks and power bars?

So overland travel rates done accurately would have to change to reflect whether your making a 2 day jaunt to the next valley, or a 2 month trek across the territory.


And of course, when you start adding multiple people into the mix things change dramatically.   Especially when you get to the scale of armies.

Not that you're discussing armies, but an interesting exercise none the less:

Picture an army of 20,000 men marching in two files.  To make it simple figure 5-6 feet between each man.  The column stretches out, 50-60,000 feet from first to last.  Keep it simple and call it 10 miles.

Even if you march at a brisk 5 miles an hour it would be 2 hours before the last man passes the same spot as the first.  If the army is camping together and only marching by day (typical, because marching at night leads to easy opportunity for desertion) that means the head of the column has to stop 2 hours before dark, to allow the tail to reach them by dark.  And the tail doesn't set out until 2 hours after dawn.  

For no other reason than shear numbers the army just chopped 2 hours a day out of its ability to travel.  This is why when armies reached into the 100,000s during the Napoleonic era they broke them up into smaller formations and marched to their destination using different roads rather than stringing out on a single road.  One of Napoleons great geniuses was his ability to get all of these different units to the same battle field at the same time more frequently than his opponents thus giving him local superiority even when army sizes were comparable.

That's straying from the topic a good bit, but I wanted to include it as an example of the type of thing that goes into figuring travel rates and how many more factors their really are beyond a Move score.

[toli]

Not that you're discussing armies, but an interesting exercise none the less:

Picture an army of 20,000 men marching in two files.  To make it simple figure 5-6 feet between each man.  The column stretches out, 50-60,000 feet from first to last.  Keep it simple and call it 10 miles.

There is a great book on the logistics of Alexander the Great's army that discusses stuff like this.  I can dig up the reference if any one wants it.

RE travel times, one might add a skill like "marching" or "hiking" that would allow PCs or NPCs to increase their daily move rate by some level...thus experienced soldiers would be able to cover more distance that your average farmer...number of successes = some % increase in total distance...NT

[Earl Aubec]

RE travel times, one might add a skill like "marching" or "hiking" that would allow PCs or NPCs to increase their daily move rate by some level...thus experienced soldiers would be able to cover more distance that your average farmer...number of successes = some % increase in total distance...NT

I don't know that an extra skill is needed. Soldiers will necessarily have greater Strength, Agility and Endurance than your average farmer and thus a higher Move score on average. If TROS was like a lot of other games where all men-sized bipeds shared the same base movement rate I'd be with you. But since the Move Score can vary from individual to individual, I think its enough to say professional soldiers will automatically enjoy above average movement due to their higher physical attributes. Hard marches (and thus greater distance travelled in a day) can be simulated though EN checks.

My two cents.

Earl

[Lance D. Allen]

Still, a "Trailblazing" or "Hiking" skill wouldn't be out of line for those who actually put some specific effort into. Your average soldier, not so much.. But scouts, explorers, bounty hunters, trappers, etc. spend a lot of time traveling the hills and trails between civilization.

However, rather than trying to get crunchy over computing travel time over twisty trails, I'd just simply fiat a good number, and use the appropriate terrain type.. if traveling a windy beaten path through the mountains, and as-the-crow-flies the distance is... 20 miles, Call it 35-40 and be done with it. Most players won't care too much, unless they're the sort who like to get into the nitpicky details.. and if you've got one like that, let them calculate the length of the trail.

[[MKF]Kapten]

RE travel times, one might add a skill like "marching" or "hiking" that would allow PCs or NPCs to increase their daily move rate by some level...thus experienced soldiers would be able to cover more distance that your average farmer...number of successes = some % increase in total distance...NT

I don't know that an extra skill is needed. Soldiers will necessarily have greater Strength, Agility and Endurance than your average farmer and thus a higher Move score on average. If TROS was like a lot of other games where all men-sized bipeds shared the same base movement rate I'd be with you. But since the Move Score can vary from individual to individual, I think its enough to say professional soldiers will automatically enjoy above average movement due to their higher physical attributes. Hard marches (and thus greater distance travelled in a day) can be simulated though EN checks.

My two cents.

Earl

I wouldnt say that a medieval soldier would be stronger etc than a medieval peasant. Today that is true, but in those days people had a much higher level of physical activity. I think the mountain farmers in Mao Tse Tungs army during the revolution could make marches of 40-60 km per day on foot. They werent specially trained, it was just the hard life that made them tough as nails. In a medieval community I guess that can be said about everyone except for the clergy.

I think a trailblazing skill would be a good idea. Each success adds 1 to the move score of the character (of course only when it comes to overland travel).

[silburnl]

20 miles...I can pump out 35 km without to much of an effort in a day with 40kg on my back... is this about the same?
That would be on poor trail as well

40kg? That's a hell of a lot of weight - are you humping ammo in your ruck? I spent a couple of weeks doing the GR20 in Corsica the summer before last and I doubt people in my group carried much more than about 20kg apiece.

With regards to travel rate - climb/descent (which I guess is handled by the terrain modifier) is a major factor as well. That Corsica trip I mentioned averaged about 15 clicks per day but generally included a couple of thousand meters of altitude change in the mix which takes its toll. Dredging my memory for the mountain skills course I did at the Brenin a few years back... the rule of thumb for route-planning was to work out your journey time based upon a 4 kph pace across the map, then add a minute for every 10m contour-line your proposed route crosses.

This works quite well if you have a decent topographic map but is too much detail for most role-playing games I think.

Regards
Luke

[Lance D. Allen]

He's prolly not exaggerating. 80 lbs is a typical load for the modern U.S. Army infantryman, and I wouldn't imagine is too unusual elsewhere. Damned glad I went armored cavalry, myownself. That's more than half my weight!

[silburnl]

He's prolly not exaggerating. 80 lbs is a typical load for the modern U.S. Army infantryman,

Oh yeah I know... its just I can't think of a reason for that sort of load unless you are combat infantry or being paid by the kilogram. The OP is in Australia however, so maybe he needs to be carrying a lot of water or something.

Like I said, In Corsica we were carrying full bivvy, share of cooking kit,  food for 3 or 4 days and at least three litres of water apiece and I doubt any of our rucks were more than 20kg.

By way of contrast - the guys who do portering in the Himalayas carry 30-40kg of awkwardly balanced or poorly rigged load, at high altitude, in jelly sandals (rubber wellingtons if they're lucky) and still get up and down the hill faster than the pampered westerners they are working for (me and my g/f for instance).

I'll add data points for that Himalayan walk (I hesitate to call it a trek - we were pussies) I did.... ummm four days total (two up, two down); 4000m of altitude change (2000m to 4000m and back); about 60km of trail, but probably only 30km as the crow flew. Altitude was a problem and if we'd been pushing on to K2 base camp we would have have needed to take a couple of aclimatisation days.

Regards
Luke