Travel and Journeys

Version 0.12 · not yet playtested

Jon Mayo. PUBLIC DOMAIN (CC0-1.0)

Travel and Journeys

The base engine runs at two scales: the push (a room, a fight, one meaningful advance) and the campaign (weeks and clocks; see Running the Game). Between them is the crossing, a journey of days. Most journeys need no rules: a known, safe road costs the time and a ration each, and you arrive. This rung is for when the crossing itself is the adventure, when the way is wild or shut, or when the party takes the short way and hopes.

It adds no new dice. A journey is the ordinary roll, made once per leg, with the world’s failures spent through the same hard-move economy as everything else.

1 When to Roll

Do not roll for a road that is known and safe; spend the days and the rations and arrive. Roll when the way is genuinely uncertain and getting there would cost you: wild country, no map, foul weather, pursuit, a route that may be closed, the short way that no one sane takes.

2 The Journey Roll

Break a crossing into legs, the setting’s unit of travel: a day, a watch, a jump. Each leg is one roll (or a handwave, if that leg is safe). Nominate a guide for the leg, the one navigating, scouting, or piloting. Only the guide rolls; the party shares what happens.

The guide rolls the odds for the leg. The attribute is usually Wits (reading the land, plotting the course), or whatever the setting’s travel leans on (Agility to pilot, Might to force a hard passage). The referee names the position: a good map, a known road, clear weather, or a guide’s background lift it; no map, storms, hostile or trackless country drop it. Another traveler can Help for a die (Naming the Odds). Read the bands:

Success. The leg goes clean. You reach the next waypoint on time, whole, and no worse supplied than you planned.

Partial. You get there, and it costs you: a day lost, a ration or a tank spent, a hazard met and beaten the hard way, gear soaked, someone frayed (a stress), or you arrive late, seen, or off the mark.

Failure. It goes wrong. A hard move on the road: lost (add a leg and a day), a real hazard (a fight, a wound, a breakdown), waylaid, weather-pinned, or your supplies ruined. Then you press on from where it left you.

3 Pace

Pace is a standing choice, and the slowest traveler sets it:

Hard. Fewer legs, but each is a die worse and costs a stress: you cover ground by spending yourselves.

Steady. The baseline.

Careful. A die better, but more legs and more rations: caution takes time and eats supply.

4 Supplies on the Road

Travel is the push economy stretched to days, and it is a supply problem as much as a navigation one. Each leg costs one ration per traveler (or the setting’s consumable: fuel, air, coin, feed). Run dry and each further leg gains a stress and heals nothing. Light, fuel, or air run on their own count as the setting needs.

Mounts, vehicles, and porters carry more and cover a leg faster or for less supply, and each is a thing to lose on a Failure. A vehicle is also armor of a sort on the road: destroy or strand it to turn a hazard aside, once.

5 The Journey Clock

A long or dangerous crossing is a clock (Looming for “this session,” Distant for a campaign trek; see Running the Game). Each Failure fills a segment; so do detours, searching the route, and resting somewhere exposed. When it fills, the thing it was named for happens with no roll to stop it: the pass closes, the pursuit catches up, the storm breaks, the air runs out.

The guide’s roll and the clock answer two different questions: the roll says whether this leg went well; the clock says how much time and safety you have left. Do not fill the clock off the guide’s bad roll and also punish the leg; let the roll handle the leg and the clock handle the deadline.

6 Arriving

You arrive as worn as the road made you. Carry the stress and any wounds into whatever waits at the far end, and apply the rest gate (Running the Game): a safe arrival lets you clear stress and heal a step before the next scene; a hot arrival does not. This is the whole reason travel earns rules, it sets the party’s condition for what happens when they get there.

7 Hazards (roll d6, or pick)

Roll on a Failure, or when the journey clock fills, or whenever the road should bare its teeth. Reskin to the setting.

d6 | On the road
1 | The way is wrong. The landmarks disagree with the map; lose a leg finding the true path.
2 | Weather turns. Everything outdoors is a die worse until it breaks, or hole up and burn a day.
3 | Breakdown or lameness. A mount, a vehicle, or a traveler’s body fails; mend it (Wits) or go on slower.
4 | Someone else is out here. A rival crew, a patrol, or a predator, met on open ground.
5 | The ground itself. A flood, a rockfall, a rift, a vacuum breach; a barrier that costs a crossing roll or a long way around.
6 | Provision spoiled. Rations, fuel, or water ruined; the supply problem just got sharper.

8 For Authors

A setting fits this rung by naming four things: the unit of a leg (day / watch / jump), the consumable a leg spends (rations / fuel / air), the guide attribute (usually Wits), and a hazard table in the setting’s voice. Keep it to one roll per leg. A starter that already carries an overland or transit table (like Bleakmire’s Country Between or a shuttle run) can point straight at this procedure to run it.