In which we travel

And eat. And hunt. And forage. And carry stuff. All at once.

OK so MANY DM's out there skip ALL of this stuff. There's a TON of discussion out there about overland travel – how to do it, when to do it, even IF to do it. Me? In an immersive world it's an important part of the game. There's an “easy” way to do it. One twenty mile hex per day. Period. Done and done. But not immersive. And passes up some GREAT gaming opportunites. So I designed a spreadsheet. It considers terrain, weather and pace and movement rate and in seconds tells me miles per day as well as MPH, how long it will take to cross a 20-, 6- and 2-mile hex. So every morning after checking the weather the party sets their pace: fast, normal, exploring or foraging. Finding how far they progress on the map is a piece of cake. This is the easy part. Check.

Then there's encumbrance. Again, MANY DM's hand waive this away. I HATE that. A significant part of the game is asset management: hit points, spell slots … and weight! But how much? First there's RAW. Strength x 15. That's it. Oversimplified? Indubitably. After more research it seems that 64 year old 215 pound me is about a STR 7. That means I could carry 105# without an issue. No a US Marine has to do that as a matter of course and I'm no Marine. Then there's a variant rule provided that provides for slowing down if you're carrying it. So my “7” means I could carry 35# without slowing down. That's a little more accurate. I take another step loss at 10x. Again, reasonably accurate. Of course I had to go one step further – what about weight. The CHARACTER's weight. So Alexis has a chart for that and I'm using it. Seems to mesh nicely with the variant rule. Not a fan with how Beyond tracks this though, so I've put together my own spreadsheet. Each character gets a tab. I plug in their weight and STR and list their inventory along with weight (and condition.) Between each session I update it to keep it close. ALSO use this sheet to track the condition of equipment: checks after every 3 hours in a dungeon, 3 days on the trail and the 1^st of every month. Whole thing takes less than 5 minutes. Done.

Which brings me to eating. Sustenance. And travel. And encumbrance. And HERE is where I go down the rabbit hole and over the edge. I'll skip a lot of the failed attempts and see if I can get to where I am – and then maybe where I WANT to be.

1. Characters eat. They consume calories. I use https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/bmr-harris-benedict-equation to calculate the daily expenditure.

2. Rations? Hard tack and jerkey? No thanks. I wanna dive down the rat hole of nutrition! Five

   catagories of food: protied, carbs, fruits/veggies/nuts, dairy, salt/spices/stuff

3. Where does it come from? Town? Hunting? Foraging?

Whatever I do it's gonna be on a spreadsheet. Crunch a LOT of numbers in short order.

<a day later>

Spent quite a few hours reading RAW and variants and AU and dozens of homebrews. And I'm back at the point of beginning. The above stuff is easy, fun and playable. The mechanic lends itself to game play. Player agency matters. Input counts. But I still need a mechanic that doesn't take forever. The fact that my party just finished a long cross-country journey in February may have something to do with my sudden interest in fixing this! No game in season and limited plants to forage.

So how about this. Using all the stuff mentioned above we determine how many pounds of food per day the party needs. My current party requires 56 pounds, so we'll round that up to 60. At the beginning of the journey we set a die with the “6” face showing <edit to add: this number is 1 for each load bearing party member). Each day it resets one lower. When it gets to 0 starvation sets in. In the following we'll refer to the face of the die as “X”.

1. <edit to alter: this only applies if 1/2 X is greater than 1/2 the party)  X is added to the negative repercussions already effecting movement rate, so as food is consumed the MR increases.

2. X is not reduced IF the party passes through a civilized area where food may be purchased although this only adds 1 to X.

3. If the party allows for ½ a day of foraging and the result is <5 pounds the die moves as normal. If between 5 and 15 pounds there is no movement for that day and if more than 15 it increases one.

4. If the party allows a day for hunting and the hunter brings back <4 pounds the die moves as normal, if between 4 and 16 pounds there is no movement. None can be used the next day.

5. Harvested meat counted the same as #4

Spreadsheet calculates lifestyle expenses for days in town and food cost for six days of food plus whatever days are added during the trip via purchases.

I actually think this might work!