d6 | Wilderness Turns Hazard Die Result |
---|---|
1 | Encounter. Roll on the wandering monster table, applying any Scout bonuses. No more than two in a 24-hour period, unless the area is particularly dangerous. |
2 | Fatigue. Each character must consume a ration and rest for the next wilderness turn or suffer a penalty of -1 to hit and damage rolls until they have rested for one full day. (Ignore one of these rolls each day, as the characters must rest each night anyway.) |
3 | Weather. The weather shifts. Roll 2d6 and consult the table below. |
4 | Discovery. Discover a clue to a hidden feature of the current hex. |
5 | Omen. Spoor or clue regarding the next encounter (roll on the wandering monster table and take note of the result for the next 1 on the die). This is independent of a Scout’s abilities. |
6 | Lost. Roll to determine if the party has become lost, adding appropriate Guide modifiers as necessary. |
I’ve been unsatisfied for a little while about how I do overland travel, especially since I’ve got an open table hexcrawl top-secret idea coming up.
A core principle I abide by is that players should be making meaningful choices. Travel as-written in 5e doesn’t really incorporate that. It’s just a random chance of a random encounter. I’ve been digging into OSE, a clone of B/X D&D, and it’s much the same there.
Roll a die to see if you get lost. Roll a die for a random encounter. Tick off a box. Next!
Meh.
So I did some reading and mashing and tweaking and came up with the following. “Came up with” is a super loose term—very little here is of my own original creation, and I’ve included a list of reference links at the bottom. But it could be useful to someone else to have them put together like this so … here we are with a 2500-word post. Let me know what you think!
Step 1: Party decides course of travel & roles/activities
Travel—options for things to do during travel. Retainers can take these roles, and each character in the party can take only one role:
Forager: Each forager has a 1-in-6 chance of finding enough food for 1d6 humans during the day’s travel (Rangers & Barbarians have a 2-in-6 chance). Each additional forager increases this chance by 1, to a maximum of 5-in-6.
Guide: In the trackless wilderness, the characters have a chance of being lost (see table below). Each guide decreases this chance by 1, and a map decreases this chance by 1. Navigation checks of this sort are not needed when heading towards a large visible landmark, moving along a coast, river, or road, or any other time the referee deems that the direction of travel is obvious. A party with a druid has only a 1-in-6 chance of getting lost in woodlands.
Guard: In the wilderness, the characters have a 4-in-6 chance of being surprised during an encounter. Each guard reduces this chance by 1, to a minimum of 1-in-6.
Scout: The first time a particular Encounter is drawn, a scout has a 1-in-6 chance of spotting spoor instead of encountering the creature. Each additional scout increases this chance by 1. Elves have sharp eyes and increase this chance by 1. Spoor is a sign that this creature is near - a howl in the woods, claw marks on trees, scat on the trail. Successfully spotting spoor allows the PCs to avoid the creature this time. If this Encounter entry is drawn again, the characters will definitely encounter the creature regardless of how many scouts are in the party.
Cartographer: Creates a map as the characters travel, which can be useful in future adventures (see Guide above).
Watch—cannot travel during that watch (4 hrs):
Explore: Explore the hex and uncover any hidden features it might have.
Track: Make a simple tracking roll (1d6) to detect tracks of monsters in the area and follow them back to their lair (if one exists). Humans are successful on a 1. Elves and Halflings are successful on a 1-2. Rangers and Hunters can roll against their “Tracking” ability. If tracking is successful, roll for Monster type. Remember when rolling for Number Appearing to use the Lair value. Once all monsters in a lair are destroyed, the hex is deemed “Cleared” and can be highlighted with a green border. This hex is now safer to traverse. If an encounter is rolled in a cleared hex, there is a 3-in-6 chance of the encounter simply not happening at all. And a hex that is surrounded by cleared hexes will not contain any wandering monsters. Any hex containing an existing town is considered cleared.
Day—takes a day, during which the party cannot travel:
Scour: A party can spend an entire day scouring the hex for monster lairs and will find any if they exist. Hazard dice are rolled as usual.
Hunt: A hunter has a 1-in-6 chance to find 2d4 rations of food in the wild. Each additional hunter increases this chance by 1, up to a maximum of 3-in-6. A Barbarian or Ranger has a 5-in-6 chance. Especially well-stocked hunting grounds also increases this chance by +1-3. Hazard dice are rolled as usual.
Rest: Characters must rest for one day per six days of travel. If characters press on without resting, they suffer a penalty of -1 to hit and damage rolls until they have rested for one full day. Only hazard dice are rolled, ignoring results of 2, 4, and 6.
Cook (can be done only during a Rest): A cook with cooking gear has a 1-in-6 chance of providing an additional +1d3 HP recovered during a day’s rest. Each additional item increases this chance by 1: access to fresh water, rare herbs, and spices. Halflings are expert cooks and increase this chance by 1.
Step 2: Roll Hazard Dice for the day
Roll 6d6—each die represents one four-hour watch/wilderness turn over 24 hours. Apply the results from the table below:
(I was today days old when I discovered Substack doesn’t do tables, and that’s kinda poo, so I popped it into a gist instead. It won’t work on email, which is annoying, and it ain’t purty, but it’s the best I could do…)
Encounter
If you roll a 1 for a random encounter, roll on the following table. This one uses OSE’s Advanced Referee’s manual, but you can easily substitute any tables. The key idea is that you have a small stable of territory encounters you can slot in to show your players where they are, but you don’t need to come up with an entire table’s worth of stuff. They don’t need to all be combat!
2d6 | Wandering Monsters (Ignore Dragon results on Terrain Tables - pg. 134) If not in territory, roll as usual on terrain tables. |
---|---|
2 | Roll a Dragon |
3 | [Terrain Table 1] |
4 | [Terrain Table 2] |
5 | [Terrain Table 3] |
6 | Territory |
7 | Territory |
8 | Territory |
9 | [Terrain Table 4] |
10 | [Terrain Table 5] |
11 | [Terrain Table 6] |
12 | [Terrain Table 7] |
What are the monsters doing? To keep things fresh, roll a d100 for intelligent creatures (rerolling on 90-100), and a d12 for animal creatures.
1-3 | 1 Lost | 46-48 | Building a camp |
4-6 | 2 Hurt | 49-51 | Demolishing |
7-9 | 3 Trapped | 52-54 | Doing drugs or drinking |
10-12 | 4 Sleeping | 55-57 | Artistic pursuits |
13-15 | 5 Eating | 58-60 | Spying |
16-18 | 6 Sick | 61-63 | Committing a crime |
19-21 | 7 Tracking prey | 64-66 | Searching |
22-24 | 8 Lying in ambush | 67-69 | Religious ritual |
25-27 | 9 Mating behavior | 70-72 | Setting, putting out, or fleeing a fire |
28-30 | 10 Starving | 73-75 | Weeping |
31-33 | 11 Returning home | 76-78 | Excreting |
34-35 | 12 Fleeing | 79-81 | Bathing |
36-38 | Plotting | 82-84 | Socializing |
39-41 | Holding captives | 85-87 | Gloating |
42-45 | Scavenging | 88-90 | Something that isn’t on this table |
Weather
2d6 | Spring | Summer | Autumn | Winter |
---|---|---|---|---|
10 | Hot, sunny, humid | Sweltering, sunny | Hot, clear, breezy | Chilly, sunny, breezy |
9 | Warm, hazy, humid | Hot, thunderheads, showers, stormy | Warm, clear, breezy | Cold, clear, windy |
8 | Warm, clear, breezy | Hot, hazy, humid | Warm, hazy, humid | Cold, hazy, foggy |
7 (reset) | Mild, sunny, breezy | Hot, clear, breezy | Mild, hazy, foggy | Cold, cloudy, snowflakes, breezy |
6 | Mild, clear, windy | Warm, thunderheads, humid | Mild, cloudy, showers, breezy | Cold, cloudy, snowy, breezy |
5 | Mild, overcast, drizzle | Warm, sunny, humid | Chilly, clear, windy | Cold, overcast, snowflakes |
4 (reset) | Mild, overcast, showers | Warm, clear | Chilly, hazy, foggy | Cold, overcast, snowflakes, windy |
3 | Chilly, cloudy, downpour, windy | Mild, hazy, humid | Chilly, cloudy, showers, windy | Frigid, cloudy, snowy, breezy |
2 | Chilly, cloudy, downpour, breezy | Mild, sunny, breezy | Chilly, overcast, snowflakes, breezy | Frigid, cloudy, snowy, windy |
1 | Cold, thunderheads, downpour, stormy | Mild, clear, windy | Cold, thunderheads, snowy, stormy | Frigid, thunderheads, hail, stormy |
Roll two dice of different colors, say red and blue. Roll both dice. You will only use the lower result. In this table, red means climb the table (hotter), blue means descend the table (colder). Using the lower result, move that many spaces on the table. If both dice tie, stay where you are. If you reach the end of the table, reset to the closest position marked “reset” and keep counting (if necessary). You can use 2d4 to have the weather move more slowly, or 2d8 if you want bigger swings.
Here’s what the weather keywords mean:
Breezy—Light winds. | Humid—Air laden with moisture, stifling. |
Chilly—Cool days and freezing nights. | Mild—Agreeable temperatures all day, chilly nights. |
Clear—Very few clouds in the sky, good visibility. | Overcast—Morning and evening clouds, clear afternoons. |
Cloudy—Heavy cloud cover, darkened skies. | Showers—Occasional sprinkles, light rain, and brief downpours. |
Cold—Freezing days and murderously cold nights. | Snowflakes—Light snow, reduced visibility. |
Downpour—Heavy, steady rain, minimal visibility. | Snowy—Heavy, steady snowfall, minimal visibility. |
Drizzle—Fine misting rain, poor visibility. | Stormy—Driving, unpredictable winds. |
Foggy—Low-level clouds create blinding conditions. | Sunny—Cloudless skies, excellent visibility. |
Frigid—Deathly cold and icy at all hours, arctic. | Sweltering—Intolerably hot days and warm nights. |
Hail—Snow and small chunks of ice or freezing rain. | Thunderheads—Dense dark clouds, often lightning. |
Hazy—Poor visibility owing to dust, smoke, or humidity. | Warm—Uncomfortably warm days, pleasant nights. |
Hot—Very warm days, warm nights. | Windy—Strong, steady winds ideal for sailing. |
Lost?
Roll on this table to find out:
Losing Direction | Roll 1d6 |
---|---|
Clear, grasslands | 2-in-6 |
Barren, hills, mountains, woods | 4-in-6 |
Desert, jungle, swamp | 5-in-6 |
If the party is in fact lost, roll the d6 again. On a 1-3, the party veers to the left, on a 4-6, the party veers to the right. Either way, they exit out of a hex one face to the rolled direction from their intended route (or corner, if they intended to exit from a corner). How do they get unlost? I’m thinking they realize by running into a landmark, by realizing they ought to be somewhere by now, or by rolling another 6.
Step 3: Description
Arrange the dice in an order that makes sense and describe the regions passed through and any sites of interest, asking players for their actions as required.
Step 4: End of day
Update time records and current weather. Roll foraging checks. Check off rations, spell durations, etc. Rest. Rinse. Repeat.
In Practice
Just for funsies, let’s bust out some dice and see what this process looks like in practice!
Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave (along with their three retainers Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon) are trekking across some thick forested wilderness in the middle of spring. Yesterday was mild, clear, and windy (weather 6). As the DM, we know that they’re headed smack through some giant spider territory today.
While the party discusses roles, we roll a quick 6d6 and get: 5,1,3,2,4,1. (For the record, I am actually rolling dice for all these.) This means two encounters, one fatigue, one omen, a change of weather, and a discovery.
Omens & Encounters
Let’s figure out the omen and encounters first. Roll 2d6 twice, and we get, say, a territory encounter and a basilisk. Sweet. Our omen can hint at both: a couple petrified stone spiders, maybe. So that’s taken care of. A couple d12s to see what they’re up to, and we decide that the spiders are eating (maybe rolling up a full-sized deer that got caught?) and the basilisk is returning home. Heh.
Weather
Another 2d6 roll shows a 5 on the blue die and a 2 on the red die, so we go up two steps to 8 on the table: warm, clear, and breezy today.
Discovery
Maybe in one of the hexes en route sits an ancient ivy-encrusted stone archway in a clearing with barely legible Elvish runes carved in it. Who knows what it does?
Fatigue
The night’s normal rest, easy peasy.
Meanwhile, the party has decided their roles for the day as follows:
Guide: Alice and Gideon
Guard: Bob and Carol
Scout: Ephraim and Frank
Cartographer: Dave
We roll a quick 2d6 for the spider encounter (one for each scout), and another 2d6 for the basilisk encounter, but no 1s show, so the one stone spider omen is all the official advance warning the party will get. Because of the two guards, the characters will have a 2-in-6 chance of being surprised for both of those encounters.
We rearrange the dice to tell the story: 3 (weather change), 1 (spiders eating lunch), 4 (archway in a clearing), 5 (stone spiders *furious foreshadowing*), 1 (basilisk encounter as they accidentally set up camp in its lair … whoops!), 2 (night’s rest).
“The day dawns a little warmer than yesterday as you break camp and head deeper into the woods. The silent forest around you would be almost stifling as the sun climbs into the sky, if not for a cool breeze that whispers among the trees. After a few hours’ travel…”
You get the idea. Maybe after the giant spider encounter, the players decide to track down their lair and clear it out. Maybe they decide to scour the land around the archway to see if there’s an ancient, treasure-filled temple or something. And if that happens, well, we’ll just have to work our usual magic! The beauty of this that the one watch/four hours their exploration takes doesn’t change anything we rolled on the back end. All it would affect is how far they travel that day.
At the end of the day, we take a note on our map of where the party ends up, and that (thanks to Dave the Cartographer’s valiant work) those hexes are mapped—there’ll be a bonus to not getting lost the next time the party comes through. If you want to get real finicky, you make a note that Dave has the map. Just in case Dave and his map get incinerated. YOU NEVER KNOW. Besides, few things unnerve players more than asking them where, precisely, they’re storing a particular piece of equipment.
I’ve not had a chance to extensively play with this yet, and I don’t quite know how well it flows behind the screen. I’d expect if you have the weather tables are handy, your random encounter tables are quick and easy to roll on (I do adore OSE’s online ones!), and you’ve got a halfway decent hex map, it oughta go pretty smoothly, especially if you don’t wait for the players to decide their roles before you start throwing plastic. I’m sure I shall tweak it as I use it.
I realize I just dumped a *MASSIVE* wall of text on you, far more than I usually do, but … Merry Christmas?
Let me know what you think!
References/Sources/Inspiration/The people who actually came up with all the good ideas here:
https://riseupcomus.blogspot.com/2021/09/in-search-of-better-travel-rules.html
https://www.paperspencils.com/structuring-encounter-tables-amended-restated/
https://vilecultofshapes.blogspot.com/2022/12/hexcrawling-procedures-simple-guide.html
https://spellsandsteel.blogspot.com/2012/09/dm-tool-random-terrain-features.html
https://mindstorm.blot.im/ladder-tables
https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/tempus-fudge-it
https://www.basicfantasy.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4183
http://www.windsofchaos.com/wp-content/uploads/encroachment/empire-weather.pdf