Hey — what’s below is still in testing, but, I wanted to share it with you!

Design goals:

• Players make high level decisions two times each day: Travel, or Explore. For long journeys, the assumption is travel twice per day.
• Players intuitively understand what the possible outcomes of their choices are.
• No “nested” rolls — Players leading the navigation do not have to wait for other players to succeed/fail to determine if they have advantage, etc.
• Quick random encounter determination that includes multiple encounters per day and mixes of encounters and monsters. 

Overview

There are three turns each game day. The first two turns are active: the party can choose either a Travel Turn or an Explore Turn. The third turn is a rest turn. Roll on the random encounter table once the parameters of the turn are declared. But first, a few words on the random encounter table!

This random encounter system uses a dXY table. I first learned about these as d66 tables (I think from Web DM?) , but the idea is you roll two dice, and the first determines the row to reference, and the second determines the column. Read the dice in the order they lay in the rolling area.

Roughly, I have it set up so that higher-numbered rows correspond to more monster encounters, and higher-numbered columns correspond to more location encounters.

Here’s a first draft of a table, I haven’t fine tuned encounter probabilities… this just feels like its in the ballpark for now. Horned faces are monster encounters. Warning signs indicate that is more likely to be tracks, or some monster sign instead of an encounter. Red Torii gates indicate that a hidden location is found. If multiple symbols are appearing, it is DM discretion as to how to combine them for the day. That is, a monster might be encountered at the location, or on the way to it, or ambush them after they’ve spent some time there.

If the party chooses a Travel turn, they must do 2 things:

• Declare a navigator that will make a wisdom/intelligence (survival) check based on a DC for the circumstances (environment, weather, etc)
• Declare travel modes. Choices include:
  • 1/2 Speed & Stealthy
  • 1/2 Speed and look for hidden locations along the way
  • Normal Speed
  • 3/2 Speed & Higher Monster Encounter odds.

Distance Travelled in one turn is: 4 x Speed /10 x Speed Factor x Environment Factor, in miles, or it is easier to just assume the default is 12 miles, or one hex, and modify up or down by halves, accordingly. Pull liberally from the Alexandrian Blog, linked below, for environment factors.

Travel Mode

In Travel mode, the default is the d64 section of the encounter table: so d6 for the row, d4 for the column. This is modified based on the choices above:

• If the party chooses the 1/2 speed and stealthy, the row die becomes a d4.
• If they choose 1/2 speed & look for hidden locations, the column die becomes a d6.
• If they choose 3/2 speed, then the row-die becomes a d8.

They can go to 1/4 speed to be stealthy and look for hidden locations, if they are so inclined.

A particularly dangerous area might start with the row-die being a d8 instead of d6, so then the die-size steps up and down accordingly.

In travel mode, the party can also optionally perform other activities like foraging, at a +10 DC penalty.

Navigation Check (Int (Survival) or Wis (Survival))

• DC is set by the environment & weather
• Failing the check by 5 or more: the party veers (per Alexandrian rules, link below) and has an insecure campsite (increase row-die one step during rest).
• Fail the check, but not by 5, the party veers, but the campsite is standard.
• Succeed: navigate in the desired direction, standard campsite.
• Succeed by 5 or more: navigate in the desired direction, secure campsite (decrease row-die by one step during rest).

For navigation checks, I’ll use my “roll with uncertainty” mechanic: The player tells me their stat+skill bonus, and I subtract that from the DC and make a note. The player then rolls four d20s and reads them in whatever order they like. Behind the screen, I roll 1d4 and use that to select which d20 to care about, and see if it is above the number I noted by subtracting the bonus from the DC (this is mathematically equivalent to adding their bonus to the die and comparing to the original DC, just faster for me).

For longer journeys, where we know the travel action will be taken twice (unless a desire to consistently seek secure shelter is expressed), I’ll still use the uncertainty roll, but I’ll use two d4s to choose two different dice, rather than asking the player to roll twice.

Explore Mode

In Explore Mode, the party is focusing their energy on the current area.

The default encounter table is the d68. The party can make the row-die go down a step by accepting a +5 DC penalty to their activity checks (see below).

Characters can split into two groups, if they like, a primary and a secondary. Or they can stay all together as a primary group. Each group focuses on one activity for the turn:

• Finding a secure campsite (Int/Wis)(Survival) – decreases row-die during rest, upon success.
• Foraging / Seeking Materials (Int(Nature)/Wis(Survival)) – upon success, gather the material if it is reasonable to find in this area.
• Look for hidden locations (Wis (Perception)/Int(History)) – upon success, increase the column-die to a d10.
• Look for locations in nearby areas (Wis(Perception)) – upon success, reveal reasonable locations in nearby hexes.

If there is a secondary group that wants to do an activity in parallel with the primary group, they choose a distance penalty. They choose to increase the DC by a fixed amount, and then if there is a random monster encounter in either group, the other group can join after a number of rounds indicated. An encounter check is rolled for each group

+10 to the DC – 0 Rounds (join immediately)
+8 to the DC – join in d4 rounds.
+6 to the DC – join in d6 rounds.
+4 to the DC – join in d8 rounds.
+2 to the DC – join in d10 rounds.
+0 to the DC – join in d20 rounds.

Rest Mode

During resting mode, each character sleeps for 6 contiguous hours. In rest mode, the encounter table default is d64, ignoring locations. If it is a secure campsite, it is d44, or perhaps even no possible monster encounter. If it is an insecure camp, use d84. If a random encounter is generated, roll two d10s, divide by 2 and round up, and for each, count clockwise around the DM screen to randomly choose characters to be awake when it is generated. If it’s the same character, it happens during one of those rarer times when only that character is awake. This one-character scenario is not needed when there is an elf or other character who needs less sleep, pick another character to be awake.

Resources for you

Here’s a PDF that I printed and have attached to my DM screen. The blank space is a space where I’ll put the monster encounters / location encounters if they’re not keyed to hexes.

Here is a PDF that I have printed and laminated so the players can put their minis on it to indicate what actions they’ll take each turn. I use colored glass beads to mark the party choices like speed. The Travel Days section is so that I can say “you think it’ll take about 5 days to get to point B” and put a bead on the 5th square. We can mark progress by moving a different colored class bead along. They’ll know they had bad information / got lost if they don’t reach the destination when the beads meet.

Remarks

So that’s the system. It’s still in testing, so let me know what you think. Below, I include a

What I was using before

I found hand-waving travel to be deeply unsatisfying. I realized that my best stories are when I am surprised too. Random encounters didn’t make sense to me until I realized that they were not intended to be random elements so much as a way of modelling complexity. I know what’s in the forest— I just don’t know where it is at this moment. 

So I discovered the Alexandrian blog. From there, I adopted the idea of 6 turns / day, (“Watches”). I began to roll an encounter check during each watch, 1 = monster. 12 = location encounter. Stealthy pace = 1/2 chance for monster encounter (roll again, monster on 1–6). Exploring pace = double chances (monsters on 1 & 2 / locations on 11 & 12). Too many complicated decisions that were actually calculations during each watch (e.g. do this precise set of party roles in travel to minimize random encounters).

My need for change

When focusing on travelling from point A to point B, dividing the day into 6 four-hour watches started to break down. It allowed players to travel for two watches, and necessitates resting for two or three watches, resting, and then… one watch that players didn’t really feel compelled to use, since the goal was to get to point B, not get distracted along the way.

So that necessitated a change in system to a point crawl system where I used a d20 where I tried to get about the same encounters per day, and have occasional discoverable locations. But I didn’t like having two different systems and two different random encounter systems for travelling through the same area.

For some time, I’ve been using Justin Alexander’s hex crawl system: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl. It got me a long way, and I had fun with it, but it started to break down as I adapted it more toward our style of play, and then really the wheels came off when the party wanted to travel longer distances with a focus in mind, and not stop at every tourist-trap along the way.

Justin Alexander has a separate point crawl mechanic, and suggests stocking the point crawl with your hexcrawl, which makes a lot of sense, but it never really sat well with me switching resolution mechanisms point crawl to hex crawl. And there were too many non-choices — as Justin says, present choices and not calculations, https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43899/roleplaying-games/thinking-about-wilderness-travel. I found that what my players actually wanted was for me to do the calculation for them (after all, I built and tweaked the system), and, well, I was able to speed things up with some default setups, but I was still dissatisfied. The players were definitely passive, but it was also hard for me to skip over.

Aha! Moment

Some time ago, Graham Ward posted a draft for his 100 Dungeons travel system, here’s where he is on that, and it’s definitely worth a read: https://www.darkplane.com/news/2023/12/19/hundred-dungeons-the-wild .

My mind has been on fire ever since.

As I was thinking about my travel system, I had also been hung up on the calculations around long rests. Mainly quick ways to generate who was on watch during a camp encounter. With a party of 5, and all taking 6 contiguous hours of sleep, you can’t have a watch for every hour. It was the kind of problem that, once I paid attention to it, I couldn’t hand-wave it away. You need more like 12 hours of time to sleep a party of 5, see below. If Char E sleeps any sooner than hour 7, and if they’re not staggered in some way, there are many unneeded hours with one person on watch.

Hour	Char A Sleeps	Char B Sleeps	Char C Sleeps	Char D Sleeps	Char E Sleeps
1	x
2	x	x
3	x	x	x
4	x	x	x	x
5	x	x	x	x
6	x	x	x	x
7		x	x	x	x
8			x	x	x
9				x	x
10					x
11					x
12					x

Graham Ward to the rescue. Instead of dividing the day into 4 hour watches like Justin Alexander, he divides a day into three turns, with penalties if you do not take the “Camp” turn after two non-rest turns. He also very wisely divides the actions into two other types: Explore, or Travel. Something about the simplicity of that just really spoke to me… just make a choice: explore or travel. I can explain that to my players easily. Graham has extra skills attached to that, and I think he’s done a great job balancing it. But I don’t want to compel my players to choose actions they’re not really interested in just to fill out the actions for the turn, so I didn’t feel like it would fit ,for me, for my design goal of covering distance travel too.

Thanks, Graham… you got me unstuck on this one!