Why is Travel Always Ignored? #
This is the reason I wanted to write about this topic. I love backpacking and exploring the natural world, but despite travel and journeying being core components of the fantasy genre which so many tabletop RPGs are inspired by, almost none of them bother to give it any amount of real estate in their rules. They have vast numbers of pages dedicated to combat and spells, but a measly three or four pages for travel, if you’re lucky. Time to talk about it.
The Systems #
The list below constitutes the games that I have played and want to comment on. I’ve ordered them in terms of how much I have played them, from most to least.
- Dungeons & Dragon’s 5th Edition
- The One Ring 2nd Edition
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Way #
Of the two D&D systems here, 5th Edition definitely has the least going for it in this aspect. There are a monstrous number of catastrophically devastating abilities and spells that turn this aspect of the game into a skipped cutscene. I have never understood the reasoning behind it.
For example, look at the Ranger. He’s supposed to be great in the wilderness, where he thrives and many of his abilities come into play (many of them exclusively doing so in the wilderness). However, many of his abilities simply disable the challenges he would be good at and have fun finding solutions for, mindlessly so. Food problems? Goodberry. Navigating the wilderness? You never get lost. You get the idea.
I had a very long campaign recently that had a strong exploration/travel focus, and these abilities and more were the worst, turning what could have been fun gameplay segments into fast travel. I wanted to try using the sparse exploration rules provided, but the game just puts up safeguards as if the designers knew those systems sucked anyways.
AD&D 2nd Edition Contrast #
Admittedly, I have played this game the least of the three. However, in the short time I have played it thus far, I have found it to have a lot less of the issues 5th Edition has at the early levels, and it has far more tools for the game master to use. The tables are fun to play with and the resource management is much better in this game overall, beyond just the travel and exploration part of it.
It isn’t perfect, however. As written, it never seems to me to have more than one or maybe two encounters before the party can rest unless you mess with it, meaning the players are at full power for every wilderness encounter. But this is a huge improvement from 5th Edition (or I guess 5th Edition is a huge deterioration)
I would like to try this system more. Of course, it is obviously more designed for dungeons and so I can’t bemoan the lack of exploration rules too much here. The “dungeon” focus in 5th Edition is much more subdued and so I feel fine to criticize it more though.
The One Ring #
This is the newest system to me, but I have very quickly been taken by it, and travel/exploration is one of those reasons. No other tabletop game I’ve played does as good of a job at getting the rigor of journeying across untracked wilderness across to the players than this one.
In D&D, players don’t even think about how hard it is to travel countless miles for days on end, on foot. While carrying hoards of treasure. In full plate armor. The One Ring makes you feel it in the mechanics, which is the one place nobody can ignore it. In this system, you gain Fatigue as you travel around, the amount depending on your successfullness in the journey and what happens, etc. Fatigue mechanically causes you to enter a weary state much more quickly, where your dice rolls become significantly worse.
Fatigue cannot be removed until you can rest in a “safe and sheltered refuge (ie not “on the road”). This is great because it really brings in an element of planning routes, finding safe places to rest, worrying about spending time wandering about looking for a hidden place, and so forth. It’s a fantastic blend of mechanics and narrative.
The company is chasing a pack of orcs across the wilderness. They might be able to catch them if they continue without rest, but will they be too fatigued to effectively face them if they do? Is it better if they risk the orcs reaching a fortified position but rest to ensure they are well-rested? In most RPGs, both sound logical, but really there is no mechanical downside to rushing unless the gamemaster arbitrarily imposes one. In The One Ring, the game was designed around that, and it shows.
The Bottom Line #
This is starting to read as if it is a pitch for The One Ring to absolutely no one at all, so I’m going to close it off with this; whether it is the travel system, the combat system or anything else, these types of games strongly benefit from connecting the mechanics to what is going on. It adds immersion, it adds player decisions, and it just makes it more engaging.
Until next time.
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