How many miles can one travel in a day?

[Embermage]

30 is the upper limit for sustained travel. Push yourself much harder than that and you won't be able to move the next day.

Did a 30 mile march years ago in the army. That's with a 30 lb. pack, helmet and weapon, taking a short (10-20 minute) rest every 2 hours.

 

[cmrscorpio]

I agree with most of the above posters: average 1 mile/hour of walking over the course of a day over easy terrain. Sure, the average person's walking speed over even ground is more like 3 mph, give or take. However, that is not usually a sustained speed over the coarse of a day. Keeping that pace for an entire day, even for someone reasonably fit and unencumbered, would be very strenuous.

And, let's face it, adventurers aren't usually known for having fancy-schmancy roads leading them where they need to go.

 

[GreyLord]

I'd wager the average person can walk a mile in an hour. So, presuming an 8 hour rest, that's 16 hours of walk-time. So, 16 miles.

A party, due to the nature of a group, would probably go slower, so maybe 12 miles(round down to multiples of 5 for easy math).

Depending on the harshness of terrain, even less. The more extreme, the shorter the distance they can travel.

You guys are frikken joking, are WAAAAAY out of shape!!!

In the woods, with undergrowth, it MIGHT be one mile an hour, MORE likely 2 miles an hour.

If it's relatively clear...or on a trail it's 4 miles an hour...3 miles if I'm with slowpokes.

Considering adventurers would HOPEFULLY be in better shape then I am even...I'd say at leat 40 miles a day with a 10 hour day (they want to get someplace). However if we say they only rest for 8 hours (we can even say 12 hours so they have time to set up camp and such) that's still somewhere between 36-48 miles.

PS: And yes, that IS sustained. For short bursts I have friends that will run or jog and that speeds it up to 5 or 6 miles an hour (my dad is insane). The actual runners do far more...but they aren't burdened by backpacks either when they do their little marathons).

PPS: From the responses I take it that NONE of the responders are actually backpackers? If I had a group that went that slow and weren't a bunch of kids...I'd never go on another backpacking trip with them...maybe a slow camping trip but not a serious hike...we'd never finish the hikes! Much less the mountain climbing...we'd be lucky to get to the far off mount before we'd have to turn back because we ran out of time!

 

[delericho]

The real-world answer is probably about 24 miles per day, assuming decent terrain and light encumberance.

The game-world answer should probably be "as far as the plot demands".

Seriously, you could probably do a lot worse than use a hex overlay, neglect to put a detailed scale on either the hexes or the map itself, and rule that the party can cover 1, 2 or 3 hexes per day (modified by terrain). It's not even as if most of your players will have the basis to understand whether your figures are right or not - the car turns what was once a day's journey into a minor inconvenience.

 

[Someone]

Now that I think on it, I remember watching in TV some news about illegal mines in Congo (denouncing guerillas, human rights abuses, corruption, you name it). The point is that the porters that transported the mineral did, and I suppose continue doing, more 30 miles of mountainous jungle trek in less than two days, with loads that exceeded 100 lbs.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

One mile an hour is slow, I am considered a slow walker but one mile an hour is really slow.
I would say that off road but not too rugged terrain 3 mph and less in rugged terrain. If one has to forage they one will walk a lot more but most of that will be foraging.
FYI, old folks around here that walked cattle to the fair reckoned 4 hours walk to a Tralee about 16 miles and cows are slow.
Davout marched his corp (circa 30,000 men) from Viennia to Austerlitz in about 48 hours, that is 70 miles.
I platoon of the Irish Army marched 80 miiles in a day in the nineteen forties I remember talking to an old farmer from Cavan when I was in hopsital about it, turned out he was one of the guys that did.
So on roads experienced and fit walkers would easily do 4 mph and could push themselves to more.

 

[Rel]

When I was 14 years old I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail. I carried a 40 pound backpack (probably about 1/3 of my total body weight) every day. The shortest day we did was 10 miles. The longest was 17 miles. That was on a trail but one that was somewhat narrow and certainly steep in many places (this is in the mountains after all).

I would imagine that hearty adults, for whom walking is their principal mode of travel, could manage 25 miles a day (to pick a nice round number) without great difficulty, even in moderate terrain.

It is probably fair to mention that, at age 14, we were only mildly concerned about being ambushed by Orcs.

 

[cthulhudarren]

Recent experience with walking my dog has taught me that around 3.5 MPH is a moderate effort. This is unencumbered, not preparing for ambush, on a mostly flat path. Modify any of these parameters and difficulty would make it an enough of an effort that going faster would leave persons in some state of fatigue.

We ought to hammer out some tables here, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we can never agree to anything.

 

[Filcher]

You guys are frikken joking, are WAAAAAY out of shape!!!

In the woods, with undergrowth, it MIGHT be one mile an hour, MORE likely 2 miles an hour.

If it's relatively clear...or on a trail it's 4 miles an hour...3 miles if I'm with slowpokes.

PPS: From the responses I take it that NONE of the responders are actually backpackers? If I had a group that went that slow and weren't a bunch of kids...I'd never go on another backpacking trip with them...maybe a slow camping trip but not a serious hike...we'd never finish the hikes! Much less the mountain climbing...we'd be lucky to get to the far off mount before we'd have to turn back because we ran out of time!

Sure. I've done 24 miles in a day, in the Rockies, with a full backpack. But if I was carrying armor, weapons, and camping supplies that weren't made out of ultra light materials? No way.

Let alone healing up from that arrow the orc put in me last week.

 

[Wik]

Sure. I've done 24 miles in a day, in the Rockies, with a full backpack. But if I was carrying armor, weapons, and camping supplies that weren't made out of ultra light materials? No way.

Let alone healing up from that arrow the orc put in me last week.

Exactly. Not to mention that when you're doing 24 mile a day in the Rockies, you're mostly just walking. Unless the PCs are in a rush, are they going to be full-focused on power-walking? Probably not - they'll have conversations, they'll stop to ask travellers for directions or news, and so on.

AS I mentioned upthread, the average time to walk the West Coast Trail is approximately seven days. This is a trail for experienced hikers only - you're not allowed on the thing if you've never done a trail before. It is often voted the #1 trail in the world. It's approximately 75 miles long - meaning an experienced hiker does approximately only 10 miles a day. I've been on similar trails on this island, and I can tell you why - narrow trails, steep switchbacks, muddy trails, waiting out tidal zones, broken bridges, weather delays, animal encounters, and more.

In day to day life, I would make my walk to an old job in approximately 35 minutes. I am a super fast walker. Google maps says this walk should take an hour, and that the total distance walked is 4.1 km. This is all through urban terrain.

Google thinks the average person walks about 4 km an hour. And google is never wrong.