D&D General Travel In Medieval Europe

[Dioltach]

As to places to stop for the night, remember that a healthy adult can comfortable walk between 4 and 5 miles per hour without significant fatigue, and a couple mph more if they don’t mind being well worn by days end. (Faster at a forced march, but that isn’t any fun) Then figure on actual roads you want to be able to stop every night when traveling by foot.

Gotta take terrain and quality of roads into account to get distance from that.

That seems a bit optimistic. As far as I know (and the general consensus in every hiking guide I've ever read and every hiking forum I've ever frequented), about 5 kilometres per hour is a comfortable pace for walking long distances over relatively easy terrain. About 3-4km per hour is usual as the going gets tougher.

 

[Oofta]

That seems a bit optimistic. As far as I know (and the general consensus in every hiking guide I've ever read and every hiking forum I've ever frequented), about 5 kilometres per hour is a comfortable pace for walking long distances over relatively easy terrain. About 3-4km per hour is usual as the going gets tougher.

If you're in shape (unlike us modern couch potatoes) I'd say 10-15 miles in a day with gear is reasonable. I've done 20, but that's pushing it, especially depending on terrain and time of year.

Assuming carrying gear and whatnot of course.

 

[Cruentus]

If you're in shape (unlike us modern couch potatoes) I'd say 10-15 miles in a day with gear is reasonable. I've done 20, but that's pushing it, especially depending on terrain and time of year.

Assuming carrying gear and whatnot of course.

And good footwear... I do about 4.5 miles per day, which I do in about 90 minutes walking. But that is the rate of this north american unladen geek listening to a podcast.

I could probably go faster, but it would probably vary if I had to walk a full 20 miles from one place to another (some would be quicker and some would be slower paced).

There'd be a huge difference in rate between an adventuring party and a farmer with his cart and donkey, as others have mentioned, taking into account road (or not) conditions, terrain, hills, etc.

 

[Ixal]

One of the things that is never really clear, either in history or in RPG books, specifically around worldbuilding is: how far apart should someone travel and expect to run into a village or town?

I've variously seen "within a days walk", but what would that mean for realistic worldbuilding? Every 20 miles or so there would be another village or hamlet? In every direction? Or would it make sense to have "roads" or travelled areas through a kingdom, to the frontier, where there might be an Inn, or a small village, until one reaches the frontier?

So if you followed the roads from the capital to the frontier, you could travel fairly "safely" and have somewhere to stop every day?

Conversely, if you walked "cross country" in any kingdom (RPG or historical), you might not run into someone or a town ever... ?

Yes. Not even 20 miles. Basically all land around any major city is full of farms and once you get too far from the city that farmers won't be able to go to their fields, work and come back within a single day you found a village and repeat the process. There wouldn't be any wilderness around big cities.
Whatever land is fertile is farmed and there is a village within a few miles.

Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City

This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city, town or castle set out all alone in the midd…

acoup.blog

 

[MGibster]

That seems a bit optimistic. As far as I know (and the general consensus in every hiking guide I've ever read and every hiking forum I've ever frequented), about 5 kilometres per hour is a comfortable pace for walking long distances over relatively easy terrain. About 3-4km per hour is usual as the going gets tougher.

I walk anywhere between 3-7 miles each day (I don't know what a kilometer is), at an average pace of a little over 3 freedom units per hour. I'm in my mid 40s, but I'm unemcumbered, walking on paved roads, am well fed, well watered, and in good health. I also enjoy hiking, and I'm typically lightly encumbered on trails of various difficulty, well fed, well watered, and in good health, and my pace is typically around 3 freedom units per hour, but that's with me pushing it a little to maintain that pace. If the terrain is particularly rocky or hilly then my pace goes down.

 

[Faolyn]

It's generally played down to avoid negative interaction with the wide variety of real world beliefs players have.

Yeah, but D&D didn't have much in the way of pilgrims even in Ye Olden Days when a large number of real world, still-worshiped gods were given full stats in published books.

I'm guessing it's because D&D rarely did anything with holy sites, so there's few place to have a pilgrimage to. Gods sometimes manifest in D&D, but the places they manifest in are considered adventure locals, not holy lands.

 

[Faolyn]

Interesting watch. But, his very first line does kinda put it in perspective. If 95% of the population are farmers, then 95% of your population isn't traveling all that much because it's kinda a bad thing to let all your chickens die so you could spend the weekend in the city.

Presumably each farm has numerous people working on it--entire families, hired hands, seasonal laborers, etc.--which means that a couple of people from the farm can go to spend the weekend in the city while the rest take care of the chickens.

 

[Tonguez]

Things like pilgrimages also give clerics and paladins a very handy role for adventure as escorts

Absolutely imc Clerics are all Temple Knights* - it explains why the games religious functionaries are all armour wearing warriors blessed with spell casting, they are warriors trained to protect the clergy, faithful and pilgrims from attack both physical and supernatural.

* (I use Templars imc but realise that might be controversial)

 

[Tonguez]

One of the things that is never really clear, either in history or in RPG books, specifically around worldbuilding is: how far apart should someone travel and expect to run into a village or town?

I've variously seen "within a days walk", but what would that mean for realistic worldbuilding? Every 20 miles or so there would be another village or hamlet? In every direction? Or would it make sense to have "roads" or travelled areas through a kingdom, to the frontier, where there might be an Inn, or a small village, until one reaches the frontier?

So if you followed the roads from the capital to the frontier, you could travel fairly "safely" and have somewhere to stop every day?

Conversely, if you walked "cross country" in any kingdom (RPG or historical), you might not run into someone or a town ever... ?

The rule of thumb is around 3- 5 miles between farming hamlets and 10 miles between towns. Noting that for settled cities there might be 10 - 20 small hamlets and homesteads scattered around it

wilderness areas the gap between hamlets gets bigger but still 10 miles is rule of thumb for market towns, (some US towns stretch to 20 mile gaps)

How did payment work on these sorts of journeys? Did a traveller start out carrying all the coin they'd expect they'd need? Or was trade (for product or work) a common arrangement when paying for food, accommodation, and/or transport? Or maybe a traveller generally expected to stop here and there for a while to earn more money to continue their trip?

the Knights Templars was first created because of lots of thieves plaguing the Pilgrimages who initially had to carry their gold with them. Some would work on the journey or beg for alms.
Later the Knights Templar created banking by storing pilgrims gold and issuing credit notes that could be traded and redeemed with the church on arrival at the destination site

 

[Faolyn]

Without trade you can basically forget making bronze. Steel requires tons of wood which is quickly exhausted when not imported from elsewhere as the food requirements of cities means nearly all space around it is farmed. Making good leather required several chemicals and just look at what materials a wizard needs for all his spells.
If travel was dangerous next to nothing in the FR would work as it is described it would.

Except... that for the most part, D&D is multi-racial and magical. You don't need a ton of wood to make steel. You need a treaty with the local dwarfs (who mine coal), the elves (who magically maintain a section of forest to produce fast-growing wood, which they sell to others in order to keep their Soul Forests free from interference from loggers), or the gnomes (and use their weird magitech to tame magma or drill for oil). You don't actually need a lot of distantly-sourced chemicals to tan leather. Fish oils, butter, animal fats, animal brains, and plants with high levels of tannins can all be used. And in a world with nature magic, it could literally be a local nature priest's duties to go around to each farm (or, at least each farm in good standing with the church) and cast plant growth once a year (or perhaps a traveling bard casts it in exchange for room and board, or it's cast by a friendly druid).