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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 9343420" data-attributes="member: 3586">With Uncharted Journeys, it presumes you make a journey in which - depending on length - 1 to 4 encounters take place. (Perhaps more, but unlikely). The way it is written is for journeys where the starting and end point are known, so it doesn't adapt that well to journeys of exploration (a big feature of hexcrawls and similar D&D scenarios).This is not surprising - the journeys in The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are well understood as having starting and ending points. For most of the journeys I was creating, this averaged at 2 encounters. After randomly rolling, one of them was a Place to Rest (so a chance to take a long rest), the other was an encounter which - if failed - would cost the party a hit die. Given that you expect parties to take a long rest after a journey of a week or more, this seems underwhelming."Oh, that's one journey" you might say... but it's a pattern that repeated again and again. Very rarely would you have a journey that actually challenged the players, mostly they ended up with slight inconveniences. (The use of Exhaustion also felt often like a sledgehammer; that is not a good 5E mechanic). When I started adjusting the system to involve more combats, things came to life. But that's not in the system as written - very few encounters lead to the possibility of combat.I realised that for the system to even begin to work, you had to have a standard journey as 4 encounters. At that point, slight penalties in one encounter can build up so when you get to a combat, the players feel the effect of previous failures or successes.Uncharted Journeys includes a lot of inspirational material, and I strongly recommend it from that point of view, but as a system that played well, it felt half-baked, and I'm not alone in that assessment. (I have another whole rant about setting DCs for the journeys).Further reading on my Uncharted Journeys experiences:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://merricb.com/2023/11/27/thinking-about-wilderness-travel/" target="_blank">Thinking about Wilderness Travel – Merric's Musings</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://merricb.com/2024/02/07/adventures-in-greyhawk-the-plains-of-the-paynims/" target="_blank">Adventures in Greyhawk: The Plains of the Paynims – Merric's Musings</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://merricb.com/2024/02/13/rpg-products-im-reading/" target="_blank">RPG Products I’m Reading – Merric's Musings</a></li> </ul>Now, as to A Life Well Lived, here is the text of one of the camp craft abilities: Crash Course.Crash CourseRequirement: Proficiency with the skill, tool, or weapon you are teaching.You take another under your wing, demonstrating your skill and teaching them to follow your lead.Choose a skill, tool, or weapon that you are Proficient with and a party member or ally willing to learn. Until the party member or ally’s next Long Rest, they can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Tests they make with the chosen skill, tool, or weapon. The ally you are instructing can’t take any Campcraft Activities during this Long Rest.Have a look at that. What happens when you use Crash Course to train a fighter who is already proficient with the weapon? At higher levels, that's a +4 to attack rolls for the session! Is the intention that it can only train someone who isn't proficient? Probably, but it's very sloppy not to include that.And there are other examples where things just don't quite line up - and some activities way outstrip the bonuses given from others.Again, I really, really like the ideas and expanded possibilities, but there's fix-up work to be done on the mechanics to make it work.Cheers,Merric</blockquote>

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