Looking for examples of travel mechanics that go beyond simple procedure

[Viamond]

The Broken Empires has two different travel systems - one for hex crawling (more about exploration) and one for overland journeys. It takes inspiration from The One Ring then adds in more simulationist elements (due to its ‘sim-lite’ stance).

There are the roles, like in The One Ring, but you do plan your route across the map and hexes have different danger profiles which influence what they are like when you have an encounter. And it is the rolls by the guide which determine how far down your route an encounter is experienced (e.g. a higher success means you traveled further before there was an encounter). That has an interesting effect as, if you are travelling a route with hexes of mixed danger level, which exact hex you end up in matters.

Travelling also consumes resources and you can’t heal while travelling but your wounds can get worse due to the dirt and difficulties of the trail.

It’s one of the most intricate travel systems I’ve seen. Only GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Wilderness Adventures has a more detailed treatment of travel in any system I’ve read / played.

The Broken Empires is just out to backers in PDF at the moment, I don’t know if you can get it from Trevor’s online shop yet.

Trevor did a YT video on the travel system if you want more info [link as video won’t embed].

Awesome. I hadn't heard about it 'til now and it sounds like he's got some of the same things in mind. The mixed danger level routes is of particular interest to me. Thanks!

 

[Viamond]

I'm working on a version of His Majesty the Worm's meatgrinder mechanic to use in my Shadowdark setting. It's essentially an overloaded encounter table that includes foes, hazards, points of interest and NPCs. It's pretty simple to fill the table for different terrain types and it adds a lot of range to the travel events without adding additional mechanical layers.

I love an overloaded table. Any resources or overload mechanics you've found work well?

 

[Viamond]

It's kind of weird when your playtesters are using one game, then you announce, "traveling! Now we're playing a different game!"

For design purposes, you might ask yourself how traveling is different from non-traveling. For seamless integration, just keep using the same rules.

Very fair, and I should've probably framed it as 'minigame'. In the examples I mentioned, the procedures can be done by a single person in a minute or two and replace simple dice rolling. I'm hoping I can come up with a way for the player in the navigator role to really feel like they're doing some mapping process and not just passing a check.

 

[Scribe]

I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but I've heard/read good things about Wildsea, and is what I'm pretty sure I'm going to be pulling from.

 

[Milieu]

I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but I've heard/read good things about Wildsea, and is what I'm pretty sure I'm going to be pulling from.

The setting of Wildsea is pretty neat, but as far as the journey rules, they're not all that different from The One Ring or some of the others mentioned above, but maybe a bit more loose and narrative-y and less mechanical.

Each turn, players pick roles; the only required ones are helm and watch. The player on helm picks the speed (slow and cautious, fast and reckless, or stop). This determines how many spaces get marked on the GM's secret progress track. When it's full, you arrive.

The player on watch can either spend some resources to narrate a location they discovered or just roll a die to determine whether you encounter Peace, Order (i.e. people/civilization), or Nature. The GM secretly rolls to determine how dangerous the thing you encounter is. Typically, an encounter is either a simple choice (e.g., investigate and risk it being a trap vs spend a resource to avoid it), a simple roll using your ship's stats to deal with it, or a location you can stop to explore on foot.

The player on engine room duty can give some situational benefits. The player on cartography doesn't make any choices or rolls, but crewing it progresses a track to produce a chart, which is a consumable resource. Another player can roll to find out what the upcoming weather will be. The weather has no explicit mechanical effect, and since the rules don't call for a weather roll if nobody's watching it but give a 50% chance of a bad result if someone is, you're arguably better off ignoring it? That's pretty much it.

 

[Vrindlevine]

I am also very interested in this. I have a suspicion that the trick to making travel interesting is not in the mechanics, but rather in the scenario or setting.

Mechanics by definition will end up being repeated quite a bit so they should either be simple or part of a more interesting whole, if they are too simple, or without fail states then it becomes easy and desirable to ignore them (5e has this issue sometimes).

With an interesting setting or scenario you can rely on existing mechanics. Take the classic example of the broken bridge, there's a lot of potential solutions that dont specifically use travel rules. Thrown in 4-5 encounters of suchlike and you may not need specific travel rules. Of course this requires extensive prep, either for the GM or the scenario Designers or use of random tables/improv.

Either way I am interested to see what people come up with. Broken Empires was mentioned previously and looks really interesting as did Wildsea which I have looked at a little before.

 

[SteveC]

I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but I've heard/read good things about Wildsea, and is what I'm pretty sure I'm going to be pulling from.

I really like Wildsea. It's one of the projects that I'm aware of because the designer stopped by to talk about the game and share development updates. It has great art, and a distinctive layout and format. I picked up the PDFs and then the physical book because I really liked the look and tone of the game (and I support smaller designers as much as I can). To horribly simplify things, the system is based on Blades in the Dark, but it uses tracks (progress bars) instead of clocks, and relies on them a lot.

The Journey rules are tied into the setting, but they are important to the game, so you spend time with them. The game has you literally hacking into the wilderness, so getting where you want to go is a big part of the game.

I recommend trying it out if you like the BitD rules. The game doesn't disappoint visually and has a lot of flavor baked in. And the designer is great and has been helpful to other small creators.

 

[Scribe]

I recommend trying it out if you like the BitD rules.

Yeah this is also on its way to me.

 

[SteveC]

Yeah this is also on its way to me.

I've had Blades since the very beginning. If I remember right, there was a Kickstarter years ago that I still get updates on. I like the mechanics of the game as well as the Crew character sheet where you build your team. My issue with it, when we played a short campaign, was some of the mechanical pieces. There are different modes of play that you have to get your head around. In my case, the GM was very strict with them, and that didn't work for the group.

The initial roll you make to see where you start the Score is brilliant, though, and more games should steal it.

(Sorry to all the folks for whom this is old news).

 

[Fenris-77]

I love an overloaded table. Any resources or overload mechanics you've found work well?

The meatgrinder from HMTW is my favourite. I've adapted it for urban adventures and I'm working on a journey mechanic using it. The original is a d20 table split in to four categories with 5 entries in each - 1-5 is torchers gutter, which activates a box ticking torch depletion mechanic; 6-10 are curiosities - evocative texture bits and telegraphing; 11-15 is travel events, mostly hazards and effects that grind resources, and 16-20 is encounters with more detail that just monster/number. You roll on the table every time the group enters a new room plus some other cases. The results from 6 through 20 are supposed to be unique and you cross them off as they happen and the GM refills the table between sessions.

When you start swapping out some of those categories for other stuff to handle different stuff than dungeons you see it's a really flexible mechanic that gives you all the random goodness in one place.