If you want to track some travel in your fantasy RPG, consider this advice: don’t roll for random terrain. There are systems for this, and it makes a certain amount of sense at the 3-mile hex level, but a pure hex crawl thru random terrain is rarely satisfying.

Wandering is great if you’re wandering a prepared world, but wandering a completely random world is just going to feel random. Instead, draw out your realm and put a 6-mile hex grid on the part the heroes will adventure in, and use it to decide on the realms and terrain. Make your own decisions about where there will be cities and rivers and ruins.

Per my mapping post, it’s easiest and most realistic to start with an old map of a real place and modify to the coastlines to be unrecognizable. Then you’ll know where mountains, rivers, and cities should be. Just remember that a lot of it should still be wilderness.

Daylight & Weather

First, decide what time of year it is and where your heroes are traveling. This will tell you how many hours of daylight they have, etc. Traveling at night is possible with torches or magic but should be more dangerous, since many monsters are night hunters (not to mention exhausting).

This isn’t crucial, but it helps avoid every adventure happening on a pleasant day in May, especially if you use my simple-but-realistic weather system.

Travel Time

Ordinary people (and horses) can only walk for 8 hours a day before flagging, even with occasional rests. So the amount of daylight is less relevant than the terrain. You may want to use my difficult terrain navigation rules. For their 8 hours, the heroes have 18 points to spend on travel every day to cross hexes. They can push themselves, but they’ll tire out, per the table below. If they have a couple of points left over, they can apply them to the next day (in reality, they got part-way across an extra hex that day).

Hours	Points	Cost
4	10	—
6	14	Tired
8	18	Weary
10	20	-1 hp per level, very weary
12	22	-2 hp per level, exhausted

Traveling a road or trail cuts the cost of the terrain in half.

Terrain	Cost/18-mi Hex	Cost/6-mi Hex	Cost/3-mi Hex	Cost/1-mi Hex
Moor, grassland, desert	36	12	6	2
Forest, hills, marsh	45	16	8	3
Mountains, swamp	54	20	10	4

Note: travel is more costly on small-scale maps because the terrain is more consistent. The larger the mountain hex, the less of the hex is actually mountainous. Some is hilly and some fairly flat, and it’s assumed the heroes stick to the easier terrain as they travel.

Roads & Trails

Since traveling a road or trail cuts the cost of the terrain in half, on a realm map with 18-mile hexes, the party can travel one hex per day along a road on flattish ground, making figuring travel days easy. Roads are generally safe and go thru settled land; encounters tend to be other travelers, bandits, and aerial hunters like griffons and wyverns. Trails use the same random encounter tables as the terrain they go thru.

Each day of travel in an 18-mile hex on a road between major cities, the heroes pass thru… (1d6: 1=no towns; only a coaching inn; 2=one town; 3=two towns; 4=three towns; 5=one small city; 6=one town and one small city). The towns and even cities can remain nameless unless the heroes stop; just have a couple of towns and cities pre-fabricated for those moments.

Finding Points of Interest

Generally, whether in a 3-mile or 6-mile hex, the heroes should find major points of interest, like a town or a tower or ruin on hill, when they enter the hex or one hex away. (Such things tend to be near the road anyway.) But things that are actually hidden–like the entrance to a cave–must be found by directions or a guide.

Or they can explore (as opposed to just traveling thru the hex) by spending double the cost for that hex and making a check vs difficulty 12 with the intelligence modifier of whomever is leading. On a success, they find a hidden point of interest, major or minor (probably the one they were looking for). Regardless, they will always find something of interest… (1d6: 1-2=minor point; 3=monster/animal (depending on wildness); 4-5=NPCs; 6=major point).

The heroes can most easily find these points of interest by asking around in towns and cities. The locals–especially shepherds–know the environs like the back of their hands, so asking for guidance is much more practical than literally wandering around.

On a 6-mile hex map, there would be–in settled lands–a town every one or two hexes, so these would be too numerous to map. Instead, keep a list of towns by name and standout feature and populate them with NPCs only if the heroes stop at them (keep a list of NPC names handy). There should be a city every three or four hexes, connected by roads, each with at least one sage.

There should be other points of interest (ruins and such) every six to eight hexes, especially outside settled lands. You might create a list of these by name and nature and use them to populate your map. You can get a start with my list of fantasy world points of interest and my killer encounter settings.

Low-level Hex Crawls

For low-level adventurers, it makes some sense to create a map with a city, a couple of towns, and a lot of wilderness at a scale of 1-mile hexes. The heroes can venture out from town to a ruins or monster lair they’ve heard about, have their adventure, and return to town.

After a couple of these, they can go to the city and hear about points of interest around there. A 1-mile hex map or two could keep the heroes happy right up thru 4th level.

There are two ways to manage this, and you can use both.

The first way is to map the ruins and monster lairs that are known to the locals. The players can simply travel right to them, altho there should be a chance of getting lost without a guide.

The second way is to not map ruins and monster lairs you consider secret. You can then use a dice chain countdown timer to determine when the heroes find one of the secret locations. Start with a d20 when the heroes get away from town and into the wilderness. When they enter a new hex, roll a d12. And so on, until you roll a 1, determining they’ve found something. You can then decide or roll on your own table to determine what it is. In the meantime, you can give them terrain trouble and innocuous wilderness encounters.

What Can You See?

Visibility is best at noon on a day with clear weather. These figures assume clear weather and a viewer 5 to 7 feet tall.

• On a grassy plain or brushy moor, the treeless horizon is 3 miles away.
• You can see a 50-foot tower on the horizon from 12 miles away (but it doesn’t rise above a treeline). From that tower, you can see 12 miles, barring trees and buildings.
• You can see a 150-foot tower 18 miles away above the trees.
• You can see the tops of most mountains from 60 miles away and big mountains from 120 miles away.

Travel Trouble

Each day, make a travel check against difficulty 10 using the leader’s intelligence modifier. A failure means the heroes run into trouble.

1d6	Trouble
1	Lost; see Becoming Lost.
2	You lose some supplies, a tool, or a weapon (left at a rest, dropped over a cliff, lost in water, seized by critters, etc.)
3	You inadvertently call attention to your presence. (+2 to next random encounter check)
4	Minor travel encounter
5	Minor travel encounter
6	Roll on the Minor Trouble table.

Minor Trouble

1d6	Flat Ground	Hills or Mountains
1	A tree has fallen across the road or trail. Possible ambush point.	Fallen rocks block the way. Possible ambush point.
2	Due to a recent storm, a river is up (or a bridge is washed out), and the river is dangerous to ford. See Rivers.	Fallen rocks block the way. Possible ambush point.
3	A storm has washed out the road or trail, and it’s a knee-deep, watery, muddy mess.	The trail has eroded and crumbled away, so a bluff must be scaled to continue.
4	A wooden bridge is decrepit and dangerous.	The trail has eroded and crumbled away, so the gap must be bridged to continue.
5	A burrowing monster (like a bulette, giant mole, or purple worm) has dug a 10-foot wide trench across the landscape, and it must be bridged.	The trail has eroded and crumbled away, so the gap must be bridged to continue.
6	The area is a mucky bog or watery marsh. If following a road, it is a decrepit wooden causeway over the water.	You’ve wandered into a steep-sloped glen; back out or scale the slope.

Becoming Lost

If lost, the heroes’ first hex of movement that day is in a random direction, but subsequent hexes of movement are in the correct direction. (This simulates getting a bit off track thruout the day, not literally going in the wrong direction and then correcting.)

The players should not know they’re lost that day and should plot their travel as if they’re on track. Since they’re likely in a different hex than they think they are, you will need to continue tracking their real location in secret. The party may only realize they’re lost when they believe they should have arrived at a destination, but it’s not there. They may able to get their bearings if they:

• Ask a local.
• Climb a big hill and look for a landmark.
• Stumble on a road or river.
• Stumble on a point of interest that appears on the map.

Rivers

Rivers are very significant natural barriers. Warn the players ahead of time that they need a plan for crossing substantial rivers. Roads will always cross at bridges or easy fording points (slow-moving water less than thigh-deep).

If a party not traveling on a road reaches a river, decide how big and deep the river is at that spot and ask them how they plan to cross it. They can ford small rivers and ones that have large stepping stones but must build a raft or something to cross a larger river. They may be able to travel up or down a river to find a better crossing point (slower and shallower with a gentle bank).