The journey is more important

I was thinking about some hexcrawling things. Blame yesterday's post for that.

The problem is my mindset. I was thinking about the distance, the amount of 6-mile hexes, the encounters... But nothing really matters in game, unless you want to realy track rations, water and so... Maybe I'm losing that old school touch.

Then I remember another post I've made, back in october. That map was inspired by Ode to Black Dougal's Into the Veldwood post. Go read it. I'll wait.

Ok. You're back.

My idea with my map was to track movement on the little "journey hexes" on the right. Every day I'd roll 2d6. The lowest one would indicate if an encounter (rolling 1) took place that day. The highest one would indicate how many "journey hexes" the party would walk.

How those "journey hexes" worked? Take the starting terrain hex and place a marker there. Then, just move the marker the amount of hexes rolled on the highest d6 (so the party would move, on average, 4.5 hexes a day). When the party crossed the "border hex" (the one with a little black border on that track) they reached the next hex on the (left) map, but the destiny is only reached when the marker stops on the destination hex.

So, moving from Plains to Plains needs 8 movement points (so the party will probably reach it on 2 days). From Forest to Hills it would take 11 movement points (5 is needed to reach the border, 6 more to reach the destination). If a party is journeying from Plains to Forest to Mountain to another Mountain (0303, 0302, 0402, 0501)they would need:
- 9 to reach the center of the Forest (4 would reach the border);
- 13 to move from Forest to Mountain (5 would be needed to see the terrain changing)
- 16 to move from Mountain to Mountain (8 is the mid-point of those hexes).
So it's a 38 "movement points" journey. On average, a party would need a little longer than 8 days to cross that distance, but the journey could be made in less than 7 days or even take as long as 38 days (unlikely -- 1/6^38 --, but possible).

So, the (rough) procedure is:
- Party (if they have enough data) or GM plots the journey;
- Roll 2d6 at the start of the day;
- Take the lowest die. If it's 1, there's an encounter that day. GM rolls on an appropriate table and determines when the encounter takes place.
- Take the highest die. Move the "journey mark" that amount of hexes, informing the party when (if) they change terrain.

I'm tempted to try this on my next gaming session. So far, it's only food for thought.