Travel

The travel day, finding the way, what you meet, food, weather, and camp.

Overland travel rules, and the format every hex map follows. One hex = 16 miles = one 8-hour travel day.

A hex here is one six-sided space on the travel map, not a curse.

The Travel Day

A travel day is two watches of movement (morning and afternoon, 4 hours each) plus camp. Crossing one hex of open country takes the full day. Nobody moves at night without a very good reason.

Travel classes per biome are listed in the map's hex key (The Hex Entry Format, below). When a hex holds two classes, the worse one applies unless the party stays on a road.

A biome is a kind of country: forest, hills, marsh. Open, Difficult and Severe are travel classes of a hex. They are not the difficult terrain of a combat round (section 2).

The Daily Procedure

Run these six steps every travel day. With the terrain tables open, a day resolves in about a minute.

This is the GM's loop: the GM rolls the weather, the day die and the camp die. Navigation, Encounters and foraging read the region's page, so read The Region, below, first.

1. Declare. The party names a direction or destination and a pace. Anyone who will forage or hunt says so now (Foraging and Hunting, below). The day's costs are paid now, before the weather and the dice: a dry day first, then a forced march, then a forage or a hunt. A traveler with no Stamina cannot choose a forced march, or a forage or a hunt that costs Stamina.
2. Weather. Roll d6 on the season's weather table (Weather, below). On a natural 6, roll again: doubles (a second 6) mean weather of the setting's own, where it has any.
3. Navigation. Auto-success on roads, rivers, and coastlines. No save in Open terrain. In Difficult terrain, one save for the day by whoever leads, and in Severe terrain one save for the whole crossing: a Mind save against the Navigation DC of the terrain's tier (Navigation, below), with +2 for each point the leader has spent in the Pathfinding tree. It cannot be bought with Stamina. A leader with Lodestar does not roll.
4. Encounters. One check for every hex entered, off the band table, and one at camp, off the region's Good and Evil (Encounters, below). On a hit, where you stand picks the table and the band picks the die. A settlement and a named way roll a die of their own (Which Table, below). A party that sits a day in one hex enters none: no day die, only the camp die. A check here is a roll of the day die or the camp die, not a dice pool, and cannot be bought with Stamina.
5. Activities. Each traveler picks one: keep watch, forage (a Sense save), hunt (a Cunning save), scout ahead (learn the next hex's terrain and any OPEN feature: what any traveler sees from the trail), or manage the animals/boat (someone must, or the mounts or the boat add nothing to that day's pace). Every activity is chosen at step 1, and foraging and hunting cost Stamina and are paid there (Foraging and Hunting, below). If there is an encounter, a traveler who kept watch makes the party's Sense save against the tier DC of what is met. On a pass the party is not surprised. For Surprise see section 2.
6. Camp. Pick a camp quality (Camp, below), set watches, apply recovery. Quality decides recovery and surprise and never the camp die.

Navigation

Navigation is a Mind save like any save in KING (section 1): whoever leads rolls d20 + Mind die + Fate die + Tier against the Navigation DC of the terrain's tier. That DC is the tier's usual DC less 2, never below 11. This roll is the Navigation save. It cannot be bought with Stamina. The terrain sets the base tier and the region's page shifts it, at most one tier easier (built ground makes a way, but a mountain is still a mountain) and up to two tiers harder, clamped to tier 1-5.

The regional shift comes off the settlement argument on the region's page (The Region, below): Civilization run away with it is one tier easier, Nature leading is one tier harder, Nature run away with it is two. So Difficult terrain where Nature has run away with the region is a tier 4 save, DC 15, and the same wood where Civilization has is tier 1, DC 11. The shift applies only where a save is rolled: Open terrain rolls none, whatever the region.

One save covers the day, and a day that enters no hex rolls none. On a day that enters more than one hex, the worst terrain entered sets it. A Severe crossing rolls once, on the day it starts, not once a day.

The Pathfinding tree. The leader adds +2 to the save for each point they have spent in Pathfinding (a regular advancement is 1 point, the Ultimate 2). Only the leader's own points count, and a total equal to the DC passes. The tree is overland and does nothing at sea or below ground. A leader with Lodestar does not roll: the save passes. Two Core lines waive the save on a known route: a leader with Pathfinder going back over a route they have walked, and any leader following a route a Trailblazer has marked and shown them. Neither changes pace. A map waives nothing: a Mapmaker navigating by one rolls with advantage, 2d20 keeping the higher.

On a failure the party still moves, but into the wrong hex. Roll d6 in secret for the face it leaves by, counting clockwise from the top of the map: it enters that neighboring hex in place of the one it meant to. Reveal position only when a landmark, road, or coastline would make it obvious. A leader with Pathfinder is told at camp where the party has ended up.

Getting un-lost: climbing to high ground (one watch, Severe hexes have it free) or backtracking to the last certain landmark.

Encounters

Roll the day die for every hex entered and the camp die every night. The band of the hex sets two things: the day die, out of six, and the die you roll on the region's table when a check hits. The camp die is the region's, not the band's (The Camp Die, below).

A die that is 1-in-6 hits on a 1, and a die that is 2-in-6 hits on a 1 or a 2. A pip is one more face: a pip on a 2-in-6 die makes it 3-in-6.

The band is the hex's zone on the map (Zones on the Map, below). The region's line can move every hex in the region one step, never more (The Region, below): a step wilder if Nature has run away with the country or unrest stands at 3, a step more settled if Civilization has. A Now or a ruler's effect that names the band counts toward the same one step. The pushes are summed and then held to one step: unrest 3 is one push among the others, not an override, so a doubled Civilization and unrest at 3 cancel. A land hex that belongs to no region reads its own zone and nothing else; the water is read off the nearest shore (Water zones, below).

Corrupted ground is a drop, not a band. It adds a pip to the day die, sets the camp die to 2-in-6 whoever leads (The Camp Die, below), and the region's table is rolled on d12 twice, keeping the higher, whatever the band: a Corrupted Civilization is a city gone rotten, not a wilderness. A hex is Corrupted when the map marks it or when the region is: Evil has run away with it, it is Fallen, or its Now says so. A hex the map marks Corrupted is Wild Frontier underneath and stays so, because a region's step does not move it: 3-in-6 by day, 2-in-6 at camp, d12 twice keeping the higher.

An encounter a rule says is drawn twice (a region's Now may say so) rolls the band's die twice and keeps the higher. It does not stack with Corrupted ground.

One thing adds a pip: Corrupted ground, on the day die, where it also sets the camp die to 2-in-6. Past that, only a rule that names the die (a country's Now, a ruler's effect, a Legacy, a relic, a Deed) touches the dice, and it does what it says. The day die still never drops below 1-in-6: a quiet country changes what you meet, never whether anything can happen. A Legacy, a relic or a Deed that says a die is not rolled means it. Weather, a fire, a road and the quality of a camp add no pip of their own.

The Camp Die

The camp die is read off the region's Good and Evil (The Region, below), not off the band:

Ground is Corrupted however it came to be so: the map marks the hex, the region is Corrupted, or a Now says every hex counts. A hex that belongs to no region has neither leading: 1-in-6, or 2-in-6 if the map marks it Corrupted. A night in a living settlement (any settlement that is not a ruin) rolls no camp die, and so does a steading. A camp just outside a town's walls is not in the settlement and rolls the camp die. At anchor the same rule applies, read off the region whose shore is nearest, on that region's Sea table.

Nothing else touches the camp die except a rule that names it (a country's Now, a ruler's effect, a Legacy, a relic, a Deed). Camp quality (Exposed, Sheltered, Secured) decides recovery and surprise and never touches a die (Camp, below).

Which Table

A named way is a road that has a name on the map. A named way draws its traffic table where the map marks the hex Civilization or Borderlands and the ground is not Corrupted, by map or by region: the region's step changes the dice there, not whether the road carries traffic, and anywhere else on a named way the Wild table draws. A river is the country it runs through. A ruin, in this rule, is a ruined settlement (a settlement of rank ruin): it has no table of its own, it is country and rolls the region's Wild table, and its row 8 goes to the ruins biome table. A camp is never road traffic and never the streets.

A settlement's die scales with the place: a village rolls d6, a small town d8, a town d10, a city d12, a great city d20.

No table hands to another. The one exception is row 8 of a region table.

The Shape of a Region Table

Every Wild and Sea table is a d12 ordered mild to deadly, and every one has the same shape, so the band's die decides how far up it you can reach:

Row 8 is the same sentence on every Wild table: "The country itself. Roll d100 on the biome table for this hex." On a Sea table it opens "The water itself." and ends the same.

Biome Tables

One for each kind of country, d100, ordered 1 harmless to 100 lethal. They are rolled as one plain d100, and only from row 8. There is no dial. The wilderness is never safe, only unlikely: settled ground reaches the biome table one roll in eight and its top rows one roll in forty.

What You Meet

Nothing arrives at a region-wide tier. Each thing carries its own:

A tier written on a row always wins, and a biome row with no tier written takes the tier of its place on the table.

How It Goes: Distance and Disposition

• Distance. 2d6 x 100 yards in open terrain, x 20 in difficult, x 10 in severe terrain or at night. A road opens it further out by day (The Road Rule, below).
• Disposition. When the row does not already say how they take you, roll d6 on Encounter Disposition (1 hostile on sight, 6 will parley): +1 if Good leads the region, -1 if Evil does, held between 1 and 6.

There is no Activity roll: a row says what they are doing. Surprise per section 2; most wildlife would rather eat something that fights back less.

Zones on the Map

Farmland and urban hexes are Civilization; within 2 hexes of a living settlement or 1 hex of a road is Borderlands; the rest is Wild Frontier; the map names its Corrupted hexes.

Menace strongholds. The seats of menaces are a map class of their own, not settlements: no market, no census, no ring of safety. A stronghold's own hex is always at least Wild Frontier, and it steps the surrounding zone up one band, one hex out for a Major's seat, two for a Sovereign's, but never above Wild Frontier: there is no band above it. This step is the map's and does not count in the region's one step. Each stronghold gets a full keyed entry: tier, garrison, approach, what it wants, and what leaks out of it.

Water zones. Open water rolls encounter dice for hulls the way land does for boots. A sea hex reads the Sea table of the region whose shore is nearest: a harbor, which is water beside a living settlement, is Borderlands and all other sea is Wild Frontier; that region's step does not reach the water and its Corruption does; and if the region has no Sea table there is no table for that water and the GM rolls by hand, because land rows are never rolled at sea. Cursed waters (becalmed bands, menace fogs) are Corrupted. The day die rolls under sail, the camp die at anchor, both on the Sea table. The camp die at anchor is read like any other, off the region whose shore is nearest (The Camp Die, above).

Waterless ground. Desert hexes without water are never better than Wild Frontier, however many caravans cross them; a living well pulls its own hex to Civilization. That one rule is the desert's whole politics.

The Road Rule

A road never lowers the chance of meeting something. It changes who is met, and how far off:

• On a named way in kept country (the map marks the hex Civilization or Borderlands, and the ground is not Corrupted, by map or by region), the draw comes off that way's traffic table instead of the region's. The region's step changes the dice there, not whether the road carries traffic. Roads are where everyone walks, so what walks up is a grain convoy, a toll party, a courier, a drove. Every way with hexes on the map carries a d12 of its own traffic, unordered and rolled flat.
• Anywhere else on a named way, the region's Wild table draws as it would off the road, because out there the road is not an artery, only a line through the country.
• Sighting. On a road the meeting opens one band further out (severe becomes difficult, difficult becomes open). Cut verges and a straight run. Not at night, and never for a camp draw.
• Camp is never road traffic. The road empties at dark; what finds a fire came out of the country.

Note the standing consequence of pace (The Travel Day, above): the check is per hex entered, not per day. Two hexes a day on a road is two checks; a Severe hex, two days in the crossing, is one. The road does not lower risk per mile, it spends fewer days on the same miles and fills them with people.

Encounter Tables

Region and settlement tables name the line by ROLE, never by name: the ruler, a rival, the Heir, the highest-tier faction on the line, the menace here. The role is read off the region's line when the row comes up (The Region, below), so no table goes stale as the line changes hands. A region's own creatures, sites and dressing are named, and a creature carries its tier on the row. A map not yet given region tables keeps one d12 per biome and rolls it the same way: the band's die on the table the hex's biome names, by day and at camp.

Region tables, traffic tables, settlement tables and biome tables come with a setting. This book prints none of them. Where no table covers the ground, the GM rolls by hand: no table is better than a wrong one. What each row of a Wild or Sea table holds is under The Shape of a Region Table, above. What is met is built in Part 7B, Monsters & Encounters.

Foraging and Hunting

• Forage (each forager rolls their own): a Sense save vs the biome's Forage DC. Success finds food for two people for the day, normally the forager and one other. Automatic in farmland and urban hexes (buy or glean), where it costs no Stamina. Impossible on ash or glacier.
• Hunt: a Cunning save vs the same DC, at advantage in game-rich country (forests, hills, grassland). A kill feeds the whole party for 1d3 days. A hunt draws one more day die: on a hit, the hunters meet it first. The extra die is the hex's day die again, on the same table and die as the day's own check. It is one die for the day, however many hunt.
• The cost: foraging or hunting on the march costs all the Stamina the character has. If the party stops for it, giving up one hex of that day's travel (on foot, 2 becomes 1 on a road or river and 1 becomes none elsewhere), it costs half the Stamina the character has, rounded up. A forager pays half too on a day the party stops to hunt. The Stamina is paid at step 1, before the weather and the dice, whether or not the save succeeds. A forced march is paid first, and both can be paid on one day. A character with no Stamina cannot forage or hunt where it costs Stamina.
• Food and rest: food found stands in for the ration a Rest consumes. With no food there is no Rest (section 4).
• Skill points: each point the forager has spent in the Survival tree adds +2 to the Sense save, and each point the hunter has spent in the Hunting tree adds +2 to the Cunning save. A regular advancement is 1 point, the Ultimate 2; only the roller's own points count; a total equal to the DC passes. A forager with Apex Survivor does not roll: the save passes, even on ground where foraging is otherwise impossible. A hunter with Apex Predator (the Hunting Ultimate) does not roll: the save passes, and the hunt still draws its extra day die.
• Talents: Forager feeds themself in normal wilderness (Forage DC 11 or lower) with no save and no Stamina, and rolls the Sense save at advantage when foraging for others or outside normal wilderness (the tree's barren or hostile terrain). Silent Stalker rolls the Cunning save at advantage outside game-rich country. Live Off the Land forages on the march, and Trapper hunts on the march, for half the usual Stamina. Apex Survivor forages, and Apex Predator hunts, for half on the march and nothing when the party stops. A kill dressed by someone with Field Dressing feeds the party the full 3 days. The usual cost is the one above (all of it on the march, half when stopped); half rounds up; cost cuts do not stack, take the better one. A trap line is the hunt activity, not free meat.

Water is assumed except in desert, badlands, and ash biomes, where each dry day costs Stamina equal to Tier until a source is found. It is paid at step 1. A traveler who cannot pay it in full pays what they have and is exhausted (When You're at 0 Stamina, section 4).

Weather

Roll d6 each morning on the current season's column. Effects stack with terrain. This book has no calendar: the GM names the season.

On a 6, roll again and read the new row. Doubles (a second 6) mean weather of the setting's own, where the setting has any; where it has none, keep rolling.

Fair weather at sea is any row except Thunderheads, Fog banks and Snow on high ground. Sailing in those is foul, and what happens is the GM's call.

Camp

A night in a living settlement is a Rest (section 4). A steading counts as a living settlement: a Secured camp, a Rest, no camp die. A camp just outside a town's walls is not in the settlement: it rolls the camp die and is Sheltered or Exposed as any camp. A camp needs a ration to be a Rest. After a forced march no night gives Stamina back. A night that would be a Rest is still one in every other way.

Quality decides recovery and surprise and nothing else. The camp die is set under Encounters, above: it is read off the region, and no camp, however poor, moves it. Thunderheads and a Cold night without a fire (Weather, above) still make camps count one quality worse, which costs recovery and surprise and never a pip. A Legacy, relic or Deed that sets a camp's quality beats both of those, and beats "always Exposed" (the mid-hex camp of a Severe crossing).

Fires: a fire negates cold-weather penalties and adds no pip. No fire on ash wastes (ash smothers it). Steadings (the small dots on the map) will shelter travelers for coin or news; named settlements per their own entries.

The Hex Entry Format

Three depths. Every hex on a map has at least a key line; the map's gazetteer promotes hexes as play approaches them.

The key line (default): coordinate, biome, travel class, tags (road, river, coast, steading, ruin site). Run it from the terrain tables above plus the regional encounter table (the region's Wild table).

A stub: one added sentence of the hex's character in the key.

A full entry: a block in the gazetteer:

(col,row) NAME
What it is, in one line: its size, its trade, whose seat it is.

The GM's two-to-four sentence summary: what is seen, what is true, what
is moving beneath.

Navigation: auto (coast road) | Zone: Civilization | Forage: markets

- OPEN: what any traveler sees from the trail.
- HIDDEN: what searching, asking, or bleeding uncovers.
- SITE: keyed sub-location, statted like a dungeon area (or a pointer to
  its own key).
- HOOK: one line that moves.

Named settlements additionally carry: population, ruler, faction presence, one market note (what is cheap, what is dear), and one rumor table entry.

The Region

The GM runs a REGION, not a spreadsheet of hexes. Every map divides its land into four to eight named regions; every land hex belongs to exactly one, the key records it, and the map draws it. Regions anchor encounters, not terrain: two hexes of the same biome fifty miles apart hold different things.

A region's page holds its six numbers, its line, its Now (if it has one), its Wild table, its Sea table where it has a coast, and its dressing. How a line changes hands, how unrest moves and where a Now comes from are not in this book: they come with a setting, or the GM sets them. What concerns this chapter is what travel reads off the line.

Dressing. Each region carries a d12 of sights: what an unkeyed hex offers when the day die stays quiet. No combat, no checks.

The Line

Each region is one line: who rules it, the rivals behind the ruler, the menaces at the back, and its unrest.

• Ruler: one faction, or nobody. A region is Fallen while a menace rules it, or nobody does.
• Rivals: the factions that are not menaces, in order. The Heir is the first rival that is not the ruler's ally.
• Menaces: at the back, any number, in order of arrival.
• Unrest: 0 to 3. At 3 the region is on the brink: the bands are pushed a step wilder.
• Now: the country's current condition there. A region may have none.

A faction is an index card: a tier, a seat, a Head and a Second, a Want, one or two alignment tags, and one effect in force where it rules. Travel reads three things off it. Its tier is 1 to 5. Its tags are one or two of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, Nature, Civilization, never an opposed pair. Its effect is one line, in force where it rules, and it beats the general rule it names.

A menace is one of the five types of faction (governments, sects, merchants, guilds and menaces): what the country becomes when nobody holds it back. A menace always carries Evil. The type makes a menace, not the tag: a faction of another type that carries Evil is not one.

What Travel Reads

Each region has six numbers, one per tag, written on its page, each from 0 to

1. The six are the ground's own: a wood is Nature whether or not a kingdom stands in it. They pair off in three arguments: Good against Evil, Law against Chaos, Nature against Civilization. The ruler adds its tier to each of its tags, and its effect applies. Nothing else about a faction touches the ground, so a new ruler is a new country. In each argument a side leads at three ahead and doubles when it also has twice the other. A side that has doubled has run away with it. Nature against Civilization is the settlement argument. The day die and the table die are the hex's own: the band is its zone on the map, and a doubling moves it a step. The camp die is the region's, read off Good and Evil.

Law against Chaos moves no die.

A side that doubles still leads; where both columns name the same thing, read Doubles. A region's alignment is its six numbers plus the ruler's tier on each of the ruler's tags, and the ruler's effect applies. Nothing else about a faction touches the ground, so a region's band (one step at most), Navigation, Forage, disposition and camp die all move when its ruler changes, and Evil run away with it leaves the ground Corrupted. Past that one step the day die and the table die are the hex's own, and the camp die is the region's (Encounters, above). Two things are read over the top whatever the numbers say: Fallen (a menace rules, or nobody does: every hex Corrupted) and the country's Now. Unrest 3 is one push on the band (a step wilder), summed with the others and held to one step in all.

A Now is one condition lying on the region, such as a famine, a closed road or bold beasts. It does what it says. A region holds one Now at a time.

A map with no regions still runs. A land hex that belongs to no region reads its own zone and nothing else, and has neither Good nor Evil leading: a camp die of 1-in-6, or 2-in-6 if the map marks it Corrupted.

Travel Below Ground

A way below ground runs from one mouth to another. Each mouth is at a keyed site: where it leads, how many days, what it costs, and who or what charges.

• Pace. Three hexes of surface distance per day below, terrain regardless: the ways run straight where the land does not.
• Navigation. One save a day at tier 3, DC 13, everywhere below, whatever lies overhead. A failure is a wrong turning: roll the d6 as above ground (Navigation, above). Pathfinding is an overland tree: its points, Pathfinder and Lodestar do nothing below. Below ground the leader adds +2 for each point spent in the Delving tree.
• Zone. Every way below is Corrupted ground for encounter purposes, Wild Frontier underneath (Encounters, above): 3-in-6 by day and 2-in-6 at camp, whoever rules overhead. The day die is rolled for every hex entered, as it is above ground. Draws below come off the map sheet's own table for the ways below: one table for each sheet, not one for each region.
• Weather, camp and food. Weather, camp quality and foraging work as they do on the surface.
• Tolls. A way that costs nothing is not yet keyed. Every mouth states a toll: a fee, a tithe, a rule of silence, a thing carried in or never out.