Tables

Overland Travel

mechanic / table set MBC Overland Travel

Homebrew rules for moving across the harrowed land.

Travel Distances (days)

A schematic distance map between major locations. Traveling outside known roads might take longer.

For a smaller world: divide static modifier by 2 and drop die size one step. For a larger world: double everything. Bad weather doubles travel days.

What's the road like? (d8)

  1. Almost-forgotten dirt track.
  2. Narrow wagon track used by farmers.
  3. Tracks drawn up by wild beasts or savage monsters.

4–5. Once well maintained trade road, now fallen into disrepair. 6–7. Well-used road.

  1. Paved road, sporadically patrolled by the King's soldiers.

Events by the road (d20)

1–3. Nothing particular happens. The world is grey.

  1. The weather turns worse (like the current weather but more extreme). You make no progress today.

5–6. Weather change. Roll on Weather. 7–8. The road forks, the signs are unintelligible. Re-roll what the road is like.

  1. 1d6 rations of food or water become spoiled.
  2. A monastery stands by the side of the road. You hear chanting inside. (The monks and nuns are cultists of Nechrubel.)
  3. The ruins of a castle stand out against the sky. (It's infested with savage crows. A blind alchemist has taken up residence in the one remaining tower.)
  4. A religious procession of flagellants and hermits. (They seek to see HIM but have lost their way.)
  5. A funerary procession of toothless villagers, carrying a very large coffin. (The giant inside is dead but dreaming.)
  6. Filthy farmers on their way to the market.
  7. 1d6+1 slavers, leading 2d6 slaves, half beaten to death, half of them freshly caught.
  8. A few mercenaries and their 1d8 guards. (All infected by a brain parasite.)
  9. Across the road, a battle is taking place between a band of flayed cultists and a tribe of Earthbound (Outcasts).
  10. The troll Adnah ambushes you (p. 64). ([CANON CHECK] Bare Bones names this troll Arbint; Cult names it Adnah. Either is canonical.)
  11. Abandoned graveyard by the road. (In a chapel there is an inverted gold cross worth 50s. d8 Zombies hide in a crypt.)
  12. Two dead bodies by the side of the road.

Searching for food and water (d6)

  1. You get lost and spend all day before finding the road again.
  2. You find d6+1 rations of food and water, but one is spoiled and makes you sick for 6 hours after consumption. Presence DR12 to notice in advance.
  3. You find d6+3 rations of good food or fresh water.
  4. You track down a savage beast. Killing it nets d8+2 rations worth of food.

5–6. You find a village where you might be able to buy what you need. Roll on the village table.

The village is (d6)

  1. Deserted; d6 total rations can be scavenged from the ruins.
  2. Stricken by plague, any ration bought is 2 in 6 to be tainted.
  3. A well-off trading post, food and water are plentiful and cheap.
  4. Ruled by bandits. Don't show off too much wealth while buying.
  5. Dominated by spider cultists. No trading with outsiders.
  6. Inhabited by cannibals. No water for sale but a bunch of food.

When you leave the road (d12) — (rows 9 missing in plaintext source)

  1. A petrified forest.
  2. An ancient battlefield (full of half-buried rusty blades and wraiths).
  3. A valley full of the bones of extinct animals.
  4. A temple to a pre-human god, covered in lichen.
  5. An entrance to the deeper underworld.
  6. A cannibal village.
  7. Goblin-infested hills.
  8. A ruined abbey. (Guarded by a Grotesque. Hidden in a crypt is a random occult artifact.)
  9. (blank in plaintext source)
  10. The silhouette of a Wyvern against the purple evening sky.
  11. A clock tower, chiming. (Heretic witches create unliving troll hybrids in its shadow.)
  12. A vast bog. (Precarious to traverse. Ruled by a huge, bloated, tentacular thing that claims to once have been royalty.)

Reminders

  • Track food and water.
  • Roll for the Calendar of Nechrubel each day.
  • Roll for Weather, rerolling when boring or when the events table tells you to.
Connections

Weather, Calendar of Nechrubel, Nechrubel (roadside monastery cult), HE (sought by flagellants), Earthbound (Outcasts), Troll (Adnah/Arbint), Zombie, Wyvern, Grotesque, all major locations

Gaps / Expansion Notes

The "blind alchemist in the ruined castle tower" (event 11), the "giant inside is dead but dreaming" (event 13), the "brain-parasite mercenaries" (event 16), the "huge, bloated, tentacular former-royal bog-ruler" (leave-road 12), and the "heretic witches making troll hybrids" (leave-road 11) are vivid one-line seeds awaiting full development.