Rules / Hexploration / The Wilderness Day & Travel
The Wilderness Day & Travel
The Wilderness Day
A day is 24 hours: an 8-hour Long Rest and 16 waking hours. A new Long Rest can't start until 16 hours after the last one ended; staying awake past 16 hours without one costs 1 Strain per hour until the Long Rest happens. The 16 waking hours fall into three phases:
| Phase | Hours | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Travel | Up to 8 | Entering hexes and their Encounter Rolls. At baseline pace: 8 open hexes or 2 wilderness hexes, on foot or by Conveyance (see Travel Modes). |
| Make Camp | 1 | Pick a site and set up shelter and fire. Shelter decides whether the Long Rest is full or halved. Camp preparations (see Camping) are chosen here. |
| Free Hours | The other 7 | Short Rests, Searching, Foraging, Scouting, roleplay, fortifying the camp and open time. Each activity that lingers in the hex is its own activity block for the Encounter Roll. |
The Long Rest follows and the next day begins. The night's Encounter Roll (8 effective hours, before camp preparations) covers the whole night; Make Camp's setup hour isn't rolled separately. The GM rolls the weather once, at the start of each Wilderness Day.
Forced March
Each hour of travel past the 8th needs a Fortitude save: DC 10 for the 9th hour, +2 for each hour after (the 11th hour is DC 14, and so on). A failure costs 1 Strain; a critical failure gives Exhausted 1. Travel can't go past the 16 waking hours; beyond that, the rule for staying awake past 16 hours takes over. Riders and passengers make no Forced March save; their mount or draft animal makes it instead, at the same DCs.
Take a Break & Conveyance
Take a Break is a 10-minute pause, once per hour, that recovers Strain. On foot, one Take a Break is assumed each travel hour and exactly cancels that hour's marching cost: no separate action and no extra recovery. Walking beside a mule or wagon still counts as on foot. Riding, driving or riding in a wagon, taking a boat or a train (anything that carries you without you exerting yourself) is Conveyance Travel: each such hour, every character rolls the Take a Break die for their level and recovers that much Strain (only Strain they actually have to recover). In Camp and Free Hours, Take a Break follows its normal rules.
| Level | Strain recovered per Conveyance hour |
|---|---|
| 1–4 | 1d4 |
| 5–8 | 1d6 |
| 9–12 | 1d8 |
| 13–16 | 1d10 |
| 17+ | 1d12 |
Daily Supplies
Each character needs 1 lb of food and 1 gallon of water per day (double in extreme heat or cold). Short and Long Rests need access to food and water. Once a character's food or water for the day runs out, they may make a Supply Check to stretch out one more use, but only if the ration or water item is tagged Consumable on their sheet; an untagged item simply runs out.
Travel Modes
- On foot. 8 open hexes or 2 wilderness hexes per Travel phase. Every travel hour is a marching hour, cancelled by the assumed Take a Break. Forced March saves apply past the 8th hour.
- Conveyance. Horseback, wagon, cart, boat or train. Conveyance hours use the recovery table above instead of the automatic cancel. Riders and passengers make no Forced March saves; the mount or draft animal does, and builds up Strain just like a character.
A pace multiplier applies to hexes per phase, not to hours: a mounted party still has an 8-hour Travel phase but covers 16 open hexes or 4 wilderness hexes in it.
| Mode | Pace | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Walking (baseline) | ×1 | 8 open or 2 wilderness hexes per Travel phase. |
| Mounted (horse or similar) | ×2 | Needs a trained riding animal. |
| Wagon or cart, on a road | ×1½ | Road hexes only; off the road, walking pace. |
| Wagon or cart, off the road | ×1 | The draft animal still makes Forced March saves. |
| Boat, poled or rowed (river or coast) | ×2 | Only with the current or along a favourable route; see Waterways. |
| Boat under sail, favourable wind | ×3 | The GM sets the wind each Wilderness Day along with the weather. |
Mounts & Draft Animals
An animal has its own Strain track, usually bigger than a character's, set by the GM from the animal's size (a warhorse might have 8, a pony 5). It makes Forced March saves in its rider's or driver's place, at the same DCs, and fails the same way: 1 Strain per failure, Exhausted 1 on a critical failure. An animal that reaches Exhausted 3 can't go on that day and must rest. Feeding and watering an animal is a separate daily cost from its rider's: treat a horse as 10 lb of forage and 10 gallons of water a day unless the GM rules otherwise for the terrain.
Losing the Conveyance
If a mount, wagon or boat is lost, destroyed or left behind partway through the day, the party goes back to walking pace for the rest of that day's Travel hours. Hours already spent at the faster pace aren't recalculated.
Waterways
A river or coastal wilderness hex can be travelled by boat only where the hex allows it. Going against the current halves the pace multiplier (round down, minimum ×1). Carrying the boat around an impassable stretch (a portage) costs 1 hour per hex, counted as an on-foot travel hour whatever the boat's normal pace.