“Exploratory adventures are likely to be the most exciting, and their incorporation into the campaign is most desirable.”
- Dungeons & Dragons Book III: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures by Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson
Unbeknownst to my sons, our irregular D&D game has backslid from a hybrid of Basic Fantasy and Rules Cyclopedia to Swords & Wizardry and is now entering its final form of straight OD&D. They don’t care, but I do. As you work backwards the game becomes more… gamey? As we finish up the Keep on the Borderlands in the next couple months I am getting ready to shift gears into wilderness exploration. I have been researching the rules to make sure I am ready for that shift and putting together my rules document. Below is the culmination of that effort, shared in case it is of use at another table.
How big is a hex?
I have read the merits of the 6 mile hex, the 3 mile hex, the 30 mile hex, the point crawl, and everything in between. It all makes sense. But OD&D does explicitly state how big a hex is on page 17 of book III: “Scale: Assume the greatest distance across a hex is about 5 miles.” The long diagonal of a hex would be the greatest distance, putting the area of a hex at about 16 sq. miles.
What is 16 square miles? It’s about 1.3x as big as the Island of Inis Mor which is ~12 square miles.
How much cool stuff is in just 12 square miles?
How about the Fort of Aengus, the Serpent’s Lair, the Fort of Eoin, the Seven Churches, the Dry Stone House, Diarmuid & Grainne’s Bed, the Church of the Four Beauties, the Fort of Eachia, the Black Fort, the Church of St. Benan, and St. Enda’s Household? The real Inis Mor sounds like years of adventure.
How does movement work?
In OD&D movement is measured in discreet hexes per day. It borrows heavily from the board game OUTDOOR SURVIVAL with subtle tweaks here and there.
First we have movement rates for people, vehicles, and mounts. A large portion of this list (9/19 entries!) is dominated by flying mounts and vehicles which is fascinating, but for now I am focused on the terrestrial options (I’ll be ignoring boats for the time being as well). Movement is handled as discrete units, points if you will, which are spent to enter new hexes. Despite there being entries for draft, heavy, medium, and light horses we only need to concern ourselves with the draft horse because it clearly states in the rules: “Horsed parties will travel at the speed of a draft Horse.”
Man on Foot: 3 movement points (~15 miles/day)
Wagon/Cart: 4 movement points (~20 miles/day)
Draft Horse: 5 movement points(~25 miles/day)
For a fully laden adventuring party this feels pretty good I don’t have any reason to quibble with it.
To enter a hex the party spends its movement points. Different terrain costs different amounts of movement points. These are taken directly from OUTDOOR SURVIVAL except for a few adjustments which will be noted below. There is no such thing as partial movement through a hex, the rules sidestep this oft cited complication by explicitly stating, “Person counters may move over different types of terrain as long as they have sufficient movement points to enter that particular type of terrain. Thus, a Person counter with a movement factor of 2 could not move at all if surrounded by mountain or swamp hexes.”
This also feels reasonable. The party emerges from the forest, the sun starting its descent for the day, and before them the mountains rise up where the forest ends. They make camp early, preparing themselves for the difficult trek ahead of them in the morning.
Based on the rules listed in OUTDOOR SURVIVAL and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS BOOK III, the terrain adjustments are as follows:
*Every 6 days of travel requires 1 day of rest. When resting in the wilderness encounters are checked 2x per day instead of just once.
Lost: A lost party must move in the direction indicated by the die roll (1–6, as shown in the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL rules and on that board) and may make only one direction change from that direction. When exploring the referee should indicate which direction the party is lost in. The direction indicated on the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL board is shown.
Evasion and Pursuit
This is the same evasion table presented in Book III but has been turned into a d20 roll over save instead of a percentile roll.
- Woods lowers evasion target number by 5 (+25% chance)
- Surprise by party doubles evasion chance (halve save number)
- Surprise by monster negates evasion chance, 19 in woods (10%)
- Party twice as fast as monsters lower target number by 5 (+25%)
- Monsters twice as fast as party raise target number by 5 (-25%)
Example: Based on the rules as written a party of 8 adventurers comes upon 2d10 [11] centaurs in the woods. Since their party number is 4-9 and the centaurs 26%-60% of their possible #, the base chance to evade is 11 (50%) modified by the woods (11-5=6) for a 75% chance.
Evasion & Pursuit Procedure
If the party is unable to evade monsters, they may flee and a pursuit begins. They roll a die as if lost and move in a straight line in that direction for their full movement. If the monster is faster, or If they are unable to complete that movement (due to terrain) there is a 10-in-20 chance that the monster catches them. If the monster does not catch them, they may again roll to evade. If successful the pursuit has ended, if failed they again roll and begin fleeing in a random direction for their full movement. This procedure continues until they successfully evade, they are caught, or the monsters give up pursuit.
From the rules: “For each hex moved in pursuit, a party must spend one-half day resting (remember, a day equals one turn). During a day at rest two dice are thrown for determining if wandering monsters are encountered, rather than but one.”
Conclusion
These rules are definitely board gamey, but they also add an element of randomness to wilderness exploration - especially by bringing in the movement rules (randomly determined direction) from being lost and pursuit. I'm excited to see how that operates in play, pushing the party in unexpected directions and toward unexpected challenges.
Up next: Can we adapt the resource management rules from OUTDOOR SURVIVAL into our OD&D game? I think we can...
