I’ve recently started a Western Marches inspired campaign, called Ravonn’s Tower. I’ve been priming myself for this campaign for years, and it has a lot of ideas that I’ve been thinking about for a while thrown in. You’ll probably hear a lot about it, since it’s my big focus at the moment.

One of the things that’s been on my mind is Overland travel. I’ve been pondering the subject for a long while, occasionally going on blog dives, where I check out what others are saying on the topic. Some ideas I incorporate into my projects, others I don’t, and often, when I come back to a project a year later, I switch the advice I ignore and take.

As I refine my thoughts about this particular campaign, I try to follow a simple rule that I don’t follow strictly enough: “Keep the stuff that is awesome, ditch the stuff that sucks.” With this philosophy, I iterate through how I run my games a lot. How do you know what sucks without trying them at the table? How do you know what’s awesome without figuring out how it works?

Which brings us to question that lead to this thought. What does being Lost bring to the table?

Lost

First, definitions. Being Lost is a condition that happens when navigating. You don’t know where you are, and that makes intentionally going somewhere difficult. You tend in RPGs to have this condition until you succeed on some sort of Navigation check to orient yourself properly, and then being not-Lost can resume.

This condition emulates real trouble that people have, where they fail to navigate and spend extra hours trying to get to their destination. Sometimes if they’re out in the wilderness, this can lead to death! That’s a serious risk and an important consequence to navigating properly.

I’ve heard of a lot of methods that work for making the party feel lost. Taking away the map or moving their marker randomly as opposed to having knowledge or control. That’s actually where my first thoughts about this came from. How do I take the map away from online players who could easily take a screenshot? Even at the table, one of the first things a player did when he saw the Western March-style map in the tavern was to pull out his phone and take a picture. It was natural, and helpful, even. One of my party members cares enough about the map to make sure they can see it without needing it passed over? I’d be fine with that in so many circumstances. Why would I be concerned in this case?

Part of these thoughts is to either justify or condemn the slight rage I felt at that photoing the map. My reaction felt weird. Especially when there are already mechanics I’m including in my campaign that make Lost pointless.

Clocks

Time doesn’t exist in RPGs. It barely is real IRL, but in RPG terms, it’s an abstract concept that flows so inconsistently that Hit Points make sense in comparison. We can pause time any time we want, just by asking a question or making a Monty Python quote. We can speed time up and skip it forward. We can even rewind it! Anyone who has ever took back a turn because they missed some part of the description is doing some low-key Chronomancy!

Time doesn’t exist as a believable construct, until we add a clock. Thats one reason why rations need to matter in overland travel. If the party can just have a person cast Goodberry once a day with no cost, then time ceases to exist again. The marking off daily of rations is a way of keeping time and figuring out how long until they need to spend some time hunting.

You could try a destination clock, like Tomb of Annihilation did. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that campaign, but the clock the book put the party on was around 180 days! To travel to a place, they didn’t know existed other than just general rumor. It was basically worthless. The players I had didn’t consider it at all during the trip. There was just so much of Chult, and no real milestones. Adventures where the party were being energy drained by the Plot had a bit more of a clock, but it still felt separate from the actual game.

Let’s contrast this with Video Games.

Lost in Video Games

I love me some survival exploration games. Grounded, and Minecraft are two of my favorites. But as I reflected on getting lost, the MMO I’m playing now, Project Gorgon, and the many hours I soaked into Skyrim both game to mind.

On paper, you’re never lost in most of these. You hit the button, and a world map pops up. Half of my examples let you place a waypoint that shows up on your HUD. It should be hard to get lost, but anyone who has played any of these or any open world game knows that it doesn’t really matter what tools you have. Getting lost is part of the game.

Well, sort of. It doesn’t feel like getting lost, as much. As you travel in a direction, there are two things that happen organically. First, there are things that repel you, changing your direction, and second, there are things that attract you.

These attractors and repulsors can be all sorts of things. A point of interest that you orient on, even without intending to check it out. A creature or encounter of some kind, to hunt or fight or flee, the terrain might be more difficult in one direction over a different path. You might see some interesting things to forage, or stumble on a treasure. So. Many. Things.

Video games have the advantage of constant immediate sensory information and feedback. The DM doesn’t say “There’s a bear over there.” There is just a bear over there. Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t. Maybe you Stealth, maybe you don’t. What happens is immediate, your interactions natural based on the perceived threat and the current goal.

This sort of experience is something that TTRPGs can’t really do. Or at least, I’ve not gotten to that point in a game yet.

But in video games, we describe this as being “Lost” if we can’t find our way back. But we also describe it as getting distracted, or as exploration. We describe it as Fun.

What does getting lost look like in an TTRPG? nowhere near as fun. A Navigation roll of some kind has failed. So, we go to a random hex instead. Which, if the party is just exploring the wilderness without a goal, is basically what the party was going to do anyway.

Scale matters here. In a video game, we’re at the scale where individual trees get in our way, not forests. Also, in most video games, time progresses at the rate of 1 second per second. This doesn’t necessarily track to 1 day as one day (Looking at you, Minecraft with your 20-minute day/night cycle!)

In video games, the characters often ARE the players, whereas in TTRPGs, the characters are just controlled by the players. Which means in a video game, the boredom of waiting isn’t filtered out, and instead is felt by the player directly. (TTRPGs make up for this by having the characters basically be the players in other places, like Social interactions, where videogames give you a few pre-programmed options. (This feels like a really big realization, but I’ll end it there for now))

The Lost Value

So, what does being lost really gain us in RPGs? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I can think of a few.

• The Verisimilitude of exploration.
• The Risk of costing time/rations/resources
• Motivates players to interact with the environment in realistic ways (blazing trails, creating landmarks, etc)

I could see a benefit to make it easier to find Points of Interest when Lost, emulating the video game distraction feeling.

I mentioned earlier that I had a few mechanics that made getting lost sort of pointless. First, I found an article about hexcrawls that mentioned that there should be landmarks. Things the characters can ALWAYS find. Climb a tree, get your bearings, move on. I think that’s supposed to be tied to the map they have, so the players can always be somewhat oriented, and when lost, you take their map away. But I like the idea that there’s always something they can navigate by. I live in Colorado, and there is a very handy mountain range that lets me know where West is at all times. I sort of feel lost when it’s gone, honestly.

I’ve been working landmarks into my game, although my prep is a bit too slapdash to really have it all figured out. Maybe eventually, as I develop this world more and more.

The other thing that I’m doing that is making being Lost have less teeth might be something that changes as the campaign progresses. Right now, I think the furthest an expedition has gotten from the starting town is maybe 4 hours of travel. Getting lost might cost the party 1 Segment, but that’s it. As they venture further afield, that may change.

Conclusions

Here’s what I’ve decided to do in my campaign for now:

1. There is no “Lost” condition. Due to how I run my sessions, and my laziness, I have no problem with the party knowing exactly where they are on the rough map. I might even consider making an Outdoor Survival hex map that let’s the party see it precisely and navigate with an eye from above.
2. There needs to be a “Fast Travel” option at my table. This is not video game teleportation, but rather a handwave. The DC of the Navigation check is going to be based on all sorts of things. The Difficulty increase with distance, how many region changes occur, and what those regions are. The check will get easier if the party includes landmarks and a game plan. Made up Example: “We’re heading back to that Castle of Sand dungeon” might have a DC of 20, whereas “We head East to the lone mountain with that kobold dungeon, then cut northeast to the coastline, then follow that north to the Castle of Sand” might have a DC of 14. How badly the roll will adjust how much extra time and resource the party spends to get to a place. This is the same basic mechanic that the party has to get back to town at the end of the session.
3. The “Hunt/Forage” option is only going to provide 1 day worth of food, and performing even better on the check gives you stuff like hides and antlers, not extra food. So if there’s a party of 5, the ranger needs to spend 5 Segments to feed the group if they wish to live off the land.
4. Goodberry is still a concern, but I’m seeing it more like Darkvision these days. Of COURSE you’re more likely to do adventurer stuff if you have this advantage.

I have no plans for a part 2, but I’m sure I’ll have more Ravonn’s Tower thoughts as the game keeps going on. I’m doing so many experiments with it, it’d be crazy for me to not have more ideas.