Square Crawl

SQUARE CRAWL PROCEDURE:

Any DM can claim a square on the board, once done, he marks up the details of the square as he desires and runs the broad outline of any encounters in that square.

Cross Country Movement:  use standard rules for movement, difficult terrain and forced marches from SRD pages 84-85

Terrain Types:

Plains: not difficult terrain for any mode

Forest:  not difficult for foot, but difficult for horses or wagons

Hills:  not difficult for foot or horse, but difficult for wagons

Mountain:  always difficult

Swamp:  always difficult

Desert:  difficult for wagons, or if you don’t have adequate water

Tundra:  difficult from October to April

--we need a way to mark map—colors or symbol—for terrain once discovered

Passing through:  when players enter a square for the first time, they should roll on the region terrain chart and determine what terrain type the square is.    If they are just passing through, they draw a single encounter card for the time they spend traveling.

 

Exploring a Square:  in order to get a general sense of the layout of the square, the players must spend some time scouting around the square to get the lay of the land.   If they are on foot, they spend 6+1d6 days scouting around the square.   If they are on horseback, they spend 3+1d4 days scouting around the square.   Any pack beasts or wagons must be set up in a fixed camp.  If the party possess a spy glass, reduce time of scouting by 1 day.  They can cut the time into fractions by splitting the party (so if you make 4 groups, you divide total time by 4) there is a minimum of 1 day of scouting in any event.  Each group draws one encounter card per day spent scouting.

Scouting the square reveals the location of all obvious (not hidden somehow) settlements, ruins, and major lairs in the square.

What’s in a Square:

As a baseline:  

1d4+2 settlements

1d4  ruins

1d4 lairs

Perhaps allow each to “Ace” once.

These are “obvious” locations, ones that locals will all know, and which will be easily located by scouting and inspection.