Wilderness Travel

During Legend of the Bones, there are occasions when the characters need to travel across the wilderness.  This is sometimes known as a 'Hex Crawl', but what I actually employ is more akin to a 'Point Crawl',

In these situations, I used a simple 4-step process to determine what unplanned events might happen.

For each day of travel, I take the following steps: 

Step 1. Determine the Weather

The weather not only helps to set tone and mood, but can also help or hinder the party's progress. To determine the weather, I use a random table, tailored for each season  (I also maintain a calendar, to mark off the days, which may also denote a change of season).

Random Weather

If appropriate (for example if at sea), I might also randomly roll the direct of the wind using my random direction table.

Step 2. Losing Direction

Depending on terrain features, I may roll to see if the party loses direction, using the standard OSE- B/X rules for this.  If the party are following a road, river or coastline, I skip this step.

Step 3. Stumble Upon

This is a random chance of the party coming across something exceptionally good or exceptionally bad.

A d20 is rolled.  Natural 1 indicates something very bad, whereas a natural roll of 20 indicates something especially good.

Examples of  something bad might be, a particularly powerful monster, a cursed place or item

Examples of something particular good might be a special NPC, a spiritual place or enchanted item

Step 4. Wandering Encounter

Sometimes I use wandering encounters in conjunction with Stumble Upon to create a single event, but usually a wandering encounter stands by itself.

A d6 is rolled and roll of 1 or 2 indicates an encounter.

If the journey is multiple days, then I may make a high/low roll on a d20 to determine whether the encounter happens during the day or the night.

If an encounter is indicated, I will then consult a random table for the type of terrain, or even make a new table if I do not have something which fits.

So there you have it, my simple process for wilderness travel.  This does not preclude me from including predetermined set-pieces or encounters, but these will always be in addition to, rather than a substitute for the above process.