Realistic travel time

[mrzomby]

So, I am gonna be DMing for a group for the first time, and I do not know any of them except for a 10 minute "sit and talk".There is a wall of text approaching, read on at your own risk. I do not want to "hand wave" this away.

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So, I am working on a DnD world, and am busy working out the actual landmasses, and bits of civilization. Part of the schtick of this world is that I am going to use this setting for a couple campaigns as a sandbox world, First in "the first age" then "the second age" and so on.
A problem I am having is how much travel time makes sense in each case? I feel like in the first age, since there is less civilization, it would be all in a clustered area, but I am having trouble deciding if they should be in 1-3 days ride away from each other, or 2-5 days.
I want there to be travel time between towns, but I also want a couple travelling merchants who go through the roads and dont think it makes sense for them to be travelling for so long to go to a new town while still balancing travel around the players capabilities. Once in a while having the merchants hire PCs as bodyguards will work a few times, but I don't want to plan on relying on that.
I didnt put a whole lot of ponds throughout the landmass, and am wondering if it makes sense for a landlocked village to be able to get water after a few days of walking? Would I have to include that they make heavy use of rain-water? or just say theres some unmapped rivers they can find?

If any more experianced DM or players have any ideas that can help me, I would really appreciate it, although my first session is not for 2 weeks, so I have plenty of time to work this around until I can find something that fits.

[Knaight]

Merchants will travel for more than 2-5 days between places. You can scatter stuff much further than that, even 2 weeks travel time between the furthest cities would be pretty packed.

[Tanngrisnir]

These two links may help.

Travel speed/time

General population stuff

Apparently rather a large amount of research went into making their figures as accurate as possible for real world medieval travel and statistics.

[Chess435]

When I first saw this thread, I kept thinking "Time Travel" instead of "Travel Time", lol.

[Aux-Ash]

When armies marched in the days of yonder they would travel 20-30 km per day for 2 days, spend one day foraging and then repeat the procedure. That's sort of the maximum speed one can travel on foot.

contrary to popular belief, horses to do allow you to travel faster. Short term it does, but travelling faster than what a human can walk for an extended amount of time will lead to the horse dying of exhaustion. That's why couriers change horses every couple of miles.

As for watersources, no settlement would be created more than an hour away from a freshwater source. But most ponds, rivers and wells wouldn't show on a river anyways.

[Ravens_cry]

Damn, for some reason I read this as realistic time travel, a topic I would love to expound upon. Still, I might find this useful.
One of the ideas for a region was a feudal region with most humanoids in small fiefdoms, separated by stretches of wilderness, populated by monstrous humanoids and worse. Trade caravans and other groups, protected by mercenary armies, criss crossed the desolations. the sides of the wagons would be painted with the logo/heraldry of the mercenary band, letting anything intelligent know they were protected by such and such. Because the protection relied as much on reputation as ability, putting a logo that wasn't paid for was a great way to be without protection from anyone, basically a death sentence. The PC's could be hired as scabs, and potentially get in trouble with the mercenary groups. As well as larger, more general companies, you could have more specialized groups that were equipped to repel certain enemies.
edit: I see I was not the only one.

[Shpadoinkle]

I too misread the title as "Realistic time travel."

But yeah, settlements (not necessarily cities, or even town of any appreciable size, but at least established camping grounds) are going to be roughly one day's travel apart. In the American Midwest, for instance, cities average about thirty to fifty miles away from each other.

[mint]

Making your own sandbox world is potentially a lot of work. It can be tricky. And you can get bogged down with details easily.
Since this is your first time as DM, I earnestly suggest that if you make a sandbox, make it small. Even a single city contains more area than you will every use in all your scenes. And there is more to a single city than you would ever bother detailing.

A land locked village would get water from wells and rain water.
But you really don't need to mark every brook and little lake on a your map.
To get realistic travel times: calculate, or look up (in the table like the one linked earlier) a reasonable turn of speed for trade caravans.
Use this speed to determine how long it takes to cross the length of your landmass in some places you find meaningful. Like distance between the two biggest cities, coast to coast or whatever.
I would try to use distances you and your players can relate to.

[J.Gellert]

Merchants will travel for more than 2-5 days between places. You can scatter stuff much further than that, even 2 weeks travel time between the furthest cities would be pretty packed.

This. If the thing you are selling is sufficiently valuable, it can be worth any travel time.

The main restrictive factor is this; how safe is it? This doesn't depend so much on the "age", but rather on the power/status of individual nations/cities/warlords across the road.

[Frozen_Feet]

Weeks? Uh, some caravans wandered for months, or years, passing through a succession of settlements on the way to the main goal, and then doing the same when coming home. Look up Silk Road.

Personally, I've been running a campaign for nearly a year now where the players have free hands to go pretty much where ever they will. Even the distances within their little home island took day or two by foot. The closest major island took half a day to reach by the sea with a cutter, same for mainland continent. The plot objective hotspots took varying travel times ranging from 5 to 15 days by the sea. Reaching the imperial great harbor required 10 days on average, and two days more by horse if going all the way to the capital. Quite a lot of the campaign has consisted of the players sailing around week after week after week. In the last two sessions, they spend a whole month to trek to the northern tundra and back with but a few mule carts stuffed full of stuff.

[Shadowknight12]

When I first saw this thread, I kept thinking "Time Travel" instead of "Travel Time", lol.

Same here. I was getting ready for a dissertation on the different kinds of time travel, paradoxes, consequences and how to incorporate them into a game. Bah.

[Knaight]

Weeks? Uh, some caravans wandered for months, or years, passing through a succession of settlements on the way to the main goal, and then doing the same when coming home. Look up Silk Road.

Yeah. My point was that several weeks of travel is absolutely trivial, and if pretty much every settlement was within a few weeks of eachother the area would be small and densely populated.

[Gamer Girl]

A problem I am having is how much travel time makes sense in each case? I feel like in the first age, since there is less civilization, it would be all in a clustered area, but I am having trouble deciding if they should be in 1-3 days ride away from each other, or 2-5 days.

Whatever age, travel takes time. Any time is fine, places need not be close to each other.

I want there to be travel time between towns, but I also want a couple travelling merchants who go through the roads and dont think it makes sense for them to be travelling for so long to go to a new town while still balancing travel around the players capabilities. Once in a while having the merchants hire PCs as bodyguards will work a few times, but I don't want to plan on relying on that.

There is no limit to the distance a merchant will go to make some money. From day one things have been moved across the whole world, just to make money.

I didnt put a whole lot of ponds throughout the landmass, and am wondering if it makes sense for a landlocked village to be able to get water after a few days of walking? Would I have to include that they make heavy use of rain-water? or just say theres some unmapped rivers they can find?

Even today...lots of the world does not have easy access to water. Those of us in the country A)Do collect rain water B)Have clean water trucked in and placed in a tank and C) use well water. Don't forget about wells, they are a major source of water. Plus most of the country is covered with tiny streams (about a foot deep and wide) that move water down hill. Several such streams run around my farm and we tap two of them for water. They are far too small to show up on any map...

[mrzomby]

Thank you everyone for the input, I will try to use all of this information to the best of my (albeit still inexperienced) ability. :D

[DontEatRawHagis]

You mentioned getting water for a land locked village.

Land locked villages might utilize either small water holes(ie. small brooks or oasises) though this is probably not enough for an average sized village. Also my town uses underground wells for most of its water supply. We don't even use the reservoirs nearby to my knowledge.

In desert survival there is a way of getting water from condensation. Modern way of doing it is with tarps over holes in the ground, however this would only grant a cup of water every hour.

[Ravens_cry]

Also, some desert areas would have underground rivers that wells could tap into. Natural incursions into this are what create oasis. Assuming a substantial size, such a place would be a natural stop over for trade routes going for a more direct route.