Wilderness "Railcrawl" Spreadsheet

[Bjarkmundur]

For those who have been following my Wilderness series: You're not going to want to miss this!

I previously posted about Distress, a mechanic meant to replace Exhaustion to better add tension during wilderness travel, and how it interacted with areas of different Hostility Levels, and how I was going to use this in a small Wilderness Minigame based on a "railroaded hexcrawl" that mostly resembled "snakes and ladders"

Well, now I have created a Spreadsheet that generates these minigames for YOU!

1. Make a copy of the linked spreadsheet.
2. Select the minimum movement speed in the group from the dropdown list.
3. Determine the difficulty of the Wilderness. This determines how many squares of each hostility level are added.
4. Determine the percentage of the path that is difficult terrain.

WARNING: The squares change whenever you refresh the document, so if you like a particular arrangement, take a picture or something so you wont lose it.

HOW TO PLAY
- You start on the first square, and for each day of travel you roll your Group Speed dice to determine how many squares you travel in that day. This can be buffed with spells and potions as normal.
- The color of the square you land on determines what Hostility Level applies for that day of travel, and how your long rest is resolved.
- Squares that are marked "D" are Difficult Terrain, and costs two points of movement to cross. When you cross a D square you also have a chance of getting lost in the rough terrain. Make a Wisdom or Intelligence check to navigate, or lose the rest of your movement for that day.

At the bottom of the Spreadsheet is an estimate of how many rounds the journey will take. You can always use more or fewers squares if you like.

Then, determine the number of "special squares" you want to add. This could be abandoned caravans full of treasures, random encounters, shortcuts, enviromental hazards, or even dungeons to explore. The spreadsheet will then tell you which of the squares to mark as special. If you select two d20 rolls, and you get the results 5 and 13, you mark the fifth and the 13th square as special. Whenever the party lands on a special square, run that scene. Any specific scenes that your DM wants to play out for you are not included as Special squares.

It's a good idea to draw your "game board" on a piece of paper, make it squiggly, mark in difficult terrain and special squares and generally make it interesting to look at before giving it to your players.

I'm really looking forward to using this in t

[Naanomi]

How does this interact with Ranger class abilities (or similar stuff... Totem Barbarian double travel speed etc)?

[Bjarkmundur]

How does this interact with Ranger class abilities (or similar stuff... Totem Barbarian double travel speed etc)?

• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

The first bullet ignores the extra movement cost of difficult terrain.
The second bullet allows you to always succeed your check to navigate through difficult terrain.
The third bullet I have never seen in actually gameplay, And how it is normally applied. Could you provide examples for me?
The fourth rule doesn't apply to group mechanics.
The fifth bullet talks about foraging being bumped from 1d6 + Wis to doubling that. I honestly didn't think about foraging for my mini-game. On the fly is probably rule you can forgo rolling the dice to travel and instead spend the day foraging.
The sixth bullet refers to tracking, not travel. But to be clear on how tracking interacts with my rules, it just adds a layer of challenge. I'd rule that at the start of each day, and upon exiting difficult terrain, you have to reroll your tracking check, and a failed track lowers your travel for that day by one before they can try again, as per the rules in the DMG.

Your groups travel speed is determined by the group's slowest member.

I am a firm believer of "add content based on what your party brings with them". Bringing thieves' Tools means I'll add more traps to a campaign, bringing a crowbar means I'll add more locked doors, bringing detect Magic means there's now a bunch of magic to detect. If I had a ranger in my group, if make sure that all of his Wilderness travel class features would be useful, at one point or another. My players never take classes with Natural Explorer class feature, so I have never looked up ways to make the feature overly useful.

[Naanomi]

Normally you overland travel at half speed or you have disadvantage in checks to avoid ambush (this is that ranger 'alert' thing). Foraging for food also halves overland movement normally.

The 6th level Elk Totem ability is explicitly a party buff:

"Elk. Whether mounted or on foot, your travel pace is doubled, as is the travel pace of up to ten companions while they're within 60 feet of you and you're not incapacitated. The elk spirit helps you roam far and fast."

[Bjarkmundur]

The weights of the Spreadsheet have been adjusted to give a better perceived difficulty, so that the highest weighted square matches the difficulty setting.

The changes were also made considering that up to 12 rounds of wilderness travel is quite much, and DMs can choose to use only 10 squares of travel instead of 20.

	Low Difficulty	Med Difficulty	High Difficulty
Green Squares	50%	20%	20%
Yellow Squares	35%	65%	50%
Red Squares	15%	15%	30%

The High Difficulty Setting is quite deadly, but is now more balanced for 10-square journeys and high level parties.

Special Squares have been adjusted so they now represent the number of the square rolled and the square immediately following it. These squares are "event squares" which have a scene or a random encounter if the party lands on those squares. I have yet to figure out the programming, so a preset squares have been marked with green for good scenes (you find a well of healing!) and red for bad scenes (You stumble into an owlbear lair).

Rules I've cleaned up the rules and included them all on this document, which can be printed alongside the spreadsheet to have on the table during sessions (for those who play in person).

[Bjarkmundur]

Normally you overland travel at half speed or you have disadvantage in checks to avoid ambush (this is that ranger 'alert' thing). Foraging for food also halves overland movement normally.

The 6th level Elk Totem ability is explicitly a party buff:

"Elk. Whether mounted or on foot, your travel pace is doubled, as is the travel pace of up to ten companions while they're within 60 feet of you and you're not incapacitated. The elk spirit helps you roam far and fast."

The Elk Totem interaction is intended, although it might make the subclass a bit too good xD

I don't think the "avoid ambushes" bit will be applicable, but if your DM is tracking food the foraging part definetly is.