Lone Wolf Fists: Walking the scorched earth

Let me share with you a story of my complete failure as a game master. It's an Exalted story, and I choose it because it's an example of how a GM can fail a game, even when the game gives them every advantage.

The circle had just gotten a tip-off that some serious business was going down in a distant city: the Mask of Winters was about to crush the military capitol Lookshy with a sneak attack from the underworld. Turns out Thorns was just a little snack; the entire free East was the main course. They've got to beat feat there before he brings the hurt down on the Scavenger Lands.

I didn't make a damn bit of all that greatness, by the way; the setting of Exalted gave me all this awesome stuff to play with. The game succeeded, I failed. Here's how:

They're traveling through the rolling hills of the East, going through vistas of sunset-drenched treetops and brooding shadows, pushing through days of moody, atmospheric terrain and big, long-winded descriptions of what stuff looks like. They travel, I drop them some more description. they keep going, I keep waxing poetic. They keep going, trying their damnedest to get to the next actual scene. I keep on describing how beautiful things look....

Eventually they have to tell me to skip to the good part; I kid you not, I had the gall to be upset about this.

See, I failed to understand the difference between what we enjoy in real life and what we like in games. A walking tour of the magnificent world of creation would indeed be a breathtaking spectacle, but having to "see" that through description was enormously less impactful. "A picture is worth a thousand words"

What we want in games isn't a walking tour, though; it is to make decisions. Exploration isn't experienced in games through description; it's experienced through revelations

...

Now, Exalted does struggle with travel. Here's one of the main designers of EX3 answering a question on travel rules:

Anu:
How about a simple way to phrase the travel question:

Can I hack the Extended Roll rules to determine how long it takes for the PCs to get from point A to point B? You can assume that I am asking the players to describe what their characters are actually doing at each roll interval in order to get from A to B, but that I, as the Storyteller, am not obstructing the characters with battles or natural hazards, and am simply allowing the players to describe the journey until they reach their destination.

Holden:
That’s one of the basic system functions, yeah.

There’s no “travel system” beyond that. Not really sure why anyone would need one, or what it’d look like beyond being a random encounter table.

(Source)

Remember when I mocked EX3 for "solving" dungeoncrawls by removing the dungeon? This was their "solution" to the "problem" of hexcrawls.

There's a simple, clean process to 'crawling, that goes something like this:

• The GM tells you what you see in the place you're at (a room in a dungeon, or an area of terrain in a hex)
• You tell the GM what you want to do
• Maybe some rules get involved, maybe they don't
• GM tells you what happens
• Repeat

There's a switch that flips sometimes:

• Maybe monsters walk into the place you're at (use the encounter distance, awareness, and reaction rules, possibly followed by combat). 
• Maybe the thing you did unlocked some content; open a door, get a new room description; open a chest, get some treasure, step on a trap, get eviscerated. 
• Maybe you evoked some rules your character can access: you cast a spell, or make a search check, or smash the door to flinders with your hammer

And that's playing an RPG. It's not complex, and it's actually kind of surprising that so much of this information apparently got lost for people that were in charge of making huge games.

....

How could I have done that travel better?

If I'd ran it then like I'd run it now, it would have looked less like this:

And more like this:

Every hex they moved through would have done three things:

1. Delivered a description of a new geographic area ("You leave the forests and enter rolling plains")
2. Triggered the content keyed to that area ("You see a village that wasn't on your map; a massive rogue forest-spirit towers of the entire village on a throne of bones")
3. Risked a wandering encounter ("You see a defeated army on the march back to Lookshy")

This would have both killed my purple prose (to the infinite benefit of my players) and kept the game paced in an evocative and engrossing way. 

The players may have been faced with hard choices ("Do we help this wounded army and risk losing our chance to warn Lookshy of the invasion?") or been granted unexpected opportunities ("This Forest God hates the Mask too; maybe we can convince him to slow the invasion force down!"). 

At the very least, they would have been able to interact with the setting on their own terms while exploring it: you might note that this is almost an exact description of an awesome roleplaying game

All that from understanding what makes a good set of travel mechanics. So here's ours. Note that the GM-facing stuff (wandering encounters and such) are absent; you'll be seeing those in the Content rules when I get to writing the GM section.

...

Movement, exploration, and travel

Moving around in an RPG is an exercise in decision making. The GM tells you where you are and what you see, and you tell them what interests you; do you want to go to that burned-out city that’s on the horizon, but not on your map? Do you want to open that door in the dark alley? Do you want to chance the leap between this collapsing building and next one?

This sections tell you how to do that.

Getting around: the process

The process of moving around is as follows:

• The GM tells you what’s in your immediate surroundings
• They then tell you what’s in neighboring places you can see
• You choose whether to travel to an adjacent place or stay in your current one and do something

That’s really all there is to it. Moving is really just a process of deciding where you want to do things. Don’t want to do anything where you are? Move to a more interesting place.

The distance you intend to travel determines what kind of scene you enter as you move:

• If you’re going a long way, you’re Traveling. This typically happens during a Montage scene.
• If you’re moving deliberately through an area, you’re Exploring. This usually happens during a Real-time scene.
• If you’re rushing through, you’re doing Tactical Movement. This commonly happens during an Action scene.

***Callout Box: Moving faster and slower in different scenes

Just for the record: you can move deliberately in an Action scene (maybe you’re sneaking around like a ninja and things are tense) and you can move breakneck fast during a Montage scene (maybe you’re fast enough to bolt like lightning between entire Regions). These rules are guidelines, they’re not super-strict. Use the most appropriate combination of movement and scene to get the spice right.***

Scale

The scale of places, from largest to smallest, is as follows:

Region > Location > Area > Field (or Battlefield)

• Regions represent huge geographical areas; mountain ranges, valleys, cities and the like.
• Locations are distinct places within those larger regions. Following from the example above, sample Locations could include a mountain, a forest, and a neighborhood.
• Areas are the individual parts of Locations. Continuing the example, sample Areas could be a mountain pass, a glen, or a marketplace.
• Fields (or Battlefields) are the smallest building blocks of Areas; you might think of them as “your surroundings”. For these examples, a stretch of the pass, a copse or stream within the glen, or a street in the marketplace would be Fields.

Moving far: Traveling

During Montage scenes, characters travel through Regions by moving between Locations. This takes the shape described before:

• The GM describes your immediate surroundings (in your current Location)
• They then describe neighboring Locations you can see
• You choose where to go and how to get there

This might sound like the following:

GM: “You’re traveling through Silver Star City. You’re currently in a crowded slum. To the north you see a glistening metal dome about the size of a stadium. To the west, you see a stretch of dilapidated buildings strewn with prayer strips. South is the mountain pass, while East and Northeast there’s a sprawl of empty-looking buildings”

(Note here that the GM is giving area descriptions and directions, so that the player can navigate in the Shared Mindspace meaningfully)

Player: “I want to go north to investigate that dome”

The GM then describes their trip and repeats the process when they arrive at the dome.

Each area described and moved through is a Location; we’ll teach you more about how Locations work (and how to make them interesting) in the GM section (p.XX)

For now, think of Travel like driving through a city; you might enter at uptown, drive through midtown, and exit downtown. You have the option to stop the car in each of these places as you drive through them, and you might hit some traffic or something that forces you to stop: that’s Traveling.

In one Montage scene, marching at an even pace (A Rank 0 Agility Movement, to be perfectly specific) will take you through a single Region.

Moving around: Exploring

Exploring occurs when players choose to stay where they are and investigate and interact with their surroundings. This works like before, but has a few new steps:

• The GM describes your immediate surroundings (within the same Area)
• They then describe neighboring Areas you can see
• You describe how you’re investigating or interacting with your surroundings
• Sometimes, your actions will unlock hidden content
• The GM describes the outcome of your efforts

That bit about unlocking content sounds pretty juicy, doesn’t it? Let’s tell you about that part first.

Certain content (NPCs, places, treasures, foes, etc.) isn’t immediately obvious to characters; this is called by the fancy-sounding name Vertical content, which you’ll hear all about in the Content section (p.XX).

For now, it’s sufficient to know that unlocking this cool hidden stuff requires your character to interact with the environment in a fairly specific way. Sometimes this is as easy as opening a door, sometimes it’s more obtuse, like asking a certain NPC about their connection to the Red Sands Shaman.

You won’t know what it is, so the only thing to do is dig deep and pay attention to the world. Nothing exists in a vacuum: the clues to unlocking hidden content are all about for canny players to find. So get investigating!

As for movement, Exploring is a methodical and measured movement from Area to Area within a Location. To put that in perspective, think of a Location like “downtown”; there’s a lot of blocks, shopping areas, parks and suchlike downtown, huh? If you took a walking tour, stopping to rest in the park, eat lunch at the shopping center, and finish up on your friend’s block, that’s Exploration movement.

In one Real-Time scene, marching at an even pace (another Rank 0 Agility Movement) will take you through a single Location.

Moving fast: Tactical Movement

Tactical movement happens when you’re measuring every second of your movement; maybe you’re being chased, maybe you’re fighting for your life, maybe the building you’re in is collapsing. In any case, you’ve got to book it! Surprisingly, this follows a similar structure to the normal movement process:

• The GM describes your immediate surroundings, including any foes, obstacles, hazards, or other notable elements you see
• They then describe neighboring Fields of which you’re aware
• You describe how you’re hiding in, running through, climbing, breaking, or otherwise strategically dealing with your surroundings
• The GM describes the outcome of your efforts

Because tactical movement generally happens in Action scenes, the speed of the movement is more likely to be measure in terms of Agility actions. Refer to the Agility Effect Chart on p.XX for a full breakdown of strategic movement.

The places moved through are Fields (called Battlefields in a fight). They’re described in terms of their Terrain and Elements: Terrain is what the ground (or equivalent medium moved through) is like, while elements are things present in the area.

Terrain can affect what movements are easy or even possible. You can’t really run underwater, and you can’t swim up a concrete staircase. In effect, players must describe their movement in terms of the Field’s terrain. Sometimes this is just flavorful, but it’s often tactically important; to give one example, it’s not so difficult to run with a broken arm, but swimming is next to impossible.

Elements also open up (or limit) strategic possibilities. A massive dead tree would require circumvention (limiting the strategic option to flee) but would make an awesome sledgehammer for a super-strong character (opening up an intimidating weapon option)!

In both cases, the Tactical Infinity leads the gameplay: this is a place where sound, consistent judgement from the GM is vital.

GMs, use the Effect Charts (p.XX-YY), Hazard rules (p.XX), Environmental Destruction rules (p.XX) and other elements of the mechanics that allow you to make game-elements from your descriptions. This turns an interesting description from you into a tactical landscape for the players, creating a rich and satisfying blend of imagination and gameplay.

Note the hyper-detail at play in tactical movement: players must consider everything in terms of how it affects their movement. This is useful for combat and chase scenes, but as mentioned before is a great way to represent any tense situation. For example, carefully sneaking through an area loaded with foes or monsters would use these rules, even though the character’s pace is much more measured than you’d expect from a casual reading.

During an Action scene, moving at a strategic pace will get you through only a single Area… In most cases. Generally, if you’re able to duck out of the broader area of conflict, you’ve effectively escaped and the game shifts to a slower scene.