The game started with a rules set that suggested you buy and use a board game of wilderness travel and survival, but the idea sort of withered on the vine; there isn't a very detailed or compelling treatment of that part of the game in much that followed. I own the Wilderness Survival Guide for 1E, and it is pretty disappointing. It has like 10 pages of ridiculously detailed rules on climbing but is incoherent as a game system for outdoor adventure.

What rules set would you say does this best?

The Wilderness Survival Guide was published a dozen years after the game started. Have you looked at the Underworld and Wilderness book of the LBBs? It's... well it's part of the LBBs, so true coherence is possibly not better, and it's probably less total text than the 10 pages on climbing in WSG, but for it's time it is a pretty good primer for wilderness adventure. I'm sure some of the retroclones would work well for your purposes.

Unfortunately I don't think I've seen any games good at this. It seems be the sort of thing that requires a ref with knowledge of outdoorsmanship for it to be done well in any game.

Quote from: Dumarest;998287Unfortunately I don't think I've seen any games good at this.

I think it is a general gap for OD&D and AD&D games/clones, but Victor Raymond wrote some excellent advice modelled along the lines of building out a "Wilderness Architect" (to compliment Roger Musson's brilliant Dungeon Architect articles from White Dwarf).  Well-worth checking out at http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/786/wilderness-architect

Allan.

None of them. They aren't designed for it.

Re-read old issues of Dragon ('78 or so). Gary Gygax and most of TSR apparently went crazy over a game, Source of the Nile, which was focused on outdoor adventuring. Maybe more boardgame like, but had a lot of RPG elements and clearly it offered something in terms of outdoors adventuring that TSR felt their game (including the holy OD&D Whitebox) lacked .

Can you give an example of what sort of mechanics you are looking for? Like, a non-D&D game that does that right or just a list of expectations.

I think the Journey rules in Adventures in Middle Earth come close to nailing it. The basic gist is that a journey consists of a Embarkation, events during the journey, and a arrival. There are four roles that need to be filled during a journey, hunter, look out, guide, and scout. Depending on the length and difficulty of the journey (as determined by the areas the PCs are travelling through) a number of events are rolled and resolved.

Where it works well is that you are not rolling per hex or per area but rather you get a handful of encounters that you can sprinkle along the way. That all the encounters not about meeting people or fighting monsters.  That they are vague enough that a creative referee can twist them to fit the circumstances of the journey. The Embarkation roll influences the resolution of the journey events. The Arrival roll is influenced by how successful the players are at handling the events of the journey. And arrival roll can confer benefits and complications for whatever the players are planning to do once they arrived at their destination.

The only issue I have with it is party roles of guide, scout, etc are a bit rigid and gamey in my opinion. I think if I was to use this for the Majestic Wilderlands I would cut it down to the main body, look out, and scout.

Plus some of the embarkation and arrival rolls require the players to roleplay the result. In the example below the Embarkation of "The Wearisome Toils of Many Leagues" implies that for whatever reason the party is not relishing the idea of traveling this time. It works with my present Middle Earth group because the folks are willing to role-play stuff like this. But I have other groups that I play with that this wouldn't go over well with.

The use of the D&D 5e exhaustion mechanics plays a big role in the mechanics and it use is quite clever. Exhaustion in of itself it quite simple to use (basically a 5 level condition).

Here is a sample events from a long journey of over a week.

QuoteEmbarkation:
 The Wearisome Toils of Many Leagues
 All terrain types classed as 1 grade harder.
Embarkation Roll: 4
Check DC: 15
Journey Events:

QuoteEvent #1
 Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Hunter: Survival test. Success results finding Redcurrants
 (removes 1 level of Exhaustion or restores 1 Hit Dice).
 Failure results in -1 to Arrival roll.
* The test is subject to Disadvantage/Advantage if Embarkation roll was 6 or 7.

QuoteEvent #2
 A Chance Encounter
 With A group of Dwarves of the Iron Hills who are visitors during mid-afternoon with gusty wind and clear skies
Scout: Stealth test to avoid, or Persuasion test. If Persuasion is used, success results in Advantage on the first roll of the next event. Fail results in Disadvantage.

QuoteEvent #3
 A Hunt
 The hunter finds some tracks left by a plump sheep.
Hunter: Survival: Subject to Disadvantage/Advantage if the Embarkation roll was 6 or 7.
* Success by 5 or more: All characters may remove 1 level of Exhaustion and the party receive +1 to the Arrival roll.
* Success: All may remove 1 level of Exhaustion.
* Fail: All receive 1 level of Exhaustion.
* Fail by 5 or more: All receive 1 level of Exhaustion and the Arrival roll is at -1

I think D&D is well suited to concrete, board-game-like outdoor rules. After all, it is already a very concrete map-focused dungeon/tactical game. We have statements about rates of movement indoors and outdoors over short time spans, rules for surprise and initiative and guidelines for hearing and seeing over distance and with obstacles. It would not be that complicated to define a timescale for overland adventure (a few hours, like a 'watch' would probably be correct), state what an inch in movement rate means over that timescale (probably something like 1 mile per inch movement rate per watch), and lay out some guidelines about how spotting, surprise and initiative work at that scale. The main new thing you would need is guidelines for the way movement works in different terrain types (rates and dangers, like falling). Also, you need some rule that describes getting lost and finding yourself (a kind of orieteering roll). And people will need to find food, water, wood and shelter, so you'd want some sort of guideline for handling that. The end result should probably be roughly as complicated as combat or dungeon exploration rules in regular D&D.

It certainly has all the important components, even if it initially mostly just said here are some guidelines and some random encounter tables, you figure it out.

I don't know if it counts as "D&D-like" in this context, but GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures, as well as Pyramid 3-95 Overland Adventures, has lots of good stuff on conducting wilderness travel of all kinds, obstacles, weather, making camp and foraging/hunting, etc. I don't imagine it would be difficult to take some of the core concepts contained therein and 're-mechanize' them for the purposes of an OSR game (DF 16, in particular, is somewhat slanted towards supporting hexcrawl-style exploration and travel).

TFT (see In The Labyrinth) has what I consider fairly decent travel rules, that cover the essentials and leave room for the GM to figure out more details if they want. There are typical travel rates given for each terrain and road type. If you stay on a road, river or coastline, there's no chance of getting lost except imperfect/absent maps, unlabeled roads and choosing the wrong one. If you go off-road, your appropriate talents and IQs (and route familiarity, and terrain, or being lost already) influence a roll to see if you get lost and travel in a direction you didn't intend. A loyal "native guide" will also keep you from getting lost. Traveling in wilderness without enough people with with the right talents/equipment slows progress and leads to risks of mishap and damage. Sample encounter tables are given per terrain, with the strong suggestion that GM make up their own encounter details appropriate for the places in their world. There are a few suggestions about appropriate encounters on civilized roads and settlements, and mention that the GM might want to assess encounters rather than roll them, particularly on roads and in towns.

Gamelords published some nice supplements for Classic Traveller: The Desert Environment, The Mountain Environment, The Underwater Environment. I still use stuff derived from The Desert Environment. The Mountain Environment is more about climbing, and The Undersea Environment more about SCUBA etc. They're generic enough to be useful for other games, but some conversion from (or adaptation of your game system into) Traveller stats is needed.

GURPS has pretty good travel rules, too, which are generic enough to import into other games. Compared to the TFT rules, IIRC they lack the getting lost mechanics and hexmap baseline, but add travel speed based on encumbrance level, fatigue, weather and clothing effects, hunting, foraging, and some other bits.

Quote from: Skarg;998445GURPS has pretty good travel rules, too, which are generic enough to import into other games. Compared to the TFT rules, IIRC they lack the getting lost mechanics and hexmap baseline, but add travel speed based on encumbrance level, fatigue, weather and clothing effects, hunting, foraging, and some other bits.

Bold emphasis mine. DF16 doesn't explicitly use hexes, but the way it's written and how the mechanics work skews towards the idea that exploration and travel is done in fairly traditional hexcrawl style. Also, it does have some 'getting lost' mechanics if you're curious (page 26).

Perilous Wilds is a good outdoor supplement by Jason Lutes usable in any D&D or fantasy game.

Quote from: Voros;998582Perilous Wilds is a good outdoor supplement by Jason Lutes usable in any D&D or fantasy game.

Any ideas for non-fantasy games?

Mazes & Minotaurs...and I'm not sure why.

Maybe there is something in the faux-Greek myth setting. I can't pin it down, but my players are always excited to toodle about island after island.