travel times

[AslanC]

Well not all of us are the brightest bulbs on the tree.

Myself being one of the dimmer lights actually

No need to apologize, maybe just try to not let it vex you so much in the future.

Like I said, with the exception of me, we are all pretty good eggs here-abouts

[Ineti]

Unfortunately, this particular poster has made it a habit of getting under people's skin. Posting questions that others answer, then ignore those answers and begins to pick at the game or the other poster or both. Usually, there isn't an answer that's sufficient for him.

If I'm not mistaken, and I'll be happy to apologize if I'm wrong, but this individual is the same who has been banned from both Decipher's boards and rpg.net. Figured it was a matter of time before he showed up here.

The weird thing is that kong has posts from a couple years ago here, and they're much different in tone than his latest batch of posts.

[Chris Landmark]

One item of fact that you may wish to consider in your argument about how fast one can travel on horseback: the Pony Express, durring their brief existence, mantained an average speed of 20 MPH across the American West. This was riding flat out as fast as the terrain and weather allowed, changing both horses and riders at regular intervals in order to keep them fresh and rested.

I'd suggest that as an absolute maximum sustainable rate of travel, so long as you've got replacement horses, or mearas. Everything else would be much slower.

And honestly speaking, 3-5 MPH as a rate of speed for travel by horse is not that unrealistic. That was the speed of travel of comerce and news and correspondence before the advent of rail and auto. While horses are capable of traveling much faster than humans for a time, if you are traveling and you need to keep your horse in shape to continue traveling the next day, and the day after that, and so on, you have to husband its strength. So you travel slower; at a Walk (3 MPH) or a Trot (5 MPH). While you are certainly able to Gallop a horse at a speed of 11 MPH or more (as suggested by the Pony Express's average speed), the poor animal is not going to be able to keep that up for eight or more hours of travel a day, day after day; it's going to keel over and die.

There's some information out there on the Web, if you hunt long enough, dealing with travel speed in the pre-mechanized age, and it really wasn't much faster than a steady walking pace.

-Chris Landmark

[Grutos]

As aforementioned, a lot of it will depend upon the terrain, climate/weather, pack weight, & weight of rider + gear.

Many knights would trot their horses to the battlefield, but not waste the horse's strength getting to the battle. They would wait until the battle was ready to begin to do a full-out charge - many with a 12 - 18' lance (depending on rider height & strength) to perform their initial strike. Then, use their smaller melee weapons - which of course add to the horse's burden.

The Pony Express post does bring up some good points: if you're riding for long periods of time on an established route, you could set-up areas to swap with a rested horse. Sometimes they sent out birds/messages to alert the posts so that horses were ready.

But, I think to demand a horse to keep a pace of 6 - 10 MPH for more than 2 - 3 hours could be overly taxing. Even if the horse walks at 4 - 5 MPH, that's still a huge cargo carrier!! That in and of itself may be one of the primary reasons for having a horse or pony with the party. Characters can only carry so much gear until they grind to a halt - never fun to have the joints go one way and you the other.

Good question, we covered the same material this last weekend. Glad to see that the other play-testers and players are as excited about the system and wanting to push for explinations as our group is.

"Game on!"

[calguard66]

Actually, over a long distance horse and human speed are about the same. The advantage for a horse is that it can carry more weight and the human riding the horse isn't as tired at the end of the day as if he had walked all day.

Originally posted by kong
another thing is the travel times listed for horse speed. if you are telling me that a horse travels at 3mph and a man at 2.5mph then you are mistaken. this would have to assume a horse travelling at human walking pace. i want the speed for a horse at a good pace, otherwise whats the point of travelling by horse!

[Chadd]

Sorry to change the subject back to the original post, but I noticed another mistake on the Travel Matrix that has not been addressed by errata.

On the Travel Matrix on page 253 regarding the distance between Rivendell and the Shire, the matrix shows:
The Shire to Bree = 40 leagues, and
Bree to Rivendell = 100 leagues,
but
The Shire to Rivendell = 167 leagues.
This cannot be correct. The Shire to Rivendell should be 140 leagues.

[Phantom]

You can only do the 'flat out' thing with a horse over great distances if you can switch horse every so often. You can't expect a horse to hold a long distance flat out run for long.

To Kong, have you ever ridden a horse before? When walking they aren't much faster then a human. As has been stated above the advantage of a horse is 1) You don't have to walk and 2) If needed they can carry way more then you over a longer period. But hey, if you want to be unrealistic then go right ahead.

[Grutos]

Although, the last time I road a horse, the horse put the saddle on my back, pulled out a keg and told me to take the hill. Darn thing refused, "You want me to allow you on my back?! I don't think so, dang d-linemen thinking they can get a ride....go push a car or something."