Travel Time

[AJwins666]

I'm just curious if anyone has accurate travel times for the game? I'm having my party travel overland from a place a little North of Casterly Rock to King's Landing and I'm curious of how much time I have to cram some adventures into it the time it takes them to get there.

[zebuleon]

well this isn't 100% accurate but it will give you some ideas. I'm rereading the first book, and it sounds like it took Ned and the King roughly 2 months to go from winterfell to kings landing. which seems short to me. so i did a map scale comparsion as well. if the wall is about 300 miles long then from Winterfell to Kings landing is about 1520 miles as the crow flies.

now compare that to real world it took almost 6 months for a wagon train to go from springfield illinois to oregon or california which is 1600 miles as the crow flies.

using the real world example that would be 8.8 miles a day. which seems slow but they weren't in any hurry either. A 20 to 30 mile day was considered a good days journey for mounted knights.

so with all that info i'd say, to keep things simple, 10 miles a day for wagons and 30 miles a day for mounted riders at a leisurely pace. Then you can tweak from there for things like, walking peasants, traveling at a gallop etc.

hope this helps somewhat.

[inmygravenimage]

Remember, you can always make a journey longer with incidents; trying to do move quickly, that's hard (though there's always the sea). If you're happy to do it, you can always jump-cut/flashback in game (hard to pitch, but can be very effective); I've got to admit that in years of GMing, I've only tried it once: it was with ASIF, and it's an oddly unnerving experience, but the players reported back as loving it.

[hedgewizard]

A 20 to 30 mile day was considered a good days journey for mounted knights.

That sounds reasonable - I would think it would be much closer to 20 for the average. 30 if pressed, much lower if terrain is rough as horses need to be rested and bad terrain can cause significant slowdown or worse, injury.

But that sounds doable on nice roads with sufficient support along the way (inns, feed & water, etc.) The road out to the American West (in our real world) was VERY treacherous, and didn't utilize much in the way of established, well maintained roads.

I've done a LOT of backpacking, both recreationally, and while in the service, and 20 miles is considered a good day. As part of an adventure race, I once covered 40 miles, but that took the better part of the 24 hours, even with a light load.

As for distances and travel times, GRRM has explicitly shied away from providing information as he doesn't want to get bogged down in the details when writing. He has, in some interviews, suggested he rues mentioning that the wall is ~300 miles long, as others have taken it as the rough approximation for creating legends for the maps. (Though he also has suggested while some maps are official, they may not be 100% to scale).

[zebuleon]

As for distances and travel times, GRRM has explicitly shied away from providing information as he doesn't want to get bogged down in the details when writing. He has, in some interviews, suggested he rues mentioning that the wall is ~300 miles long, as others have taken it as the rough approximation for creating legends for the maps. (Though he also has suggested while some maps are official, they may not be 100% to scale).

thats true, someone says in the books that the wall it a hundred leagues long. and since even a league can be anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 miles, depending on which country your in, it still leaves it kind of vague. I like to think that the wall is near norway/sweden while Dorne is near eqypt just based on the climate.

[Irontruth]

I've done a LOT of backpacking, both recreationally, and while in the service, and 20 miles is considered a good day. As part of an adventure race, I once covered 40 miles, but that took the better part of the 24 hours, even with a light load.

I'd agree with this, a person in good shape can carry a 40-60 lb load for 20 miles, though it's still a long day. Most people would be closer to 12-15 miles carrying a load like that.

Another interesting thing to note, horses don't necessarily speed up long distance travel, humans are more efficient over long distances and a human in comparable shape to a horse (ie, exercise and run/walk a lot) can actually outdistance a horse on long trips. The reason horses are useful is cause they can carry so much more and having four legs helps distribute loads easier.

[AJwins666]

well this isn't 100% accurate but it will give you some ideas. I'm rereading the first book, and it sounds like it took Ned and the King roughly 2 months to go from winterfell to kings landing. which seems short to me. so i did a map scale comparsion as well. if the wall is about 300 miles long then from Winterfell to Kings landing is about 1520 miles as the crow flies.

Is there anyway to establish the whole "crow flies vs. walking distance" conversion?

[AJwins666]

well this isn't 100% accurate but it will give you some ideas. I'm rereading the first book, and it sounds like it took Ned and the King roughly 2 months to go from winterfell to kings landing. which seems short to me. so i did a map scale comparsion as well. if the wall is about 300 miles long then from Winterfell to Kings landing is about 1520 miles as the crow flies.

Is there anyway to establish the whole "crow flies vs. walking distance" conversion?

[Thorn]

well this isn't 100% accurate but it will give you some ideas. I'm rereading the first book, and it sounds like it took Ned and the King roughly 2 months to go from winterfell to kings landing. which seems short to me. so i did a map scale comparsion as well. if the wall is about 300 miles long then from Winterfell to Kings landing is about 1520 miles as the crow flies.

Is there anyway to establish the whole "crow flies vs. walking distance" conversion?

It's not really a "conversion".

Walking distance = distance along road/paths
"as the crow flies" distance = drawing a straight line from point A to B. The line may go over impassable terrain, since the crow is flying over everything.

[zebuleon]

the guys above pretty much covered it with the backpacking. a 'crow flies' is a straight line regardless of terrain. I assume that a 20 mile day walking would be on flat dry land. if that terrain was hilly and muddy of if the person doing the traveling was out of shape, then the 20 would go up accordingly.