The Road goes ever on and on…

A brief update about the new RPG travel system I came up with for my Fantasy campaign, and that I mentioned in this post.

I gave the system a try last night and think it worked very well – four cards turned up a story of a mudslide blocking the path, necessitating a dangerous cross-country descent down a mountainside; this was followed by a brief stay with a friendly woodsman who provided food and healing, and warnings of dangers ahead. The latter half of the journey involved an ambush by trollish minions, followed by a chance to regroup and for the leader of the company to raise the spirits of the others with a well-placed speech. Lots of flavour, emerging story, and very little time taken.

I’ve had some input from the group about potential new cards and have also come up with a mechanic that involves potentially shortening or lengthening a journey depending on what happens as shown in some of these new cards.

The potential for this system is large I think. I can imagine creating focussed journey decks to cover specific situations, for instance a deck for exploring large underground complexes – surely a better way to replicate something like the Mines of Moria than mapping the whole thing out and asking “do you go left or right” every hundred yards or so. Netrunning decks for Cyberpunks might work too. Maybe even a deck for navigating a social encounter such as a grand ball or season at a king’s court.