Hiyas!

I was wondering if the Table for "times for different types of travel" is correct in stating that the same time's taken when travelling by boat as on foot?

When reading the Marsh-bell adventure it states that navigating the Marshes via boat reduces the travel time by half. Why, if both foot travel & boat travel times are the same (unless boating is less)?



Am I missing something?

Am I reading things wrong?


Ñ

Without looking it up myself, the first thing that jumps out at me is that travelling by foot through a marsh should be time consuming.

I think that might be your answer. Will look in the books later if no one else does.

Boats aren't affected by terrain. You always go 20 miles a day downstream, even in a marsh. On foot, you can travel 20 miles a day on open ground, but not in a marsh.

There are a lot of variables when you're talking about travel time, and instead of bogging everything down with rules for all of them TOR presents the table as a baseline, and then multipliers for different terrain. Much like that 20 miles per day assumes open terrain that's fairly easy to walk across, I would say that the 20 miles per day by boat represents paddling a fairly calm body of water (a slow-moving river or the Long Lake).

You can use your judgement and bump up the mileage traveled if there's a noticeably strong current (though rapids may cause enough of their own problems that you actually don't go much faster!). Likewise you can decrease mileage in a shallow marsh where you're likely to get held up and have to portage through much, or a swamp where you have to navigate around a lot of trees. I picture the Long Marshes as being fairly deep personally, without too much in the way of "aquatic terrain" (assuming you're good at route-finding anyways!).

EDIT: Ultimately, you have to keep in mind that the designers don't expect you to follow every rule exactly. Do what makes sense for your game, because the story comes first.

Hiyas!

Sorry I haven't made myself clear enough!
I wasn't asking about rule interpretations, I was asking if there could be an error in the Table itself.

Mytholder:
You're saying that, when on a boat, the terrain mods should be ignored?


Thanks,
Ñ

Assuming you're speaking of the chart for SPEED on page 34 in the LM book:

No the chart is not wrong.


The speed of 20 is the "BASE SPEED" prior to terrain modifiers. The difference is that 20 miles by foot is hampered by "Marsh Terrain" which is depicted in chart on page 32 (Distance traveled via marsh is multiplied by two to determine time spent travelling). Thus it takes twice as long to travel through marsh on foot as you would otherwise on good terrain.

Traveling via boat on the other hand does not suffer such terrain modifiers.

Thus traveling via boat in the marsh in The Marsh Bell adventure is twice as fast as traveling via foot in that same area.



Note you can increase speed via boat in a good downstream current; just as there's precedence established to increase speed on foot when traveling on a "good road."


Hope this helps.

Exactly what SirKicley said. Spot on, SirK.