Hi Rich (and everyone else)!
First, thank you and great work on your Travel House Rule! I really like what AiME has done regarding Journeys and longed to house-rule it for TOR. It's great that another brave soul has done my job for me
Now, a question (or two):
There's a classic joke in our (French-canadian) stand-up repertoire (it might exist in other cultures) regarding canned goods: say your can has December 1st as an expiration date; what the hell happens at midnight that makes the food turn bad from December 1st to the 2nd?
Long detour to explain my mindset regarding one aspect of your house rule: the Journey Length being categorized as Short (1-12 hexes) - Medium (13-24 hexes) - Long (25+ hexes). Rhetorical question (of course) but why would it be so much harder to travel 13 hexes instead of 12, but then you can almost travel twice as far without it being more tiring?
Of course, I know it's mostly for simplicity's sake, as too much granularity would overcomplicate things.
But I can't help but feel such a classification is a little artificial. I was trying to think of an alternative, and I thought of this: how about instead of counting hexes, you count the number of regions traveled (e.g. Western Mirkwood, East Middle Vales, etc.)?
For example, you'd have One-region, Two-Regions and Three (and more) Regions Journeys, with the same modifiers as the ones in your rules for Short-, Medium- and Long Journeys.
Regions are not all the same sizes, but it could be argued that the sameness of a single region's landscape is more important than the exact distance traveled.
Doing this slightly simplifies things (counting regions instead of hexes) and, at least to me and my players, might feel more "natural".
Do you think it might mesh well with the rest of your House Rules?
Thanks!