Movement

We differentiate between two kinds of movement during the game, the strategic and the tactical maneuvers. Strategic movement results in this description to long distances and long durations, whereas tactical movement is the propagation on short distances for a short time, i.e. a chase through a castle or the narrow streets of a town.

Distances are measured in miles in Arkania (1 Arkanian mile = 1 kilometer) and in steps (1 step = 1 meter).

Strategic Movement

The strategic movement - you could as well call them speed of travel - is important, when you want to measure the distance a gang of heroes can walk or ride during one day. Unfortunately, the speed of travel is always the speed of the slowest group member. Good average values per day are:

• Group of travelers walking: 30 miles
• Group of travelers riding: 50 miles

These are the distances people can travel at slightly quick pace without spending all the travelers' or the animals' energy. If time is short and the group wants to travel faster they can, but beware the animals:

• Group of travelers marching: 45 miles
• Travelers riding their horses: 70 miles

Important: A march or drive can only be carried out every other day.

Travelling at normal speed you have to think about the surrounding nature and terrain.

Bad terrain slows down the pace of the brave heroes. Therefore there is a modifier on the main value.

Terrain modifiers:

• Imperial Road 110%
• Open fields 100%
• Open forest 75%
• Hills 75%
• Forest 50%
• Mountains 30%
• Dense forest / Jungle: 10%
• Swamps 10%
  

  Means of transport:

• Oxcar 25 miles/day
• Horsecar 30 miles/day
• Travel coach 50 miles/day
• Stage-caoch 120 miles/day *
• Barge upstream 20 miles/day
• Barge downstream 40 miles/day
• Sailing boat 140 miles/day

* Frequent use of horses enables the stage-coach to go that fast, it uses nearly only imperial roads.




Tactical Maneuvering

Tactical movement is normally only interesting if the situation of a chase arises and somebody has to catch somebody else. How long will it take? Does it happen? So what we need to know for it is the maximum speed a creature can go and its stamina (i.e. how long it can go that fast).

Maximum speed: In the following we proceed on the assumption that a sporty, agile human being (which is the group that most of the heroes belong to) can easily obtain a maximum speed of 8 steps per second or very agile heroes (AGILITY 16-20) may even reach speed of up to 9 steps/second whereas less agile heroes (AGILITY 8-10) make only 7 steps/second. Dwarfs are limited because of their short legs to 5 steps/second.




Stamina

The stamina of a hero is the result of the sum of STRENGTH and Life Energy, as we have already seen. It gives you a value to measure the endurance of a hero concerning the seconds he can keep up moving with maximum speed.

Our tables show 3 different levels of speed depending on the class of armour. Table 1 is valid for fast humanoid creatures like men, elves, goblins, trolls, vampires or orcs. Table 2 consists of slow humanoids like dwarfs, reptile-men and the undead.

A man is so subject to the conditions of Table 1 and his maximum speed is e.g. dependent of his armour. Clothed with only a loincloth (Handicap 0), his maximum speed is 8 steps/second, in normal clothes this reduces to 7 st/sec, whereas a knight's armour reduces even that to 2 steps/second.

The number of seconds he endures at that speed is the number of Stamina points he has access to. After that he has to turn down his run into jogging which he can endure ten times as long, so that he finally ends up marching and tumbling. In that stage he needs a turn (5 mins) to rest before he can start a run again.

Example

A warrior in watted service coat (Handicap 2) with a Stamina of 40 can run for 40 sec with a maximum speed of 6 steps/second. Than he has to reduce speed to jogging velocity, which he can keep up for 400 seconds. After that he can simply march and has to keep that up for at least 5 minutes, before he can run again.

Loads

Given the case that a hero has to carry additional weights, her speed will reduce. That is especially true for big and edgy items. (If you do not believe it, try a 100 meters run with a wardrobe on your back !) In single cases the master has to decide which handicap will be appropriate, for simplifying it let us say 200 ounces too much is 1 level of handicap.




Speed Table 1: Fast Humanoid Beings

Handicap by armour	Maximum speed in steps/sec	Jogging speed in steps/sec	Marching speed in steps/sec
0	8	4	2
1	7	4	2
2	6	3	1
3	5	3	1
4	4	2	1
5	3	2	1
6	2	1	1
7	1	1	1




Speed Table 2: Slow Humanoid Beings

Handicap by armour	Maximum speed in steps/sec	Jogging speed in steps/sec	Marching speed in steps/sec
0	5	3	2
1	5	3	2
2	4	2	1
3	4	2	1
4	3	2	1
5	2	2	1
6	1	1	1
7	1	1	1

Additional weight reducement:

200 ounces weight => handicap + 1

Note: The handicap of weight of armour and shield has to be calculated as well if it is part of the overload.




Speed Table 3: Animals

Animal	Speed
Giant Amoeba	0.25
Rattle-snake	1
Tomb-Louse	4
Giant Monkey	7/5 *
Tatzelworm	5
Rat	7
Werewolf	9
Ogre	10
Giant	10
Octopod Newt	3/2 **
Crocodile	5/1 **
Wolf	13
Bat	15/0.5 ***
Treekite	15/1 ***

* in trees or else,
** in water or else,
*** in air or else

Animal	trotting	galloping	Stamina
Donkey	6	10	trot 3 turns, gallop 1 turn
Mule	7	11	trot 4 turns, gallop 1 turn
Camel	8	13	trot 8 turns, gallop 4 turns
Horse	10	14	trot 3 turns, gallop 1 turn

Explanation

All values are steps per second values. Animals which are used for riding have got three different values, since they can go at 3 different paces: stepping, trotting and galloping. The stepping speed is the same as the walk speed of men, i.e. 2 steps/sec. The column Stamina gives the duration that a rider can keep up a higher speed on his animal without treating it too bad.




Swimming

When a hero, chased by a water-based creature, cannot reach the next bank or beach within a few strokes of swimming, he has to think of another tactics than her swimming - so we think, a table is not necessary. The distance a swimmer is capable of swimming is, however, interesting. It is dependent on his/her talent Swimming and his/her Stamina.

A Rule of Thumb

Talent Points (TaP) in Swimming multiplied by Stamina multiplied by 10 is the distance she can manage to stay head higher than the water surface. A hero with TaP 2 in Swimming and Stamina 40 will so manage a distance of 800 steps, 2 times 40 times 10.

This number can only be obtained if clothed in nothing but a cloth around the genitals, clothes in street clothes or even armour, the formula changes to:

Distance = TaP times Stamina times (10-Handicap)




Creeping, Crawling, Balancing
and other strange ways of movement

A table for rare things like that is, in our opinion, not essential. This is a part of the game, when the gamemaster has to manage his own rules. (This would have been a good advice for any kind of movement, but remember, if rules get too annoying, just change them as you like them to be, i.e. you, the gamemaster, not someone else, although heroes can be quite helpful sometimes…)