The harsh world of Tarisia is unforgiving, its scattered settlements separated by vast stretches of dangerous wilderness. Crossing those distances makes travel a brutal but necessary part of adventure. Dwindling supplies, exhaustion, hostile weather, and the dangers of the wastes can turn even a familiar journey into a struggle for survival.
But travel also opens the door to exploration. Beyond the safety of the city-states lie forgotten trade routes, lost tombs, abandoned cities, hidden caches, and ancient artifacts buried beneath shifting sands. Strange travelers cross the wastes, colossal creatures reshape the landscape in their passing, and the mysterious Discordant Paths can carry the brave, foolish, or unfortunate across impossible distances. What happens along the way can be as important as reaching the destination.
This chapter provides rules for journeys and exploration across Tarisia, including travel pace, camps, weather, encounters, discoveries, hazards, and the many choices travelers make along the way. These rules build upon Survival & Caches, which covers the supplies and resources needed to endure Tarisia’s harsh landscape.
When to Use These Rules
Not every trip needs to be a Journey. If the route is safe, the distance doesn’t matter, or nothing interesting is likely to happen along the way, simply narrate the passage of time and move on.
If travel matters but doesn’t warrant tracking supplies, pace, camps, and individual Legs, use Quick Travel.
Use the full Journey rules when distance matters, resources are limited, the route is dangerous or uncertain, or travel and exploration are important parts of the adventure.
Quick Travel
When the trip matters but doesn’t warrant a full Journey, draw a single Action Card and resolve its suit as a Journey Event. The Game Master decides when and where the event occurs and narrates the rest of the trip as appropriate.
Quick Travel doesn’t use a Route or Legs. If circumstances make the details of travel important, use the full Journey rules instead.
Journey
Travel across Tarisia is rarely easy. A short trek between nearby settlements might pass without incident, while a long expedition across the wastes can become an adventure of its own. These rules treat such travel as a Journey, divided into a series of Legs between the travelers and their destination.
Each Leg exposes the travelers to the uncertainty of the wastes. They might encounter dangerous creatures or other travelers, discover something unexpected, endure hostile weather and other hazards, or struggle against exhaustion and dwindling supplies. Their choices about route, pace, supplies, and rest can prove as important as the dangers they encounter.
The Journey rules determine what happens along the way. Use the normal Savage Worlds rules to determine what the characters do about it.
Beginning a Journey
Before setting out, determine the route, distance, and normal travel time to the destination. Prepare supplies and Caches, account for Encumbrance, and determine the Journey’s Legs as described under Travel Time & Legs. The travelers then choose their travel pace.
Deal each player an Action Card. Next, deal one Action Card facedown for each Leg, and place a token representing the travelers before the first card. These cards form the Route and represent the uncertain journey ahead.
Each time the travelers begin a new Leg, move their token to the next facedown card, reveal it, and resolve its Journey Event. Delays, detours, exploration, changes in Pace, and other circumstances may alter the remaining Route.
The Journey ends when the travelers complete the final Leg and reach their destination.
Journey System
- Prepare: Choose a route, gather supplies, establish Caches, and account for Encumbrance.
- Determine Legs: Determine the Journey’s normal travel time and number of Legs.
- Choose Pace: Choose the party’s travel pace and adjust the number of Legs accordingly.
- Deal: Deal each player an Action Card. Deal one Action Card facedown for each Leg and place the travelers’ token before the first card.
- Travel: Advance the travelers’ token to the next Leg, reveal its Action Card, and resolve its Journey Event and any other consequences of travel.
- Camp: Make camp, tend to the travelers’ needs, test Survival, and recover where possible.
- Continue: Repeat, adjusting the remaining Route as circumstances change, until the travelers complete the final Leg and reach their destination.
Journey Events
Whenever the travelers enter a new Leg, reveal its Action Card. The card’s suit determines the general type of Journey Event. The Game Master determines the specific event based on the region, route, weather, and circumstances of the Journey.
![note] Action Cards
Each player keeps the Action Card dealt at the beginning of the Journey. When the order of actions matters during a Journey Event, use these cards to determine who acts first. Use the Journey Card’s Rank to determine when the event occurs in that order, when appropriate. Otherwise, the Journey Card’s Rank has no effect.
Keep the Journey Moving
Resolve Journey Events quickly and keep the Journey moving unless an event is important enough to become a scene of its own. Use a Trait roll, Support, a Dramatic Task, Quick Combat, or another appropriate rule when needed, then narrate the outcome and continue the Journey.
Not every Threat needs a full combat, every Encounter a lengthy conversation, or every Discovery an expedition of its own. Save detailed scenes for events that matter to the adventure or capture the players’ interest.
![tip]
Let the travelers detour when something catches their interest! That’s part of the fun of the Journey system. A Discovery, Encounter, or even a Threat might lead the party away from its planned route and into an unexpected adventure.
Journey Events aren’t always obstacles. Travel across Tarisia is dangerous, but it also offers opportunities for exploration, trade, discovery, and unexpected fortune.
♠ Threat
A dangerous creature or hostile group threatens the travelers. Raiders might ambush the party from a dry riverbed, a hungry predator might stalk their camp, or agents of a Throne might search the route ahead.
Threats are always dangerous, but violence isn’t the only way to overcome them. Travelers might hide, flee, negotiate, intimidate, or find another way around the danger.
If a Threat leads to violence, the Game Master should resolve it with Quick Combat unless the battle is particularly important or interesting.
♣ Hazard
Dangerous conditions or events threaten the travelers without actively seeking to harm them. Sandstorms, extreme heat, shifting dunes, treacherous terrain, flash floods, and the passage of colossal creatures can all create Hazards.
Hazards usually hinder or endanger the travelers, but clever characters may avoid or even exploit them.
♥ Encounter
The travelers cross paths with someone or something in the wastes: a caravan, nomads, pilgrims, merchants, refugees, a wandering beastmaster, a Throne patrol, migrating creatures, or something stranger.
Encounters are uncertain. Many bring trouble, suspicion, competing interests, or difficult choices, while others offer trade, information, assistance, companionship, or unexpected opportunities.
♦ Discovery
The travelers find something noteworthy along their route. Discoveries include hidden Caches, ruins, abandoned settlements, water sources, ancient monuments, valuable salvage, forgotten trails, strange Miraj phenomena, or signs of something worth exploring.
Discoveries are often useful or intriguing, but rarely promise safety. Investigating one might require a detour, consume additional time or supplies, or expose the travelers to new dangers.
🃏 Fortune
Fortune unexpectedly favors the travelers. Favorable weather, an unusually comfortable camp, generous strangers, an unexpected source of water, or another stroke of luck makes the Journey easier.
When the travelers reveal a Joker, they ignore all penalties from Fatigue for the remainder of the Journey. They still gain Fatigue normally and may become Incapacitated from additional levels of Fatigue.
The Game Master may also introduce another beneficial circumstance appropriate to the Journey.
Travel Time & Legs
Journeys across Tarisia may last a few days, several weeks, or even months. Rather than resolve every day of a long expedition individually, divide the Journey into Legs. Each Leg represents an abstract portion of the journey and corresponds to one facedown Action Card in the Route.
Abstract Time
Legs represent roughly equal portions of a Journey, not exact units of time. A three-month Journey divided into seven Legs doesn’t require each Leg to last precisely 13 days. Track exact time only when supplies, recovery, deadlines, weather, or other circumstances make it important.
First determine how long the Journey would normally take at a sustainable pace. Then use the Journey Length table to determine its number of Legs.
| Journey | Typical Length | Legs |
|---|---|---|
| Short | Days | 3 |
| Medium | Weeks | 5 |
| Long | Months | 7 |
These values are guidelines. The Game Master may use fewer Legs when travel plays a minor role in the adventure or more when the Journey itself is a major focus.
Example
A Journey expected to take four weeks is a Medium Journey with five Legs. The Game Master deals five Action Cards facedown to form the Route.
Travel Pace
Before starting a Journey, the travelers choose how hard they intend to push themselves. A faster pace reduces the number of Legs and the time and supplies required to reach the destination, but Fatigue leaves the travelers less prepared for dangers along the way.
Apply travel pace after determining the Journey’s normal number of Legs.
| Pace | Legs | Fatigue |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | Normal | None |
| Fast | –1 | 1 |
| Forced | –2 | 2 |
- Normal: The travelers maintain a sustainable pace and suffer no additional Fatigue.
- Fast: Reduce the Journey’s Legs by one. Each traveler has a minimum of one Fatigue while maintaining this pace.
- Forced: Reduce the Journey’s Legs by two. Each traveler has a minimum of two Fatigue while maintaining this pace.
Travelers cannot recover below the minimum Fatigue imposed by their current travel pace. They may recover additional Fatigue caused by Hazards, lack of supplies, or other sources normally, but never below this minimum.
Incapacitation: If one of the heroes becomes Incapacitated from Fatigue, the party must stop and take a Rest before continuing the Journey, or leave their ally behind. The party’s Pace immediately returns to Normal.
Changing Pace
The travelers may change Pace at the end of any Leg, before recovering Fatigue at Camp. Add or remove one facedown Action Card from the Route for each step the Pace changes.
Increasing Pace immediately raises each traveler’s Fatigue to the new minimum, if necessary. Reducing Pace lowers the minimum but doesn’t remove existing Fatigue. The travelers may recover that Fatigue normally during the coming rest.
Camp
Travelers make camp as necessary throughout each Leg. Camp gives them time to eat and drink, tend animals and equipment, recover from the hardships of travel, and prepare to continue their Journey.
The players and Game Master decide what making camp entails. Travelers might shelter among rocks, pitch tents in the open wastes, sleep beneath their caravan, occupy an abandoned ruin, or simply wrap themselves against the sand and hope for a quiet night.
Consider the terrain, weather, available equipment, supplies, and current circumstances when deciding whether the travelers must make any rolls or take special precautions.
Survival: At the end of each Leg, each traveler makes a Survival roll as described in Survival & Caches. On a failure, the traveler suffers one level of Fatigue. Travelers may use their Caches Die to aid this roll as normal.
Journey Events, Weather, terrain, and other circumstances may modify this roll or require additional Survival rolls at the Game Master’s discretion.
Change Pace: After testing Survival, the travelers may change their Pace as described under Changing Pace.
Recover: Travelers recover Fatigue normally while camping, but cannot recover below the minimum imposed by their current travel pace.
Events at Camp
Journey Events don’t necessarily occur while the travelers are moving. A Threat might attack during the night, an Encounter might join the travelers around their fire, a Hazard might make shelter difficult, or a Discovery might only become apparent after they stop.
The Game Master decides when during each Leg a Journey Event occurs based on the circumstances and the needs of the adventure.
Rest
Sometimes the travelers need to stop. Injuries, exhaustion, dwindling supplies, severe weather, or other circumstances may make continuing the Journey more dangerous than losing precious time.
The travelers may spend a Leg Resting instead of making progress toward their destination. A Rest lasts approximately as long as one Leg of the Journey. The travelers don’t advance along the Route, but still test Survival and remain exposed to the dangers and opportunities of the wastes.
During a Rest, don’t advance the travelers’ token. Instead, draw two Action Cards and let the players choose one to resolve as a Journey Event. Discard the other.
Resting & Events
Remaining in one place doesn’t protect travelers from the dangers or opportunities of the wastes. A Threat might discover their camp, an Encounter might pass through the area, a Hazard might descend upon them, or the additional time might reveal a Discovery they would otherwise have missed.
Resolve Survival, Pace changes, and recovery as described under Camp.