Travel in the Borderlands, RPG mechanics

Choosing wise routes and not getting lost leans towards Intelligence + Survival. Dealing with complications as they occur is primarily Wits + Survival, and preempting problems in the first place is usually Perception + Survival. If the Game Master wants to be generous, he can bias things towards the characters' higher attributes.   Normally, one character acts as "the guide" and rolls various Survival rolls on behalf of the group. In most cases, it's not appropriate to allow multiple characters pool rolls when navigating because this can easily turn into a case of "Too many cooks spoils the broth."   It is possible to hunt or gather natural resources while traveling the Borderlands but this usually requires going off the trails fairly often.   When multi-tasking while traveling the Borderlands, normally one character is the "guide" trying to make sure the party arrives at their destination quickly and safely and another character is the "gatherer" making dice rolls per the normal rules for whatever he or she is doing. If the "guide" and the "gatherer" are the same person, apply multi-action penalties. The player can decide which roll gets the two-dice penalty and which roll gets the three-dice penalty     You can roll for every leg of the journey or you can do one representative roll. If you want to save time to focus on meatier story elements, you can gloss over "inconvenient things" quickly.  

Successes Rolled

  Botch: Something very bad happens (see sidebar)   Failure: Something bad happens (see sidebar)   One Success: Three inconvenient things happen (see sidebar)   Two Successes: One inconvenient thing happens (see sidebar)   Three Successes: You arrive at your destination promptly without any notable problems.   Four Successes: You arrive at your destination a bit faster than expected.   Five Successes+: You arrive at your destination quickly and safely, and something unexpected and good happened along the way (see sidebar)    

Base Travel Difficulty

  Summer 3   Autumn 4   Spring 5   Winter 6    

Various Modifiers

  Characters are actively avoiding trails, +2 difficulty   Characters are hunting and foraging along the way, +1 difficulty   Characters are moving at an unusually fast pace, +1 difficulty   Characters are traveling primarily at night, +2 difficulty   Characters are hauling heavy or awkward cargo, +1 difficulty   Party has negligible amount of proper camping equipment or has a severe supply shortage, +1 difficulty   The characters are choosing not to light campfires or torches so as not to give away their position +1 difficulty   Guide has been to the area multiple times before, -1 difficulty   Guide is a true local, intimately familiar with the Borderlands -2 difficulty   Party has ready access to useful magic such as Fly spells, Protection from Elements, Animal and Plant theurgy, -1 difficulty    

Group Modifiers

  The base difficulties and modifiers assume you are dealing with 2 to 10 people.   Lone travelers suffer a +1 difficulty.   Large groups are a mixed bag. If most of the large group is mostly made up of seasoned travelers willing and able to help out with chores and provide extra hands and sets of eyes. -1 difficulty for the guide.   If the group is made up of people who can't or won't help much. Examples include children, elderly, prisoners, sick or injured or prissy people with lots of demands, +1 difficulty for the guide.   If a large group has language barriers and/or the group includes people with strong internal rivalries, +1 difficulty for the guide.  

Fatigue Checks

  You can theoretically roll fatigue checks for every leg of the journey or even several times per each leg of the journey, but that is time consuming and not very fun. I recommend only rolling Fatigue when you know the characters are heading towards something difficult or dangerous, so you can find out how "fresh" they are when they face the obstacle.   For example, if the PCs are traveling ten days across the Borderlands and you decided that a monster is going to attack their base camp on Day 7, you only need to roll fatigue checks on day seven because the other nine days it doesn't matter how tired the characters are when they make camp.   If extenuating circumstances mean that the characters are racing the clock and are to opting to forgo rest and are force marching, then in that case, the Game Master should require lots of Fatigue Checks, but that assumes there are high narrative stakes like when Balto helped deliver critically needed medicine to an isolated Alaskan settlement or Aaragon, Gimli, and Legolas trying to save Merry and Pippen before they are taken to Isengard.   Most of the time, it doesn't make much difference if the PCs travel for four days or six days, in which case don't bother with Fatigue Checks.    

Overland Flight

  If the party has the Overland Flight spell or some other means to let the entire party fly, this does not make the Survival roll easier because its much easier to get lost when you can't see the trail and trail markers. Also, you can accident or fall or accidentally drop supplies somewhere you will never be able to find them again. Also while flying you can't pick up supplies or find helpful people enroute.   However, the party can cover ground much faster with overland flight, roughly quadruple what the normal rate of travel would be.   Note, if the entire party has ready access to the spell Feather Fall, this automatically counts as as having ready access to "useful magic".   The difficulty of overland flight is actually reduced for parties that are flying. The speed increases a lot. Most of the time, the guide to a flying party needs to roll Intelligence + Survival because the primary danger is getting lost (because you can't see the trail markers very easily), and poor rolls while flying are more likely to result in time lost than dangers faced.  

Dealing with Ambushes and other Attackers

  Rather than roll for every leg of the journey, and every aspect of a journey it is usually best to make a few representative rolls. You can throw in a few Perception + Alertness rolls too, which can throw a bone to players of characters who have Alertness bonus as a racial features.   Game Masters can adjust this pool based on what kind of natural hazards they want to deal with, or they can be nice and let the player pick their best mental attribute the guide has to pair with Survival. Game Masters can also use skill based rolls to determine if and when the player characters are attacked. If the player characters roll very well, they might be able to turn the tables and get the drop on some bandits.