Travel

Designer's Notes: travel in FS is important, and to this end there are a fair quantity of rules and guidelines relating to this topic presented. Most travel will be in vehicles and so forth, and to this end I begin the Travel section with a look at vehicles.

Also see:

Long Distance Travel

When travelling some considerable distance in FS the important things to know are the Time the trip required, whether any Accidents took place en route, and whether the traveller(s) reached his/her/their destination.

Note that speeds for a person on foot are given under the rules for Fatigue [2.6]; they choose a rate of exercise which yields a speed for overland movement (Running is the appropriate skill) which is treated as Cruise, while the next speed up (if any) is treated as Max. If long distance swimming is attempted, divide the speeds by five. The maximum time a character may travel on foot depends on how long his/her fatigue holds out.

Also note that a driver should have to stop for rest breaks every WP hours, and thus this is the greatest period any one Driving (or Navigation) roll can apply to.

Navigation: in unfamiliar terrain one of the characters must navigate (ie. make a Navigation roll), and the worse of this and any Driving roll is used to determine the duration of any journey, with the exception that a QR 10 result for navigation indicates that the characters are lost, and at best are considerably off-course.

Normal Travel: if characters are not in a hurry, then they choose a driver (if applicable) and he/she makes a normal driving roll, the result of which yields a mean speed for that leg (see below). If this speed is insufficient to finish the journey in the driver's WP hours, then simply this speed multiplied by the driver's WP km are covered in that time (the characters may then rest, or select a relief driver), otherwise the journey is completed in the distance, of the journey (in km), divided by the mean speed hours.

QR 1, 2: Mean speed is average of Cruise and Max speeds of vehicle (adjusted for terrain).
QR 3, 4: Mean speed is Cruise speed of vehicle (adjusted for terrain).
QR 7: Mean speed is half the Cruise speed of vehicle (adjusted for terrain).
QR 10: The vehicle has suffered some sort of mishap (probably non-serious in nature), eg. a flat tyre, ruptured fuel line, or faulty tape deck. This simply means that a few hours have been wasted without making progress (alternatively the GM may spice up the situation by forcing the characters to tramp off for spare parts, or whatever). A person on foot may have injured him/her self, eg. sprained an ankle.

Hasty Travel is handled a little differently: it is assumed the characters are in a hurry to get somewhere, and want to minimise the time taken. Hasty travel may not be attempted by people on foot (they use normal travel, above, and increase their rate of exercise).

The procedure is otherwise as for normal (unhurried) travel, with the following changes:

QR 1: Mean speed is the Max speed of the vehicle adjusted for terrain.
QR 2: Mean speed is 90% Max speed of the vehicle adjusted for terrain, or the speed for QR 3 if that is higher.
QR 3: Mean speed is the mean of the Max and Cruise speeds of the vehicle adjusted for terrain.
QR 4: Mean speed is the Cruise speed of the vehicle adjusted for terrain.
QR 7: The vehicle has suffered an accident of a minor sort, and is delayed for a few hours, but otherwise has a Mean speed as under QR 4.
QR 10: Some time into the leg a serious mishap occurs, damaging the vehicle, and perhaps the characters. The driver should make another driving roll at Man rating of vehicle - 3. QR 1, the accident is easily avoided, treat as QR 4 above; QR 2, the accident causes the vehicle light damage, treat as QR 7 above with a delay of one hour; QR 3, the vehicle suffers medium damage, and must be repaired before the journey can continue (at least in it); QR 4, the vehicle suffers heavy damage, and everyone inside suffers damage indicated by indexing a random QR with DC 4; QR 7, the vehicle suffers incapacitation (4), the passenger suffer DC 8 (random QR); QR 10. the vehicle suffers incapacitation (5) and the passengers DC 10 (random QR).

Designer's Note: there is deliberately almost no chance of killing a healthy character using this system; that's the idea. It's pretty frustrating for players to lose characters in the comparatively mundane area of travel.