Before I start, I don't want any posters jumping in and saying why don't you just handwave it with a couple encounters. Just assume, for the moment, that I'm a completely out of his mind GM, and I'm actually going to force my players to roleplay every day and night of travel from point A to point B, with a percentage of built in encounters, a percentage chance for random encounters, and myriad stops at notable Inner Sea locations.
When measuring distances using the Inner Sea poster map, what is a good ratio to use to determine actual travel miles versus as-the-crow-flies miles? Yes I realize that's an entirely ambiguous question. What's point A; what's point B; are they traveling by foot; are they traveling by horse; horse-drawn wagon; boat; ship, etc. ad nauseum. Ignore the specifics. If you were forced at gunpoint to come up with a ratio like 2:1 or 3:1, what ratio would you use to transfer as-the-crow-flies miles into actual land traveling miles?
Thanks
I'm not sure why you need rarios or even to figure out how the crow flies. Have the players plot their riut and assign a mode of travel for each rout period. If their mode of travel is to change its their deciding how its changed.
Basically what I'm saying is, the players saying we take the river barge down to lumber town then catch a coach from lumber town to seaside city. No complicated ratios or funky math.
Though I will add I'm not sure why your doing this. I don't think you should hand wave travel but my experience with this in the past is its tedious and not fun. You can save yourself a lot of time and stress and your game running smoother by simply creating set piece encounters. The set pieces can come from ransom encounter tables though.
Apparently being put at gunpoint doesn't carry the weight it used to. I get that the specifics make all the difference in actual travel time. I know that the CRB covers overland movement including adjustments by terrain. I also get that taking the time to figure out a complete route with actual travel miles determined by mode of travel is a much more authentic way to do it. Just play along with me for a second, and throw all that out. What I'm asking is for an off-the-cuff, hazard a guess, no real clue-but I'll throw something out, ball-park idea. If you're looking at covering a great distance across the Inner Sea region, let's say somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000, straight-line from point A to point B, miles, and you HAD to ball-park how many actual land travel miles that would be, what ratio would you use? 1.5:1, 2:1, 3:1. I don't even care if you have a good reason. I just want to hear what other people would use.
I don't think you can ratio it. As Lincoln Hills points out, it would vary a lot depending on terrain. If you're being a completely crazy GM and making them RP every day and night of travel, then you probably don't need a ratio. You really do need to take into account terrain, mountain ranges, weather, etc if you want to RP out every traveled mile.
If you want a TL;DR ignoring these factors, assuming there are well maintained trails along the route, I'd use a ratio of 1.33 (1 "crow mile" to 1.33 "traveled mile"). This is based on a quick calculation comparing "as the crow flies" to Google's driving directions between a few cities in the US.
Double.
Although I'd resent my gun wielding interrogators as much as if they'd made the same threat and asked "how long is a piece of string?" You seem to be asking "ignoring those factors which influence the ratio, what do you think the ratio is?"
Double.
Although I'd resent my gun wielding interrogators as much as if they'd made the same threat and asked "how long is a piece of string?" You seem to be asking "ignoring those factors which influence the ratio, what do you think the ratio is?"
Yes! That's exactly what I'm asking. Which is of course a ridiculous question. Perhaps as ridiculous as trying to find a way from one point to another on a map with no discernible roads? A giant poster map with all of the wonderful locations of the Inner Sea is a beautiful thing, but as far as useability for figuring actual travel distances is concerned it leaves MUCH to be desired. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I have a visual reference for players that shows relative distances. It's nice to say, it's about "x" miles away. The problem is that those miles don't transfer at all to actual game mechanics. Which means the best way to find the actual travel distance between two points in Golarion is an exercise in frustration.
First one must either use a ruler (which sucks at measuring arcing or rounded distances), a knotted string (which requires that one have the skill to knot string at precise intervals), or buy an expensive map wheel to measure actual miles. Even then most of what's being measured is only guesswork because there are no roads on the map. What route does one usually take from Augustana to Canorate? If Golarion is to be a living breathing world, it must have roads. Even if some of them are nothing more than well-used game trails that travelers know about. Otherwise all travel in the entire Inner Sea is cross-country in as straight a fashion as possible.
We know this isn't true because many of the modules and campaign setting materials mention roads, some of them even have encounters that take place "on the road." Any GM running a sandbox campaign where their players can literally travel wherever they want, would have to do just as Mojorat suggests, and make the players plan their routes specifically from place to place, describing which modes of transportation they'd take from one waypoint to another. The GM and players would then have to figure out the travel times based off of what types of terrain are being traveled, what mode of transportation is being used, and whether or not the group is taking a highway, a road or trail, or moving through trackless territory. This then requires that they guess at where roads might be built, given the government and infrastructure of any nation, because, as I mentioned already, there are no roads represented on the map.
This is unless of course Golarion is where Dr. Brown is going.
Given all of the above, a quick dirty ratio for straight miles to actual travel miles seems far more desirable.
of course, if they find a large supply of red dots they can just travel by map like they do in the movies.....
OK, I think I get the root of the difficulty; you've got a very large-scale map and it's not showing roads, trade routes or more than the broad strokes of geography. I'm kinda surprised Paizo hasn't done any 'regional' maps... oh! There's an idea for the "products wanted:" An Atlas of Golarion, with page after page of smaller-scale maps (each with a small kingdom, or half/quarter of the big ones.) Of course, a whole book of nothing but cartography is liable to be expensive to print, but it'd be mighty purdy...
Although - if they made them black and white, in the style you see in most fantasy paperbacks... Is anybody here so in love with color maps that they'd be unhappy with a black-and-white atlas?
Bang! You hit the nail right on the head. A Golarion atlas/gazetteer (color or black and white--I don't care which) with clearly drawn highways, roads, and trails would probably be the most used book at my tables besides the Core Rulebook. Now, how to get Paizo to realize that that is the product everyone has been waiting for...?
Well I found what amounts to an official statement saying that the devs are not, at least as of the time of this thread, concerned with placing roads on any but the smallest of maps. Which I guess means I can take a digital copy of the map and draw roads on it wherever I'd like. While that might be a fun project, it is something too daunting for me to tackle at present. Anybody with a keen digital hand want to draw highways, roads, and trails (with a corresponding legend of course) on the Inner Sea map?