Joined: Nov 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 663 Karma: 19
Re: River Speed... « Reply #2 on Apr 8, 2012, 3:06pm »
I assume you mean long distance travel? Short distances are covered in naval combat, but we can adopt the rule from there: base speed is standard speed for oared ships, half standard for sailing ships, modify base speed by +/- 2 depending on direction of current relative to direction of travel. (Naval combat says +/- 5", but long distance travel seems to be about half the scale inches number.)
Edit to add: Come to think of it, I was basing the "half scale inches" principle on horse speeds... but ships don't need to rest, so their speeds in the long distance table match the cruise speed in the naval combat table. Apply the full +/- 5.
Joined: Nov 2012 Gender: Male Posts: 1,554 Location: Austin TX USA Karma: 151
Re: River Speed... « Reply #3 on Apr 8, 2012, 3:11pm »
Well, there are hex rates listed, too. Just not in the same section, hex rates are in the wilderness section, not the naval battle. For boats it is 15 hexes for river and 5 for swamp.
Well, there are hex rates listed, too. Just not in the same section, hex rates are in the wilderness section, not the naval battle. For boats it is 15 hexes for river and 5 for swamp.
Yep, spotted that, as noted in my edit above. Speed for a boat is 15 in the hex table, 15 for cruise speed in naval combat; raft is 10 in both. Therefore, it seems reasonable to apply the full modifier listed in the naval combat section to the speeds on the hex rate table.
Joined: Nov 2012 Gender: Male Posts: 1,554 Location: Austin TX USA Karma: 151
Re: River Speed... « Reply #7 on Apr 8, 2012, 4:06pm »
Hmm ... I'm not quite sure about these movement rates. 15 hexes is 90 miles, the rules represent that as one day of travel.
Assuming 24 hours of constant movement and a six mile hex, that is 3.75 mph. Reasonable speed, not sure about the 24 hours, though. Making it a 12 hour rowing day, however, increases speed to an unbelievable 8 mph.
So ... round it off to 4 mph, assume a slow-moving river has a 1.5 mph (using the lower Mississippi River as an example) and yielding a speed of 2 to 2.5 mph against-the-current movement. A reasonable speed, I'm just hung up a bit on the 24 hour thing. I guess it is do-able with a good sized boat and multiple rowing shifts. For one person in a rowboat you may wish to severely reduce distance travelled, perhaps 30 miles in a day? That would still be quite a feat, 8 hours of rowing.
Joined: Nov 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 663 Karma: 19
Re: River Speed... « Reply #8 on Apr 8, 2012, 4:30pm »
Well, the movement rates in U&WA are based on 5-mile hexes, not six. If you're using 6-mile hexes, you have to convert.
I think the travel time for overland movement is based on a really short travel time + campsite prep/breakdown + breaks during travel. Water movement is supposed to be more like 12 hours for river movement, so by your calculation, a move of 15 gives a 6.25 mph move rate. I suppose if that's too high, you can treat rivers as swamps and use those figures instead.
Joined: Nov 2012 Gender: Male Posts: 1,554 Location: Austin TX USA Karma: 151
Re: River Speed... « Reply #9 on Apr 8, 2012, 5:17pm »
So it does. Funny thing is, I even looked it up but I thought I had remembered 6 miles and I suppose the subconscious wouldn't let it go.
6.75 mph for a rowed boat traveling upstream does seem a bit fast to me, but I'm not an expert or even more knowledgeable in that field than the average person. I'm only going by my limited experience.
So it does. Funny thing is, I even looked it up but I thought I had remembered 6 miles and I suppose the subconscious wouldn't let it go.
6.75 mph for a rowed boat traveling upstream does seem a bit fast to me, but I'm not an expert or even more knowledgeable in that field than the average person. I'm only going by my limited experience.
The 6 mile Hex was Steve Marsh's invention. Asked him why about a week or two ago and he said he just thought the 5 mile hex was a little smallish.
I find this question to be very tricky since the answer depends entirely on the strength of current, the frequency of cataracts, and pehaps the strength of those paddling/rowing if that's the type of boat we are talking about. Rest would also be required.
If a sailboat is involved then draft would be an important issue also.
Joined: Jul 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 561 Karma: 17
Re: River Speed... « Reply #11 on Apr 8, 2012, 6:34pm »
Travel is 8 hours per day I think (I don't remember where I read that).
You simply subtract the river current from the number of hexes in miles traveled. If a raft does 10 hexes per day of travel (60 miles) and the river is flowing at 2 miles per hour in the opposite direction, then you lose 16 miles (3 hexes about) per day. So the party only traveled 7 hexes the first day.
Travel is 8 hours per day I think (I don't remember where I read that).
Maybe for water travel. I vaguely recall this to be true in AD&D, but I'm too lazy to check right now to see if it's in U&WA.
Land travel, though, is based on six hours of travel. A five-mile hex is two leagues, and a league is the distance a man can travel on foot in one hour. Man on foot travels 3 hexes, which means one day's travel is really only 6 hours of actual travel; the rest must be overhead of some kind (break down camp, rest along the way, scout, double back avoid bad terrain, make camp again.)
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 245 Location: Behind the Orange Curtain Karma: 10
Re: River Speed... « Reply #13 on Apr 11, 2012, 12:01am »
Browsing through the internet, rivers seem to range between 0.5 and 7 miles per hour, usually down in the 1-3 mph range. White water conditions, where a larger river gets channeled through a narrow, shallow section, will cause the speed to increase dramatically - the record seems to be the Passaic River in New Jersey:
"The Great Falls of the Passaic River at Paterson NJ falls 77 ft into an extreme narrow gorge which at the head of the gorge the river channel is no more than 25-30 ft wide. It is at this point in the falls into which the greatest volume of river water plummets. At flood stage when there is many billions of gallons per day going over the falls, the combination of the velocity of the descending water crushing down onto the channel squeezes or puts pressure onto the water in the channel from above. This combined with a very narrow cross section causes the velocity in that short and small section of the river to easily flow some 70 mph."
Joined: Oct 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 679 Location: Lille, France Karma: 45
Re: River Speed... « Reply #14 on Apr 11, 2012, 6:12am »
Interesting this is Passaic river, as this name has been suggested as a possible source for the FFC's wizard named Pissaic (who build the Blackmoor's wall, if I remember correctly).
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