Really good points here, yeah I don't show the map ruler to my players (1 hex = X miles) and well the only map we've seen in game so far is the one from LMoP. Mirabar to Longsaddle: 14 days (includes 1 rest day).The trade route from Mirabar, south through the Dessarin Valley, to Waterdeep. Use actual travel time to provide drama ('as you rush up the last half-mile to the gates, the dragon swoops in above you!').įor example, this is as detailed as I have got in my game: The Long Road Its OK (and actually desirable) that journeys can't be predicted to the minute. Predetermine average travel times, and wing it at the table. Do not let anyone get a ruler and measure distances. What does this mean at the table? It means you shouldn't sweat distances and you shouldn't rely on the maps. :-) In a world without satellite and high-altitude photography, maps are just artistic representations that are hopefully close to the truth.

Maybe the journey is slowed because the rogue just discovered they are allergic to crumblecake, and has to go behind a tree very thirty minutes?Īlso, those pretty maps might not actually be correct. Flying to Mirabar might be five hours today but seven hours tomorrow. One day it might take 40 minutes to cross the city, the next day 50 minutes. A trip that takes the PCs five days might take six or seven in a month, as the weather worsens. For example, there are places in the hills near where I grew up where hunters talked about travelling less than a mile in a day.Īllowing for time to set and strike camp, a caravan with wagons or carts might only make 10-12 miles a day, so Phandelin might only be 30 miles from Neverwinter. With really nasty terrain, travel times get ridiculous. However, throw in a river or a forests (or *shudder* a swamp) and these numbers drop dramatically. Add animals and wagons to the group, and it drops again. More than 30 miles needs exceptional fitness and terrain. Fit travellers on easy terrain do around 22 miles per day, pushing it to 30 sometimes. Overland travel is difficult, which means the world is probably smaller than you imagine. I assume for ease of access, the distances between Neverwinter and Phandalin are halved in LMoP maybe it's a better experience for newer players to take a short 3-day roadtrip than an almost 1 week long journey. So, since I'm not too keen on retconning I'll be halving the distances mentioned on SKT on my game and that's that but if this is something you may come across on your next Sword Coast game, well, there's something to keep in mind. I'm making this post since I looked up some info online and it lists Triboar at 225 miles from Phandalin (while I know it's not official I wanted to at least get something as a base).īy using the provided Sword Coast map in SKT if we trace a direct line above the sword mountains, Triboar is roughly 130 miles away from Phandalin, or ~182 by taking the Triboar Trail, something that I'm very happy to use instead of the 225 from before but at the same time, Neverwinter is about 125 miles away from Phandalin (~140 by taking The High Road, nearly double as in LMoP). Which would place Phandalin roughly under 70 miles (even less if we're counting a straight line to the town from the city). In LMoP I saw that in the intro trip from Neverwinter to Phandalin takes the players 3 days. I'm looking into distances since it seems there's going to be a lot of traveling while playing SKT. I'm recently running a LMoP game and once it's done I'm planning to turn it into SKT. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse

Dungeons and dragons world map