Making camp in old school RPGs

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Some thoughts about travel in old school RPGs. This is part of my work on my own homebrew rule set. I wanted something that captured a little of the risks and discomforts of roughing it in the wilds; made proper preparation for a trek in winter vital; led to interesting choices; and, crucially, was very simple at the table.

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Back when I had detailed rules for a game that had a “bush craft” skill, but not many rules for this, I approached the topic from a bit of a different angle: A tent (or similar equipment) gave you a bonus to your daily miles marched. My reasoning behind that was that you theoretically could do a decent nightly camp with just a knife or an axe in your average fantasy-Euro-environment given enough time, but having a decent tent saved you some of that effort.

I can’t remember whether I had “tarp” below this, but I definitely had “elf tent” as an improvement :wink:

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Yeah that also totally works! But I specifically wanted to not always hand wave the act of making camp, but attach some decision making and consequences to it.

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This looks interesting. You say this in the blog post
“if their equipment is inadequate, roll for campsite. Add 1d4 to the pool for each of these problems”, but I couldnt find anywhere where you explained what your rules were or wha the dice pool was?

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I just meant: roll some number of d4 and if you get a 1 on any of them then you have an inadequate campsite. And you roll more d4 the more problems you have.

Does that make sense?

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Yes that makes sense. Thank you for the clarification.

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I do enjoy that “Camping Phase” of Overland Journeys quite a bit. Some Players even adopt different “roles” for it (Scouting out a Good Location, Gathering Firewood, Cooking Meals, etc.)

One thing that has really made them more memorable sometimes is rolling on a d100 Table I whipped up with some Events for Camping or Overland Rests & Repose for some minor decorations on the activities. The entries that feature Questions for the Party to Answer are particularly fun, and I might end up doing an entire table of those :slight_smile:

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