Travel Speed, Communications, and Influence

[Simon Molendinarius]

I know I am making a bunch of these posts today, so I will try to stop after this one. I just wanted to make a note on travel distances, speed, and the type of world we are working with.

Obviously this can vary base on the breed and health of a horse, but for long distances a horse can generally only keep up a trot of around 8 mph. Now, a skilled rider can vary between a trot and a canter or a gallop to increase that average speed, and a poor rider would arguably take quite a bit longer, but for our general purposes this is a good working number.

At that speed, it takes about 4 hours to travel from Scarborough to York. To ride from Richmond to York could take around 8 hours, and therefore the majority of your waking hours. To cross the entire region would take more time than you could manage in a single night.

This means that attending a gathering of all cainites in York really means that you must leave your domain for a day or more in many cases. It also means that resources held in your domain will not be available to you even when you have only travelled a short distance. You have 50 men in Leeds and you want them to get to a Scene taking place in Hull? Well that's a downtime action, because there is no way you can mobilize those men during the course of gameplay. You need a special object that you normally keep locked in your vault? Well feel free to send a man to ride all the way to your vault and then all the way back with the object.

This also means if something happens in your lands, it could be hours before you even hear about it, assuming the message came by pigeon rather than horse.

Just some thoughts for players and STs to consider.

[Admin]

Thank you, on the bottom of the domain map is a distance marker, to determine how far one part of the map is from another. Keep in mind we have allowed people to bring these things to bear in Scarborough specifically because we wanted players to get a feel for their characters and the way some of these new systems work. Next session should take place in York, unless the prince deems it otherwise, and players will have to determine if they have moved all/some/none of their resources from their strongholds with them to the city. This will be similar to handing out blood at session start, you'll let us know what you've got in the local area and what you've got in other areas.

[Vala]

What would travel time be in flight form? According to goggle a horse runs at 25-30 MPH at a gallop, and a bat can fly 40 MPH. It has to be faster then a horse since you can fly over obstacles, even besides the speed.

[Vala]

On that same topic, how do various forms of boats effect travel time, boats, canoes and so forth, along with the various types of waterways?

[Simon Molendinarius]

Most boatmen will not risk a river voyage at night. It is incredibly dangerous, so would be fairly rare. Ocean voyage is still possible, but would not do much to increase travel time.

STs will have to rule on bat form. A bat would not flay that fast for that long, since it would get tired, but a cainite probably could make quick flights back and forth. 40 miles an hour would let you cross all of Yorkshire in 3 hours or less.

[Brother Dominic]

Not sure how kindred in bat form work, but IRL bats can only fly for like a half an hour before they are exhausted.

[Vala]

I am sure it varies wildy by types of bats but I have read that some bats fly much the night foraging for insects. Maybe when they are doing that they aren't quite as fast as 40MPH. As a side note, I see they can dive up to 80MPH, probably does not matter for this discussion, just kind of neat they can dive so fast. ( http://batslive.pwnet.org/pdf/Q&A.pdf )

[Kendra of the Wood]

I would rule that without the use of celerity a Vampire in animal form could travel for one hour per physical attribute as long as the sun isn't there to stop them or wound penalties don't exist.

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