Outdoor Regions (Patreon)

In thinking over exploration and reading over the comments, I've made some tweaks to the system for outdoor travel.

Dungeon exploration, or any exploration that takes place on a tactical scale, tracks threat and resolves encounters or events in real time as a default. A DM can choose to attach that to a more formal turn order for groups that prefer that approach.

Outdoor travel is based on narrative time. The characters move from region to region on the map. Entering a region might trigger an encounter check, as could spending time there.

Each region has a separate threat level based on the characters' actions there.

A region or domain has its own encounter tables.

Characters use food and water using the core rules (assume the SRD rules). If anything special relating to supplies applies to a region, it notes it.

Each region has a set of encounters that can occur there, along with key events or actions that can cause it to change.

Over time, regions "level up" as their threat increases. As the PCs travel back and forth between town and dungeon, the wilderness around them changes and shifts, too.

If the most powerful creature in a region is defeated, there are notes on how to changes. A power in an adjacent region might move in, or the place might gain a distinct, new flavor.

Some regions can become useful tools for the PCs if they manage to "solve" it.

The attached region might be the one region the PCs traverse in traveling from town to the first dungeon they tackle. The archive might be a place they need to visit to resolve a quest, or they might journey there based on clues that the dungeon yields.