Journey Rules
Travel in the Thornwood is not a cutscene. The forest is the adventure, and the road through it is played out day by day.
These are the house rules for that. They sit on top of the Level Up Journey Activities rather than replacing them, so if you know the book's rules you already know most of this. The parts that are ours: every travel day is rolled, and finding things is a separate engine from being found. A quiet day can still turn up something worth having.
They apply to any journey into the Thornwood, on foot or on the water.
The Day Cycle
Every travel day runs the same five steps. Once you have the rhythm it is about ten minutes of table time on a quiet day.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Break camp | Whoever is leading declares the day's pace and route. Each of you declares a Journey Activity |
| 2. The open roll | The Encounter die and the Discovery die are both rolled, in the open, where you can see them |
| 3. Travel | The day's ground — the hexes covered, how the forest is behaving, what your activity turned up |
| 4. Make camp | Campsite check, watches, Supply, and one camp scene if there is appetite for it |
| 5. Night check | One more Encounter die, at the night threshold. Night encounters come to the fire |
The Open Roll
Two d20s, different colours, rolled in front of you at step 2.
- The Encounter die. On a hit, something happens today. You will see the die land; you will not be told what it rolled up until it arrives.
- The Discovery die. On a hit, the day turns up something real — forage, lore, a shortcut, a good campsite, a cache. Discoveries are never just flavour.
Both can hit on the same day. That is the best kind of day: something found and something risked.
Base thresholds
| Die | Hits on |
|---|---|
| Encounter, by day | 16+ |
| Encounter, at night | 18+ |
| Discovery | 15+ |
Standing modifiers
| Condition | Effect |
|---|---|
| Crawl pace | Discovery hits on 12+. Encounter unchanged |
| Push pace | Encounter hits on 14+ — you are making noise and taking no care. No Discovery die at all |
| Someone on Scout duty | Discovery threshold −2, and the Scout rolls your side of the Detection Contest |
| Someone on Cover Tracks | Night Encounter threshold +1 — harder to hit |
| Poor campsite | Night Encounter threshold −2 — easier to hit |
The thresholds above are the baseline. The deeper into the forest you go the worse they get; you will be told the day's numbers before you have to commit to a pace.
The Detection Contest
Scouting does not switch off surprise. It fights for it.
When the Encounter die hits and there is something living on the other end of it, we settle who saw whom first before the scene is set. Some encounters are in the open by their nature and skip the contest entirely — everybody sees everybody.
Your side of the roll:
| Situation | Roll |
|---|---|
| Someone on Scout duty, or on Keep Watch in a boat | The Scout's active Perception check |
| Nobody scouting | Passive Perception of whoever is leading the line |
| Nobody scouting, at Push pace | The same, at −2 |
Their side is the creature's Stealth. Then read the margin:
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| You win by 5+ | The drop. You see it first and it does not see you. Walk around it, follow it, talk to it on your terms — or set the ambush yourselves, in which case it is surprised |
| You win | Mutual awareness at range. Everyone gets to position, nobody is surprised |
| You lose | It picks the ground — range, cover and timing are its choice. Anything capable of an ambush starts hidden |
| You lose by 5+ | Ambushed. You are surprised, by the book |
Night encounters run the same contest against whoever has the watch. This is what Scout duty and a good campsite are actually buying: not safety, but the odds. "The drop" is how a careful party turns a dangerous forest into a hunting licence.
What "surprised" actually means
Worth knowing before you gamble on a pace, because it is not a free round for anybody. This is the Level Up rule as written — see Surprise and Sudden Actions.
- There is no surprise round. Everyone rolls initiative as normal and the fight starts.
- A surprised creature cannot move or take an action on its first turn, and cannot use a reaction until that first turn has passed. It is one lost turn, not a free one for the other side.
- Only those who were unaware of a stealthy opponent when the fighting started are surprised. If both sides knew, nobody is.
- Starting trouble is not the same as ambushing. If everyone can see everyone and one side simply opens the ball, nobody is surprised — but whoever started it rolls initiative with advantage. This is what happens when a conversation stops being a conversation.
Pace and Distance
Hexes are 3 miles.
| Mode | Crawl | Steady | Push |
|---|---|---|---|
| On foot, trail or riverbank | 2 hexes | 4 hexes (~12 miles) | 6 hexes |
| On foot, trackless deep forest | 1 hex | 2 hexes | 3 hexes |
| Boat, upstream | 3 hexes | 5 hexes (~15 miles) | 7 hexes |
| Boat, downstream | 4 hexes | 7 hexes | 9 hexes |
Pushing costs. A Constitution saving throw at the end of the day, DC 12, rising by 1 for each consecutive day you have pushed. Fail and you take a level of fatigue. Rowing upstream at a push, the save is at disadvantage.
Boats. A hired keelboat, or canoes. Canoes can be portaged around a deadfall or a set of rapids at a cost of half a day; a keelboat cannot, and the Westrun is not a cleared channel. On foot the bank is honest trail most of the way — riverbank pace, not trackless.
A boat crew has idle hands. Up to two of you can take activities that would normally cost walking attention — Chronicle, cooking prep, harvesting at stops — without slowing the boat.
How far. Work the distance out from the table once you know the route. As a rule of thumb, anything past the near forest is measured in weeks, not days — and that is before the journey home.
Journey Activities
Everyone picks one per day. The book's effects apply as written; the right-hand column is what each one additionally does out here.
| Activity | The gist | Out here it also does |
|---|---|---|
| Scout | Range ahead, spot trouble | Discovery threshold −2, and you roll the party's side of the Detection Contest. Only one Scout benefits at a time |
| Track | Read trails | Any sign you come across is read for free — age, number, direction. Signs become leads |
| Hunt and Gather | Gain Supply | DC varies by how deep you are. A critical success deep in the forest turns up something other than food — roll the Discovery die again |
| Harvest | Reagents and components | Everything gathered past the Border Stones is over permit, which is a problem for another day but still a problem |
| Cook | Recovery and morale | A properly cooked camp lets one character shed a level of fatigue, or reroll a failed Push save |
| Chronicle | Record the journey | Kept pages are worth real coin and real favour on your return, and the Archive will want a copy |
| Entertain | Morale | Once per journey each: turn a night Encounter hit into a social or an omen instead of something hostile |
| Pray (house rule) | Ask out loud, and listen for an answer | The party gains one Blessing a day — a d4 that any one of you may add to a d20 roll after seeing it land. A d6 if the one praying has a god, an oath or a pact with something that answers. It expires at dawn. Once per journey, spend the Blessing instead to make the Encounter die be rerolled — the second roll stands |
| Cover Tracks | Hide your passage | Night threshold +1, and you are harder to follow by anything that has to follow on foot |
| Keep Watch (boat) | — | On the water this counts as Scout for the Detection Contest, but not for discovery |
Prayer carries. Praying is done aloud — that is the activity, and it is why it works. Deep in the forest, on any day somebody prays, the night Encounter threshold is −1. One Blessing exists at a time; they do not stack, and an unspent one is gone at dawn.
Camp
- The site. A Survival check from whoever claims it — DC 12 near the forest's edge, 14 in the middle reaches, 16 deep in. Success means defensible and dry: the night threshold stands and a Long Rest is safe. Failure is a poor site — night Encounter at −2, and an interrupted rest is lost rather than resumed.
- Watches. Three of them. Night encounters are usually already at the fire's edge by the time anyone rolls anything.
- Supply. Consumed as written. Foraging DCs run 12 near the edge, 14 in the middle reaches, 16 deep in.
- The scene. One camp scene a night, driven by whoever wants it.
What Exploration Buys You
The Discovery die only matters if what it turns up compounds. So:
- Landmarks bank. Every landmark you find goes on the map permanently and is worth something on the way home — a known campsite is an automatic site check, a marked ford is a crossing, a shortcut is a free hex, a cache is a cache.
- The forest is a text. Signs and discoveries stack into conclusions. Three kobold signs are a route. Two omens of the same kind mean you can predict the third — worth advantage on initiative, or an outright evade. Keep notes, or put someone on Chronicle.
- Named finds have uses. Herbs, reagents and oddities get real names and real mechanics. A bundle of the right herb is a healer's kit charge. Nothing found is decoration.
- First-footing. Nobody living has walked most of this ground in three hundred years. Anything you name out there, you have named — and it goes on the map under that name.