For a long time now I've wanted to develop a robust rule-set for traveling on long journeys as opposed to the classical hex crawl of D&D. What I mean by a journey is when the PCs want to go from city A to City B and they take the King's Road or some such. They aren't mapping or getting lost or doing any kind of exploration. They just want to get to the destination, and it is anti climactic to just say you travel for eight days and you get there, or they travel for 3 days, random encounter, travel, for 2 days, random encounter, travel for 3 days and they arrive. It never feels like they actually traveled.
So towards that end, I've been looking at the house-rules of other people, and most recently examining The One Ring and its 5e adaptation Adventures in Middle-Earth. I was working on converting it wholesale when it hit me: long journeys and detailed wilderness exploration don't need separate rule-sets. Sure I can have a robust travel ruleset that expands on the normal D&D rules by giving PCs tasks of scouting, or foraging, etc, but I can use the same method for both aspects. The only real difference between the two modes of travel is the navigation, or getting lost. Just skip that step when the PCs are on a road or river. Resolving all the travel tasks every day, instead of trying to figure every 3 days or 5 days like TOR, can give the journey a sense of length. Every single day matters.
I'm also of the opinion that wilderness exploration should not be done on a day by day basis, and even the 4 hour watch may be too long of a time frame, because the PCs are exploring and don't have a destination in mind; if they did they would be following a road or river. But that's beside the point. Journeys require the same day to day resolution of tasks as wilderness exploration, discounting navigation rolls.
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