I know there’s a lot of thread and questions about the wilderness stuff in TB but, l’m curious to read how do you guys are interpreting this. Is there somme kinds of chalenge for long travel, in between towns. Some mountains to pass, rivers to cross you know… Not only from dungeons to towns but, from a country to an other…
I believe Thor suggested in this video that they were considering doing a deeper treatment of the wilderness and such in expansion books.
In the meantime it’s mainly just pathfinder. For long wilderness journeys you could call for a hunter/scavenger test to see if they can feed themselves, or a survivalist test to see if they have any problems with camp. You could throw in some weather hazards if you want. And of course, if they fail any of these things you can introduce a wandering monster or other hazard as a twist.
In general, though, Torchbearer right now is about dungeons. Movement between dungeons is intended to be simple and not take a lot of game time so that you can get back into the grind quickly.
I got it. I dont mean to get out of the grind of what TB can do, but there is system in witch towns do not provides the same advantages from one other. Players may want to go further to get what they need. Different localisation, different jobs or services.
I guess figure out what’s keeping them from getting from one town to another (bandits, toll roads, no roads, bad weather, whatever), see how they handle that, and if they can’t come up with a Good Idea, call for a Test that matches what they try to do.
If there’s a big, clearly marked, well-maintained and safe road from one place to another, then they should just get there without a problem.
Yeah, as jovialbard said, I think because TB is an homage back to ODD, the game is meant to focus pretty much only on dungeons at this point (levels 1-5). I wasn’t there, but I think ODD was really meant to be played only in dungeons and wilderness stuff was added for higher level play as the game expanded and people started to hack it. I’m willing to bet there will be more wilderness stuff in the 6-10 book. There’s gonna be a 6-10 book right? Right? Right?
I hope so! We’ve certainly been teased enough about it 
What I did was, for each day of travel, I described the terrain that they were travelling through, then asked for one ob 2 Pathfinder test. If they succeeded, the day passed uneventfully. If they failed, I tossed an encounter at them from a list I had.
I also described special locations that they reached - a camp site on a haunted hill, a traveller’s shelter by a lake.
I didn’t want to just “Say Yes” - this is Torchbearer, and travelling between towns should be an expenditure of resources. As it turned out, it sure was! By the end of the four day journey, the PCs were out of food entirely and somewhat desperate. They’d also discovered that rolling to start a fire, then to forage for fresh rations, then to cook those rations didn’t work out very efficiently for staving off hunger. (Maybe next time, they’ll remember to earn some checks so they can do that stuff in camp phase.)
The biggest hurdle was that they had no chance to earn loot en route, so the town phase was particularly harsh. (And then they got a “minor inconvenience” involving an ob 3 resources test…)
On the bright side, the dwarf opened up Pathfinder as a skill from never having used it before. They also found themselves a nice side quest dungeon for next session where they might be able to grab some loot before they tackle the dungeon they went all the way out there to reach.
The Adventure Phase Procedures outlined on p. 183 leave this open to the GM. If you want to, you can “skip right to the cave mouth, make them test Pathfinder to find their way or require a whole pre-adventure.” It cautions, however, that “[l]ow-level adventures should be easy to get to.” (I especially love the first point on the page, where the GM describes the adventure.)
I do hope, however, that the levels 6–10 book is going to make good use of the map which the Basic book is telling you to make. By the time characters hit level 6, that map should be crawling with all kinds of interesting locations and features that came up in play, in addition to the seeded stuff.
If they’re anywhere with a supply of trees and it isn’t raining, I would let them make a camp fire as a good idea. As for scavenging/hunting and then cooking… yeah, that could eat up some turns. Though if they aren’t pressed they can always just camp on the third turn to avoid the hungry and thirsty condition.
Upon rereading the book, having a tinderbox lets them light a fire without making a test “under normal conditions.” So if my party had a tinderbox, I screwed them over. If they didn’t, then I think making them test was the right call.
Let’s see… looks like the halfling still has his tinderbox in his belt pouch and I owe them an apology. Ah well, we’re all still learning the rules. Now I know!