Expedition D&D Dev Log Part 2: Basic Expedition Rules

In the second post, I want to dive into the details of the expedition system itself. Following on the Source of the Nile rules, I want to have two base units you can hire: soldiers and bearers.

Soldiers are going to be pretty much the same by default. I’m thinking of the DCC retainers, maybe amping them up a bit because Simple D&D has higher HP. So I’ll set them at 4 HP, +0 to hit, and dealing damage by weapon (typically d6).  Their armor class is set by whatever armor they wear, and they have zero bonuses to their stats—generic mook-type characters.

Bearers, on the other hand, have no combat abilities at all. If a fight breaks out, they’ll run, scatter, or hide.

Next, I want to establish some carrying capacity limits. I love the way Source of the Nile handles this. Each bearer can carry about 10 units of supplies. Bearers don’t have weapons or armor, so they can always use their full carrying capacity for supplies.

For the soldiers, we’ll make a tradeoff. They will also have a base capacity of 10 units, but their weapons, armor, and other gear will count against that total. If you want to bring along a lot of supplies, you’ll need more bearers, because your soldiers will be partially loaded down with their own equipment.

For the heroes, I’m considering tying their carrying capacity to their strength score, like in Shadowdark. But I’ll put a pin in that for now.

Next, let’s get some numbers for food. Regarding food, I found a few sources from the Roman army; one says between 59 and 78 lb per man per month, while another gives 2.5-2.8 lb/day. I’m going to assume this didn’t change much. As our baseline for supply I’ll approximate 10 units ≈ 100 lb, so we’re at something like 1-2 units of food per unit per week. I decided to keep it simple at 1. Maybe this is generous to our expeditions, but I like how easy it will work in game.

For water, the sources say anywhere from 2-12 L/day (depending on conditions). The daily ration in WWI was 4.54 L/day, Vietnam was 3-5 L/day, but could go to 10 for certain duties. With 1L = 2.2 lb, that is something from 4-10 lbs daily. We’ll be generous again so that our expeditions can stay in the field longer, and say 1 unit of water daily per two individuals. But, we’ll give this multipliers, noting that multipliers up to 8x are historically plausible. Maybe we’ll have some rules to apply these in hot environments.

Finally, I want to make some other decisions about water. First, I don’t want to track containers. Caravaneer did this, and it worked only ok because it was a video game and I can’t imagine doing it by hand. Second, I don’t want to track it while you are along a water source. I like the idea of what this system will do for water tracking. It will be really demanding in terms of weight to carry water, so it will be hard to move away from water supplies. I like that idea and I’m excited to see it play out.

So there are our working Rules:

Bearers: Do not fight. Carrying capacity of 10
Soldiers: HP 4, AC and attacks as equipment (+0 to hit). Carrying capacity of 10.
Food: Each unit eats 1 unit/week
Water: Every two units consumes 1/day. Subject to multipliers of up to 8x according to condition. Do not need to carry if next to fresh water supply.