So, I'm currently on a mini break from writing Carnival of Dreams to produce another adventure. One of the things that continues to amaze me is the level of detail people will go into on RPG and adventure creation. Sometimes those little bits of realism are what makes the difference between the adventure world being believed or people struggling to accept it.
So in looking into this I wanted to find out about horses and carts, and travel times, distances and speeds. I came across this resource: http://www.lrgaf.org/guide/writers-guide.htm
What I noticed most was that this seems to be from a fairly reputable source, but also that the speeds the horses travel seem to vary from a lot of the RPG sources I could find. I found the paragraph on endurance interesting as people probably overlook weather conditions etc. as really effecting a horse. There are other items that reference the distance a horse can travel in a day, but often they omit their definition of day. Is it 9 - 5, is it sun up to sun down, all these things matter.
So there you have it, I spent some of today researching horses and some researching international spy techniques for identification of contacts, and all this for potentially a single line in an RPG to add some believably
So next time you play an RPG spare a thought for the poor soul who wrote it. They probably did a lot more research, thinking, and general writing and re-writing, than the finished product will ever let on.
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