A Wilderness Die!

About a month ago, on a couple of streams, I played around with creating a wilderness die, an outdoors mechanic in the mold of the popular dungeon-type die that you roll every Turn in a dungeon. That version is a bit more complicated (and I'm still working on it) but I decided to put together a bit of a simplified version and add some player-facing mechanics to boot!

It's dead simple. When the party is moving around the wilderness, each PC can take on one of these roles:

• Navigator
• Scout
• Lookout
• Quartermaster

Every Turn, they, along with the referee, roll a six-sided die. On a six, each of the roles has a positive effect that they can deploy. The referee uses the result of their die roll, along with any effects from the party, 

Role effects

• The Navigator notices if the party’s heading is off-course and can correct by one hex face.
• The Scout can identify a hex feature in the path, if any, and may choose to approach or avoid it.
• The Quartermaster can avoid supply loss this Turn and raise morale by 1.
• The Lookout can identify the nearest encounter and may choose to move closer or further away.

Referee effects

• An encounter draws near: the party moves closer to an encounter or a wandering creature moves closer to them.
• A hex feature is found: the party encounters a geographical feature of the hex; if it is an obstacle, they may move around it at the cost of one Turn of movement.
• Supplies or Morale: unless supplies are consumed, the morale of animals and hirelings falls by 1.
• Off-course: the party’s heading drifts by one hex face from the expected direction.

That's it!

It's very simple. If you want to leverage PC classes in various roles, let them roll two dice and take the better result or give them a +1 to their rolls (spice it up by increasing this bonus to +2 at 4th level and +3 at 8th level).

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