I've always hated fast travel in CRPGs, and Ultimate Edition will have none of it. This chapter's "Ultimate Fast Travel" title is then facetious, as the point I am trying to make is that Ultimate Fast Travel isn't fast at all, it should in fact be the slowest means of travel in the game. But let's take it from the beginning.
One of the many problems I am facing with Ultimate Edition is that the source material of the worlds I use is made for a very definite player power level. In the Pathfinder setting at the center of my metaverse, this power level consists of 4 characters. So how is a lone character supposed to make his way in this world that's built for 4, WITHOUT employing gay difficulty-adjustment techniques that make the world feel bullshit?
First let's understand why it's IMPERATIVE that the world be able to accommodate solo characters making their way across it. Why can't the world only work for groups of characters?
Because 90% of fiction is about lone characters. The group is an exception in fiction as a whole, but in GMRPGs it is the rule for reasons I have explained in depth in my essay Roleplaying Culture (briefly: because it's more fun to interact with other people instead of just with the GM all the time).
Group play is in fact RESTRICTIVE in the type of narrative that can be spun out of it. Almost none of noir works with a group for example, and barely anything of horror, to name just two big genres. That's why the groundbreaking Blade Runner RPG (which is supposed to be noir science-fiction) is made for "1 to 4 players", and may well be best played with a solo player. But we'll discuss that game at length soon in a Battlegrounds Alpha 2.0 update. What's important to grasp here is that none of these considerations apply to Ultimate Edition, because even if all roleplaying teams in the Pathfinder section of the game are made of 4 characters, there may still be lone heroes traversing the world in the adventure-strategy layer aka Master of Heroes, and it would kill much of the realism of that layer if an arbitrary rule was added that forbade heroes from traveling alone.
So again, how are lone roleplaying characters or adventure-strategy heroes supposed to traverse a world that's made with a group of at least 4 of them in mind?
That's the number 1 issue my Ultimate Fast Travel mechanics were designed to solve, but there is also a number 2 issue, and this is that the SRPG layer of the game, aka Master of Combat, needs a way to "teleport" the teams from mission to mission without interacting with the adventure-strategy layer, for the sake of players who only want to play the greatest SRPG of all time, and not the greatest adventure-strategy/4X game of all time, or the greatest roleplaying game of all time. How are we to accommodate those diehard SRPG fans and bring them along for the ride so we can employ their contributions to enrich the depth and interactivity of our metaverse?
Keep in mind that Paizo's Organized Play department hasn't found a solution to this issue, and to my knowledge never even tried, so they actually do TELEPORT their tens of thousands of player characters across the Pathfinder and Starfinder worlds, oftentimes even BREAKING THE SPACETIME CONTINUUM to do so. Think about it for a moment. You take your official Pathfinder Society character to a game store and participate in a scenario. But across the table from you is sitting another player with a character who played last week the scenario your character will play next month. How the fuck does that make any sense? And just as bad is that all these characters didn't have to walk or ride or fly between scenarios, and Paizo just teleported them across the map according to your life schedule.
Ultimate Edition solves all this faggotry by CONNECTING THE SCENARIOS VIA A 4X ADVENTURE-STRATEGY LAYER that must be traversed in order for a team of Pathfinders or Starfinders to progress from one scenario to the next. Moreover, once a scenario is played IT IS OVER and can't be replayed by the same team or any other team. So everything makes spatial AND temporal sense, and moreover there is now a kind of competition between players on who can reach and play the coolest scenarios first, since when they're played they're gone, and gone forever, together with their substantial rewards (completing Master of Combat Scenarios is the fastest way to get ahead and generate capital also in the adventure-strategy layer, at least until a player has acquired entire settlements or a kingdom).
The simplicity of the rule that solves all these issues is stunning, so here it goes. When a roleplaying character or adventure-strategy hero (or groups of them for that matter) travels along civilized roads or established shipping lanes—designated as "Safe Routes" on the overworld—he simply doesn't roll for random encounters. Problem solved.
Think about it for a moment. HOW ARE THE NPCS TRAVELING BETWEEN TOWNS FOR FUCK'S SAKES? Do THEY roll for random encounters too? Most of these are PEASANTS for fuck's sakes, so even if there were 4 of them, it would mean jack shit. In the Sandpoint Hinterlands—to mention a low-level area that's already been unlocked in Battlegrounds—if you roll 82–91 you get half a dozen fucking ghouls, and the chance of an encounter is 20% per day. You mean to tell me every time a farmer goes to town, he rolls on that table? How are there any farmers left?
Of course, Paizo's random encounter tables are made with the intention of being adjusted by the GM to fit the party's power level, and I suppose the GM also adjusts it for the NPCs, but this adjustment makes no sense, since at least all the intelligent predators would focus the brunt of their attacks on the WEAKEST travelers and NOT on the strongest, as Paizo's mechanics would have GMs do, thus utterly annihilating the civilian population of practically every region of the world!
But there is an explanation that solves everything! In my view, the peasants and civilian travelers in a dangerous fantasy world like Golarion would develop a life rhythm and protocols that allow them to group together and rely on safety in numbers. So for example, they wouldn't go far from their homes at night, or would join caravans when traveling between towns, or ride on the coattails of regular guard patrols, etc. And that's how lowly peasants and NPCs in general survive!
And that is also what lone player characters and heroes can do. Moreover, even groups of heroes can employ this method of travel when going for example from one Master of Combat Scenario to another, so that they won't have to interact with the 4X adventure-strategy layer if the players are only in it for the SRPG missions.
Of course, there is a drawback to this travel method, that it is slow, and takes TWICE as long as it otherwise would. Your character or characters must wait for the next caravan or the next guard patrol, after all, or for the weather to turn so that it might be bright and sunny so that monsters can be spotted from afar, or not even leave their lairs at all, and so on.
This method of travel doesn't mean that such caravans and groups of travelers are NEVER attacked. Attacks may well happen, but the group is large enough to fend them off without substantial casualties, and certainly without any player characters or heroes getting killed, though they might be injured. And recovery from such incidents and injuries is also part of the reason these travel times are doubled, as is the extra work that a character or characters might have to do to pay for these caravans or guards and so on. It's all included in "the price" so to speak of having all travel times doubled.
Now you might think this slow travel method would prevent the players using it from effectively competing for the coolest and most sought-after scenarios, and that is undoubtedly at least partly true, but take also into account that the groups traveling normally will be eating random encounters, some of which may hurt them badly enough to require expensive healing and/or rest, and on occasion a party may even be wiped out; all the while the slow party is sure to reach its destination, and at full strength. On the other hand the safe-traveling groups will forfeit the XP and loot the random encounters can provide, so it's a complex maze of advantages and disadvantages to each travel method that each player and group will have to navigate for themselves, and according to their particular circumstances (for example, if no rival team seems to be sprinting towards your preferred scenario, maybe there's no sense rushing, but if several of them are headed there, you might want to step on the gas until you're clearly the frontrunner). It sure will make for many interesting decisions, which is what good game design is all about.
But above all, Ultimate Fast Travel = slowass Safe Travel finally unlocks the possibility of lone-wolfing it across the biggest and deepest fictional world of all time, in a manner FULLY CONSISTENT with both fundamental GMRPG mechanics AND the requirements of cool fiction, so you can finally play the lone hero on a lengthy journey of exploration ALL THE WHILE epic group and multigroup campaigns are going on all around you. This means that right from the beginning of Master of Heroes you can send a hero out to the furthest reaches of Golarion (or at least to the parts of it that have been unlocked, which for the moment is the Inner Sea Region) without having to worry about grouping up or painstakingly investigating each region before setting off to cross it. As long as there is a ROAD (or established shipping lane) with the designation "Safe Route" on the overworld, your roleplaying character or adventure-strategy hero can head there safely as long as you're willing to double the traveling times quoted in the source- and rulebooks.
