Quill&Steel OS
Fantasy Travel Calculator for Writers & Worldbuilders
Readers will notice if the ride from the capital takes six days in chapter three and two days in chapter nine.
Quill&Steel OS works out how long any journey in your world takes, how the terrain and pace affect it, and how much food and water it takes to get there.
Try Quill&Steel OS free for 14 days
Watch the demo
See the travel time calculator in action
Enter a distance, choose how your characters are travelling, pick the terrain and the pace, and get a realistic timeline of the journey.
Everything you need
An overland travel pace calculator for your world
A fantasy distance calculator that accounts for what your characters are riding, what they're crossing, how hard they're pushing, and what they have to carry.
Six ways to travel
On foot, riding horse, warhorse, wagon, sailing ship or flying mount, each with its own speed. Ships and flying mounts ignore the ground beneath them.
Nine kinds of terrain
Road, plains, forest, hills, mountains, swamp, desert, tundra and coast, each slowing the party down by how hard it is to cross.
Pace, and what it costs
Slow, normal or fast. Slow lets the party forage on the way, fast wears them down and they notice less, and you set how many hours a day they march.
Rations and water
Set the party size and you get the provisions: how many rations and how much water the trip needs.
Get a breakdown of the results
You don't just get "eleven days." You see the speed it used, the miles covered each day, and the total hours.
Saved journeys
Save a route between two places with a note on which road it takes, then load it back the next time your characters make that trip. Place names fill in from the locations you've already built.
All in one place
A travel calculator that knows your world
A route here runs between two real places in your world. So a saved journey sits beside the map you drew, your city articles, and the timeline the trip belongs to.
Made for writers and game masters
From a day's ride to a voyage across the sea
Use it to keep a journey consistent across a whole novel, to move a party from town to town in your campaign, or to find out whether reinforcements can reach the city before it falls.
Save the routes your story uses again and again, and stop recalculating the same journeys.
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Novels
Keep chapter three and chapter nine agreeing about the same journey.
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D&D & TTRPG sessions
Overland travel between towns, with the rations counted for you.
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Caravans & armies
Work out what a company has to carry before it marches.
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Sea and sky
Ships under sail and flying mounts that ignore the ground entirely.
Start today
Start planning your journeys
Try Quill&Steel OS's fantasy travel calculator free for 14 days.
14-day free trial. No card required.
FAQ
What is a fantasy travel calculator?
It works out how long a journey takes in a made-up world. You give it a distance, how your characters are travelling, what they're crossing and how hard they're pushing, and it returns the days, the hours and the supplies the trip needs.
How do I calculate travel time in a fantasy world?
Take the base speed of how they're travelling, adjust it for pace, then adjust again for the ground they're crossing. Multiply by the hours they travel each day and divide the distance by that. The calculator does it for you and shows each step, so you can see where a number came from.
Can I use it as a D&D travel calculator?
Yes. The pace options follow the overland travel rules 5e players already know: a slow pace lets the party forage, a fast pace costs them alertness, and eight hours is a normal travelling day with ten to twelve a forced march.
Does terrain change the answer?
Yes, and it's usually the difference between a week and a fortnight. A road or open plains costs nothing, forest, hills, desert and coast slow you by a quarter, and mountains, swamp and frozen tundra cut your speed in half. Ships and flying mounts skip the terrain entirely.
Does it work out rations and water?
Yes. Tell it how many people are travelling and it counts the rations for every day on the road and a gallon of water per person per day. Travel at a slow pace and it notes that the party can forage along the way.
Can I use leagues or kilometers?
Yes. Enter the distance in miles, leagues or kilometers, whichever your world counts in, and the results convert for you.
Does it measure the distance on my map for me?
Not yet. You enter the distance yourself, read off the scale of the map you drew or simply decided on. Everything after that, the pace, the terrain, the days and the provisions, is worked out for you.
Can I save a route and come back to it?
Yes. Save any journey with its start, its end and a note, and it's kept with the rest of your world. Open it again and every setting comes back exactly as you left it, so the same trip takes the same time in book two.
What speeds does it use?
These are the starting speeds, before pace and terrain change them:
- On foot: 3 miles per hour
- Riding horse: 6 miles per hour
- Warhorse or wagon: 4 miles per hour
- Sailing ship: 8 miles per hour
- Flying mount: 12 miles per hour
It assumes 8 hours of travel a day, which you can change. Pace and terrain then raise or lower the speed from there.
Is the Quill&Steel OS travel calculator free?
You can try it free for 14 days, with no card required. After that, the travel calculator is included on every Quill&Steel OS plan. See pricing.