Here's a technique to pace the threats inherent to a journey into the wilds.

Here's a technique to pace the threats inherent to a journey into the wilds. If you are leaving a settled place and heading into perilous lands, you can use your journey progress track as guide to the ranks of the threats you will face.

The further you delve, the greater the danger. The amount of progress you've marked on your journey sets the rank of your foes and the severity of the outcome for failure (see the illustration, attached).

0-3: Dangerous
4-7: Formidable
8-0: Extreme

For example, I leave a village and head off for the deep woods. On my second journey roll, on the outskirts of the woods, I score a miss. I decide I encounter a fast-moving river that I must ford. I am at 2 progress, so this will be a dangerous threat. I Face Danger to get across, but score a miss. Per the rank of the threat, I suffer 2 harm as I loose my footing and get bashed against some rocks in the freezing water.

A few segments of my journey later, I am now deep in the wilds with 8 progress. Unfortunately, I roll another miss. The threat this time is extreme. I decide that an elder wolf (an extreme foe) is stalking me.

A threat can be mechanical (the rank of a foe or the amount of harm/stress you can suffer), but can also be purely narrative. In either case, using the gradient threats will help you set the tone and severity of what you encounter. You can adjust up or down one rank as appropriate to the situation you envision.

This technique helps reinforce the feeling of moving into untamed territory, and gives you a bit more risk/reward for taking chances with the Reach Your Destination move before you've filled up your progress track. Do you want to risk an extreme threat, or should you push quickly on to your destination?

For guided sessions, GM's can use this as a reference for escalating the dangers en route.

This technique is less appropriate if you are traveling between safe places, such as from one settlement to another. In that case, you can consider breaking a longer journey into two smaller journeys (with a destination in the middle), or just handle threats as appropriate to your surroundings.