>Driving 700km (or whatever it is--I know it takes a long time) to Melbourne
>in one go is not a stretch for some people; I've done it several times.
Heck I just drove 800 KM to get back from the Origins con. I do it every year.
But that's nothing. My parents regularly drive from Wisconsin to New York about 1500 KM, Florida 1700 KM, and usually twice a year to California a whopping 3500 KM by the shortest rout - more like 4000 the rout my parents take. My mother refuses to fly, you see...
To bring this into Gloranthan perspective (since this is a HQ list), I think that what we're all pointing out here is how much time in travel people are willing to put up with for what purpose. When population density permits villages are close together so that they're perhaps an hour walk between them. This allows trading and visiting to occur - visiting being especially important for ensuring that you don't get inbreeding. If you can't regularly get to other villages, your populace is going to get genetically odd fast (which explains, I daresay, some of the peoples of the Appalachian Mountain region in America where, in fact, it might be more than a day's walk from place to place).
I'm assuming that in Glorantha horses are ridden rarely enough (I'm thinking Sartar, of course), to make walking the only common form of travel. Now, my parents are retired, living in America which makes travel really easy (no matter where you go there'll be a MacDonalds off of the offramp), and affluent enough to spend money on travel. Looking at an ancient model, people aren't given vacation (holiday, for you Brits) time - you work or die of starvation mostly. So I think that even a day away is probably a rare enough event. Any more than a day and I'm going to guess that the trip is going to be seen as a major expedition.
Meaning that you have to go there, do what you came to do, and get back in the same day.
Now, over on the rules list I think there was a discussion of how far you can go in a day. I think that for practical purposes it's actually pretty short. Yeah in times of desperation a man can go a long way in one day. But given normal traveling conditions in which we assume that the traveler doesn't want to be hurt badly by the process, I think that even 10 miles is about the limit on day trips for Orlanthi getting to the next village. That's about 3 hours walking there, a few hours doing what you're doing, and then 3 hours back. Sounds easy until you try it. You'll be very tired the next day.
Meaning that most Orlanthi will rarely have been further from home than 10 miles, and that assumes straight roads and such. Oh, perhaps for special religious ceremonies and such (flying probably gets you far fast, I'd guess). But otherwise I think that they're mostly very limited in how far they get from home. Using Jane's figures for English village density (which are probably a bit high for Dragon Pass), that's still as many as 30 villages, actually, given optimal distribution. So there's still potentially lots of population to meet. But it's still very local population.
Mike
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