There are two basic, interrelated components that make up the overworld: nodes, which represent the places that player characters will be traveling to, and paths. For every location that is a significant distance away from any other location in the overworld such that players will have to expend travel resources in order to get there, a new node should be placed. A good rule of thumb is that if players would have to use the travel round rules to get to a new place, then a new node should be made to represent it.
When a new node is placed on the map, at least one path should be drawn connecting it to another node. A path serves as a representation of how to get from one node to the next. There are two primary elements that are necessary to define when making a new path: the means by which the players will traverse the path, and how long it will take to travel the entire path from node to node. The basic unit of time for this is the travel round. Each travel round represents one day of travel, while anything less than a day is instead represented by a partial travel round. Each distinct path has a length, which is the number of days it will take to traverse it under ideal conditions, and a number between 0 and 10 called the navigation difficulty that represents how perilous it is to traverse it. Each level of navigation difficulty reduces the probability that the players will be able to successfully get where they are going by 10%. The navigation difficulties for a given type of path are shown in the table below.
| Navigation Difficulty | Description |
|---|---|
| 0-2 | Roads with clear guideposts and boundaries. |
| 3-5 | Countryside trails that are well-traveled but not recognizable by people who aren’t local. |
| 6-8 | Forested paths and/or walking trails that are either overgrown or not well-marked. |
| 9 | Completely overgrown and/or unmapped countryside. |
| 10 | Terrain that is hostile or impassable via conventional means–a volcano, a sheer cliff, an icy mountain, etc. |
While traveling, players may encounter enemies or NPCs on the road. In addition to the navigation difficulty, each path is also assigned a danger rating, which is a number between 0 and 5 that determines how likely it is that they will encounter enemies during their journey, with 0 meaning that it won’t happen and 5 meaning that it has a 50% chance of happening.
When players either visit a new node, discover an interesting landmark, or discover a hidden or otherwise hard-to-reach area, they will earn 1 Discovery XP for doing so. If they manage to reach a node that is well-hidden or very difficult to find, they will earn 5 XP instead.