- "Move" redirects here. For the game mechanic from games Powered by the Apocalypse, see Move (PbtA).
Movement is a sort of action in which characters go from place to place in the local area of the game world. (When characters move long distance over an extended period of time, that is travel rather than movement, which is small scale.)
In some situations, most notably combat and similar pressured encounters, movement rules may restrict where and how fast characters can move, especially useful when groups use a combat map. Some games do not use movement rules, and rely on fictional positioning and the players' sense of what makes sense in the fiction.
Movement speed[]
When movement speed is defined, it is usually specified as a distance that a character can move in one action or one turn. Such a distance may be measured in one of the following ways:
- an actual distance in the game world (e.g. in a unit such as feet),
- a number of squares or hexes that can be moved on a grid map (often as a representation of an actual distance),
- a number of zones on a zoned map,
- a qualitative distance with respect to the target of an action (e.g. characters can go from being a "short" distance away to being "close", or a "medium" distance away to being a "long" distance).
A character's movement speed can be defined as one of their statistics (e.g. from a character type such as race or class, or by increasing it using character points) or all characters may be assumed to have a similar speed in similar circumstances. It can usually be affected by factors such as the medium through which they are moving (e.g. moving on flat ground is faster than moving on rough ground is faster than climbing is faster than swimming is faster than flying) and certain conditions.