Geography of the Frontiers of Alusia

The Frontiers of Alusia is a campaign setting released by SPI for use with DragonQuest or other fantasy RPGs.  I've used the Frontiers of Alusia (FoA) as a campaign base for DragonQuest off and on since its release in 1981.  The included 22"x34" map has the quality you would expect from the preeminent war game publisher of time.  The accompanying Travel Guide provided basic descriptions of the various named areas and features of FoA and included a basic history of the region plus hints about neighboring areas.  There are ruins, abandoned cities, impassable mountain ranges, deep dark forests, haunted battlegrounds, primitive cannibals and barbarian tribes.  Plenty of adventure hooks and room for GMs to put their own stamp on it.  It's a real shame that further expansions for either the Frontiers or Alusia as whole were never produced.
In the cover sheet Frontiers of Alusia is described as "a thinly settled, semi-explored wilderness."  In keeping with that there are only two settled areas within the Frontiers of Alusia: the Barony of Carzala and the Brastor Holding.  They cover about 4% of the total area.  If you've read any of my previous blog posts then you know that I like to dig into the numbers and I collected a few for the Frontiers of Alusia.

Movement Rate Conversion Charts for DragonQuest

DragonQuest specifies movement for the inhabitants of the DragonQuest world in two ways primarily.  First is the Tactical Movement Rate (TMR) which defines how many hexes an entity can move in a Pulse (5 seconds) during combat and second is the Movement Rate for the Chase Stage specified in Yards per Minute (YPM).  Then Book 2, Magic, comes along and uses Miles per Hour (MPH) for spells like Telekinesis, Windwalking and Shadow Wings which requires conversion to game movement rates when used on the Tactical Display.  It takes no great feat of math to do the conversions but for Telekinesis and Shadow Wings it needs to be done with each improvement in spell rank.  So a while back I threw together a few tables in OpenOffice Calc to do conversions from MPH to both TMR and Chase Stage movement for the two spells but also more general conversion tables.