In a recent session of my weekly Castles & Crusades campaign, the party needed a local lord (Ealdorman Beornhelm of Hlaftur) to send an urgent message to the fortified town of Eotenword a few days south, warning them of an approaching goblin war party. One player asked the logical question: "How can we send a message and how fast can it get there?" Naturally, this lead me down the winding path of researching how messages were sent during the Middle Ages, since my C&C setting of the Realms of Yore is very much a medieval "simulationist" setting (within the parameters of a fantasy RPG such as C&C by Troll Lord Games).
My first point of research was a great article found on Medievalists.net. It gave me a solid overview of the topic in general and then I burrowed down the never ending rabbit hole from there. My focus here is purely on the sending of messages and not how news travels. That latter topic is a deep dive all on its own. I am also going to use the assumption that we are omitting magical messaging. If you are playing a very high magic setting then the use of magic to send messages instantly makes this entire article pointless (beyond a passing interest in the overall subject matter). In the Realms of Yore, long-distance magical IMs aren't a thing. I'm going for a much more grounded and gritty feel to the setting, where magic can't just solve every problem all the time. Plus, with magic being a more finite resource (as defined by the game system itself) wizards are less likely to want to squander castings on sending a missive for a lord. In my setting, you need to do it the mundane way (for the most part).
In the very broad 1,000 year timeline that constitutes the Middle Ages, there were three main ways of sending messages over longer distances: the slow way, the faster and more arduous way, and the very fast yet somewhat unpredictable way.
The Slow Way
For less urgent communications, messages would often be handed to a traveling merchant or pilgrim who happened to be heading to the destination your message needed to go. This was definitely the slowest way to get in touch. Pilgrims usually walked and merchants traveled at the slow speed of wagons and carts. This form of messenger service was pretty reliable overall, since pilgrims didn't want to damn their souls by betraying the trust given to them and merchants knew that they had a financial interest in making sure the message arrived where it needed to.
The Faster Way
Much faster than a traveling merchant or pilgrim was the use of a dedicated riding messenger. This was also a rather expensive option. They needed fresh horses along their route and traveled at higher speeds, increasing the risk of injuries. To make sure there was ample supply of fresh horses, waystations needed to be created along the routes. All of this entailed considerable expense. If setting up such infrastructure was beyond a lord's means (or interests), then a rider would need to pace themselves, meaning it took a bit longer to deliver the message.
The Fastest Way
The quickest way to get messages from one place to the next was with the use of pigeons, something that has been utilized for millennia. Though not free and certainly in need of maintenance, these birds could travel 500-700 in a single day!
Gamifying It
Now that we have the three main ways that messages were sent in the Middle Ages, as GMs and worldbuilders we need to figure out how & why this matters. All three means of messenger services are usable in a fantasy RPG world and campaign. Once again, I will harp on the fact that any good and meaningful setting will account for economics and infrastructure in their worldbuilding. The importance should be self-explanatory, since you need to know how fast news might travel for all manner of campaign reasons (war, monsters, assassinations, etc.). How you set it up depends on your setting, but all three methods are valid for a typical fantasy setting.
Do you have pilgrims? Maybe yes, maybe no. Would they carry messages? Maybe there is a deity or priestly order that specializes in such things...or at least related topics. You must have traveling merchants. Would messenger services be free or would it cost some coins. It might be in the merchant's best interest to offer such services free of charge to nobles, but then charge a fee for the lowly adventurer.
Does the setting have the infrastructure for a "Pony Express" style messenger service? This could actually be a route into adventure for a group of PCs, offering to carry messages for their local lord and somebody is going to try and stop them from reaching their destination. Factor in the travel rates and determine how long it will take a message to get from point A to B.
Pigeons would be the best option for fast messenger services. Or perhaps another winged creature, e.g., the ravens from Game of Thrones. Accounting for rests, winds, dodging birds of prey, etc. the messenger pigeons found in the Realms of Yore travel 480 miles per day. 480 is perfectly divisible by 3 (=160) and 24 (=20), which are the two hex sizes I use for my setting. I would recommend the 24-mile hexes for this calculation, as it's much faster to count.
Heading back to the example from the beginning of this article and looking at the three possibilities for messenger services.
Pilgrims or a traveling merchant: It would take them 5 days to travel from Hlaftur to Eotenword and give the local ealdorman a warning of the goblins. There's a good chance that the message arrives too late (if at all).
Rider: A rider pushing his mount would arrive in just over 1 day, whereas one not exhausting his horse would make it a day later.
Messenger bird: Given the speeds listed above, a messenger pigeon would get to Eotenword and back to Hlaftur the same day. In fact, it could take only 4-5 hours (average speed of 48 mph). This method would give the people of Eotenword more than enough time to prepare for the goblins and set up their defenses. In fact, more pigeons could be sent to other keeps in order for the lords to muster up their troops to head south and face the goblins.
Too many topics are all too often handwaved by GMs and worldbuilders. But I hope I have demonstrated why supposedly mundane and boring topics like messenger services (as well as the tied-in topics of economics, religion, and infrastructure) are so important to running meaningful RPG campaigns. You have to account for such things and its implications on your setting and campaign. It might not seem like it, but these "boring" details are catalysts for adventures.
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