Strictly speaking, the league is an historic measure of the distance a person on foot could travel in one hour. In modern parlance it equates to approximately three-and-a-half miles, or five-and-a-half kilometers. At sea, one league is generally understood to be three miles.


These are interesting figures. I came to the conclusion some time ago that what we call "one league", meaning OOC one game zone, should be roughly equivalent to three miles. My reasoning was based in a relationship between space and time. Since we adapt ourselves to different time scales, depending on the situation, the same should be true about spacial scales. The in-game clock runs 30 times faster than real life; one hour per two minutes. We can take this more seriously when we are travelling through great distances, like, say, from Polm to Talin, but not when we are just chatting by the well. If we took it too seriously, every simple conversation would last for hours in-game, which is an absurd. Therefore, the interpretation of the time flux has some flexibility.

Now, the "zones" are 16x16 areas, where each square is said to represent 10 meters. In this scale, a zone has, then, 160 meters. But this is the realistic, "zoomed in" spacial scale, similar to when we ignore the very fast clock and take the time flux to be more realistically close to real life. In the larger scale, the spatial and the temporal scales should be compatible. Since time runs 30 times faster, space should also be 30 times bigger. So, a zone, in this larger scale, should be equivalent to 30 x 160 = 4,800 meters. But 1 mile = 1.6 km, which means that a zone should be taken as 3 miles. 



At a comfortable walking pace, an average unencumbered player character can traverse approximately three zones in one in-game hour, leaving me to judge each zone as roughly approximating one mile.

This is not my experience. Walking (not running!) in straight line from one side of a zone to the other takes amost one IG hour; I would say that it would be possible to walk perhaps one zone and a half in one IG hour, but certainly not three. Hero, could this perception of yours be influenced by instances where PCs don't cross the whole zone? I'm pretty sure that going, for example, from the market square in Polm to the Ferry takes more than one hour. And that's approximately three zones: 1/2 zone from the square to the gates + 2 entire zones + 1/2 zone to the ferry.

Furthermore, that a PC, by my experience and by my numbers, can walk a bit more than one zone (3 miles or 4.8 km) in an hour agrees with your suggestion that "In modern parlance it [one league, meaning the "historic measure of the distance a person on foot could travel in one hour"] equates to approximately three-and-a-half miles, or five-and-a-half kilometers."



  

Last Edited By: Ali Akabba Aug 3 12 6:12 PM. Edited 3 times.