A few years ago, I was overweight and bored and looking for a way of making exercise and weight loss fun again.  So I came up with a silly little system where I would track my daily exercise mileage (usually in the form of walking – but other stuff, too) and plot it on a Fantasy Map to see my progress.

Back then I used the Forgotten Realms as my backdrop.  I kept a log of how many miles I walked/exercised per day and plotted that progress on the map of Forgotten Realms.  I started in the far east of the Forgotten Realm, commencing in the Great Wild Wood in Murghom. I even generated “Myself” as a character with Stats and stuff.  I started with silver pieces, and would pay ‘money’ to stay in Inns scattered across the Realms.  And in those times I was traveling through uninhabited wilderness, I came up with a system for living off the land.  Now and then I would run into Random Encounters –usually combat, which would generate into an additional Real Life physical challenge that I would have to accomplish in addition to my daily walking.  For example, a random dice roll generated a Goblin, which I decided would be 100 pushups in Real Time. Of course, I also played out the combat in Game, too.  I had “Me” keep a journal and it proved kind of entertaining for some time until I switched jobs and the project kind of fell by the way side. And then, of course, I blobbed back up again.

I am doing it again.  I just dropped 30 pounds since January strictly from dieting but want to add Exercise to go another 30.  This time I’m going to try to hike across the World of Greyhawk.

I am going to play the role of Wyatt Ferris, a 17 year old kid who just got discharged from the Borderland Army.  He’s got a stash of plunder he earned from the battle and earned a bit of a reputation.  Now he wants to wander the World of Greyhawk and seek his fame and fortune.

If you are thinking of starting an exercise plan and would like to make it a bit more  interesting, hit me up and we can talk about your Character, your Character's preferred mode of travel, and how we can convert that to Real Life Exercise.  We can then have an OOC forum to talk about our progress, our successes, give advice, encouragement, and all that good stuff.

Only people seriously interested in committing to a walking or exercise plan should apply.  It doesn’t have to be a super long term commitment.  You might want to lose X number of pounds and then stop.  You might only agree to a shorter stint in the plan – say commit to walking from the Greyhawk to Hardby – or whatever.

This isn’t a 'real' Roleplaying Game.  Its just a system I've developed, largely self driven, to track your Real Time Walking Progress, “see the world” of Greyhawk, maybe lose some weight, develop a PC and have a little fun along the way.  Perhaps, down the road, your developed PC, now with some history and earned XP, can join a real campaign – mine or someone else’s.

Looking forward to meeting my next “Hiking Partner”.
This message was last edited by the user at 12:05, Sat 21 Apr 2018.

Piping in to say this is admirable and I hope you find hiking mates.

I am also just commenting... If this works for you that's great, and good luck! But something you could try as well/instead that I have found helpful is an app called "Zombies Run" which gives you audio about going on a mission and tracks your runs (or in my case walks). For example you could be on decoy duty luring the zombies away from the base while they fix one of the gates so they don't get in or on a supply mission to get medicines.