This is embarassing, but I can't remember how to figure out how fast a character moves, and I can't find it anywhere. Can anyone help me out?

SR4, page 138. Humans, elves and orks walk at 10m/turn and run at 25 m/turn. Dwarves are 8 and 20, and Trolls move at 15 and 35 respectively.

This thread brings up an interesting question. What is the conversion from combat movement rate to 'travel' or 'longterm' movement rates?

If you do a straight conversion based on phase movement rate an average human runs, without sprinting, at 18.47 MPH.

That seems a tad fast....

That's what Fatigue tests are all about I've always thought of SR's "running" as being "moving as fast as you can while still being able to do anything else" and "sprinting" as "moving flat-out as fast as you can."

I can run and fire a handgun at some yahoo, and still maintain a rate of speed that'll tire me out in less than an hour.

... when did the average stat become 1?

Nope, see fatigue damage (as Shrike30 said). Besides, the world class runners get to be faster than Joe Average, so no record for him anyway.

There's the problem of acceleration: if you strictly apply the rules a character who starts to run cover the same distance as a character who's already running.

the running speed rules were designed for short-term distances--basically, the 100m dash. running longer distances requires harsher fatigue rules.

Hey, if it's too fast for ya, knock 1/3 off all the distances. Not hard

I actually cut speeds in half, myself. I said, three seconds is a stupidly short amount of time for a round, plus characters run really fast, so I'll keep the speeds the same and make a round six seconds. Poof.

The sheer distance people can go seems rather silly, but I'd hate to see short range speed knocked down any. After all, I'm willing to bet those world class runners wouldn't have gotten so fast if the world of 2070 didn't also happen to be home to gangers providing motivation via smartlinks and gyromounts. I'm biased though; I always make athletic characters who sprint to cover fairly regularly.

Definitely. One would think that if stride length was THAT critical there'd be more elite runners of exceptional height out there, and I can't think of any modern elite sprinters that were any taller than 6'1" off the top of my head. Many of them are in the 5'9" to 5'10" range, which is really fairly average. Not to mention Michael Johnson ran somewhat oddly and was considered to use rather short steps compared to many runners. I'm fine with trolls being good runners, but they already benefit in that area due to their strength scores even without a movement bonus.

Trolls get faster with each edition. In first and second, they had the same land speed as dwarves. In third, it was the same as humans, and in forth, it's better than everyones. I can only conclude that they are evolving.

Indeed, we are. Soon we'll outrun you and feast on your tiny organs!

OK, so my organs aren't made of meat, so unless you evolve the ability to digest metals, I'm not to worried.

Abstract running speeds are certainly sufficient for our group as we are not playing with exact maps anyway. Anyone who wants to improve the mechanic needs to separate speed and endurance.

Speed should use strength, running(appropiate kind), race, load

Endurance should use body, running(appropiate kind), load


I´ll ignore load for a while and include race via ability mods, with dwarfs getting a negative mod of -2m/round. Max. Running speed could then be something like 8+half strength+half running skill, giving unmodded humans a base of 8,5 to 14,5 m/turn or about 10-18 mph. Not perfect, but a good start. Walking should be close to 5m/turn btw., or about 6km/h.

No idea on Endurance right now, I´d probably simply hand out exhaustion modifiers after body+running rounds.