LOTR Style Wilderness Travel

I've been reading my copy of "The One Ring" RPG, by Francesco Nepitello, and I found a real gem about wilderness travel.

In Lord of the Rings, overland travel is a big deal. There is no teleportation, or airships (actually, there are in the Silmarillion), or other forms of fast travel. Instead, journeys can take months. In fact, the rulebook states that a party ("company") of adventurers ("companions") usually only get one big adventure per year, and the characters will take an entire season off (usually winter).

Party Roles

The party of characters are encouraged to take on individual roles:

• The Guide. Responsible for navigating the party, maintaining food stores, setting up camp, general maintenance, tending to the horses and wagons, and so forth.
• The Pathfinder. This one is actually called the "scout", but I feel "pathfinder" is more appropriate as they're responsible for finding a path for the party to follow. They're also responsible for finding a suitable camp site, and responsible for traversing the party over perilous paths (steep cliffs, thick underbrush, through swift-flowing water, etc).
• The Scout. Actually called the "look-out", but again, I felt scout was more appropriate. They're responsible for watching out for possible dangers, such as nearby monsters, bad weather, predatory animals, etc. Works well with "night watch" roles.
• The Huntsman. Responsible for hunting and gathering food, locating drinkable water, and somewhat defending the camp from wild fauna. Can also be responsible for tracking and the like.

What makes these roles so fun is what comes next.

Dangerous Journeys

Because travel takes so long, the party will occasionally make fatigue rolls along the way. This is sort of like an encounter roll that the Game Master would make, but instead success & failure are determined by how stalwart the characters are. The difficulty and frequency of these rolls can depend on several factors, such as the overall terrain, how lawless the land is (there's a spectrum from "freeland" where cities reside to "border lands", "wild lands", "shadow lands" and "dark lands"), and the current season of the year.

If one of the characters fails their fatigue roll very poorly, the travel montage "zooms in", and changes to, a "hazard episode".

Wilderness Hazards

A hazard episode is basically an encounter--except hazards don't have to include NPCs. Instead, the party could face a raging river, or poor weather, or become lost in the woods, or stumble across a nest of carnivorous beasts.

However, what makes the LOTR hazards fun is that they're related to the failing character's role. For example, if "the pathfinder" failed their fatigue roll, the hazard the party faced would somehow be related to them failing at their duties (e.g. getting lost, or being forced to bed down in a poor campsite, or the party has to take a costly detour).

Each role has some example hazards, which I thought were pretty cool. Here's some examples:

• Guide Hazards: Lost direction, uncomfortable lodgings, lost supplies, spoiled food, neglect that leads to wear and fatigue of the party.
• Pathfinder Hazards: Dangerous path, slow detour, dead end, path leads into a nest of dangerous creatures.
• Scout Hazards: Neglected to notice approaching bad weather, surprised by ambush, believes misleading information, misses a valuable treasure/area.
• Huntsman Hazards: Rouses interest and is hunted by predatory animals, cannot find enough food, feeds party spoiled/poisonous food.

 The party can band together in an attempt to overcome these hazards, as well. If no characters take on the challenges of the roles, the fatigue tests will automatically fail, and things go south from there.

Conclusion

Though the book doesn't really say whether hazards are supposed to be played out as an abstraction, or in more details (like a combat encounter), I can see how each hazard could be treated like a mini side quest in their own right.

Another idea would be to have positive "hazards", perhaps called "events" or "opportunities", which could be friendly or positive events that may lead to mini side quests. Examples could include: finding a lost village in the wilderness, scoring a larger-than-average amount of food, discovering a bandit's hideout (which could lead to the party ambushing them, or stealing their loot).

Thoughts?