Stop Measuring Movement
Look up from your screen toward the closest door.
Make a sincere effort to estimate its distance from you in feet.
How certain are you that your estimation is correct?
Now measure its distance in approximate steps.
How close was your guess? More importantly, how closely did your confidence in that guess align with the truth?
That uncertainty you just felt is interesting. With added stakes, it becomes a pillar of drama - “can the hero make it in time”. I value that drama in my elf games, but my elf games frequently do not.
Precise player movement speeds are both unrealistic and uninteresting. They are spherical cows inherited from wargaming that the NSR should jettison.
I am a priestess of Blorb. Just as the map is not the territory, the rules are not the fiction. You do not need a codified movement speed to permit player characters to move.
What you need is a means to quickly and fairly adjudicate questions where distance is relevant, and a memory aid that helps all parties track relative positions.
You can accomplish the former faster through intent questions than mini fiddling1.
“I want to tackle Chet to the ground. Can I make it to the dock this turn?”
Instead of resolving edge cases with a formula, turn that uncertainty into tension - let distance modify the difficulty of checks.
“You’re pretty far, but it’s possible. You’ll have disadvantage on the tackle.”
Fiat spacial rulings also give you the freedom to synchronize movement in dramatic ways. For example - when a player character falls off a cliff, when should they hit the ground?
The tactics game says "now". I say "at the end of the next player’s turn".
common Mothership win
The latter need can be fulfilled by my favorite of all TTRPG accessories - shitty whiteboard drawings. Hastily sketched, easily improvised, quaint in their DIY simplicity. The PS1 graphics of the TTRPG landscape.
The pressure of a table full of waiting players will help you resist the temptation to make your crude representation beautiful. Beautiful words can be sculpted much faster. Besides, it's the year of the Beta. Let it go. Choose joy.
swoons
Did you know that Discord already has a built-in collaborative whiteboard? Did you know the contents of those whiteboards are automatically saved between sessions?
“But I like moving my little guys on maps”, I hear my precious little sword dreamers cry. Shush shush shush, I know baby. I love playing Root too.
You can always stipulate axioms and use them to justify your behavior. It’s, like, one of the most popular human activities. All I’m saying is that the joy derived from little guy moving is in tension with other principles I suspect you value more.
And yes, we should throw attack ranges out with the bath water too.