Part 1: The Road to Hommlet

I'm just finishing up a battlemap for this combat. Should be ready and posted this evening. The map itself is quite large, as the gnolls are a good 200ft from your party still (I know I said about 300ft/100meters, but the map was just ridiculously big as a 50x50 square grid), so well say you manage to close the distance of 100ft before things start getting tactical. As the distance closes even more between the party and their targets I'll start zooming the map tighter and tighter on the action.

i think we should all move to the tree line, head west from our position to the left corner (A47) and then head north to the trees, that will give us cover in our approach. Then those of us who are melee can move forward from there while Selvam covers us with his bow

@Aldrusian: Yes, your are correct. The wider, gray-colored one is road. The thin red strip that follows it is a small stream. The deer lay in the stream at the top of the map, along with the three gnolls.

@everyone: If your plan is to move west to A47ish and then north to the copse of trees to get some cover, most classes can't sneak over there (I think only Angel can using Move Silently), but everyone has a chance of slipping over unnoticed as there are a singifigant number of boulders occupying the open area between your party and theirs, and because the gnolls are really preoccupied with their kill. They will have to make a roll to see if they notice you sneaking by. Even if the gnolls do look up, Angel can try and make a Move Silently roll to see if at least he remains unnoticed from the others.

An excellent point brought up by GeneCortess is movement rate across this field. I really hate tracking encumbrance for every little thing, but it does have a major impact on how quickly a PC can move in B/X D&D. For these reasons I'm tracking encumbrance using the "Encumbrance by Weight Carried" option, rather than "Encumbrance by Armor" option. The "Encumbrance by Weight Carried" option takes into account any weight in coins carried as armor, shields, weapons, and treasure, and also assumes a generic weight of your other adventuring gear as 80 coins. I don't expect you to to have to keep track of your encumbrance, because that's a lame job for a Player, but I am tracking it on a spreadsheet I keep for quickreffing your PCs, and I'll keep you informed when you're nearing another level of encumbrance.

Basically Encumbrance affects Movement Rate as follows:
Up to 400 coins: 120'
401-600 coins: 90'
601-800 coins: 60'
801-1600 coins: 30'
1600+ coins: PC is too encumbered to move.

Current Encumbrance is as follows:
Angel - 360gp
Selvam - 780
Jonas - 770
Coulson - 710
Alice - 710

Basically, everyone in this party except Angel is laden down with heavy plate mail and currently has a base move rate of 60' In combat your Base Movement Rate is divided by 3 to determine how many feet you may move on your turn before or after taking an action, meaning that most PCs here will only be able to move 20' (4 squares on this battlemap) on any turn in addition to attacking, unless they use their action to sprint, in which case it doubles to 40'. Angel will be able to move 40' (8 squares) per turn during combat because his low encumbrance means he still has a Base Movement Rate of 120'.

So while Angel tries creeping to the trees at 120' per turn, the other PCs, all clad in plate mail can either charge at a dead run along the road doubling their combat Movement to 40' per turn until they clash with the Gnolls, or they can try and move along the boulders to the right of the road at a more cautious pace of 20' per turn, moving slower, but making themselves less likely to be spotted by the gnolls as they approach.

I had suggested that Angel move through the trees by himself because he's a lot quieter than everyone else. He can wait in the trees for the others to move offroad through the boulders. No sense in having the Gnolls see everyone too early. And having others in the trees making noise would definitely spoil the surprise.

10 turns of movement with less chance to be seen vs 5 turns of loud movement? Can our characters see what the Gnolls are armed with?

@Aldrusian: Yes that's the way I'm understanding it as well. I'm going to make some rolls for the Gnolls to determine if and when they happen to spot the approaching PCs, but I will still have Angel make a Move Silently roll as a thief. The other PCs are subject to notice based on if the Gnolls are distracted or not, but the Thief class get to make a Move Silently roll, then if the gnolls are distracted, it won't matter, but if the gnolls do happen to look around, Angel still has a slim chance of remaining undetected if he passes his Level 1 Move Silently roll.

@TheFoxofFinch: From this vantage point of about 200ft, each gnoll seems to be armed with a spear. One of them is using a knife to hack off hunks of meat as well, so I suppose it would count as a dagger, but the other two are tearing at the carcass with hands and teeth.