I did some searching to see whether this question had been asked and answered before on the forums and couldn't find anything; even so, my apologies if this is a duplicate thread.

I'm wondering whether there have been any suggestions or house-rules for variant travelling roles to use when the heroes are making a Journey by boat. The Loremaster's Book suggests on pp. 128-9 that the Guide role corresponds to the boat's steersman, for instance. And I could imagine that Huntsmen and Look-out men would still be needed at night, when the company makes camp on the shore. But I'm not sure what part Scouts would play during a boat trip -- would they be navigators? Or just scouting for the evening campsite on land?

Equally, I sort of expected a role to exist for Oarsmen; I imagine more boat-related Hazards would arise for the Oarsmen than for any other role (e.g., eddies in the water with the risk of overturning, or milder Hazards that require Athletics rolls to avoid slowing the boat's progress through incompetent rowing).

So I was wondering about having different roles for boat travel: Steersman replacing Guide, Oarsman replacing roughly to Scout, and so on. But there have been a lot of great game ideas posted in this forum, so before I started messing with rules I thought I'd ask whether anyone else had already investigated such an idea, or whether folks had good arguments against tinkering with these rules.

Interesting point. While bodies of water are important and Tolkien recognized that and did them appropriate honor over the course of his work, within The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings themselves, they are undervalued as a means of transportation.

Things might have been quite different if say, Frodo left Rivendell by boat to the coast, then by ship to Minas Tirith (or, at least, Pelargir) and traveled on to Mordor from there. As I recall both Morgoth and Sauron pretty much avoid the Sea as they recognize that the relevant Valar (whose name is escaping me right now) was proof against them and their machinations.

As far as I know you are looking at a new area of interest. I did have some suggestions for water hazards in my Hazard project (which I haven't gotten back to). I don't think many were named and fewer than that are expanded with a description. But other than that you're on "untouched ground". At least as far as I know. I read the very early posts here, and then some immediately before I joined, but there was a gap in the middle. Back then their were 400+ topics and I know I didn't read them all. We've doubled that now. If you read all of them you are phenomenal, without ever producing any kind of output for the community.

Are you talking about a ship at sea? All the bodies of water in the game so far are rivers (and the long lake).

River travel is going to have a lot of the same roles as overland. You can still hunt. You still need a scout to plot out a course through the river (watching for shallow areas/sandbars).

I think there are some rules in Tales from Wilderland for boating up the Anduin.

doctheweasel, I'm talking about small boats on the Long Lake or river, not ships at sea. Specifically, water-based Journeys in which the company is still responsible for their own travel.

The reason I ask is that I'm reviewing "The Marsh Bell" with an eye to running it as my group's introductory adventure: as it includes a possible boat-based Journey, I'm anticipating questions about how the standard travel roles apply to a boating company.

I appreciate your suggestions. The idea of having Scouts serve as navigators hadn't occurred to me, though I wonder whether this wouldn't tread on the toes of the Guide (Steersman) role: when travelling on land, you can have Scouts range out to find various paths from which the Guide chooses the best, but in a boat this seems less plausible.

But I'm wondering whether my suggested Oarsman role should be an addition rather than replacing the normal land-based roles: any non-Guide character could opt to serve as an Oarsman while on the water, up to the boat's limit of rowers, and I could just add special water-based Hazards which target Oarsmen or the Steersman. So a given character might be a Scout on land and an Oarsman on the water for the duration of the Journey.

I'll take a look at Tales from Wilderland to see what it says about boating up Anduin: thanks for the recommendation.

It's not very thorough, or at least as thorough as what it seems you are looking for. I think it just involves some Athletics checks to determine how fast you can travel upstream.

I would get it anyway, since it is a wonderful series of Adventures. If you get it for just the boating rules, I think you may be disappointed considering what you appear to want from the system.

I have TfW already, but have only skimmed it so far and didn't remember the Anduin boating rules you mentioned. But no worries: I bought it for the adventures and am appreciating it greatly on that score. :-)