That's what the Journeys are for, a quick skeleton creation system that you can hang your version of The Hobbit on.

You have to look at it differently from an old school (immersive, simulationist, World In Motion, whatever you want to call it) random encounter. When you're emulating a world, you come up with encounters that are present in that area. There is a bandit gang that operates between Suntroll Rock and the "Left Fork". There is an old Warg who leads a pack that roams the western eaves when the moon is full, whatever. When characters are in a place that they could conceivably run into one of your encounters, you determine if they do or not.

Journeys here aren't world emulation. They are basically The Hobbit emulation. It seems like a ridonkulous amount of rolls, and if you were only emulating Middle Earth, it would be. However, your characters are supposed to be overcoming the challenges while you as players are engaging the rule system cruising on the narrative vibe of making your own Hobbit.

If the Journey is very short, or if as a LM you want to logically pick and assign things rather then roll for everything, then the system can fade away and your players won't know the difference. With a very long Journey though, you're going to have to be one hell of a ad-libber, or your players are going to have to enjoy being active Storytellers.

Funny. You're a funny guy young Skywalker.

But you know what I mean right? I mean separate, single Skill checks outside the bigger building blocks or Entities in the game.

Thinking about this I might be able to explain it like this instead (not anyone cares how I bend and twist my words to get some meaning through):

Duel of Wits, Combat and similar "Game Entities" in almost all RPG I've ever tried... (might be some exceptions here I don't know) ALL have a clearly defined exchange sequence, it might be Turns, Phases, Days, Weeks, whatever.

Regardless this tells you a) the structure of the conflict at hand and b ) when it is over and the next conflict can pick up the thread.

And they are rarely, if ever, interrupted by other Entities. (You seldom see a Debate in between two Combat rounds for instance).

Journeys... in ToR... has all the look and feel of a new kind of Entity a Mechanical package that I can use to support, play and have with Journeys in the game. All the rules are there, I know exactly what to roll... but what I don't know is the structure in time. The sequence of things... I also have no idea how to handle for instance Combat in the middle of a Journey... since it is one Entity interrupting another and that is quite alien to me.

Even I can't stand my own broken record syndrome now so I apologise and adjourn myself from this topic for a while...

... (yeah I say that now... but wait an hour and I might find it hard to stay away... )

/wolf

I totally understood what you were saying My point is that Let It Ride is not inconsistent with subsystems with loads of dice rolling and could also be considered a part of a wider approach to dice rolls as seen in Burning Wheel. Invoking Let It Ride to reduce dice rolling in the Journeys mechanic misunderstands the concept to an extent. Journeys is where the drama is in this game.