I would certainly grant a point of Hope for such a scene. Another example: when Sam, Frodo, and Gollum reach the Crossroads, they discover the crown of flowers bedecking the severed head of the stone king. That's certainly a Hope refresh of some sort. Or Sam's discovery of the single star high above the smokes and shadows of Mordor. I don't see anything wrong with helping out an ailing Company if their hearts are true--it certainly fits the theology of grace informing the setting.

Ob The Hobbit: "The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!"

Quite possibly!

If one of my players role-played a scene like that, I may be tempted to award Hope, but obviously not too often!

A session is not the same as an Adevnturing Phase. The rules as written pretty much suggest that an Adventuring Phase will normally be 2 to 4 sessions long.

So, stopping a session in the middle of an Adventuring Phase is just fine with the rules as they stand.

The main reason for using session is that it removes the need to record things between sessions. Whilst this sound pretty minor, its actually pretty nice not to start a session with the question: "So what was our Fellowship Rating on again? ":)

That makes sense thanks

It could be worse. It could be a resource based on an in game time like a day. Sure, it looks great on paper but in reality a day in game is even more fluid than a session

I know there are a number of people who prefer the game being low hope usage, but for those who may prefer to have hope being slightly more commonly used and refreshed I can see a number of possibilities.

1) Increase the size of the fellowship pool, this could be done either by increasing the pool by one per person (plus one for any Hobbit) or simply doubling
2) Increase the amount of hope recovered from each fellowship point spent, you could have each point restore two points of hope or even more if you prefered.
3) Provide instances when hope may be recovered, for example; when Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas meet Gandalf in Fangorn forest, or when Tom Bombadil helps the Hobbits. Or perhaps something wonderous being seen as when Sam sees the Olliphant
4) In a similar way you could have s restore hope, Rivendell is a place of healing and so should Lorien most likely. Perhaps they provide an amount of hope restoration if a night or longer is spent there. You may even decide that spending a fellowship phase in your homeland may increase your hope
5) Perhaps an undertaking such as I mentioned earlier in this thread which allows the healing of hope as opposed to the reduction of shadow
6) Lastly, you could perhaps allow a roll in certain circumstances using the heroes remaining hope (minus any shadow points) as their skill level. Make the difficuly based in where they are and allow them to recover an amount based on the roll.

As previously stated, these ideas are for those who do not want hope to a scantily used and rationed resource.

E

Sounds good to me Eldath.

I was also considering one other possibility;

In the event the company defeats a particularly difficult challenge, a Monster of exceptional power, or large numbers of smaller monsters.

Would that seem suitable, reward of some restored Hope along with the regular rewards?

I'm not sure the rules as they stand promotes "low Hope Usage", so I will try to play as written first a couple of sessions, resisting the urge to House Rule something I have not even tried.

If it turns out my players are all Hope-hogging in fear of using it I will consider some of the options above.

/wolf

My first batch of players did not "Hope-hog" and ended up depleting quite a bit. This is because as starting characters things are a little tough and they wanted to succeed at most of their rolls.

My second batch of players hardly spent any Hope because I warned them about it being a dwindling resource. They took more Endurance damage than the first group, but they did fine (no one took a wound and they didn't flinch if they missed a roll). The reason they took more Endurance damage is because they spent longer in combat.

So, you'll just have to dive in and see for yourself (as you said).

I haven't run a TOR session yet, but I find that I am firmly in the "low Hope return" camp. I can't picture myself adding house rules to increase Hope beyond the guidelines set forth in the rulebooks.

Some reasons/thoughts:

1) I understand that new players see a bunch of Hope points on their character sheet and tend to go hog wild, but I think that they will necessarily become more miserly with them as the campaign progresses.

2) As mentioned by someone previously, a Skill rating of 2 vs TN14 still provides a 42% success rate, a 3 provides a 69.5% chance! If you want to see a full analysis (Exhausted and non-Exhausted), check out - Aramis's Task Chance Analysis at RPGgeek. It's interesting, and goes to show that the system is very elegant. I don't think it was designed for players to be burning Hope and throwing +2 to +10 to every roll they deem moderately important. I see it, ideally, as an aid for last ditch efforts. *Also, for those of you calculating average rolls, it's [5, 8.5, 12, 15.5] for [0, 1, 2, 3 Skill rating], since that pesky Eye counts as a 0. ;)

3) As stated in the sourcebooks, heroes don't HAVE to be perfect, and few of them really are. In my mind, Flaws don't destroy characters, they make them more interesting. There's a long process before a character becomes unplayable. "Miserable" doesn't equal a Flaw, you have to be Miserable AND roll the Eye on a check. A player would have to do this 4 more times in order to lose their character. If a character at this critical level of Hope/Shadow, that's what Fellowship Points are for. Not to mention, a character gets the chance to Heal Corruption (reduce Shadow points) during the Fellowship Phase.

4) Even if, after many many adventures, a character rolls many miserable Eyes and become permanently unplayable... its not that bad! The player just makes a new one (a brother, a friend of the character, etc) that benefits from the first character's experience during creation. In most RPGs, death/failure means starting from scratch - not so in TOR. I talked to Francesco at GenCon about this "generational" effect on the game. Pendragon is the RPG famous for it, but he noted that the penalties for taking a new character were still too steep - nobody wanted to give up their 60 year old knight in favor of his unskilled, newbie son. TOR characters' skill sets seem to be geared more as roleplaying-aid than critical stat. Accordingly, the retirement of one adventurer for another shouldn't be a game-destroying knock to the Fellowship, but just another turn in the path. Pretty brilliant, actually.

- Construkshuns

Yeah. The concern I have is that by increasing Hope, you devalue it. As it stands, it is a focus of the system and makes a real difference. If it is used all the time, then people will see it little more than bennies.

In my game, the PCs spent 9 Hope and had a Fellowship Rating of 7. That included a number of Hope spends that probably didn't need it and were based more on player pride.

I really liked how the different approaches to Hope actually created tension amongst the players, with some calling for caution and others being reckless. This would definitely have been lost if they had more Hope.

As a GM, I do think that its important to consider two other factors:

1. Be communicative. If failure obviously doesn't mean much then tell the players that. Failing a Travel Roll is IMO to be expected. However, many players will knee jerk Hope spending as they are averse to failing.

2. Think about when to call for rolls. Let it ride. Outside of combat and journeys, one roll should be enough for a distinct result. Don't call for multiple rolls for the same thing, especially the same Skill. By reducing the number of dice rolled, you reduce the expenditure of Hope.

It also wouldn't hurt to explain the Hope/Shadow system to the players before you begin, including how Shadow is gained and Hope restored, so that they are aware. You don't want players expecting to be able to do whatever they want (ala Shadowrun) with little to no consequences, and then laugh at them as you lay down the Shadow points and Misery. Instruct them on the theme and use of Hope v. Shadow and they will thank you for it, don't just spring it one them.

That's an excellent point Caul. I think that's why my second group of players were much more conservative. I understood the game more, having already run the introductory adventure, and so I took the time to really explain how Hope and Shadow works.

Funny, though, I can't wait to actually be in a session where one of the player-heros gains more Shadow than he has Hope left. It should make for some academy award style acting.

On page 28 of the Loremaster's Book, there is an example of a successful Awareness roll allowing the heroes to notice a tree spirit and gaining a point of Hope.

So it seems that replenishing some Hope can be built into scenarios.

I was thinking about that as the dice roll. Please bear in mind that I am still forumlating this and have not yet had the chance to test it. In cirumstances such as winning a particularly hard fight you would roll either your wisdom or your valour versus a difficulty of 22 minus the attribute of the highest opponent fought or the number of enemies more than the size of your group.

So if you fought a Great Orc you would roll versus a TN of 15 (22 - 7), if your group of four heroes fought versus 8 orcs you would roll versus a TN of 18 (22 - 4(because there were four more orcs than your group)). A success would gain you 1 hope, a great success 2 and an extraordinary success 3.

This would mean that the harder the fight you had won, the better chance for you to regain hope after having defeated a great evil. For instances where there is no numeric value to use to base the TN on, the Loremaster could determine the TN dependant on the event.

This does mean that more experienced heroes regain hope more quickly than the less powerful heroes, but by the point that it becomes a noticeable issue hope use would likely be less common anyway as skills are higher (which seemed to be the most common use of hope when I ran the game).

I will let you know if/when I refine this idea.

E

I have already run the game once and having gotten an idea of how the players are likely to use hope and also the kind of game I want to play (more Hobbit like and less Lord of the Rings) I feel quite comfortable house ruling it.

The main thing for me is, as the Adventurer's book states about hope on page 105 "a player-hero who has just started his adventuring career is bound to rely on it quite often (veterans might come to rely more on their own abilities", this combined with the slow refresh makes me think that without the tweaks I will be making (not sure on my final call but it will not be all of the ones I stated above, they were just a selection of potential ways) the heroes will end up very low on hope far too quickly and far too frequently. And that way madness lies, and more importantly players who are not enjoying themselves as much as they could.

I am sure you will make the right choice for your group though wolf

E

I will certainly be handing out Hope awards for significant story events, like defeating the plots of the Shadow or its agents. Seems to me that such a thing would make people more Hopeful, so works natutally for me. I also like things others have mentioned, like seeing the star of Elendil in the sky through the roiling vapours of Mordor or reposing in the Last Homely House.

Can someone tell me on which page in the rules it actually spells out how to determine how many points are in the starting Fellowship Pool?? I understand it is 1 point per non-hobbit character, 2pts per hobbit character but I have not been able to find this in the rules??

Robin S.

Page 81 of the Adventurer's Book states "The number of points available to a company of heroes at the beginning of the game is equal to the number of heroes in the group."

Then page 62 of the Adventurer's Book states "Each Hobbit character in the group increases the company's Fellowship rating by one point."

Bringing this post back to the surface is timely for my campaign. We have played four sessions: All four sessions began with a journey then an adventure phase. They were around four hours long in play-time and covered a month of game-time. Also, three of the four sessions had a significant encounter.

Interestingly, the key to our fellowships's Hope, its expenditure and recovery was in the player-heroes collaboration. That is, the better they worked as a Fellowship, the more Hopeful they were individually (I.e., Hope spent while not easily recovered was regained in a tangible way such that the player-heroes weren't despirited by their reliance on it to accomplish a number of tasks and tests.)

Looking out for each other's Fellowship Focus proved important, especially in those moments when a timely intervention with a point of Hope covered an exposed position or a social fop.

So far as the rules stand, the mechanics seemed balanced towards an encroaching darkness that is creeping into the player-heroes spirits. Using Hope is necessary. The times require its use more than there are opportunities to replenish it. That adds a nice narrative flavor where by all counts everything seems bright. Yet, in the hearts of those intrepid few that venture out to confront the changing times, the actual experience is more than bright. It bears a dark edge that the minstrel's songs say has been chased away.

But what do minstrel's know and Loremasters with only four game sessions to speak of...

Is there a way to increase maximum hope level beyond the incial level?

Yes. When you have a 2 or greater Wisdom, you gain a new Virtue with each increase above 1.

One of the Virtues available is an increase of +2 to Max Hope.

You can select this Virtue multiple times.

Having multiple Hobbits in a Fellowship really helps too.

I see, many thanks