This is a draft set of house rules designed to fix the journey system and actually make it an interesting, and more importantly playable, "mini-game". I've only run one session with them but already its moved my group's focus away from cooperatively managing combats to managing the journey. "Should we explore for treasure or a good campsite", "should we try to move with greater stealth or awareness" are just some of the decisions that these rules allow players.

Expanded Journey rules

I like some of the changes. Sometimes I have wondered if the journey rules have some improvement needed. Some of this speaks well to that - other points you made leave me confused. I really like the ability to hand over an advancement point to another for a return - very pro-fellowship teamwork rule mechanic. The Lore Check per leg of the journey is a much needed improvement for instance.


Of the confusion:

Tasks

Do the bracketed descriptors mean that only that person can do such a task? Only a Slayer calling can do the battle task? Only a Wanderer calling can do a craft task?


Second Leg: You mention it's still 29 days - however I was under the belief you were intent on using the road (else why travel so far south through the swamp first) and you mention the road should be 30 miles per day. - so shouldn't the 200 miles be only 7 days? In which case I'm not convinced that reducing the trek through those woods even on the road to only 7 days is an advisable change.


In your example journey of four legs, can you include the number of "segment" within each leg? It appears most of the rules you've changed are to die-rolls per segment and yet the example only spoke to the number of legs of the journey and not at all helped establish a foundation to use for the number of segments you're envisioning w/ this trip.

In this example journey and legs/segments, can you point out how many opportunities one would have to improve their Hope (as you said - can be done in "safe place" along the way) How many such "safe places" do you envision on this course? and what are they?

You have Travel as a Task - tasks are described as being something a player can do each day. The benefit of Travel is keyed to reducing days off of a leg of a journey. Is this suppose to be once per Leg of Journey task?


The biggest concern I have for the rate of recovery. If tasks can be done each day: A huntsman can restore 2 Stamina each day, Wardens can remove 1 Shadow Point each day, Song can restore 1 Hope every day, Treasure Hunters can find 1-3 Treasure Points every day, and you say that Resting prolonged for the purpose of recovery of Hope, and yet this is possible each day based on "1 task per day" with a successful Craft check. And I don't really understand what exactly the Explore skill can do once per day.


All in all - I think there are some good improvements - but alot of the benefits seems way too lucrative IMO.

Francesco's timely clarification (see "Concerning Blighted Places - a Clarification") has fortunately made much of what I'd drafted redundant. I'm now revising what I originally proposed with a view to keeping (but toning down) the Journey tasks component as I still believe there is a good mini-game in those rules.

For the benefit of others I'll briefly respond to some of the points above.

Yes, except that the Guide can also perform these tasks. The exact phrasing I used in the rules was: "Each Hero may perform one task per day. Tasks with a [bracketed] role or calling are restricted to that role/calling except that the Guide may perform any task."

You're forgetting the Terrain Difficulty Modifiers on p32 of the LMB. The 29 days (using my road rules) is calculated as:

13 x 10 x 5 (daunting) / 30 (road) = 22 days
7 x 10 x 3 (severe) / 30 (road) = 7 days

BTW, the standard rules would calculate this as:

20 x 10 x 3 (any road in Mirkwood) / 20 = 30 days

The remainder of your comments deal with rules that will need to be changed (for the better) in light of Francesco's clarification.

My revised (and toned down) Journey rules in light of Francesco's Blighted Places clarification. Contains more explanatory text and examples.

Expanded Journey rules v2

Hey Ashley, resurrecting this thread as I feel your PDF of options has a good deal of merit for many.

I myself have already begun utilizing the "Legs of a journey" aspect on my most recent campaign journey - and the players seemed to enjoy that more than the previous two journeys of "one long leg" with one die-roll to rule them all.


I like much of the newer PDF (changes) that you've attached. Especially as I said the legs of a journey, and the various daily options of a character, and the Advancement Point sharing during the Fellowship Phase. I also feel that in theory - you have assigned the RIGHT theme to each character type (i.e. Fear test protection assigned to Slayer, and Corruption prevention assigned to Warden, treasure points found by treasure seeker, etc; very well-thought out and planned.)


Below are my current concerns - with hopes of sparking some thoughts on addressing them.



1) The rules on page 37 of the LM book regarding the two-rolls per day I believe address primarily a set-up in which the LM has an obstacle that must be addressed - such as tracking the dwarves in the Marsh Bell scenario. Thus the IN-GAME REWARD (IGR) is strictly based on the story needs at the time. (Need to find the dwarves to continue story.....make checks to find the dwarves x2 per day = you either find or you delay progression of story and make things harder).

Thus - the 2x day checks are based on story needs - not supurfluous at all. On the other hand, what you proposing in your options of checks are a "given" opportunity for player-heroes to have IGR for something that never was an obstacle to overcome. Sometimes you need to track dwarves. Usually you don't. When you do, there should be a IGR for doing so (attempting). When you don't - a plausible IGR every day of travel can become way too beneficial IMO.

How better to regulate this? Once per Leg? Once per Game-day? Once per Journey? I don't know.


2) The every day checks brings up another potential issue: Awe for instance allows for "next Fear check" to have a bonus. Take for instance the 29 days crossing the Mirkwood

Can the player make two such checks every day? 58 tries? Even once-a-day allows 29 tries. How often is a character going to fail 29 tries? If he does succeed, can he go ahead and try again the next day just to see if he can up the success level? What about the Treasure - Hunter? 58 potential times that a character can increase his Treasure points just travelling through Mirkwood?


3) Can a Huntsman and a Healer both provide 2 Endurance to companions? That's 4 points a day on top of anything else.

4) What about Lore/Scholar finding clues? 58 clues? how many clues do you need? What kinds of clues are you talking about?

In Summation:
I like the leg journeys, the Lore checks for each. I like the option to lend an Advancement Point from most to least earned character. I like the options for the daily tasks.....but only in theory. I do not think their application is well-designed (yet). Part of the problem with it is that TOR doesn't seem to follow a very crunchy RPG pattern (such as D&D/Pathfinder). Combat encounters are few and far between in TOR. Several days pass with nothing to truly challenge them. There's no "random encounter charts" that have to be checked every hour etc. I feel the options the players have are too lucrative and too often for the amount of stuff that happens to a hero group in a given journey, and not quite explanatory enough.

I know that TOR is a very abstract rules-light game and thus not a lot of explanation is needed - but you're suggesting adding a bunch of mechanics (crunchy number-based elements) to it, and that's the type of thing that DOES require a great deal of explanation to be used right - since these are not abstract notions but hard-fast mechanics.


I would like to use some of this, so I hope to see if you have different explanations from what I took from it, or alterations to make them more in line with the mechanics of the game. I look forward to hearing more from you.

Thanks for your kind words, I hope that at the very least my work has given others ideas that they can improve upon and share.

Since I last posted in this topic my rules have undergone further 'testing' and revision. The latest incarnation, which addresses many of the issues you raise, can be found here.

Summary of changes:

• Removed odds & ends rules that didn't relate directly to Journey
• Anyone can now perform a Journey task with the bracketeed calling/role receiving a -2 TN bonus
• Awe and Inspire successes only last until after the next Fatigue test
• Inspire and Song can alternatly be used to generate bonus dice
• Failure results have been toned down (the previous rules were making Travel too important)
• Clues have been expanded upon
• Added a 'when not to use these rules section'

The last two were added to directly address some of the issues you raised, which only left the question of can a Huntsman and a Healer both provide 2 Endurance to companions? ... to which the answer is yes.

I hope this goes someway to addressing the issues you raised, if not post away and we'll see what we can come up with.