So how do you handle them? The Adv. Book states that the Fellowship Phase occurs about once a year between adventures, but what about adventures that see no more than a month or so of game time?

For instance, The Marsh Bell adventure in the back of the Loremaster's Book shouldn't take more than 2-3 weeks time all told.

When would you allow the player's to enter a fellowship phase? When it looks like one more adventure will kill them all? When they are completely out of hope? Curious to see how other Loremaster's would handle it.

Between each adventure, every 2 to 4 sessions, as is indicated by the book. The one adventure per year is just an expectation of how generational play will happen.

The end of year parts of the Fellowship Phase would happen only at the end of the year.

ah ok... must have missed that.

Thanks!

Page 18 of the AB.

Unlike some other games, TOR doesn't assume that the heroes are out adventuring all of the time. They have lives, they travel, they visit friends and join in celebrations, and occasionally (about once a year in TOR's case) they go on an adventure. Adventuring takes time in travel and time to resolve, but when they return from their travails, they rest.

Adventures in TOR should be epic, month long things like the Hobbit, with several Adventuring and Fellowship phases (see AB 19 for a great example). This method, doing one adventure a year, also makes generational play more realistic.

Now, with all that said, do you have to play that way. Absolutely not. You can adventure every day of the week if you want. However, I would say that you still need to be careful about handing out too many Fellowship phases. The way I look at it, a Fellowship phase should only take place then the characters are able to return home for a time, or if they are able to spend several days or weeks at a safe haven. A prolonged rest at a well defended campsite then is not a Fellowship phase in my opinion.

I agree. For the most part I will simply be using Marsh Bell with some pregens to help get me used to the rules in play and the players as well. Seems like a good one-shot adventure to use to introduce people to TOR.

For longer campaigns I would likely look at more epic adventures that take the fellowship longer to accomplish, fitting in a bit better with the model of the game.

Of course, also as Caul says - you can adjust as you see fit for your game. The above is just how I plan on tackling it.