Let's say the hobbit in my campaign decides to make his life in lake town. When he goes home, it's to his new digs on the lake shore. Can he buy standing with the folk of lake town?

How about Dale, or the Woodmen, etc? If the campaign centers on an area, and one or more players choose to immigrate to the area, is that feasible?

-Jeff

For whatever it's worth, I intend to allow heroes to so settle & gain standing if the situation arises, despite any rules to the contrary. If that's what your player prefers, I don't see too much of an issue.

Concerning the original core set & the future release of Tales from Wilderland, for example, Bilbo attained high standing with the Dwarves because of his aid to the recovery of Erebor, despite a certain disagreement over the division of treasure .

Note Glóin's opening comment to Frodo at Rivendell as "...you are the kinsman and adopted heir of our friend Bilbo the renowned." Renowned has a nice ring to it.

Hi Mim,
any ideas how you will allow this ?

What about
a (very) good deed from the group/character for the relevant culture (*)
plus (in the following fellowship phase) a purchase of standing 1 with double cost.


Hopefully we will also see some official rules in a future sourcebook


(*) at least something like
- saving a messenger from (near) death and escorting him to safety
- some deliveries to dangerous places

You make a solid suggestion - you still allow your player-heroes to step outside the box a bit, as it were , yet you enforce the carefully crafted balance in TOR by emphasizing the two key points:

1. Role-playing by having him/her do something out of the ordinary, such as your example of rescuing a messenger or making deliveries (these open up other possibilities as well of course).

2. Balancing the rules by enforcing the double cost.

In summation, I think these work fine & wouldn't have a problem with one of my player-heroes doing this as a - very - rare exception.

I haven't done this yet...

I've been thinking about simply allowing players to buy standing with any culture they want, following the existing rules. The only limit is the story - if your dwarf adventuring around laketown, and decides to buy standing in the shire, it doesn't work (I'm being simplistic here to avoid writing a tome).

Remember, standing must be maintained. Having to pay maintenance costs on multiple standings every month should be a decent deterrent.

At the very least, if you're going with double cost, I would do it on the maintenance-side of the house, not on the buying-side.

-Jeff

I haven't weighed it very carefully yet, but around our table we favor allowing you to gain Standing in a culture if you have a Sanctuary in that culture.

<<<Hi Jeff,
I interpret AB p.169 Upkeep standing that you "must" pay your standing rating once a year
>>>


I would increase the first purchase of standing in another culture only and not every purchase, because I think the effort to maintain it once a year is hard enough
(you have in each of your fellowship phases one action only, where you are allowed to do this - if I remember the rule correct (AB p.171 untertakings)).