I read the rules on making a journey and how the travel skill plays into it. Also, on resting, edurance loss and recovery, fatigue, getting weary, etc.

I did a search on the forum and it seems like there is a bunch of different opinions on this game mechanic.

I play tested it out with my group a few times to hammer it out...it seems pretty straightforward...

Am I missing something of why it seems to get generally negative feedback?

You didn't test far enough.

Make a character, Say a Beorning. Or a pair of characters, day a Beorning with a Greatspear and a Dwarf with a Mattock (actually, definitely make the dwarf, and take "a life of toil"). Stat them using normal character creation. In fact, go ahead and create two slightly different versions of each of these guys - give one a third rank in the relevant weapon skill and have the other not put anything into weapons.

Have them start in Laketown and travel to Beorn's house (tiny spoiler - this is what the starter adventure in the Loremasters book has the party do). This represents a "typical" adventure's worth of travel - walk a good distance to nearest safe area, take a fellowship phase (end of a very long session one) go do what you came to do and go back near safe place, take a fellowship phase (end of a very long session two), return to main base of operations / go on another adventure.

Go through the whole Journey process - plan out the route, attempt the lore check if you think the char has a decent chance of making it (just like a player would), make every single Travel check and every single corruption check. Keep track of accumulated Fatigue damage and Shadow Points (remember that Fatigue damage (from traveling), unlike Endurance damage (from combat), only clears during the Fellowship phase, and that Shadow only clears as an Undertaking during the Fellowship phase, and even then maybe not all of it).

If one of the test characters is a Hobbit or a non-dwarf in Mail, he's probably got enough Fatigue damage to make a fight very risky. If one of the test characters is a Wisdom 1 fighter-type (all dwarves, most elves, most beornings, some others), he's probably got a fair number of Shadow points.

An unfortunate character (such as a Dwarf with the "a life of toil" background), might have even managed to, in a single session, earn enough Shadow Points to become Miserable, and then find himself with a permanent point of Shadow Corruption. The unfortunate player of said character, who had no idea that something like this was even remotely possible in a starter adventure, might be very understandably upset, and rather passionately debate the travel/journey rules whenever they are brought up from that point forward.

This is why people find Journeys to be overkill. If you haven't sat down and actually gone through the entire process, you don't - and can't - understand.

I don't remember reading the part about fatigue damage only going away during the Fellowship Phase... I thought it was after a prolonged rest in a safe ?

Actually, the intro adventure requires only one Fatigue roll from the players. Not a big deal.
If your 'typical adventure's worth of travel' is going to be a journey spanning the entire width of Mirkwood every time the company sets off, then I can see the problem...

What might be more troublesome are the Corruption tests required by traversing blighted areas. Spending three days in Long Marshes can be nasty for a starting company, and I regret the choice I made in the 'Marsh-bell' a bit (but it's not what the original poster asked, though).

Anyway, this brings me to a point: I think many players are looking at Shadow points a bit like they were insanity or corruption points in Warhammer - or in any case as something that is going to mar their heroes and make them 'bad', even with a tiny amount. This is not the case: heroes are supposed to accumulate Shadow points, and to fall prey to bouts of madness from time to time. Flawed characters make for more interesting heroes, and the Shadow mechanics are there to stress the danger of living in the twilight of the Third Age.

Francesco

Yes, sorry, you are correct.

I was trying to emphasize the point that Fatigue damage doesn't heal every night (which is a misconception I've already seen more than once, and the game's only 3 months old). I got over zealous.

Really? only one?

As I remember it, there were three travel checks to go down the river and at least another two on the old road.

Also, Shadow Points, especially permanent shadow points, are NOT just "a little minor flaw". They are "your character has been forever tainted thus meaning your hero has failed at being a hero forever and can never truly recover" or "your character can now be made to arbitrarily fail at something he should have succeeded at" or "control of your character can now be taken away from you and be made to act differently from what you want".

Maybe that's not something that bothers you or the people you have gamed with, but I've got to tell you that those three points combined are a HUGE screaming in anger frothing at the mouth RAGEQUIIT button for myself and about a third of the gamers I've met.

It's not something you can just dismiss. It's not something where you can just say "if you are trying to avoid getting shadow points at all costs you are playing the game wrong / playing the wrong game", because saying that means angering and chasing away a third of the market.

We've done a fair amount of travel in our campaign so far, and have not run into any problems. Admittedly, most of it has not been in blighted areas (by player choice), so we haven't accumulated a lot of Shadow, but I agree with Francesco that gaining some shadow isn't a bad thing.

We also haven't had any problems with too much travel fatigue. The only time it has come into play is when I've used a battle as a hazard, and even then it hasn't had a big impact (most characters have only gained 1-2 points of travel fatigue, even on the longest journeys).

I've also heard criticisms that hazards happened too often, but again, we haven't encountered this. In fact, in our game, the players want more hazards to occur, because they are fun and add to the feel of the epic journey. I just need to get to work on my big list of example hazards by role and terrain type so I can vary them up more.

So, to the OP, in our experience the travel rules work fine, are easy to understand, and haven't had any negative impact on our enjoyment of the campaign (I would say just the opposite - we've really been enjoying that part of the game).

John

Yes. Just one.

From page 128:

In terms of Shadow, they can be recovered in the Fellowship Phase. They are sticky, which makes them dangerous, but they hardly create an inevitable spiral.

Thank you Francesco for the clarification.

Bob, about Fatigue Damage healing during a prolonged rest...I thought that could be during a night if it was safe. For under the recovery section it says a prolonged rest is usually a full-night's sleep.

Or am I getting that wrong...I thought I was pretty good on reading through the two books.

johnmarron, yes, the travels we play tested in my little group were quite amusing. We are looking forward to doing them on a grand scale in a campaign!

I am sorry that the mechanics for Shadow are provoking such a reaction from you and from people you met. It really differs from our experience in playtesting and my personal experiences. I would insist that some of the problem stems from a misconception, the fact that points of Shadow ruin heroes forever. Don't you and your friends find flawed characters like Boromir interesting at all? Or do you think he was a hopelessly tainted character? I find him to be extremely interesting, maybe one of my favourite Tolkien characters ever. And I think he had a good number of permanent Shadow points even before he crossed the gates of Rivendell.

Francesco

Prolonged rest is normally a full night's sleep. However, to recover from Fatigue gained from Journey's you need a prolonged rest in a safe . This has been clarified by the designers to mean pretty much journey's end but it could include other things like sleeping at a tavern (which are very rare in the Wilderland). It is clear that it means more than sleeping in the wilderness.

WOOHOO! Someone else who likes Boromir. He always gets looked over with my group of friends...obviously everyone either loves Gimli, Legolas, the Hobbits, or Aragorn.

Boromir is a great flawed hero...I think he showcase the shadow corruption mechanic to a T. Same with poor old Bilbo.

So I definitely think gaining shadow is negative yes, however, I also see it as a mark of what my hero has gone through and how he dealt with it.

I see, thanks Skywalker. Where is that stated exactly, do you remember? I don't remember seeing that under rest and recovery or under the journey section in the LM's book. It makes sense however.

My next question would be, why not establish a sanctuary, or does that have to be done during the fellowship phase?

Recovery from failed Fatigue tests is the most sensible piece of errata. It is not in the rules.

Francesco

Can I get that eratta from the Cubicle website?

It has not been compiled yet (if you look around here there is a thread summarising what went wrong - not a lot luckily).
I'll try to do that shortly, but I have been busy with the Italian edition of TOR lately. Btw, the Italian version has been updated with all the known errata, thanks to you players writing here! So: grazie mille a tutti!

Francesco

Found it, thanks. 1 point a night in a safe . Now I shall re-read up on sanctuaries and such.

To be honest, that one comment is pretty much the entirety of the errata for TOR

Swords got added to the weapons that Dwarves used too (damn you, Thorin).

Fellowship Phase only. I wouldn't allow PCs to open a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere. It seems clear to me that you need an established and make friends with the population.

Maybe that's true, maybe I have misunderstood things.

As I see it, zero shadow = "uncorrupted hero", and four shadow = "traitor / forced retirement / pull a Boromir right the crap now or your next char comes in with absolutely nothing".

That doesn't leave much (any) room for "one, two, or three" to be defined as proper heroes. That doesn't mean they can't be heroic, but in my mind there's a big difference between "jerk who does the right thing on occasion" and "proper hero", and as I understand things, "proper hero" is limited to pretty much zero corruption.

I like that there's a Shadow Corruption mechanic, I like that characters get points when doing thoroughly despicable things like stealing and murdering townsfolk; there are several people I game with who are literally incapable of playing a character without going full-on burn-and-pillage chaotic evil in less than ten sessions (I have known these guys for 12 years, and I wish I was exaggerating; I have not been willing to run any game in any system for them for several years now - I'll play with them, but I won't GM).

So, yeah, big fan of the Shadow Corruption mechanic.

It's just... I don't know what we did, exactly; I do know that I made three travel rolls on the river, though one might have been a guide check. I also know we made at least two travel checks on the old road before finding the troll, and at least one more after that. Maybe my GM was making us roll too much, I don't know. I do know that I made a total of 13 corruption checks between Laketown and Beorns house, and I managed to fail eight of them and then roll an Eye of Sauron.

Part of the problem was the newness of the game in general - there were no accumulated horror stories anywhere for us to have stumbled upon.

Part of the problem is the fact that we didn't know what we were doing; only the GM and one player had read the book prior to that first session.

Part of the problem is that I just fundamentally misunderstood how often corruption would come up, and how vulnerable a dwarf with Heart 2 and Wisdom 1 was to corruption.

Part of the problem was I just sort of assumed that "taking a casual stroll down the old road" would be rather less difficult than "carrying the One Ring through Mordor itself", but apparently they have the same corruption rating (maximum level on the chart). If my dwarf was walking to Mount Doom I would not expect him to come back at all, much less uncorrupted, but playing courier for a beard, a bear, and some birds didn't exactly sound dangerous.

The point is, I was rather thoroughly caught off guard by something that I very much did not want. It's not an issue any more; after this happened, we sort of backtracked a bit so that it unhappened, and I eventually switched to a Hobbit (double digit hope score plus reroll corruption checks ftw; I do miss being able to wear mail and have a single digit fatigue score, though).

As for Boromir, he's a great literary character, but I'd never want to actually play him.

Interesting point Bob. Boromir is a great character on the pages, but I'd play him in a heart beat. But perhaps that is just my cup of tea. I love heroes of the exemplary knight stauts, who are the pinnacle of honor and good but I also love flawed heroes as well.

Boromir and heroes like him, to me, provide a great sense of realism. Especially around the gaming table. Many of my wizards, who were heroes, often wanted to use a means of power for good, thinking they could control it, but it would back fire.

And many of my warriors and paladins were often haunted or flawed when it came to quandries of "one over many" and vice versa.

If I were to apply that to the TOR game, pretty much the majority of my characters would have a good amount of shadow corruption...but always in their heart would be striving to be a beacon of good.

What would you call "a fair amount of shadow corruption"? Again, unless I'm misunderstanding something, 4 = "immediate forced retirement because no longer capable of being hero often enough".

Also, no one's addressed the other big issue I have with shadow points, where if you've got even one permanent point your char can be made to act in a way that you just fundamentally believe he would not act.

I'd say two or 3 permanent points would even be okay with me. But that is me. As for acting out of character due to shadow points. I think it means bouts of weakness.

As a good example would be Bilbo. Bilbo is a curious, happy-go-lucky, kind sort. However, after having the ring and accruing corruption, he doesn't want to give it up. He is always having second thoughts about giving it away. When truly it is not like him to be so posessive and covetous of something.

And good old Boromir. His shadow corruption makes him want to take the ring from Frodo and use it for good. While normally I would think a stout and noble captain of Gondor wouldn't do such a thing but he acts out of character because the corruption is swaying him.

I too had problems with the Journey/Travel rules, but for a completely different reason.

I understood the rules and how to calculate Fatigue Tests and so on... my problem was, wait for it, what the hell is a Fatigue test?

That might sound crazy but no where in the Adventurer's rules does it actual say what you are testing? I.e. what stat/skill etc. "The hardships...when traversing the Wild are represented in the game by fatigue tests." pg 153, but it doesn't say what it is!

Now I assumed it was Travel skill from the context, mainly from references to failed Travel tests (2nd column page 154), with the word Travel in bold. Even in the Loremaster's book, say page 34 "Fatigue tests" it doesn't say! But earlier on page 28 it does! Hurrah I was right, but it could have been clearer in the Adventures' Book I feel.

I suppose the trouble I have is in calling it a Fatigue Test, when it is a Travel test. (you gain fatigue "damage" and hazards from failure, but it is not a test against Fatigue skill or stat, as there isn't one!)

This happens else where in the game, but is described better. For example a Corruption Test, uses Wisdom rating and the rules are clear - but curiously doesn't not appear in the indices and doesn't appear in the Adventurer's Book rules on Journeys. It should say something along the lines of "The Loremaster may require you to make a Corruption Test while travelling along the dark paths of the world."

Great game though and lovely product - sorry for the quibble but until I read the LM book, it drove me nuts!

Just to clarify shadow works like this:

You get shadow points.

Once they exceed your hope you are miserable meaning an eye of Sauron roll means you will suffer a bout of madness.

Note the bout of madness does not have to occur immediately. The LM can wait until he likes.

Once you suffer a bout of madness you lose all of your shadow points and gain the first of four possible negative traits and the process starts over again.

The LM can wait as long as he likes for you to suffer your bout. That mechanic alone is a safeguard against things getting out of hand because of die rolls or other wackiness. In this window you could get a dozen shadow points that don't really matter.

BobChuck, Without knowing the details I'd suggest you kindly ask your LM to read the Shadow and Journey rules again. It sounds like you are making too many rolls.

There are plenty of examples of heroes who exhibit some sort of flaw. In fact, I think there would be more examples of heroes who have faced their darkness and overcome it. It may even be an essential element of heroism.

Boromir is redeemed as he gives his life to help his friends after he fell to Shadow. He isn't an example of a hero who got to 4 Shadow. He is an example of one who got to 2 or 3 and gave his life to make good his wrongs. That's the essence of heroism.

Thorin gave way to dragon sickness and abandoned his friend Bilbo. But he too overcomes that darkness and redeems himself to fight in the Battle of the Five Armies.

I think you need to redefine what a "proper hero" is and perhaps read myths, legends and fantasy stories a little more broadly. is one area where The One Ring gets it absolutley bang on.

Looking at your posts, I think you may have misunderstood things.

Let's break this down. The path to Corruption is as follows:

1. You gain Shadow
2. When your Shadow exceeds your Hope, you are suspectible to bouts of madness
3. When you are suspectible to bouts of madness and roll an Eye of Sauron, you gain a Shadow Trait and loose all Shadow accumulated
4. When you have 4 Shadow Traits you fall to the Shadow

So, its not 4 Shadow and you fall to Shadow. Its actually a very long process.

Average starting Hope seems to be around 14 or 15. Sure Hope gets spent (that's the whole point of mechanic) but it takes a while before Shadow will be greater than Hope.

Along the way, the players can manage this with some costs by spending Fellowship Phases to remove Shadow (roughly at the rate of 1 per session), the PC can take the Virtue that allows them to regain all Hope, and the group can manage Hope and Fellowship points in such a way to protect that PC.

Once you get through all those lines of defences, the PC still has to roll an Eye of Sauron.

And they have to go through that process 4 times.

I would expect that it would take years of normal play before any PC does a Denethor.

Also, once you are miserable you can limit your rolls by not volunteering tasks until you can get your hope back up or shadow down. Or only do tasks your traits will allow you to autopass. That's extreme but if you are close to a fellowship phase don't go trying to roll for song to impress a merchant to sell you a pretty horse at a discount. Unless you want to RP someone how's exposure to the shadow has given him a taste for extravagance or vanity.

Didn't know that. I don't think he knew that either, at least at the time, and it hasn't come up again. I do know that we wasted several days (in thoroughly blighted territory, meaning 2 corruption checks a day) investigating some random goblins that we thought were involved (but were actually just there because of a bad hazard roll).

Also, while I agree that average overall Hope is in the 12-15 range, the spread for Dwarf Hope is 8-10; I had 8, never spent a point of it, and went from 0 shadow to 8 shadow + Eye of Sauron on my last travel roll.

But yeah, I was a pretty extreme case, and we probably made a number of mistakes that made things worse.

And for the record, the rest of you may be perfectly happy playing Anakin Skywalkers and Boromirs, but that's not the sort of character I have any interest in playing, and I do not enjoy being told that I am somehow "doing it wrong". As I said, they make for compelling characters in stories, but I have no interest in playing one. Which is why I'm a hobbit now, as previously mentioned - harder to get shadow, much larger buffer, plus have more XP so wisdom is not 1.

@BobChuck - From your earlier posts, it sounds like you guys also chose to walk through Mirkwood on the Old Forest Road (I apologize if I've got that wrong). I'm surprised your LM let you guys do that as beginning characters without giving you some kind of warning about how corrupting that area is. If he did warn you and you chose to go anyway, then I would say you should expect a lot of corruption. If he didn't warn you, I don't think he realized how tough that area is, or is happy to see the characters corrupted quickly.

John

yeah, we took the old road. We planned it out without really thinking (I knew that it had been "corrupt" from my memories of the Hobbit, but I had no context for what that meant). I don't think anyone else thought it was all that dangerous, and the GM just let us pick the route (again, probably didn't know it would turn out the way it did, as it was his first time running the game).

There was no malicious deception involved, just a whole lot of ignorance, combined with bad luck and poor character selection.

It hasn't come up since (though we do still take the old road more than is entirely healthy, we've all got wisdom 3 now, and the lowest Hope is the Beorning at 14, so it really hasn't mattered).

This was back in August, less than a month after the game's release. Like I said, there were no accumulated horror stories, no short list of references, no collection of things for new players to watch out for. Things are different now.

Yeah, it does.

FWIW I am not saying you are playing it wrong. What I am trying to say is that The One Ring is focussed on replicating the stories written by Tolkien. You can play it however you want, but you will find that where you break away from that paradigm, you are likely to come into conflict with the mechanics.

Your choice to move to a Hobbit PC sounds like a sensible solution.

Agreed. As I was saying in another thread, this game is indeed a fantasy rpg and can be played however you choose. For there is no wrong way to play...but LOTR definitely has a special style niche if you understand what I am saying.

Like, I cannot approach TOR as I would D&D. I mean in my d&d game, I'm hacking and slashing, looting corpses, generally kicking butt and taking names to get all that sweet sweet loot and xp. But in TOR it has a totally different atmosphere.

Bit of resurrection here. I've been following several threads on this forum about problems with travelling and the pitfalls involved. There are a number of ways being mooted about how to solve the 'perceived' issues including, amongst others, allowing travel tests to be made against athletics as well as travel.
I think that one of the issues is that it is possible for a character to leave Dale in the summer meander down the path alongside the Lake to Laketown and gain fatigue, even if that character had taken 5 long slow days about it with picnic baskets and multiple comfort breaks.
Perhaps the first fatigue check should only be taken after six days(in summer, of course)and any fraction after that.That means that long journeys attract one less fatigue test and a short summer journey of up to five days does not merit a fatigue test. Too much?

I have to say that I agree with Skywalker in his statement about opening up sanctuaries and that the players cannot simply open them up in the wilds. However, it falls to the Loremaster to ensure that the players are made aware of potential sanctuaries that are not on the players map.
Eg, Hafdal of Esgaroth has taken Healing Hands as his character background. The background blurb implies that he has travelled on the River Running and spent time being healed by a foreign maiden(A noble woman of Dorwinion?) far to the south. As Loremaster, I would allow Hafdal to be aware of a number of trading settlements on the River Running which would be suitable for sanctuaries, should he ever find himself returning to that region.

a) then you rest up at laketown to recover your fatigue.

b) sitting In a car for a day is fatiguing...I have no issue with a single point being gained for a few days travel.

-Jeff

edit turning off emoticons

I'll back this up. My 16 hour ride in a truck to Gencon this year was certainly fatigueing.

John

It would seem that my three favorite LotR characters are none of the typical "loves," too ... in no particular order, mine are Boromir, King Théoden and Samwise Gamgee. So, please add my WOOHOO to yours!

Actually, I like Boromir better now that I saw the movie - it helped me to see the character in the book the way he was. Probably Sean Bean - he's a good actor.

I've always liked Theoden, movie and book. I'm a sucker for the guy who gets a second chance and does the best he can with it.

Sam? I think a lot of people actually favor Sam. His loyalty and toughness under adversity make him easy to admire.

-Jeff

All three of mine stem (originally) from my reading the books when I was in Junior High School in the mid-70s. Then, Sam and Théoden were reinforced by the Ralph Bakshi movie adaptation in '78 (though I didn't care at for the bearskin-wearing, Viking "style" helm portrayal ... that was NOT a son of Gondor!) and finally all three (wonderfully portrayed) in Peter Jackson's movie adaptations.