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After about a year of running a campaign, and playing online in a couple more, I have made these adjustments:

1) Magic Item's default encumbrance starts at 1/2 (round up) of what a non-magical equivalent piece would be.
Why? Accruing magic items is too much of a slog and becomes very un-Tolkienesque. Either players cache/discard an older item in favour of a better one, or cache/sell/discard the newly found one. If you want magic items to seem like treasured heirlooms, seldom traded or discarded, and instead are collected, you need to provide a mechanism whereby having more is clearly better. Encumbrance on large items crushes that.

2) Two Fellowship Undertakings per Fellowship Phase, three for long ones (1 more than official rules).
Why? Several Undertakings (like Receive Title) are things that are based on a hero's actions over time already spent adventuring, and are not things that would take a lot of time to accomplish in the phase itself. Also, some pairs of things seem like they ought to be able to go together (if players wish) at any Fellowship Phase, not just a Year End, like Open Sanctuary and Meet Patron; or Raise Standard of Living and Raise Standing.

In regard to 1, I almost always treat upgrades to weapons as occurring to an existing weapon and magical items explicitly work that way as well (gaining new powers as the user "attunes" with the weapon). Also, with lowered Encumbrance I'd be afraid of having my heroes lug around multiple magic items, which seems less Tolkienesque. I'd love more clarity on your experiences.


For 2, I totally agree. We've been doing two Undertakings per FP in the Darkening game and it works really well.

zedturtle wrote:In regard to 1, I almost always treat upgrades to weapons as occurring to an existing weapon and magical items explicitly work that way as well (gaining new powers as the user "attunes" with the weapon). Also, with lowered Encumbrance I'd be afraid of having my heroes lug around multiple magic items, which seems less Tolkienesque. I'd love more clarity on your experiences.

The players I am running my campaign for are very encumbrance adverse, to the point where they view the lessened encumbrance from little/no armor (or heavy weapons) as preferable to the Wondrous Item buffs+encumbrance. They strive for minimal fatigue. Perhaps this is an idiosyncratic feature of this group.

Dedicemancometh wrote:

zedturtle wrote:In regard to 1, I almost always treat upgrades to weapons as occurring to an existing weapon and magical items explicitly work that way as well (gaining new powers as the user "attunes" with the weapon). Also, with lowered Encumbrance I'd be afraid of having my heroes lug around multiple magic items, which seems less Tolkienesque. I'd love more clarity on your experiences.

The players I am running my campaign for are very encumbrance adverse, to the point where they view the lessened encumbrance from little/no armor (or heavy weapons) as preferable to the Wondrous Item buffs+encumbrance. They strive for minimal fatigue. Perhaps this is an idiosyncratic feature of this group.

I'm still puzzled by this, even with the idiosyncrasy. What are the Wondrous Items that have encumbrance?