Underground Travel

[Glorelendil]

I'm at it again. I've come up with new rules for underground travel, with one big conceptual departure from my previous attempts: instead of being general purpose rules for dungeon crawling, these rules are specifically focused on underground journeys of longer lengths. In other words, analogous to above ground Journeys, but underground. For that reason I've decided to abandon the moniker "Delving" as the general description, although I've retained the word's use in these new rules.

I've yet to run a simulation to ensure that the probabilities fall into reasonable bounds, so I may yet adjust some of the dials.

As always, feedback appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aHB ... 6jR30/edit#

Change Log
- Oops. It's supposed to be Severely Hindered, not Weary, when running out of supplies. It's awkward because I've got food & torches tracked by the same variable, but for a variety of reasons I think the rule for darkness (based on TfW) is the right one.
- Altered "A Cure for Boredom" to restore player agency.
- Altered "Separated" to allow an Awareness roll
- Modified Hazard Type table: "Dangerous Meetings" is now a double result, and "Separated" was inserted into the Eye of Sauron slot. That makes an additional way that companions can become separated, which means an additional way to trigger a magical treasure check via "What Have I Got in my Pocket"

[Glorelendil]

Ok, I ran some numbers through a simulator, with the following assumptions:
Distance: 40 miles
Terrain: Daunting (TN 20)
Nominal Time: 10 days
Obstacles: 50% chance of looking for a detour
Skill Levels for Explore, Craft, Riddle: varies

Average of 1,000 iterations.

With skill 3 it took 21.5 days, encountering 9 obstacles (and god only knows how many failed Fatigue and Obstacle tests, which means that they were probably out of supplies and Weary before they were halfway through, making all those skill tests even harder. God those poor bastards are probably still down there)

With skill 3 or 4 it took 16 days, encountering 6.2 obstacles.

With skill 4 it took 12 days with 4.2 obstacles

With skill 4 or 5 it took 10 days with 2.6 obstacles

With skill 5 it took only 8.5 days, with 1.4 obstacles

Hazard rates for all of the above would be 1/12 per companion per day and is unrelated to the TN. Note that some Hazards might result in longer travel times. I didn't model that.

I find it interesting that average skill level of 4.5 seems to be the point at which delays and short-cuts balance out and the journey takes as long as expected.

Next step is to compute expected Fatigue gains.

[zedturtle]

I probably won't be able to dive deep into this for another day or two, but those values seem a bit off (if we consider the Moria trip to be a typical example, which might not be the case). The Fellowship enters Moria on 13 January and exits on 15 January, having travelled about 40 miles and ran into two or three obstacles (the long jump, the intersection near the guard-room, the encounter with the orcs and more in the Chamber of Mazarbul).

So either having Gandalf and Aragorn with their prior experience really helped out, Moria is not a good sample (sucks that our sample size is so small... Bilbo in the goblin tunnels might help though), or the calculations need a tweak.

[Glorelendil]

I don't think Moria, or at least the experience of "The Fellowship" in Moria, makes a good example at all, never mind these house rules. According to RAW, Moria would have to be "easy" terrain for that to even be possible to do 40 miles in 2 days on foot, and that's assuming a relatively straight line.

If it were Severe instead of Daunting (which could be argued) then the 40 miles would take 6 days nominally, which could become 4.4 days with skill levels of 5 to 6 guiding them.

[Robin Smallburrow]

Won't have time to read this in detail yet, but why is Terrain difficulty set to Daunting? I would have thought a default of TN 16 makes more sense, even lower for dwarves & hobbits

Robin S

[Glorelendil]

Won't have time to read this in detail yet, but why is Terrain difficulty set to Daunting? I would have thought a default of TN 16 makes more sense, even lower for dwarves & hobbits

Robin S

That's just the TN I used for the simulation I ran. It could have been 16 or 18, too.

[Finrod Felagund]

Your rules certainly show how difficult travelling long distances underground is. As a whole they look fine - perhaps a little long (try and get the rules bit down to a couple of sides max), but that may be due to the font you are using and character spacing.

Just a couple of things:
- Can live with, but didn't like "What have I got in my pocket?". It's fun, but unlikely without the intervention of 'fate'.
- More hazard examples generally. It's good having a rule set but having interesting situations where they apply is more important IMO
- Dump "A cure for boredom". Fun but a tad silly. I personally have always hated it when bad dice rolls make my PC do something stupid.
- How about more information on what adventurers are likely to find underground - generally too much emphasis on rules and not enough on the environment. For example we know that evil things escaped underground after the destruction of Utumno so what are they like (LoTR LCG has "Nameless Thing" and "Elder Nameless Thing" if you want some inspiration). Also what made that tapping sound when the Fellowship was in Moria? You have fungi, underground lakes and waterfalls, hidden treasuries, rockfalls, gleaming caverns, stalactites and stalagmites, branching paths, narrow fissures, fast flowing streams, prisons, guarded doors, maybe the odd trap - all kinds of exciting stuff!
- Different types of cave environments. I'd suggest that caves dug by Dwarves are different to noxious Orc caverns, which are different to natural caves, which are again different to the deep cave systems dug by Eru knows what! Not only in what you can see but also in what you can smell, touch (temperature / breeze?), hear, and maybe taste (does the air have an acidic or brimstone taste?) Also some will influence adventurers feelings - bringing on despair or fear for example.
- How about a short adventure or some adventure ideas so that players can slot this into a longer campaign. It could be as easy as a child getting lost in a cavern to villagers living close to the Misty Mountains feeling rumblings in the ground and wanting some mugs to investigate for them.

Hope this helps

FF

[Glorelendil]

Thanks for feedback, FF!

Length
It would be a little less than 4 pages in the typeface/layout of official books, and that's with the introduction, sample hazards, and journey example. When I get down to serious editing it will probably shrink by a little bit, but probably not much.

A Cure for Boredom
Yeah, you're probably right. It's a hazard so it's entirely the choice of the LM, but I agree with you about loss of player agency. (It's why I hate the concept of the Warlord from D&D: the whole class is based on the premise that my character admires somebody else's character and finds him inspirational and follows his order. Ick.) I'll see if I can re-write it to keep the fun but eliminate the puppeteering.

What Have I Got in my Pocket
The Hazard itself will occur frequently. It's just that the chance of actually getting a magical item that's very rare. So relatively often players will get the suspense of this one, even if almost nobody ever wins the lottery. Plus it provides a mechanic to "explain" the "most unlikely event in the history of the One Ring" (or however Gandalf described it) which I find curiously pleasing. Other readers have (in previous iterations of these rules) really liked this one, so maybe it's one of those things that you either love or hate.

Example Hazards / Different Environments
I do plan to expand the list of hazards, and that's also how I would address different environments: short intros to Dwarven mansions, orcish tunnels, natural caves, mines, "Roots of the Earth", etc., and then offer a bunch of hazards to add color. What categories/environments do you (and others) think should be covered?

Monsters
Yes, that's another section I'd love to include. Everybody always wants more adversaries to use, although it's a delicate business adding such things to Middle Earth because of canon sensitivities. I'd also like to create some neutral NPCs the heroes might encounter.

Sample Adventure
This is hard because these rules are really meant to be used within other adventures. The section on the underground journey would pretty much be "now the heroes have to travel X miles through Y terrain, and here are some hazards to use...". But maybe some examples and plot hooks for why the heroes would want to (or have to) travel underground?

Edit: How's this?

A Cure for Boredom (All Companions)
During a rest, a dark hole in the floor beckons to the curious. Each companion who did not participate in this day’s Delving test must make a Wisdom test; the first to fail is fascinated by the abyss, and finds himself wondering where it goes and how deep it is. If he decides to drop something in the hole, “just to see what happens”, the next Hazard that occurs will be an Adversary of some sort, but the foolish hero also earns 1 XP.

There. No loss of player agency. This is the sort of "immersion" I love...both the character and the player will feel temptation to do something unwise.

[zedturtle]

Agreed. I'd just change it to 'each hero' that fails, instead of the first. Make them scramble to out-Took each other.

[Glorelendil]

Agreed. I'd just change it to 'each hero' that fails, instead of the first. Make them scramble to out-Took each other.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Done.

(Also changed consequence: instead of causing next Hazard to be an adversary it raises Hunt score to threshold.)