New Journey Rules - Ideas from AiMe

[Rich H]

Thinking about this more, A Good Road Taken, could effectively mean the heroes gain no Fatigue at all if the result is a great or extraordinary success while in the spring or summer months (2 Fatigue). Is that too powerful?

Possibly. It hasn't been too bad in play. The PC has to get a great/extraordinary success on the roll and has to 'spend' a bonus success die to perform the task. I wanted to differentiate between ordinary and other successes so couldn't think of how to do that in relation to fatigue other than go with the 1 and 2 point difference. Maybe if it didn't apply to every companion?

[beckett]

Thinking about this more, A Good Road Taken, could effectively mean the heroes gain no Fatigue at all if the result is a great or extraordinary success while in the spring or summer months (2 Fatigue). Is that too powerful?

Possibly. It hasn't been too bad in play. The PC has to get a great/extraordinary success on the roll and has to 'spend' a bonus success die to perform the task. I wanted to differentiate between ordinary and other successes so couldn't think of how to do that in relation to fatigue other than go with the 1 and 2 point difference. Maybe if it didn't apply to every companion?

My initial thought was to have it reduce the TN for the next Fatigue test but that would step on the toes of the Twice-Baked Honey Cakes Virtue. At the moment I'm at a loss for alternatives, but maybe the potential reduction of fatigue points isn't as overpowering as it might appear.

[atgxtg]

Some possible alternatives for "A Good Road Taken":

1) It could allow the PC guide to roll two fate dice and take the better of the two.
2) It could reduce the travel TN.
3) It could grant the party a pool of bonus dice that could be spent on travel rolls.
4) The group could cover more distance than normal, which could reduce the time for the journey.

[Rich H]

Some possible alternatives for "A Good Road Taken":

1) It could allow the PC guide to roll two fate dice and take the better of the two.
2) It could reduce the travel TN.
3) It could grant the party a pool of bonus dice that could be spent on travel rolls.
4) The group could cover more distance than normal, which could reduce the time for the journey.

Considering the thread is discussing new journey rules, option (4) doesn't exist anymore.

And the whole point of these role based journey tasks is that they *each* reduce some impact or toll to the characters that the journey has *already* had on them so far - reduce fatigue, heal lost endurance, remove Weariness and reduce Eye Awareness. I don't want to make one of the different in that way from the others.

[Rich H]

My initial thought was to have it reduce the TN for the next Fatigue test but that would step on the toes of the Twice-Baked Honey Cakes Virtue. At the moment I'm at a loss for alternatives, but maybe the potential reduction of fatigue points isn't as overpowering as it might appear.

I think I'll keep it as-is but an option could be to award a number of fatigue points that can be 'healed' to be divided amongst the company.

[cuthalion]

I'm still mulling over your recommendations Rich but they certainly seem to simplify and speed the process.

I suppose my question to you and others, after you've had a closer look, would be does it lose anything in doing it like this? Simple and quick is nice to have but not at the expense of options and/or interesting mechanics.

Just a quick response here--with the caveat that I think that you've played a lot more than me, so perhaps have thought of this already. Still, you ask for mechanics that are going to be lost: what happens to eye awareness and hunt threshhold if you change the default journey mechanics?

Besides the fact that I'm one who sometimes would like a little less abstraction--i.e. I like having to calculate the journeys, would like more detail in places on encumbrance and equipment, etc.--what's great about the current ruleset is that journeying through ME in the base ruleset is NOT DnD high stakes high adventure. Two woodmen travelling through the outskirts of Mirkwood shouldn't necessarily be beset at every turn--but this seems like what AiME moves closer to (based on what you're describing--haven't read them myself).

With the EoS mechanics, that sense of danger at peril can be introduced at the right time (both thematically AND mechanically)--when the characters have literally brought upon themselves the kind of stakes that the company in LoTR are adventuring under, and that seems a lot more in keeping with the theme.

So, in short--doesn't this kneecap the EoS mechanics? I don't know what AiME includes in this respect--does it have something similar?

[Rich H]

So, in short--doesn't this kneecap the EoS mechanics? I don't know what AiME includes in this respect--does it have something similar?

Potentially you are rolling less travel rolls so the threshold amounts for Eye of Mordor may need tweaking; somewhere around a 2 to 4 point reduction should suffice.

[Glorfindel18]

While this is a good idea in theory, isn't the whole point of AiMe to give players another system for 5e? I know this is a house rule, so that's fine. At the same time, I don't want too much change to the official rules making the two systems. If you like the 5e version that's fine, but I would like TOR and AiMe to remain separate from each other, mechanics wise.

[Rich H]

It still wouldn't be much like 5e. These rules cut out the oft-criticised repetitive nature of fatigue checks and also don't rely on the random nature of hazards occuring. Ask yourself this, the journey mechanics of TOR could have been pretty easily lifted wholesale into AiMe but they were not. Rhetorically, I wonder why? Perhaps because they aren't as satisfying and have their problems with repeated tests and random hazards. Francesco himself has revised them on occasions and played around with how they work. I actually think the journey rules in AiMe provide more narrative flexibility than those of TOR; by combining elements of both I'm getting the best of both worlds.

Also, I specifically stated in the OP, "I don't want this to be a thread to discuss whether the above are issues or not". Lets keep it that way. Thanks.

[Rich H]

I've pretty much gotten these rules where I want them to be so over the next week or so I'm going to be stripping it down to the bare bones and sharing the actual rules. I can't share the full document that I've worked on as it contains text from both TOR and AiMe.