Advice for a new TOR Campaign

[jamesrbrown]

Long time away, but I caught this discussion and I wanted to chime in about the Flipped Tolerance for a second. When I thought of the idea, it was to help players who had a hard time navigating encounters. Mostly, they would keep making rolls just to get the maximum amount of successes to get the best rewards in the end, rather than truly playing out a scene. I also found that most of the time, reaching 7 or more successes before exceeding Tolerance was really easy to do in most cases. So, Flipping the Tolerance to mean how many rolls could be made during an Encounter resulted in less rolling for rewards and more roleplaying to gather information and wisdom. Just remember that the minimum Tolerance is 1.

Consider, even in the RAW, exceeding Tolerance doesn't mean the scene must end necessarily, and neither does it with Flipped Tolerance. In both cases, it simply means there will be no more successes counted toward the rewards, which I often associate with the main objective of the encounter.

Lastly, I want to mention that I personally play by the RAW most of the time. I think the rules are pretty amazing as is on all counts, and as Rich has pointed out, they are brilliantly designed with flexibility.

[bigsteveuk]

Cheers for your wisdom again.

Do you ever limit trait usage?

As due to the broad nature of some traits they could be over utilised either for every test thrown at the players or multiple times within the same encounter.

[Butterfingers]

The more they use the traits, the less advancement points they get, right? So it's a trade-off, and I think once they raise their most used skills a bit, they'd choose rolling almost all the time, because it gives them better quality of success? Maybe not in cases where it's enough to just succeed in general or where it's more important that you just don't fail (and roll EoS to boot)?

Also, in cases where the companion has already maxed out on advancement point ticks for that skill group, then they might be more inclined just skip rolling to save time. I don't see trait use necessarily bad or boring, as it makes the players to look for more ways to play in character. And to that end encourage them to use these traits in situations where a skill use benefit isn't even a factor, just for roleplaying.

[jamesrbrown]

Cheers for your wisdom again.

Do you ever limit trait usage?

As due to the broad nature of some traits they could be over utilised either for every test thrown at the players or multiple times within the same encounter.

The guideline I follow is found on p. 93 of the core rules: "The Loremaster may agree with a Trait invocation to speed up play, especially if failing at the roll would not lead to dramatically relevant consequences, or if the action wasn’t difficult."

Because the encounter rules use a Tolerance rating, I feel that the consequences of failing a roll are a little higher than normal in that the whole objective is in jeopardy. I also feel that influencing or impressing a Loremaster character should take work. Therefore, I usually only allow Trait invocation after a successful roll for the purposes of gaining an Advancement point. However, if a player can come up with a fantastic reason to invoke a Trait for an automatic success during an encounter, I might allow it once during the scene, especially if the companions are speaking with a patron or someone they are already friendly with. Otherwise, I feel that invoking Traits during encounters can be too easily abused.

On a side note, with Flipped Tolerance, Trait invocation has less of a chance to be abused since it only counts for one success and counts as one roll toward Tolerance.

[gsecaur]

James, I've seen references to Flipped Tolerance in a few discussions, but I wasn't on the forum when the idea was initially batted around, so this is the first time I've seen it explained. Thanks for the brief summary!

I have allowed my players to invoke traits in social encounters, but I apply the same limitation to those that I do to skill selection. I don't allow any single character to benefit from using any skill or trait more than once in the same encounter. This started as a way to prevent our charming Hobbit from monopolizing the conversation and repeatedly spamming his Courtesy or Song to roll up successes with minimal risk to Tolerance. I wanted the uncouth Dwarf to have to try, too, despite his relative lack of social skills.

Of course, from a role-playing perspective, the Hobbit is still the chief spokesperson of the group, but I'm trying to get everyone to participate in the encounters.


gsecaur

[Rich H]

Do you ever limit trait usage?

As due to the broad nature of some traits they could be over utilised either for every test thrown at the players or multiple times within the same encounter.

This is something you're going to have to decide on when you start playing, Steve; only you will know what's best for your gaming group. Personally, yes, I did limit trait usage to avoid the 'spam' feeling. I also felt that not limiting traits actually lead to less RPing as players just got a bit lazy relying on their traits and only seeing them as ways of getting auto-successes. Once I limited the traits to one use per encounter/battle/journey/etc the traits were far more valued, used at critical times and the players, again, saw them as descriptions on their character sheets to be used to support roleplaying their character all the time and not just when invoking the trait itself or trying to find a way of invoking them all the time - ie, it got rid of the ' winning the subgame' of trait invocation.

And doing this won't break the game, either. I've run TOR extensively with this house rule and it's fine. Again, YMMV though so have a think and try out the RAW before deciding.

[bigsteveuk]

So the big kick off for my blended Tales from Wilderland & The Darkening of Mirkwood is approaching, hopefully about 3 weeks.

So a couple more questions!!.

1. How have you allowed Leechcraft and Herblore to be used in your campaigns & do you allow it to be used in place of a healing roll.

2. How have you seen the leadership trait use in your adventures? (one player is considering the leader calling)

2. Any tips on mixing in TfW and DoM e.g. order of running, what worked, what didn't?

Cheers,

Steve