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Hey,

Ran my first session of TOR last week and it went exceedingly well.

I will run the next session this week and for the life of me I cannot see how PCs recover Hope except through fellowship points or certain actions.

Is that meant to be in the rules?

If so, it means players have to be damn careful about using hope as it will only regenerate slowly over many adventures....


Sub question, anyone have a printable calendar that can be used to keep track of time in a Middle Earth setting? I am using a regular calendar I downloaded for free online...

canuckofthering wrote:Is that meant to be in the rules?

If so, it means players have to be damn careful about using hope as it will only regenerate slowly over many adventures....

Yes, that's an intent in the design of TOR. Dwindling Hope; a commodity that should be spent when absolutely necessary as there are few opportunities to recover it.

canuckofthering wrote:
I will run the next session this week and for the life of me I cannot see how PCs recover Hope except through fellowship points or certain actions.

That's because, that is in fact, the only way to recover Hope. Barring any characters having a Fellowship Focus.
It's a finite resource.

Thanks, makes sense and I feel better I advised my players to husband their hope points!!

Fellowship points help as they regenerate after each gaming session right?

canuckofthering wrote:Fellowship points help as they regenerate after each gaming session right?

Yep.

So players can keep an eye on when the session is going to end and use the remainder of the Fellowship Pool rather than personal Hope knowing that it will refresh at the end of the session. Personally I find things like that a bit too gamey which is why I house rule that the Fellowship Pool refreshes at key narrative points within the adventure rather than at the end of each session; but that's just my personal preference.

Since I have 9 players 2 of whom are hobbits, there has been only one adventure where anyone started the next one down a few.

Which is cool to me.

canuckofthering wrote: Sub question, anyone have a printable calendar that can be used to keep track of time in a Middle Earth setting? I am using a regular calendar I downloaded for free online...

I've got you covered: http://thechamberofmazarbuldnd.blogspot ... endar.html

The blog post explains how I've come up with the calendars and how to use them, and the dropbox link is the actual calendars (both Westron and Shire calendars).

canuckofthering wrote:Thanks, makes sense and I feel better I advised my players to husband their hope points!!

Fellowship points help as they regenerate after each gaming session right?

My players were bit flummoxed by this realization that they would eventually be rendered hopeless,....but they came to good terms with this when I explained it to my players thusly:

Like the heroes in the Lord of the Rings books/movies - when they first became "heroes of the story", they were light on experience, but full of hope. By the time the Ring was destroyed, they had much experience, but their Hope had surely been spent.

In TOR, this is also mirrored. When the heroes start out, their skills etc are on the light side, and Hope is required to secure much success. By the time 5 years have passed, they can easily make most standard TNs of skills, but should have dwindled much of their Hope along the way. Old veterans, and grizzled adventurers are notoriously portrayed as such - full of experience, but with much toil.

This is true in our own world, as well. Cops/detectives, armed forces, firefighters, etc; they have seen much and experienced a great deal of human casualties and suffering. And while they'll be the first person you would want with you on a deserted island to help you survive, there's no doubt that there is much evidence of lasting mental anguish and scars in many of them.

Robert

SirKicley wrote:By the time 5 years have passed, they can easily make most standard TNs of skills, but should have dwindled much of their Hope along the way.

That's how I explained it also, but now my group is so strong they rarely spend more hope than they can get back at the end of the session, and they are at full Hope most of the time.

SirKicley wrote:Old veterans, and grizzled adventurers are notoriously portrayed as such - full of experience, but with much toil.

Robert: An insightful response that rings true to both the books & the game.

Rich: IIRC, you've posted this before about using the Hope refreshment rules as a narrative tool instead of the end of each session (but I couldn't recall). Thank you for reminding us & I'm going to play it this way for the same reasons.