Fellowship Phase & Sanctuaries

[Rocmistro]

Well, it's your game, and since I play in it, I guess I gotta do what you say

But I think it's easier to just say each person tracks and opens his own sanctuaries.

By the way, since we're discussing it, your ruling works ok for the firs scenario I posted. What about #2 (where one player effectively bars the entire group from opening a sanctuary because he doesn't want to open it)?

[Rich H]

As a counter to Rocmistro I'm going to push another viewpoint regarding a group Sanctuary.

The whole idea of the gathering to tell stories and relate heroic deeds is so embedded in the material the Professor took as his models for the cultures in Middle-earth that it's hard for us, in a milieu where nuclear family groupings are not necessarily the norm, to understand how the communal living common in the early Middle Ages guided the social and religious practices of that society.

Why is that any different whether a place is a Sanctuary or not? What you've described there isn't really excluded whether you go with Group, Individual, or a combination of the two, Sanctuaries. New characters can be introduced either way and to be able to choose the Undertakings of a Sanctuary they need to Open it as one. Or they can choose not to. Even if all the other PC have the place as a Sanctuary they still need to open it to gain access to Sanctuary specific benefits.

The way I see it is that it's not so much Opening a New Sanctuary for the new guy but when the company chooses to visit in the normal course of things the new guy get's the introductions to the right people and the recommendations of people known to the host.

That could happen whether it's one character or the rest of the Fellowship. They get the introduction to allow the Sanctuary to be opened - works for any number of their companions that already have the place as a sanctuary.

[Hermes Serpent]

I guess I'm still very much wedded to the idea of the tight-knit group of heroes working together and find it hard to envisage a case where one character is so at odds with the others in the company that he sort-of sulks because they all want to Open Sanctuary as their undertaking and he doesn't. I'd see this as a case where there is a lot of tension in the group and a possible sundering of the company. It's possible that I'd consider imposing some sort of no Fellowship Focus penalty for antagonistic actions like this depending upon the actual reasoning by the player.

Maybe the benefits of a Sanctuary don't appear to relatively new characters as being worth not doing something else. Maybe a more cohesive cultural group without a diversity of types might find it easier to accept that Esgaroth is their base and although they may return to Erebor or Thranduil's Halls for End of Year celebrations/ceremonies for the rest of the time they base themselves at Lake town.

Luckily for me I don't have to deal with difficult players that tell me 'my character wouldn't do that' and sulk if they don't get their own way. Whereas in the past I might have been more accommodating I don't put up with stuff like that and show them the door with a 'don't let the door slam on your way out'.

I can see that in future trying to provide a cohesive backstory for a mixed group of Hobbits, Rangers, Rohan riders, Elves and Dwarves as well as Dalesmen and Lakemen is not going to be easy. I believe you'd have to have some sort of forced marriage for the greater good with every culture pressing their merits as leader and holder of the great macguffin.

[Rocmistro]

I guess I'm still very much wedded to the idea of the tight-knit group of heroes working together and find it hard to envisage a case where one character is so at odds with the others in the company that he sort-of sulks because they all want to Open Sanctuary as their undertaking and he doesn't. I'd see this as a case where there is a lot of tension in the group and a possible sundering of the company. It's possible that I'd consider imposing some sort of no Fellowship Focus penalty for antagonistic actions like this depending upon the actual reasoning by the player.

Maybe the benefits of a Sanctuary don't appear to relatively new characters as being worth not doing something else. Maybe a more cohesive cultural group without a diversity of types might find it easier to accept that Esgaroth is their base and although they may return to Erebor or Thranduil's Halls for End of Year celebrations/ceremonies for the rest of the time they base themselves at Lake town.

Luckily for me I don't have to deal with difficult players that tell me 'my character wouldn't do that' and sulk if they don't get their own way. Whereas in the past I might have been more accommodating I don't put up with stuff like that and show them the door with a 'don't let the door slam on your way out'.

I can see that in future trying to provide a cohesive backstory for a mixed group of Hobbits, Rangers, Rohan riders, Elves and Dwarves as well as Dalesmen and Lakemen is not going to be easy. I believe you'd have to have some sort of forced marriage for the greater good with every culture pressing their merits as leader and holder of the great macguffin.

Hermes, I probably could have worded this better. I'm not envisioning a character "sulking" or even being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

What if a player just *needs* his character to go home, for RP reasons or because, perhaps, he cannot afford to pay standing upkeep cost by being away from home? I can easily envision a situation where he's not trying to be difficult or make the game all about him, it's just he doesn't really want to open a given sanctuary...or perhaps he wants to open a different sanctuary? What if the group is split 50/50 on what sanctuary to open?

[Jakob]

I guess I'm still very much wedded to the idea of the tight-knit group of heroes working together and find it hard to envisage a case where one character is so at odds with the others in the company that he sort-of sulks because they all want to Open Sanctuary as their undertaking and he doesn't. I'd see this as a case where there is a lot of tension in the group and a possible sundering of the company. It's possible that I'd consider imposing some sort of no Fellowship Focus penalty for antagonistic actions like this depending upon the actual reasoning by the player.

I wouldn't call it antagonistic behaviour of one player isn't too keen on the Santuary undertaking; maybe he really needs to get his shadow score down, maybe he desperately wants to meet with a patron, maybe he just likes the idea that his character would return home this winter to visit his dying mother ... in that case, it could be seen as equally antagonistic behaviour by the other players if they gang up on him: "Hey, we all want Rhosgobel as sanctuary, and now you want to ruin it for us? No way! You're a bad, bad roleplayer, there's the door!"
In my experience, it's seldom a good idea to force a player into having his character do something by making him feel guilty.

Also, houseruling that not everyone needs to take part in the sanctuary undertaking doesn't make it impossible for the players to take a place as sanctuary together; it just changes it from being an obligation to being their free choice - and choosing to do something together instead of doing what the others want out of a sense of guilt is simply much more fun.

[Hermes Serpent]

AB p168 tells us "The players are free to spend the (Fellowship) phase at any place they have already visited during the game."
and p169 "Players should generally choose a place within a reasonable distance from the area where they were adventuring during the recent sessions of play, also taking into consideration how long the Fellowship phase is going to last and where and when they have agreed to meet up afterwards."

Sanctuaries are defined as "special places particularly suited to support the needs of a company of adventurers, and inhabited by a host willing to welcome them." and the same page tells us that Esgaroth is the one place already a Sanctuary. Now I'd argue that Woodman Town, Mountain Hall, Beorn's House, Rhosgobel or anywhere similar could be the starting Sanctuary depending upon the campaign arc the LM is going to run.

The same page 169 tells us "When a hero intends to invest his earned Treasure, he needs to return home." with the unwritten proviso that investing in this instance means spending Treasure equal to his Standing to maintain his Standing in his home community.

So assuming everyone spends the Winter season at home handing out torcs and improving the palisade around the homestead it's only other Fellowship Phases that are going to pose a problem. At home one can improve skills and improve Wisdom and Valour as well as most of the other Undertakings so it's really only Meet Patron and Open New Sanctuary that can't really be done at Home (I'm assuming in this case your Home counts as a Sanctuary).

I'm supposing that Meet Patron involves amongst others, Radagast, Bard, Thranduil, Thrain, the Master of Laketown and any number of other worthies who might provide you with tasks and challenges. As one of the reasons for wandering over the landscape and fighting evil is completing tasks for Patrons one has to assume that companies of heroes are submitting requests to these important people to "help us to help you" and there is little disagreement on soliciting tasks.

So really I can't understand why Opening a New Sanctuary would necessarily be a difficult choice to make as I see it as "we need a base closer to the area where we must operate this year, somewhere we can find safety to recover Travel fatigue and get food, fresh armour and weapons so we don't have too far to go across hostile territory to get back to our last Sanctuary. We'll make the trek there in the Spring and spend a month or so getting the lie of the land and setting up relationships before heading out."

[Jakob]

So assuming everyone spends the Winter season at home handing out torcs and improving the palisade around the homestead it's only other Fellowship Phases that are going to pose a problem. At home one can improve skills and improve Wisdom and Valour as well as most of the other Undertakings so it's really only Meet Patron and Open New Sanctuary that can't really be done at Home (I'm assuming in this case your Home counts as a Sanctuary).

[...]

So really I can't understand why Opening a New Sanctuary would necessarily be a difficult choice to make as I see it as "we need a base closer to the area where we must operate this year, somewhere we can find safety to recover Travel fatigue and get food, fresh armour and weapons so we don't have too far to go across hostile territory to get back to our last Sanctuary. We'll make the trek there in the Spring and spend a month or so getting the lie of the land and setting up relationships before heading out."

The difficult choice might come into play if you want to do one of the things you can do at home, but also somewhere else, why everyone else wants to open a sanctuary.
Imagine, for example, that in the last adventure, the group had to move fast while having a prisoner in tow. They couldn't let him run, because they knew that he would try and cut their throats at night. No one said it, but everyone knew that it would be best for their fellowship if they simply executed the guy. One night, one of the PCs takes it on him to do just that. Of course, he earns himself a hefty dose of shadow points by that. The other PCs, who didn't do the deed directly, but silently condoned it, have also earned shadow, but probably only half as much. So far, it might very well be that this was a beautifully role-played sequence of events: the characters are in a tough spot, they do a misdeed to get out of it and suffer the consequences in the form of shadow points. To my mind, that is exactly the kind of interesting turn of events that TOR was designed to dramatize.

Now comes the fellowship phase. The player of the character who did the deed wants his PC to try to come to terms with what he did - in game terms, he wants to heal corruption. That is quite believable, it enhances the theme of the game, and it also makes sense in terms of the game's mechanics, since the player probably needs to lower his shadow score. However, for everyone else, it makes more sense to open a sanctuary.

In the RAW, two scenarios are possible. Either the one player defers to the others, lives with his high shadow score for another year, and loses the opportunity to add color to his character by stressing his dire need to come to terms with what he did. Otherwise, the rest of the group defers to the one player, finds something else to do, and the group can't open a new sanctuary. Both scenarios might work, but they also might breed resentment among the players. That's the simple reason I would prefer to allow players to open sanctuaries individually.

Let me stress that this is not about letting a player who thinks that his character has to be a unique snowflake and get all the spotlight have his will. It is about a situation that might arise quite naturally from the interplay between the characters and the story.

I'm not even saying that the RAW doesn't work; you could probably play with it and never run into any problems; but if I ran into te kind of problem outlined above, I would much prefer to simply allow the players to make their choices each individually, instead of singling one of them out and accusing him of being antagonistic.

[Hermes Serpent]

Thanks for your viewpoint Jakob. The idea of one hero needing to dump his Shadow points because of a evil deed is an ideal situation for completing some sort of redemption task - travel to a contemplative location or making some sacrifice for another. The redeeming task might be best played out as a narrated event during the Fellowship Phase or indeed as a hook for a next adventure.

I also note your assumption that there is only one Fellowship Phase in a year although the rules make it clear that other times besides the End of Year celebrations can be a Fellowship Phase.

Really the FP can almost be split into several sections: A Recovery Phase (remove Travel Fatigue, recover Endurance and deal with wounds and Shadow). An Improvement Phase where AP's and XP's are spent. A Development Phase where new Sanctuaries are opened and new Patrons acquired. A Standing Phase (EoY only) where Treasure is spent for gifts). You can almost see the boardgame rules inter-move phase showing here

However as TOR is a narrative oriented game the whole bundle is wrapped up in a loose package to allow the LM to interpret the jumble to suit his game and his players. It's things like this that ensure the much fabled Session 0 clearly sets out expectations of how the game is going to be run.

[Jakob]

I also note your assumption that there is only one Fellowship Phase in a year although the rules make it clear that other times besides the End of Year celebrations can be a Fellowship Phase.

That's an interesting point - I played "Tales from Wilderland" with my group and had the first 3 adventures take place in the same year as part of a continuous journey; however, I didn't allow for a fellowship phase after each adventure, but only one at the end of the year, treating all 3 adventures as one long adventuring phase. That seemed to make sense, because the rules state that the fellowship phase takes up about one season, and the characters didn't really have time to rest for a full season in between adventures. Since I was planning to keep on playing 2-3 adventures a year, I assumed that a fellowship phase would turn out to be a very precious thing, as a character might have only 2-3 of them throughout the whole "Tales from Wilderland" sequence.

Of course, assuming that you simply get one fellowship phase after each adventure, regardless of the exact time of the year, makes just as much sense. In that case, it wouldn't be a big problem if a character had to delay his or her preferred undertaking, because the next Fellowship Phase would never be that far away.

[Hermes Serpent]

The rules specifically state that Fellowship Phases can be as little as two weeks and up to a Season in length. A maximum of two weeks to refit and refresh seems about right for Spring, Summer and Fall/Autumn with a longer FP during the Winter months. I'd set the length according to both what the players wanted to do during the FP and how the campaign arc was progressing.

The sidebar on p18 in the AB mentions break of a week for refreshing the party without entering a Fellowship Phase. AB p168 states a FP lasts "from a week to one full season of game time, depending on the Loremaster’s structuring of the game."

The actual FP can be spent together or by returning Home and the AB states that "Three months are enough for any companion to return home from any location in Wilderland and leave him some time to be among his family and folk."

So a break for a FP to not only refresh the party but spend AP/XP makes sense multiple times in a year as an adventure will generally get a maximum of around 10 or 12 AP's (2 of 3 for each Skill Group) and there's no point is continuing to adventure (outside the plot of course) just to get the chance at filling that third check box.

I'd plan my campaign arc/plot line to match this sort of progression although when the characters get higher skill ranks the cost of an increase is such that it makes sense to reduce the number of FP's to match the need to spend AP's?XP's although 'banking' them will still be necessary and short FP's fill that niche even if the players choose not to engage in more lengthy Undertakings.