Journey's and how they might be improved

[Hermes Serpent]

In the latter part of our on-line game last night, after completing the Fellowship Phase and outlining the potential directional choices for next session and a discussion of availability due to vacations/holidays, the talk turned to the various ways of dealing with the issue of walls of die rolls when journeying. I mentioned my system which is to narrate several days travel (with input from the company for any tasks they want to do (Hunting, searching for tracks etc.) and then do a travel test and maybe a Corruption test if they are going to enter a Blighted Place in the next time block. By only calling for the die rolls and breaking it up with narration I feel that method avoids the forty die rolls that some people have faced from LM's and much derided in the earliest days of TOR. It also uses the original rules and, in the case of demoing the game, ensures I'm playing the rules as written, but not pushing an undesirable feature of the rules.

The issue was such that Francesco supplied Alternative Journey Rules that avoided the 'plot the journey, lore roll, assign roles, roll Fatigue tests and then do any hazards' method outlined in the AB p152-6 and the LM book p31-37.

The most recent revised Journey rules III makes the company plot their journey, make Lore rolls then the LM calculates the number of Fatigue tests and the company tests by role for the length of the journey. This involves a minimum of two tests for any journey taking up to 30 days during Summer. A much reduced number of die rolls compared to every hero having to test each 6 days and testing again on a Failure with an Eye icon making 25 tests for a five person company marching for 30 days.

I hope that this 'lite' version, or something similar, is the one that finds it's way into the revised edition.

[Rich H]

I hope that this 'lite' version, or something similar, is the one that finds it's way into the revised edition.

I sort of agree but the problem with the later revised Journey rules, as far as I can remember, was that due to the reduced number of Fatigue Tests a journey across Mirkwood, for instance, using the Men-i-Naugrim was too easy with regard to such tests. I think if you're going to reduce the number of rolls then you need to increase the difficulty and/or have more of a 'scale of success and failure' with regards to accruing fatigue. The issue with the revised rules is that the frequency is reduced, yet TNs stay the same as before as well as fatigue gained.

Or something along those lines. Personally though, I'm happy with the hybrid Journey rules that I mashed together from various sources.

[Hermes Serpent]

I suspect that the vehemence of the complaints about how hard travelling was may have produced an over-reaction and you suggest that the third iteration/revision of the Journey Rules has gone a little too far.

If you up the TN to match the chart of p34 of the LM book but reduce the difficulty in line with the suggestions for the early years (Dark Lands reduced to TN18 and Shadow lands to TN16 IIRC) then that might swing the chances of bad thing happening back in the original direction of tougher journey's.

A trip across the Old Forest road takes 25 days so five tests per hero in Summer at TN14 unless using the optional raised difficulty in the LMB p34 and then it's TN16 or higher.

Using the Revised III rules it's still five TN14 tests but only 2 per hero, although at optionally TN16 if using the reduced effect of travelling in the early years (1@ TN16, 1@ TN18 or 3@TN20 otherwise - pity the Guide, Scout and Huntsman when travelling East to West).

Presumably somewhere between five tests per hero for a 25 day journey and 2 tests per hero for the same journey should be the sweet spot

[Corvo]

Oddly enough, I like the original rules for travels.
I feel that one roll every, say, 5 days in good season, is already generous.
On the other hand I have my players make their roll, I narrate the outcome, then they make another roll, etc.

[Robin Smallburrow]

I use the original rules becoz journeys WERE tough in medieval times and I want my players to respect this - too many don't! To get around the dice rolling issue I break a long journey up into 'legs' and do each seperately, also allowing the PCs to plan for this as well. So I would break a trek across Mirkwood up into at least 3 legs - the advantage for the LM is u can design xtra places such as "the ruined Dwarven fort know as Halfway House"

Robin S

[doctheweasel]

The math on the alternate rules is the same as normal, it just puts everyone's eggs in one basket as far as handing out fatigue. There are the same number of opportunities for a character to gain fatigue in a given journey.

The only argument I could see for raising the difficulty is that there are fewer "unskilled" rolls, i.e. characters with bad Travel only have to use it once, then can rely on higher skilled specialists to carry them through.


That makes me think a nice solution would be to give a journey specific penalties to roles based on the nature of the journey. Deep in the Mirkwood? It's +2 to Lookout and Explorer. In the desolate norther wastes? Get +2 to Hunting. It balances the math out while bringing forward the story elements and flavor of the setting.

I'm sure there could be a systemic way to know how many to assign to a given journey, maybe based on the Region.


Also, I thought in the alternate rules a hazard appeared on an eye roll, successful or not.

[Hermes Serpent]

What I've found interesting, based on extra awareness after having started this thread, is that despite all the furore early on in the old forums I've seen in the past couple of days a few posts on another forum praising the TOR Journey rules with people thinking of using them as a basis for games in other settings.

@doctheweasel you are correct, in re-looking at the III'rd version of the revised Journey rules an eye rolled at any time during Fatigue Challenge resolution is mentioned as leading to a Hazard.

I personally have always used the original journey rules, one, because I'm doing a number of 'demo' games and they should always use the RAW and two, because I have a narration style that fits into a rhythm that includes a die roll every few days (for Travel or Corruption or whatever).

[Evening]

We ultimately decided to stay with the original journey rules.

[Rocmistro]

What I've found interesting, based on extra awareness after having started this thread, is that despite all the furore early on in the old forums I've seen in the past couple of days a few posts on another forum praising the TOR Journey rules with people thinking of using them as a basis for games in other settings.

My Face-to-face group is currently playing a Savage Worlds Deadlands game which sort of parallels the Firefly show. We have an Airship called the Georgia Peach, captained by my character, Ribold Isaiah Ryker (Rib-I.) Since we wanted the journeying of the Airship to be a major part of the game, I asked the GM, and was given permission to, port over a Travel system not unlike the one presented in TOR. I'll post the actual rules I came up with, if anyone is interested, but there are basically 6 journey "lengths" dependingin on actual distance: A 'lil trip, a Hop Skip n' a Jump, A Good Haul, A Voyage, an Epic Trip, And Pushing the Frontier. Each one involves "Travel" rolls, so the most number of rolls you would make is 6 (but they increasingly harder as well). Failures include extra travel time, extra fuel consumption, ship damage, engine over-heating, up to and including a crash event, chase event, etc. So yes, I'm happy to report that they have inspired me to homebrew a "journey phase" for other games, and in fact I think any game that I GM from now will probably have some kind of travel component. My friend has dibs on the next Gamemastering duties, and he's going to want to do a Space opera campaign. I'll be pushing for Journey rules in that too, and I think everyone in our face to face gaming group is on board with this kind of thing.

I like the *difficulty* of the 1st iteration travel rules. The only thing I didn't care for was the massive amount of dice that needed to be rolled.

[trystero]

We're using the Journey rules as written for my group, and so far they haven't been a problem. I do like the idea of splitting up the rolls a bit: we did two sets of rolls for our trip through Mirkwood and then a battle, and we'll do two more before the next "scene".

I don't find the need for everyone to roll Travel twice in a row to be a huge pain (though admittedly we got a Hazard on the first set, so there was a pause while the Guide made one extra Travel roll to avoid a problem). I can see that rolling six times in a row might get a little dull, but I think it's easy enough to interject a little description, a battle or action scene, or an encounter to break up the rhythm.