forums.cubicle7.co.uk
archive

A fellowship phase is, per the rules, as little as 1 week.

AB 168 reads: "A Fellowship phase lasts from a week to one full season of game time, depending on the Loremaster’s structuring of the game."

So there's no reason it can't be even as many as 5 adventures per year, if it works that way.

My players asked for a fellowship phase mid-adventure - I saw no reason to deny it, since they had no pressing time crunch, and were doing the actions in the local area.

What I'm unclear on, is that since a fellowship phase is supposed to last a season, that is three months, how is the default pace one adventuring phase per year? A 9 month-long adventure?

I guess the idea is that the characters are doing more "everyday" stuff then adventuring. Which I guess would accurate.

Heilemann wrote:What I'm unclear on, is that since a fellowship phase is supposed to last a season, that is three months, how is the default pace one adventuring phase per year? A 9 month-long adventure?

It feels to me like a Pendragon holdover left in the text.

In Pendragon, most of the time is spent either in the Lord's lands on routine peacekeeping and patrols, or, for landholders, running one's own lands. One has a single adventure, and then in winter, one spends 3 months trapped by the snows, training and preparing the plans for what's going to get done in the spring, summer, and fall.

TOR characters are not D&D-style Murder-hoboes. They have some role in their home culture.

• A Rumschpringe-like walkabout as a rite of passage
• a spring and fall job as a farmhand (actual summer work is minimal given medieval farming practices)
• a child of a well-off or socially elite family
• A journeyman craftsman who is needed most in the fall or spring
• A scribe or scholar, student of the local loremaster
• A hunter or soldier

So, if they aren't adventuring, they're doing their "day job". Or they're en route from home to sanctuary or vice versa.

@Heilemann and @Aramis The rules say a FP is between a week and a season long (Structure of FP LMB p168). The season being usually Winter for both reason of travel difficulty and returning home for EoY celebrations and family/tribal reconnections.

The rules also state that adventuring is not full-time occupation and there are things to be done associated with an adventurers occupation that should be handled in 'down-time' LMB p168 first paragraph of Fellowship Phase section. Note this in connection with the Holding rules from DoM.

There seems to be a tendency to skim the less interesting parts of the rules and only remember fleeting phrases, not always the important ones

I wasn't skipping, I was considering the Fellowship Phase as 'all the stuff between adventures', which is what it's sold as in the book.

I think what I might do is allow for multiple Fellowship Phases to follow each other. So if the company spends 6-9 months in Rhosgobel, that's 2-3 Fellowship Phases. That way they won't seem quite as precious either, and it will help alleviate the "What? Oh, I spent the last three months picking herbs. What? No, just picking herbs, that's it."

@Heliemann. I wasn't picking on you for skimming just making a general comment. However I'm not sure you have grasped the rules statement about FP that suggests that the player character tell the LM what the characters are doing so there is no questions such as you are positing from players. Either they don't put any effort into describing what they are doing during a FP or they turn all war and Peace on you and do a massive info-dump of every day's endeavour for their particular character.

In every case it's the turn of the players to drive the story during the FP not the LM. So tongue-tied or otherwise uninvolved players are going to have short FPs as they don't/can't tell their LM what they propose to do outside of the Adventure Phase.

If it helps, think of the game as having three phases - the Adventuring Phase, the Fellowship Phase, and the Everyday Life Phase when the character returns home. The Everyday Life Phase takes up 99% of the character's time; during it, they're hunting, farming, crafting, doing whatever they normally do to support themselves.

During most gaps between Adventuring Phases, the Fellowship Phase happens along with the Everyday Life Phase. It's the most notable, extraordinary thing the character accomplishes that year. Boris the Barding goes home to Dale and works as a guard. When he has time, he gathers Herbs. It's not that he spends three months gathering herbs, it's just that herb-gathering is the only thing he does that will have larger ramifications in the next Adventuring Phase.

Sometimes, on an especially long quest, there'll be Adventuring and Fellowship Phases without any Everyday Life Phases. In the Lord of the Rings, for example, the company definitely get a Fellowship Phase at Rivendell (and probably at Lorien too), but there aren't any Everyday Life Phases.

So, taking into account the Everyday Life Phase that Gareth described, can one fit two adventures and two fellowship phases into a year, or are the three phases he described an argument for the one adventure and fellowship phase per year pacing as described in the rules?

That's not the RAW though. At least the way I read it.