One adventure per year pacing

[Hermes Serpent]

@Skyspire - Do whatever suits your campaign.

If the adventure starts in Spring and is a short one (it's worth using a calendar to track the passage of time) then you can have a short FP to recover fatigue from Travel and Endurance from combat. You can also do any Undertakings that the players want and adjudicate the length of time accordingly. Start another Adventure Phase in early Summer with a short adventure and a second FP before finishing Summer/Autumn with another adventure before a final end of Year FP. The players may not have done a lot of mundane stuff outside the adventuring but that's going to depend on your players, whether they want to immerse themselves in the setting or just do adventures and not worry about non-adventuring actions.

The suggestion for one adventure a year seems to be based on the players choosing to do other non-combat background things, farming, hunting, raising a family, normal stuff.

Your Middle-earth May Vary.

[Mytholder]

Having multiple Adventuring/Fellowship phases per year won't break the game or anything - there's no mechanical reason you can't go adventuring all the time. It just doesn't fit with the slower, more considered pace of Middle-Earth. In a D&Dish game with more swords and sorcery and high weirdness, it makes sense to have more frenetic adventuring - I'm running a 13th Age campaign where the PCs don't have time to breathe between zombie hordes, living dungeons, elemental cults and insane gods, and that works perfectly well in that setting. Trying to do the same in Middle-Earth, though, would feel wrong.

Sometimes, it'll make sense to have a series of Adventures and Fellowship Phases in quick succession - the War of the Ring is the obvious example, but there's also the final two adventures in Tales from Wilderland. To quote the Adventure's Guide, one adventure per year is the default pace, not the mandatory one.

[Valarian]

I've generally done two or three in some years, where there's not so much travel involved, with a Fellowship phase down-time of one to two months. An adventure in early Spring, one in Summer and one in Autumn isn't too unbelievable. XP and AP gain will be less in the shorter adventuring phases, so it averages out.

[Heilemann]

I enjoy that pacing myself, I just wonder if the suggested fellowship phase length is an oversight.

[aramis]

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?

Yes, they can be used to fit 2 or even 3 adventures. The key supporting quote...

In the section on Year's End...

Starting the Following Adventuring Phase
When the Loremaster has finished bringing his players up to date and the players are done with their intervetions, the Fellowship phase is over. The next Adventuring phase will take place during the first season of the following year. If the Fellowship phase took place during the year (i.e. the Loremaster is running more than one adventure in that year), then skip this last phase and proceed straight to the start of the next adventure, with the characters leaving their sanctuary or reforming the company at the appointed place.

Color added to emphasize the important line.

It's explicit that the GM may run more than one adventure and may connect them with fellowship phases.

[Stormcrow]

Those who have trouble with fellowship phases are probably cleaving too closely to a D&D-style mindset. Consider the motivations of Tolkien's adventuring characters—but ignore the example in the Adventurer's Guide splitting The Hobbit into phases. Characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings generally don't roam the countryside going from adventure to adventure; they go on an adventure, then settle down. An adventure has a reason for getting involved with it beyond "something bad is occurring and you just happen to be nearby."

Unfortunately, this sort of "you're nearby" motivation is what most of the published adventures employ, which means adventurers DO tend to roam the countryside going from adventure to adventure. The idea of a fellowship phase once per year doesn't really work well with this. A fellowship phase once per season makes more sense, letting adventurers spend a few months interacting with whoever they've just done something for.

So consider whether you're trying for a true Tolkien feel, with adventures with sensible motivations, or if you're going with the less-Tolkien do-gooders–roaming–Wilderland set-up. Use one fellowship phase per year for the former, one fellowship phase per season (-ish) for the latter.

[Heilemann]

I dare say that there are plenty of characters in Tolkien's writing that went on more than one adventure. Aragorn alone has been traversing the Wilderness thin for years on end.

I think the confusion is around the fact that the rules are contradicting themselves.

[aramis]

I dare say that there are plenty of characters in Tolkien's writing that went on more than one adventure. Aragorn alone has been traversing the Wilderness thin for years on end.

I think the confusion is around the fact that the rules are contradicting themselves.

Do they? To me, they don't. I'm curious where you see it, because to me, it's not contradictory.

[Yusei]

Aragorn surely went on more than one adventure, but he lived very long. Without checking, I'd say he's been adventuring for at least 80 years; did he go on more than 80 adventures worth mentionning?

[Valarian]

He served a number of years as a rider of Rohan. Then, again for a number of years, as a guard of the White Tower in Minas Tirith. Both as "Thorongil". He then passed in to the Eastern lands for a number of years. Followed by a hunt for Gollum. Followed by the events in the LotR books. Sounds like a fair number of adventures to me.