Fatigue and adventuring

[Hermes Serpent]

I've just run the latest session of our Roll20 Hangout game and the unlucky Woodman who was badly injured by the snow troll got healed by Frar who was making his way back from Erebor on his latest attempt to get the King Under the Mountain to send an expedition to retake Greydelve.

Anyway the return trip across the Withered Heath and back via the Northern Dalelands using the revised Journey rules was a bit of an eye-opener. A TN18 test for the section of the route across the Withered Heath with a character who had a Treated Wound was very hard and he accrued Travel fatigue in great dollops over the three test (2xTN14, 1xTN18)
[Esgaroth to Dale 20 miles, Dale to Erebor 10 miles, Erebor to Pass through mountains to Withered Heath 100 miles
All easy travel in Border Lands TN14 - 6.5 days
Pass to Dwarven Tower 20 miles.
Daunting travel (x5) in Dark Lands TN 18 - 5 days]

We realised that the changes to 2 fatigue for Spring and Summer makes a lot more of a difference that at first thought. If LM's are using the added difficulty of travel in different regions and using the table in the LM book then low ranking characters are going to not want to travel any distance from their home base unless with groups where Failures can be mitigated with bonus dice from Lore rolls. The limitation on one bonus die per test and adding the die before rolling makes for some interesting decisions in allocating those dice.

I thought that LM could probably do with a selection of simpler/safer adventures around the nominal home base of the company (Esgaroth/Laketown). A few two/three session (4-6 hours of play) games should be adequate to get characters to their first Fellowship Phase and maybe the Fall/Autumn or Winter of 2947. So perhaps a session - either Marsh Bell or something similar to take the company to their first encounters with the enemies of the Free Folk. Then something over the Winter unless the company goes their separate ways. A Spring series, a Summer series and maybe even an Autumn series in 2947 would give the Company say 15XP total and 20-25 AP which would go towards avoiding the situation where Companies are poorly served with Travel skills and are almost permanently Fatigued when travelling in even slightly dangerous areas. I know some LM's have reduced the TN's in dangerous areas in the early years presumably to avoid the problems with their companies finding Travel too hard.

[Glorelendil]

Actually, I Gandalfed on the TN 18 test.

Yes, I'm that cool.

[Murcushio]

My own Fellowship just trekked across the entire Heart of Mirkwood (quite literally; we walked north from the Black Tarn and then east along the Old Forest Road, which is one of the longest possible distances you can walk in Severe territory without meandering or doubling back on yourselves) with starting characters.

Now, it's possible our GM was going easy on us; I think we only rolled, mmm, I want to say between eight and ten Fatigue tests the entire time. It's possible he wasn't, however, as we were routinely rolling very well indeed on all our other Travel-related checks. Nevertheless, when we finally got Lake-town the entire company except for myself (I have Hardy as a Trait, which means I laugh at Fatigue tests) was incredibly Weary. In fact I think a lot of us had Fatigue well above our max Endurance scores, especially given the large amounts of treasure we were carrying.

It was okay, though, because when we finally got to Esgaroth, we just... rested for awhile and reclaimed our Fatigue.

It seems like the issue isn't so much "travelling a long way" as it is "traveling a long way from a friendly location." There's no reason you have to be chained to one locale. It's entirely reasonable for a group to travel from, say, the Easterly Inn to Rhosgobel, rest up there to recover, go on an adventure into the Heart of Mirkwood, come back, recover again, go back north to Beorn's House, rest there, go have an adventure at the Stinking Mire, etc. That's not even a years worth of adventuring if you've been efficient in use of your time.

[Glorelendil]

I just checked using my TOR mapping tool, going from the Black Tarn north (on the right side of the river) to the Old Forest Road, then east across Mirkwood, and got 12 fatigue checks in summer. Using the west side of the river it was 10 rolls.

[aramis]

I just checked using my TOR mapping tool, going from the Black Tarn north (on the right side of the river) to the Old Forest Road, then east across Mirkwood, and got 12 fatigue checks in summer. Using the west side of the river it was 10 rolls.

Horses should halve that.

[Hermes Serpent]

No riding in Mirkwood IIRC.

[Andrew]

Did you give the new Hazard rules a go?

[Hermes Serpent]

We stumbled a bit on those conflating them with the old rules and had a few moments where we had to sort out the right method.

Looking back at the chat log, the Beorning rolled a 9, the dwarf a 14 and the injured Woodman 9 with a Eye.
I checked the new rules and had Wound as the Hazard and the Scout as the target. Describing the Spring weather as atrocious with several days of rain and sleet I reread the rules (in the Revisions document) for the new system and although we all agreed that there was a way of the Scout testing it wasn't obvious how that happened from the Revisions document. Going over it again and taking into account the old rules we decided that the document meant we should make an Explore TN14 test to see if the Scout failed and was penalised. Looking at the results table it wasn't obvious which Success dice was being referred to in the table for "Lose Endurance equal to Success die result, or suffer a Wound on an Eye". If you are rolling several Success dice on a test that could be a lot of Endurance loss. As the Woodman passed the Explore test it didn't come up, but looking at it this morning I decided it should be a separate Success die roll to determine the loss i.e.1D6. On top of losing 2 Endurance for failing a Spring Travel test that's a lot of Endurance loss and could make someone Weary just from that one failure.

[Andrew]

It does mean roll a D6 to determine Endurance loss; we use the term Success die instead though!

[Valarian]

It does mean roll a D6 to determine Endurance loss; we use the term Success die instead though!

Maybe use the "roll 1d6" terminology for the endurance loss roll. Success die to me means the dice I'm rolling as part of the skill roll, with all the mechanics such as the Tengwar rune and ignoring 1 to 3 when weary. If we're meant to just treat it as a normal die, then perhaps the d6 terminology is better.