Newbie questions about the game

[Robin Smallburrow]

Hi Steelwind, welcome to the forum and hope you love the game like most of us!

I recommend that if you are considering running TOR that you playtest first examples of the three main parts of this game: - a sample combat, a sample encounter and a sample Journey, so that you get your head around the 'rules' for these three aspects of TOR.

You also need to explain to your players the dice and how they are used. Each player rolls a 'Feat' die (12 sided) along with 'success' dice (these are six-sided, no. rolled depends on skill rank - so a skill rank of 3 means 3 dice rolled, and tries to match a difficulty TN set by the LM - with TN 14 being considered 'average'. This applies to all dice rolls in TOR, including Wisdom & Valour tests.

Last but not least, the central theme of this game is Fellowship - that characters can achieve great things if they work together - this theme is represented mechanically in the game by the Fellowship Pool and Fellowship Focus. Characters can only regain Hope (which is what you use to boost dice rolls) by using points from the fellowship pool, or if they are 'directly aiding' their Fellowship Focus.

Because a Fellowship that behaves as a true Fellowship will survive, I also strongly recommend that when you sit down with your players that all of you design the Fellowship first before allowing particular PC types - a Noldor elf is all very well, but how does the character 'fit in' as part of the Fellowship??

Robin S.