Actual play experience of Hope/Shadow

[Murcushio]

Twenty sessions or so in, my group has experienced an odd curve.

We started off hardly using any Hope at all, because we saw it as a limited resource.

Then we realized that, because we had a Hobbit and a Beorning with Honey-Cakes, if nobody got wounded in a session everybody could spend two points every session and come out even, with some left over on top of that. And we started getting much more liberal with the Hope usage.

That, in turn, led to us overspending, which drove several people down to around 25% of total Hope until they realized they needed to cut back a little bit and not spend Hope just because they blew a roll.

As far as Shadow goes, we're all super clean. Our Fellowship is well-behaved and everybody acts to clear Shadow the instant they accumulate any at all.

Some of us have gone massively out-of-character in order to do this. My Beorning is neither particularly into singing nor particularly into making things, but she damn well has Craft 3 because I refuse to lose control of my character or gain permanent Shadow. Most of the rest of the Fellowship feels the same way.

[Yusei]

As I have often said here, I too think the shadow/hope rules are a bit too lenient. We have played through TfW, another home-maid campaign, and a bunch of adventures from DoM, for what must be about 50 sessions. We had one bout of madness, during "those who tarry no longer". After two thirds of TfW, things got a little too easy, as characters got better with Craft/Song, got a few sanctuaries, higher Wisdom, honey cakes and such. Realising that, I house-ruled a thing or two, and brought them to dark places, but they still get rid of shadow pretty easily.

In my opinion, shadow shouldn't be a problem when you start avdenturing, but it should become one after a few years. In the RAW, it's the opposite, and when you're an experienced character, shadow only becomes dangerous if you go too long without a fellowship phase (or if you have urgent undertakings to take).

[Dunkelbrink]

Of course a matter of taste, but I can't help thinking that lost hope and the concept of good characters falling from grace due to sadness and corrupting things is a vital part of Tolkien's world. In my campaign I want that to be the case at least, to see the players start out as fresh heroes, but as the years pass by they will start to feel the burdens of fate upon them. And I want the rules to support this.

That's why I think it's really interesting that Yusei describes that he's experienced only one bout of madness during 50+ sessions of play. No one else seems to have had even one, at least not among those who posted here. I think it's fair to say that the RAW are a bit too lenient. I might have to turn up the Shadow gain even more to get to the point where it becomes a real threat. I agree with Yusei that Shadow should be a problem only after a few years of adventuring, but that it's a problem if the Shadow is less of an issue when you're experienced.

[Falenthal]

I haven´t your experience, but what about something simple like doubling the number of Shadow Points gained?

[Corvo]

I would avoid increasing Shadow points gain, else the players would feel compelled to "spam" Heal Corruption undertaking.

My choice had been to make Heal Corruption uncommon, and tied to specific events in the campaign: in a dozen adventures of the King's Men fellowship, I allowed it only three times.
The other venue I adopted was having more uses for Hope, in the form of the Parry rolls: but that is a road precluded to most LM, given the hefty game implications.

Another, extreme idea I'm mulling about is having Corruption rolls for acts of "legitimate" violence, as in fighting for self defense. Extreme, as I said, but I'm starting to think if it's the moment to question the standard "death is the easy solution" attitude of RPGs. No decision yet on the subject, just mulling.

[Hermes Serpent]

My original company has gone through about 10 sessions of about 2-3 hours apiece on average. Saturday evening was their third Fellowship phase and they chose to rid themselves of Shadow although they have few AP's to spend on skills they have a hoard of treasure to resolve. They have done the Marsh Bell, travelled across Mirkwood and back through the Grey Mountain Narrows, done a small side trek finding out a lost tinker and completed a trip down the Celduin to sort out some bandits disguised as Easterlings. Now the Mirkwoood trip was early on and I went very easy on them being a little unsure of the Travel rules and travelling in Mirkwood. The early threads about too much die rolling for travel affected my approach and the confused variety of methods of adjudicating travel didn't help at all. So in the only real chance to accrue Shadow I was easy on this company but when removing Shadow this FP the dwarf removed 4 points, the Elf I believe up to 6 (I think he actually had 3) and the Lakeman 2. All accrued via travelling and none via misdeeds or any other method of gaining Shadow. The players all seemed concerned about the amount of Shadow they had gained which is a good thing.

[Robin Smallburrow]

I have read the other posts with interest about this issue, as I see the Hope/Shadow/Fellowship dynamic as being central to TOR. My own observations from LMing TOR is that although I can't claim to have done 50 sessions I have seen these problems from running TOR at Cons, which IMHO highlight good and bad aspects of a RPG.

Some suggestions & house rules:

1. Someone in a previous thread recommended that Shadow should be easy to gain,since it is fairly easy to remove. I agree with this and advise that LMs should be less lenient- don't feel bad about giving out Shadow, even for seemingly trivial things.

2. I also think Sanctuaries should be much harder for PC's to obtain, and the same goes for the Fellowship Focus. In my current campaign with 4 PCs only two have a Fellowship Focus and only two have Sanctuaries.

3. Taking a skill rank of 3 in Craft or Song without fitting the character concept just to make it easier to remove Shadow is exactly the sort of stuff I don't allow in my games! If you as LM allow this sort of stuff what other things are your players doing that will also create problems down the track

4. Nothing burns Hope faster than Combat- if you look at the Official adventures there are at least two minor and one major Combat scenes, so Ensure that there are enough combat scenes in the Adventuring phase.

5. A useful House Rule used originally at Cons is that the LM can rule that a Bout of Madness results from an Eye result on a failed Corruption test (instead of only when PC is Miserable as per RAW). This seems to reflect better characters' actions in the stories

Robin S.

[Yusei]

That's why I think it's really interesting that Yusei describes that he's experienced only one bout of madness during 50+ sessions of play.

And that was in the first third of those 50+ sessions.

Since then, I have made a few house rules. One of them makes the "heal corruption" tests harder if you have a lot of shadow (TN 12+shadow). I believe it works well with a new group, but mine is already a tad too strong, and they don't really fear TNs of 16+.