Aspiring Lore Masters

[robbmiller]

Being away from RPGs for a while now, I am trying to get my brain around TOR. It is substantially different from the last game I GMed, AD&D over 20 years ago.

I have the core rulebook and the available supplements (save Rivendell which I am waiting for).

I recently read a thread here about how to introduce the game, step-by-step, to new players. What steps should an aspiring LM take to master the rules and bring a satisfying experience to his players?

BTW: My gaming group will be my family who are used to me blundering through the rules of new games and are very forgiving.

[jamesrbrown]

Hi robbmiller! Welcome to The One Ring forum community and congratulations on finding such a high quality game! You are going to love every minute playing it...and so is your family.

For me, just reading through the core rulebook a couple of times really helped me to get the swing of things, paying close attention to all the examples and tables throughout the rulebook. Then, running The Marsh-bell really brought it together. Honestly, I picked up the rules very quickly.

Here are the top four areas I would focus on before my first game:

1. How to be a Loremaster. Read Part Six: The Loremaster fully; do not skip anything! It will really help you to understand your job.

2. How to create player-heroes. Master this by walking through the process until you feel comfortable. By doing this, you will learn many things about the game because you will be curious about how each statistic is used. This will include answering questions about Fellowship focus and the Fellowship rating. You will be spending much of this time in Part Two: Creating a Hero, while referencing Part Three: Fundamental Characteristics.

3. How Adversaries work. Read Part Seven: The Shadow. You don't have to read every detail about each creature, but understand that they do not operate exactly the same way player-heroes do, so it is imperative you understand their statistics and Special abilities.

4. How an Adventuring phase works. Read Part Four: Adventuring phase completely. This will give you all the basics about resolving actions and how to handle Journeys, Combats, and Encounters. When you have questions about anything, don't hesitate to create a post here on the forum! There are plenty of willing people who can help you. Some have been playing since the beginning in 2011 and others are newer, but we're all big fans of the game and how it works!

That's my advice for now. Get ready for all kinds of fun!

[Glorelendil]

I'll add a few things that I thought were "different" from my experience playing other RPGs:

1) I was used to playing "this is what I want to do....what skill do I use and what do I need to roll?" TOR approaches things a little differently: instead of having a rule for every occasion, players are encouraged to make the roll and then narrate the result based on the outcome. So instead of telling a player he can get extra damage for making a rogue-like sneak attack, tell him to roll the dice: if he rolls some Tengwars for extra damage, encourage him to narrate how the sneak attack struck a vital spot. "Bonus dice" from preliminary rolls are another way to accomplish this: if the player has some extra dice from a successful battle roll, encourage him to use them to narrate "I snuck up on my opponent and get a sneak attack!" (There's no guarantee that the bonus die will make a difference, but it might.)

2) Traits always cause some confusion. Read other threads in this forum to understand them better. The key thing for players to understand is that Traits can be invoked before a roll for an auto-success (at the LM's discretion to avoid abuse), but doing so eliminates the possibility of great/extraordinary successes or earning Advancement Points. Or they can be invoked after the roll to earn higher (2nd and 3rd) Advancement Points. (Traits can also be invoked to allow a roll after the LM has said, "No roll is possible", but in my experience that occurs less often.)

3) The first time I LM'd the game I spent forever figuring out the travel rolls for a journey while my players yawned. So I wrote an app to make it easier. See the link below. (It does require you to have the PDF version of the maps.)

Good luck! Post questions here!

[Robin Smallburrow]

1. In addition to what others have said, in my view you need to understand the Hope/Shadow/Fellowship dynamic especially, as to me this is the real heart of TOR - by which I mean things like Hope, Shadow, Fellowship Points, Fellowship Focus, gaining Shadow, regaining Hope etc. because you as LM will need to be able to answer questions from your players about these things.

Why is this central to TOR? Because a Fellowship that acts like one (working together) will survive!! This also means that players should create their characters together, not independently!

2. You should run through a quick demo for yourself of the Journey, Encounter & Combat rules so you get an idea of the basic rules for these key elements of the Adventuring Phase so when a player asks you a curly question you know what to answer!

Welcome to the forum!
Robin S.

[Majestic]

2) Traits always cause some confusion. Read other threads in this forum to understand them better. The key thing for players to understand is that Traits can be invoked before a roll for an auto-success (at the LM's discretion to avoid abuse), but doing so eliminates the possibility of great/extraordinary successes or earning Advancement Points.

So no Advancement Point if the player invokes a Trait (to get an ordinary success for their first AP in that Skill Group)? I always figured that invoking a Trait was the equivalent of making a successful roll, but then the rules do say "upon any successful roll".

Great advice so far. Let me add that many of the supplementary tools made by the TOR community can really make life easier for the LM. There's everything from really handy Indexes to game aids (like Voidstate's battle and journey maps) that can really help make things more easily understood (both for yourself and your players).

[Stormcrow]

So no Advancement Point if the player invokes a Trait (to get an ordinary success for their first AP in that Skill Group)?

Right. Traits have three uses: automatic action, unforeseen action; advancement point. Normally, you can only use ONE of these at a time. (There are some places, magic items in Rivendell I think, where you are explicitly given permission to apply two invocations simultaneously.)

[Majestic]

Thanks, stormcrow. I didn't realize that before, but it does make sense (and gives more of an incentive to roll them bones!)

[Eluadin]

My gaming group will be my family who are used to me blundering through the rules of new games and are very forgiving.

Hey robbmiller, I was wondering if you might share how it's going...I'm really curious!

The comments and suggestion in this thread are awesome. It might be interesting, if you don't mind sharing, how it has played out so far. I'm familiar with jamesrbrown's take on Loremastering, we've collaborated on a few things like Mythic Battles so his vision on Tolkien and evoking a great roleplaying experience resonates. I really like Glorelendil's attention to Traits and the Journey rules for their narrative impact--both positively and negative in impact! The centrality of Fellowship and all the mechanics that interact with it Robin tabled and I agree from my own experience as a Loremaster.

I hope you share the fruit of your own encounter with The One Ring!

Sincerely,
Scott