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If your fellowship focus wasn't severely harmed you get one point of how back outer session... And you can get a little back with undertakings... Is that it? Should my players need extremely frugal with their hope?

Yes and no. You also get the fellowship pool back, divided among the fellowship.

So as long as the fellowship spends less hope (among all players) then is in the actual fellowship pool, they'll never run out. Thus, if it's a 5 person party, don't spend more then 5 between refreshes.

Now, if you're a Dunedain (like Aragorn) then you can't use the fellowship pool, so your only chances are 'events' and your fellowship focus. Good thing Aragorn knew 'we could do without hope. There is always Vengeance!'

Plus, declining hope and the gradual gain of shadow is part of the game. It's an inevitable part of adventuring. If you want to remain hopeful and happy, stay at home and farm the land - until the orcs show up.

A hobbit or two in the party also helps. They give an extra point to the fellowship pool.

Angelalex242 wrote:Good thing Aragorn knew 'we could do without hope. There is always Vengeance!'

What's that from? I don't remember that quote.

Master Smithwise: regarding your comment about 'regaining a little Hope' during Fellowship Phases...count on that being very little. There are not many undertakings that allow it, and you may have a lot of other things to accomplish during those phases.

Valarian wrote:Plus, declining hope and the gradual gain of shadow is part of the game. It's an inevitable part of adventuring. If you want to remain hopeful and happy, stay at home and farm the land - until the orcs show up.

I dunno about 'declining Hope', the game I'm currently playing in is still pretty early on to some degree (around the 20 xp mark for most characters)...but we're also only down an average of less than 1 Hope a piece, and don't seem to exceed our Fellowship Pool + Hope from Fellowship Focuses, on average. Of course, we've got a pool of 7 for 5 characters, which helps a lot...but we weren't actually gaining Hope from our Fellowship Focuses for most of the game...since that started, we've actually been experiencing a net gain on Hope on average. 10-12 Hope (gotta account for Weariness, wounds, and other trauma) per session is plenty most of the time for 5 characters...more than enough in relatively quiet sessions or ones where the dice are being generous, which allows it to be used to replenish losses from situations where it isn't enough.

It seems like, if you use Hope relatively conservatively for the most part and have some people providing extra Fellowship Pool you could keep this going well-nigh indefinitely (for non-Dunedain anyway). And it's not just the LM being nice to us, since I know for a fact we're going through bits of Tales From Wilderland and doing The Darkening of Mirkwood, both more-or-less as written.

Shadow accumulation is another matter entirely, and pretty unavoidable in the long term, though frequent use of the reducing shadow Fellowship Phase action can help quite a bit (the aforementioned group also have a max of two temporary shadow a piece and no permanent shadow at all at the moment...I think the max anyone's had at once was 6, while I think the most a character has accumulated is 8 or so).

Valarian wrote:A hobbit or two in the party also helps. They give an extra point to the fellowship pool.

Beornings with Twice-Baked Honey Cakes very effectively serve this purpose as well.

And all Beornings should grab themselves Twice-Baked Honey Cakes at some point.

Glorelendil wrote:

Angelalex242 wrote:Good thing Aragorn knew 'we could do without hope. There is always Vengeance!'

What's that from? I don't remember that quote.

Angelalex242 is thinking of the Bakshi film, where, after escaping Moria, Aragorn says, "Then we must do without hope. There is always vengeance." It is based on a line from the beginning of Book II, Chapter 6: "‘We must do without hope,’ he said. ‘At least we may yet be avenged."

Deadmanwalking wrote:I dunno about 'declining Hope', [...] It seems like, if you use Hope relatively conservatively for the most part and have some people providing extra Fellowship Pool you could keep this going well-nigh indefinitely (for non-Dunedain anyway).

Agreed. There's a perception among some that in order to play the game properly every character has to end up scrabbling for Hope at some point, and if you don't have at least one Bout of Madness at some point you're missing out on something. I don't think this is the case; not everyone reaches such a catastrophe. Hope is something you have to maintain. It's not there just so you can lose it.

Stormcrow wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:I dunno about 'declining Hope', [...] It seems like, if you use Hope relatively conservatively for the most part and have some people providing extra Fellowship Pool you could keep this going well-nigh indefinitely (for non-Dunedain anyway).

Agreed. There's a perception among some that in order to play the game properly every character has to end up scrabbling for Hope at some point, and if you don't have at least one Bout of Madness at some point you're missing out on something. I don't think this is the case; not everyone reaches such a catastrophe. Hope is something you have to maintain. It's not there just so you can lose it.

I agree. I do think the sweet spot is 2-3 Hope per session, i.e. Just enough that you're going down over the long term.

- - - - -

For clarity's sake, the Fellowship Pool cannot be used to replenish Hope that wasn't spent in that session. I think some comments in this thread might lead new folks to misinterpret this rule, so I wanted to say something that might be obvious to everyone out loud.

Zedturtle could you please give a reference for your clarification? It seems to contradict the RAW from what I read in the Revised Rulebook on page 132-133 under the section Fellowship Points. As far as I can see I am allowed to use the Fellowship Points to refresh my personal Hope up to my maximum.

zedturtle wrote:the Fellowship Pool cannot be used to replenish Hope that wasn't spent in that session.

I agree with bluejay; I don't think there's any such rule.