When to refresh fellowship pool?

[mirkwoodfalcon]

Hello all!

As I read the RAW, it seemed to me that the fellowship pool of hope points should be refreshed at the beginning of every night of play. Here's the dilemma; We play for 2-3 hours every week, which is short by comparison to most groups. This means that per-adventure, we get more fellowship pool points than most groups do. Because of this (combined with the fact that one of our players is a Hobbit, granting +1 fellowship point per session) we have never, ever had a character run out (or even low on) Hope, and we've nearly been through 3 adventures by this point. What we do is we divy-up the fellowship pool at the end of each night of play to make sure that everyone returns to max (or very near max.) And then, at the fellowship phase once each adventure is completed, we fully replenish our hope and endurance before starting the next module. Are we doing something wrong, or is this how the game is meant to be played?

Thanks for any and all advice on this matter.

[Hermes Serpent]

You only replenish Hope from the Fellowship Pool not at the end of a Fellowship phase. Look at the table on p193 (Revised edition) there is no Undertaking or choice that allows you to recover Hope. The only option is to pay for a Mastery of Confidence p103 (Revised Edition) which resets Hope and adds two points. You can take this option only three times and it costs points.

Recovering Hope by spending it on your Fellowship Focus is a special case and doesn't add extra Hope, merely restoring spent Hope for each action that uses the Hope to aid your FF.

[zedturtle]

Hey HS, I don't think you read the post carefully enough... This is the opposite problem where Hope is coming back too quickly.

I'd suggest looking at Rich H's rules that have the Fellowship Pool refresh at narratively appropriate points. Then it resets at those predetermined points, even if it falls in the middle of a session or takes two sessions to get there.

[Hermes Serpent]

No, you missed the section where he states that they refresh Hope and Endurance to max after the Fellowship Phase which is not RAW.

[Rich H]

I'd suggest looking at Rich H's rules that have the Fellowship Pool refresh at narratively appropriate points. Then it resets at those predetermined points, even if it falls in the middle of a session or takes two sessions to get there.

Thanks zed. For ease of reference it starts on page 26, here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/795 ... 0Rules.pdf

[zedturtle]

No, you missed the section where he states that they refresh Hope and Endurance to max after the Fellowship Phase which is not RAW.

Oh, oops. Indeed that is incorrect. I was just confused, since you hadn't addressed the other point. Mea culpa.

[Hermes Serpent]

His original point of too many Hope points is fixed by not setting them to max at the FP.

[Rich H]

His original point of too many Hope points is fixed by not setting them to max at the FP.

Not completely. He may still have the issue I had in that short sessions lead to too many Fellowship Pool refreshes. The OP does mention that and it's why zed pointed out my house rule, to which I linked to above.

[mirkwoodfalcon]

I'll take a look at those house rules, they might be useful for us Thanks for that link.

Also, I see now that you are correct, we should not be replenishing our hope at each fellowship phase. I'll make a note of this!

[Angelalex242]

In play by post, such as rpol.net, the opposite tends to happen...

Because play by post is such a slow medium, it allows for greater narrative ability, and dives deeper into the thoughts and feelings of characters then face to face or even real time like fantasy grounds does.

However, hope tends to be scarcest in such format, as fellowship pool refreshes may have months...literally...between then.