Quick Indiecon test game report

[Hermes Serpent]

I've been working out a con scenario to demo TOR at Dragonmeet in London next month so I took it to the UK's South Coast for Indiecon this past weekend.

The scenario was that a number of Dwarves had been tasked by King Dain II to investigate a old report in the archives in Erebor of a secret door into Moria. In case of female players or someone with a dislike of playing a dwarf I did two woodmen heroes/heroines as well. None of the players had played before and some claimed to have never read The Hobbit or LotR so I'm afraid I went a little too heavy on the rules explanation too early and saw some players start to wilt. One player was going to be running the game and had questions and needed some clarifications which slowed the game a bit at the start.

The Encounter with the Woodmen chief at Rhosgobel that started the scenario to introduce the Woodmen characters to the Dwarves didn't quite go as well as I'd hoped mostly because to the previous rules dump which had proven to be a bit boring. I need to revise my introduction to cover just the skills section at first and introduce other bits as necessary.

Anyway, a bit of a short journey from Rhosgobel to the Anduin was covered narratively and again I need to revise how I'm going to deal with this as one player was confused by the switching between narrative, an Episode with some wolves and back to narrative. The 'setting up camp', the fight and then arriving at the river had him well confused.

The planned Encounter/Episode with the Leofrings at the river was sort of glossed over as some of the players obviously wanted to just hit things.

Another Travel roll for the journey to Dwarrowhall and an Eye gave the Scout a chance to find signs of a large force of goblins travelling from Southern Mirkwood to the Misty Mountains. Pressing on in the hope of finding somewhere safe from goblins they found Dwarrowhall and saw some signs of recent habitation. The Battle rolls for finding a good defensive position went well although one player (the confused one) found it hard to get past the initial Battle roll (by the most skilled dwarf) for finding the best defensive position and the individual Battle rolls to get Combat Advantage and the situational modifiers I was throwing in (choke point, fallen stones as barrier etc) also didn't help.

I borrowed the fight from Stewed Hobbit as the basis for the final battle but that didn't provide as good a fight as I'd hoped. The players felt that (in a after action debrief) they didn't have much choice beyond just keep fighting goblins. I've done a rewrite so that they can have a choice between doing a falling back defensive fight or a heroic charge to attack the leader of the orcs and cut him down to demoralise the goblins.

One of the other main issues was having six players, too many to handle in about four hours for a complex game with so many players who didn't know the rules.

As another method of adjusting the style I'm going to need I played in another LM's game on Sunday morning so I could see how someone else ran the game. The scenario was Marsh Bell which I don't see as a particularly great scenario for a con game, it's more designed as an intro than a one shot game. I think I'll run Blood in the Water at Conception as a con game as it seems, having run it as a starter scenario for a club game, better suited to show the rule system to players (an Encounter, search, track, small fight, big fight).

The Sunday morning LM had limited his game to four players which definitely worked much better than six and paced his introduction (although one player was in the LM's on-line game and I knew the rules it was easier to work with just two players needing help) with no explanation of the character sheet and just the dice mechanic at first. Combat explanations only came in when we fought the final adversaries (no Episodes for us with failed travel rolls in the marshes).

I noticed there that there tends to be a lot of overlap in LM's and players minds between Search (small area) and Explore (large area) skills. The Traits are also an issue as despite a cheat sheet for each hero in my game one player couldn't manage to understand getting a 'free' success when using his trait in role play to deal with an issue. The fact that the cheat sheet had several options for a single skill (the sheet is based off the Using Traits document that Rich did customised for the individual hero) definitely threw him.

I think I'll skip any mention of that part of rules (traits) and tell the Dragonmeet players that the game is only a taster and the full rules aren't in play.

[James Harrison]

Could you consider starting a the scenario in a battle; So the characters are thrown into a tense situation straight up, and get to learn the mechanics. You can then have Woodmen coming as "reinforcements" -potentially finishing the fight early and bringing the players into an Encounter.
This would doubly help players not be "bored" and might mean players that "need to hit things" will be happy to role play in the aftermath of having hit things.

[Hermes Serpent]

Thanks for responding but I think it's really not in the spirit of the rules to stress the combat areas of the game. I was trying to put the Encounter and Travel material front and centre rather than the Combat to avoid the usual RPG stance of 'I hit it' compared to 'I talk with him'.

It's true there is plenty of combat to be found fighting orcs, spiders and things of evil but not to the exclusion of the role play and interaction with the other creatures in Arda. I've thoroughly revised the way I'm approaching revealing rules to players through play to give a much better impression.

TOR is probably the most complex game I've had to explain to players without any game system experience in nearly forty years. With the majority of games I can say it's like X or Y but this bit is different and people get it immediately but that isn't something you can do with One Ring.

[James Harrison]

I've thoroughly revised the way I'm approaching revealing rules to players through play to give a much better impression.

That is brilliant! I'd picked up from your original post that you would think through how you were presenting the rules. I'm glad that it has worked out well. I agree with you that combat isn't the focus of The One Ring. When typing the suggestion I was actually struggling with that very concept, but if you hadn't come up with a more eloquent & engaging way to present the rules that it would be a good way to introduce new players to the base mechanics (Rolls, hope, endurance, fatigue), throw them into a tense situation... and would hopefully placate the bloodthirsty to then enjoy the non-bloodthirsty parts. Anyway that's enough self justification! Again I'm really glad you've found a good way to explain the game.

On that note I've come to believe that being able to explain a game is a laudable skill. I have a friend who is excellent at game explanations; and it came as a shock to discover I was not naturally very good at it. Explaining a relatively simple game, 7 Wonders, got me into a big twist... and I learnt something similar to the purpose of your post - if you spend time thinking through how best to explain a game (particularly after succeeding badly!) you get a much much better explanation at the end! It's a bit oblivious really but spending time thinking things through helps! Who would have thought (I'm an extrovert, so sitting and thinking is not how I naturally process).

Thanks for sharing!

God bless,
james