Tell Me About Your Group! (And how you play)

[Scrollreader]

Between analysis of my own sessions, and discussing possible house rules, I've started to wonder about how groups approach the game. In order not to sidetrack too far from the purpose of those threads, I thought I'd start a new thread here.

My group consists of six players, all of whom are e pretty experienced roleplayers, from a variety of backgrounds. Pretty much all of them have at least some experience with D&D in various forms, and most of them have years of experience from LARPing in the World of Darkness. They have varying degrees of exposure to other systems of roleplay, from Star Wars (old d6), Shadowrun, Pathfinder, and Mutants and Masterminds.

What they are not, however, are Tolkien obsessive. One player is a great lover of the books, and is the one who encouraged me to take a look at The One Ring. The rest may have read the books, and everyone is familiar with the movies, of course. But I'm pretty sure I'm the only one to have read any of the Tolkien canon beyond the core books.

They are also all adults, around 30 or so, and about half of them have experience running their own games in the past or currently.

We also had a long talk about setting and expectations for the game, as in my experience, the number one problem that kills roleplaying games is a disconnect on tone and type of game between players and LM.

When we started, they were a little too gun-shy about spending Hope, and there was overflow from the fellowship pool (mostly due to forgetting about fellowship focus hope). We're just starting the third year of the campaign, and we've had 4 and a half adventuring phases. Since we run long games (about 5-6 hours) they're actually getting less use from the fellowship pool than 'normal', but I've normalized XP to match the book suggestion per year (more or less).

I'm running the Darkening of Mirkwood, with both Tales and some custom adventures woven into the game, to get two to three adventuring phases per year. After six sessions, and 4 full adventuring phases (and 4 fellowship phases, two of which were year end), the fellowship has three characters who are below maximum hope (by a point each). They've dipped below this, but in general, they are good about handling the hope economy.

Relatedly, my players are all mature players who are not afraid to let their character fail. They are getting a good feel for what the consequences of failure will be, and are phenomenal about working together as a group. On multiple occasions, they have pooled or lent treasure (particularly to let people buy standing), and they are all happy to let someone shine in their area of expertise. They also have been very tactical about trait usage, using traits when failure seems to have dire consequences, rather than risk a failure and a hope expenditure, and invoking them often in order to get extra AP or (particularly) for unexpected actions.

In combat, hope expenditure is rare, and tends to be reserved for a Pierce threat or a double tengwar on a Large Sized or otherwise 'boss' bad guy; or else on a dire protection check.

So: What is the makeup of your group? How much hope do they tend to spend? Do they use traits often? How much shadow do they 'carry' before spending downtime actions on removing it?

TL;DR : I have a group of veterans (from other systems), they use hope sparingly, and make good decisions as players, aren't afraid to fail as characters. Tell me about your group and game!

[Majestic]

My group used to be much larger, but has settled down to four regular players (besides myself). All of us are long-time veterans with RPGs, and we play FTF (face-to-face).

My players are fairly familiar with Tolkien, most have read at least some of the books, and they're all familiar with the movies. None are scholars that are familiar with the intricate details.

Most are older (40s through 60s), but one is young 20s (my son). We've all been playing games with each other for many years (decades).

My players work well together, and generally understand the proper Middle-earth themes. Most are not afraid to have their characters sing or craft or do other things that fit the setting well, and they do an excellent job of protecting whomever might be weak or vulnerable, both amongst their own party or when NPCs are in those states. Some have really stepped forward to call out and encourage the Free Peoples to rally together and to set their differences aside, advocating for the unity necessary to defeat the Shadow.

We're about half-way through Darkening of Mirkwood, and have played the entirety of Tales, along with a few others (Words of the Wise, The Marsh Bell). One PC died along the way, another more or less retired, and a few other PCs have floated in or out of their lives through the years.

Nowadays, they tend to rarely spend Hope beyond what they started the session with, and they're competent enough to be able to do this. They're not afraid to fail, and it often happens anyway (often where a Hope expenditure wouldn't have helped anyway). Shadow scores are pretty low (the only exception being the deceased Dwarf, who kept a high total due to Stiff Neck), and they tend to work off any darkness clinging to them during Fellowship Phases.

TL; DR: My group of gamers enjoys the setting and the game, and work together well. They're veterans of other games (for a long time, together), and rarely spend Hope beyond the Fellowship Pool.

[zedturtle]

I have three groups. Plus there's a few people that I get to play with once or twice a year, and then I can draw from various groups to do special one-offs.

Group A is currently going through the Darkening of Mirkwood, Special Edition. They (although to be honest only a core sliver of the group has been there from day one) first went through Tales From Wilderland and then we segued into Darkening. There are six players, most of which are up on their Tolkien but everyone is usually too kind to correct any of my gaffes (though, of course, I'm always looking for feedback and would love it for folks to say 'nope, that's not working for me'). They're all focused very much on their characters and right now a central tension is within the group instead of outside of it. In the past (with this group even), that would have been really hard or impossible to pull off, but I trust all of them. I think we're going to get a great Boromir-like moment here sooner or later.

Group B is reconstituting itself after suffering a HPK (Half Party Kill). One of my players from Group A is in this group, along with four other players. They are also fairly well versed in Tolkien and really appreciate playing in the world. They're usually pretty enthusiastic about meeting folks like Glorfindel and Gandalf and DJ Tommy B. We have some new characters played by old players after the HPK, including our first female dwarf, our first Dunlending and a laketowner that was marked by Smaug. After a dragon caused the HPK, the company has decided that they're going to be dragon-hunters, which is a really interesting hook that I can lead them around from place to place by trying to get ready to actually face the dragon again and defeat her.

Group C is my smallest group, with only four players. I share this group with another GM and often do little things (one-offs) with them on my nights to run games. Three of the four players have very little experience, and none of them are very up on the Tolkien lore at all. So that's an interesting change and allows me to have a 'control group', which mostly reminds me to control myself about geeking out over Tolkien.

— • —

Demographically, my players come from all over. One of the parts that I'm proudest of is that I've got at least one female player in each group. And for a little while, I had my 14-year-old playing with Group C. Both things hopefully point to growing the game and making even more folks interested in playing.

[Hamarr]

My first time with the One Ring had a fair amount of RPG vets, and a few newbies. The Loremaster is a huge Tolkien fan, and had ran some games of the One Ring with three of the players in my group. The amount of Tolkien knowledge was varied, coming from some who were mostly familiar with the films, and other who have read the books. At the time of playing our LM was the only one who read the Sil. But the game encouraged my love for Tolkien after reading the books in my High School days.

Our group was made up of all young adults, in their 20s. The starting group included myself playing a Man of the Lake named Hamarr, stuck to sword and board in combat with a decent amount of social skills. Alas as I was getting used to the rules I was not aware of some armor qualities that lowered encumbrance of gear. I got the Mail armor reward, but because of combat got harder and before I could rectify the problem Hamarr fell in combat. But he was a good and noble character.

The LM's girlfriend played a Barding scholar named Bard, who was a dashing swordsman and retired eventually to serve King Bard. he eventually settled down with another hero of the Woodmen named The Fey.

The Fey was our ranged hero who would occasionally come into defensive with her long hafted axe. Unfortunately do to some disagreements she eventually left.

The most badass and longest running character was Belli the Dwarf who had accumulated so much treasure, and fame. The player joked about how every single time you saw Belli, he gained at least two pounds. He eventually found the Black Sword of Turin on the isle of Tol Morwen. Adopting a Lake Town warrior as his apprentice, he retired and so Varr carried the Black Sword until it could be reforged.

The last of our original company included a wayward elf of the wood named Tindraug who was a spearman, and a treasure hunter, and Hobbit of the Shire Chika Took who died doing battle angainst a wraith along the banks of the Anduin.

Other characters joined as heroes died in combat, or retired. I played Haleth the son of Hamarr named after the young boy from Those Who Tarry who took a liking to Hamarr, Hamarr's line is a tragic tale, ending with Haleth who was cursed by an ancient helm of the East Bight.

[arthyn]

Our current group spans three generations!

Players are my son and daughter (playing a Beorning and a Ranger respectively), my wife who plays a High Elven Scholar, and my mother in law who is playing as a Woodmen of Wilderland. We've been making our way through Tales of Wilderland, and we're currently about halfway through Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit. Usual sessions are around two to three hours, and everyone has been having a great time.

We generally play once a week, usually Friday or Saturday night so as not to conflict with homework!

Here's a shot from our last game night:

[mirkwoodfalcon]

My group has been playing for the last three years and shifted a bit over that time. It started at seven (6 players + LM), then went to 5 (4 players + LM), then to 7 again, and now it's right at 6. My older brother used to LM for us, but he has since moved on and I am now the LM.

We're all pretty young, early 20-somethings, and nearly all of us were new to tabletop roleplaying games when we started One Ring. Two also play in a D&D campaign, with one of my regular players being the DM for that game.

All of us have seen the movies of course and have a good deal of respect for them, but I like to sneak lots of book-lore into the games and run it very much so 'from the source'. A few of the players have read the books, and my wife (who is part of our group) has even humored me by reading Children of Hurin with me.

All in all, it's a very fun group to run, especially since I get to bring elements in to play from the lore that some of them have no idea about, but others will immediately recognize. There's a bit more of an action-oriented play style than some groups which I suspect is a holdout from the D&D mentality of some of the players, but not overly so. We play every week for 3 hours on a weekend night and have a blast.

We've run through Tales and about half of Darkening, and I've had some one-off sessions where I introduced elements from Rivendell and Journeys and Maps (the ruin generation chapter is excellent!)

Our group is composed of one High Elf, one Elf of Mirkwood, one Beorning, one Dunlending-turned-Woodman, and one Man of the Lake. In the past we also had two Bardings, another two Elves of Mirkwood, a Hobbit, another Beorning, two Dwarves of Erebor, and a Ranger. (some players have played more than one character over the years; others have stuck with theirs since they started.) As a fun fact, none of our original characters from three years ago are still being played, but they occasionally feature as NPC's.