Tell Me About Your Group! (And how you play)
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 2:07 pm
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!
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!