How do you award AP?

[Stormcrow]

There is a resulting tendency for players to always want to roll the dice

The Loremaster is in charge of setting difficulty levels. If he declares an action to be automatic, then the players don't get to roll. If the players are looking for pointless opportunities to roll the dice to get advancement points, the Loremaster only has to declare them automatic actions. Problem solved.

Generally, actions should only be rolled for when failure would bring significant consequences to the player-characters. Climbing every tree and inspiring awe in every acquaintance have no significant consequences, so they're automatic actions and passed over without rolling.

[Falenthal]

There is a resulting tendency for players to always want to roll the dice

The Eye of Mordor rule comes in handy here, to always risk something when rolling.

Also, what Stormcrow said: not everything a player proposes needs a roll.

[Majestic]

WRT those "double score" Undertakings mentioned earlier, I've found those to be (to put it nicely) worthless Undertakings, and none of my players have ever chosen them.

I've used the Revised rules for AP collections (as enumerated here a couple of times) and think they work fine. My players rack up plenty of AP, without any extraneous rolling, just in the course of a normal adventure.

[Stormcrow]

Some groups will wish to maximize their benefits during a fellowship phase; others will wish to explore their characters and put interesting things into their Tale of Years.

[Glorelendil]

I agree about the problem of the incentive to roll more dice. It also seems slightly out of kilter that some virtues become AP machines (Natural Watchfulness and Ill Omen come to mind.) Really I think the best fix is to (re-)instate the requirement that failure have serious consequences, although I'd add that it must also be direct consequences. Otherwise you'd have somebody arguing that if they hadn't succeeded at Natural Watchfulness they wouldn't have known about the Troll, etc., etc.

[Earendil]

For comparison, here's how advancement points are awarded in the original rules.

Advancement points should be considered in any of the following circumstances:

• A player who succeeds at an action may invoke a trait to gain an advancement point.
• If the player was told prior to the roll that failing would have serious, negative consequences, a successful roll should always be considered worthy of an advancement point.
• Success at severe or daunting difficulties should usually be considered worthy of an advancement point.

Then there is the limit per skill group:

• The first circle is filled by satisfying any of the above.
• The second circle is filled by satisfying any of the above and if the character has achieved something out of the ordinary.
• The third circle is filled by satisfying any of the above and when something truly extraordinary has resulted.

The distinction between simple, great, and extraordinary successes is only to be used as a guideline by Loremasters, not an absolute measurement. A clever player will think of special things to do that have out of the ordinary or exceptional results, but which they manage to achieve with only a simple success. These can still fill in the later circles.

The revised rules are much simpler and are, in my opinion, inferior for it:

• The first circle may be filled upon any successful action.
• The second circle may be filled on any great or extraordinary success or if the player invokes a trait.
• The third circle may be filled on any great or extraordinary success and if the player invokes a trait.

That's it. It's purely about how well you roll and whether you can invoke a trait. The consequences and the difficulty have nothing to do with it. Hence, the revised rules favor characters who already have higher skill ratings.

This is very interesting. I own the original slipcase edition of TOR, but before I ever got to run it the revised edition came out, so I used that for my campaign. I used the revised rules for advancement as they seemed much more user-friendly for a new LM, and didn't really ever look at the older ones again, until now.

I actually don't think there's much difference in principle, but the original rules leave a lot more up to the LM's judgement. This seems like a situation where an optional rule might have been best -- offer LMs both the "basic" rules (as in the revised edition) and the more complex rules (as in the original edition) and allow them to choose which suits them.

If/when I run TOR again I might actually use a mix of the two. I like the original rules' rewarding of success against "serious, negative consequences", but I don't really like the requirement to have something "out of the ordinary" happen, unless that's interpreted very generously by the LM. Sometimes succeeding at something small but highly personal should be weighed just as much as world-shaking events.

I do, however, think that even the revised rules should be viewed more as guidelines than as rigid rules which must be obeyed! In particular, the LM might be a bit more lenient with characters with lower skill; perhaps they could be rewarded for a lower degree of success than characters with higher skill, to reflect equivalent levels of achievement relative to their skills.

[Earendil]

I find the fact that AP reward dice rolling annoying.

There is a resulting tendency for players to always want to roll the dice: Helping to hunt the "main" hunter, pushing forward to use "Awe" when another character is presenting the group, looking around with everybody else etc. Of course in some instances the demand can be readily discarded (not wise to talk all at once, only room for one there, and so on), but generally speaking I find it a bit straining. Rewarding skill usage is pretty common in RPG, for example I think it was the case in good old Cthulhu game, but I do not remember it being an issue at the time. Of course, in Cthulhu chances of success are often low and people often die or get mad on a failure, so nobody is in a hurry to roll the dice !

I do remember that being a potential problem in Cthulhu, and I'd recommend the same possible solutions here as I found there:

Don't let players roll just because they want to, only when it's a significant use of the skill (which as Stormcrow points out is actually supported by the rules).

Or let them roll but only allow ticks for significant uses of the skill. For example, if they want to help the main hunter, I might let them do so (with each successful "support" roll adding +2 to the final result) but only the main hunter can get a tick.

Or warn players that failure on such a frivolous use of a skill will have worse effects than usual, because they're deliberately taking risks they don't need to. (Could be nasty if combined with the Eye of Mordor rules!)

[Majestic]

Some groups will wish to maximize their benefits during a fellowship phase; others will wish to explore their characters and put interesting things into their Tale of Years.

FWIW, my characters have always done stuff that made sense, story-wise. They aren't min-maxing power gamers that just want to buff and improve their characters in any way possible. On the contrary, they've been very heroic, generous (to the poorer Free Peoples), and thoughtful with their choices.

There are lots of options for Undertakings, though, and doing one that might, under rare circumstances, grant the equivalent of a single AP, doesn't make a lot of sense, unless it's something that they just want to do for the story reasons.

[Mando]

Thanks for all the advice to cool down the roll-mania. Especially I like the "helper" trick.

I should point out that my players do not roll that much in the end, as I allow it only when it makes sense. For example the 3 AP mark is very rarely if ever reached for any skill category after a 5-6h play session, even for our "pro-roller". But still the RAW reward dice rolling, through AP and with the encounter success scale based on the number of rolls.

Anyway, that was mostly just a comment, I can live with this minor twist, game is fun and Middle-earth is terrific.

[Earendil]

Thanks for all the advice to cool down the roll-mania. Especially I like the "helper" trick.

I should point out that my players do not roll that much in the end, as I allow it only when it makes sense. For example the 3 AP mark is very rarely if ever reached for any skill category after a 5-6h play session, even for our "pro-roller". But still the RAW reward dice rolling, through AP and with the encounter success scale based on the number of rolls.

Anyway, that was mostly just a comment, I can live with this minor twist, game is fun and Middle-earth is terrific.

You're welcome! As for encouraging players to roll, I don't see that as a negative thing. Yes, if a player wants their character to get better at skills, they'll need to roll dice to get Advancement points, but if they then narrate what their character does (as the rules suggest) that encourages them to get involved in the game. I find that it helps if you gently remind quieter players that they need to get stuck in if they want AP, and ask them outright what they're doing when others put themselves forward.

It doesn't fit well with some styles of roleplaying -- I've had 4-hour sessions of other games where maybe one die roll was made, and that doesn't really work in TOR -- but I found that it was a lot of fun once we figured out how to adapt our play style to work with the system.