Post
by Falenthal » Sat Dec 03, 2016 10:36 am
Having two hobbits in the group surely helps your fellowship a lot. And if you're recovering Hope points because eveyone is taking care of his or her Fellowship focus, then you're doing things fine.
So, I should say that nothing's wrong with your way of playing. Quite the contrary, you're playing perfectly fine.
But... your concern is that one of the things that make TOR special (Shadow and Hope) is getting lost for your group, and you feel you're missing part of the fun of playing this game. It's like playing a Jedi and never, ever have the slightest danger of falling to the Dark Side.
As a LM, I learned to adjust the difficulty of my games so that Hope was slowly, but steadily, lost by the players. As I said, we didn't see it as a way of messing with the players, but as a source of fun for the game.
Some hints that served me well:
1) Don't be afraid to put "too many" Corruption tests during an adventure if they make sense. Shadow points can be healed, and the sense that the Shadow is growing faster than you can heal it should add to the game and general feel of "darkening". Take a look at the starting adventure, The Marsh Bell, and count how many Corruption tests the characters are forced to make... and that's for a first adventure with starting characters, some of which will have just 1 rank in Wisdom!
2) Don't recover the Fellowship pool after every session. In fact, we played it so that the Fp lasted for the whole adventure (2 or 3 sessions). Only at very long adventures, if there was a resting point in the middle (for example, the characters reach Beorn's House and have a day to prepare for a battle against the Viglunds), did I allow to refresh the Fp.
3) If a test is hard, make it hard (TNs 18-20). Hope points are there so the players can spend them. If they don't use them in critical moments, or they don't need them when facing a mortal threat, then the menace won't be perceived as so terrible as intended.
In my group, this changes made the adventures a bit more hard, but it was seen by everyone as feeling more epic and much more interesting. Travelling through the Mountains of Mirkwood, arriving at destination without Fatigue, and replenishing Hope to the full afterwards felt dissapointing, not heroic, to us.
) everybody has a fellowship focus and is eager to keep him/her safe. So there is plenty of hope regeneration every session due the fellowship focuses and the by two higher fellowship points offer a lot of hope regeneration too. 
