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The Boons are not Rewards in any way. They grant bonuses that are "spent", and each Boon can only be used as many times per Adventure Phase as its rank.

For instance, the cultural Boons, like Elven, can be spent during Encounters with Elves to gain an automatic, regular success on a skill check, But when its spent, it's gone for the rest of the Adventure Phase, unless you have higher ranks in that Boons. However, with the Cultural Boons (Elven, Dwarven etc), spending a Boon to gain an automatic success while not belonging to the culture in question, lowers the Tolerance by one for the Encounter.

"Greetings, Master Dwarf. Look at this fine Dwarven jewel!"
"Aye, lad. That fine Dwarven craftsmanship, it is! But where did you get it??"

Boons can also be added to items when you craft them, but that's for another topic, I think.

E.

I had this same conundrum come up in our TOR group when we started worrying about TP = 1 gold. Initially I almost house-ruled that instead 12TP = 1 encumbrance, because that's a nice round year's worth of prosperous living.

But then I remembered that encumbrance is NOT simply weight. It is the awkwardness and unwieldiness of things. A great spear isn't 4 enc because it simply weighs so much, it's because it's a 9+ foot long pole that you're trying to carry through Mirkwood.

So going off it not being too heavy to carry, I started wondering why it has such a high encumbrance? Simply put, value.

Someone had mentioned that Smaug's hoard is huge, so they don't think that precious metals are uncommon in Middle Earth. But that's like saying "We've seen the 4500 metric tons of gold stored at Ft. Knox, gold must not be that rare."

If I had ONE, 1oz gold coin on me, modern value has that priced at ~$1200 currently. In-game we know that 1TP is enough to sustain you for a whole month at a prosperous standard of living. That's a lot of money in my opinion, and if a character had a bag of ten gold pieces on him I would suspect that he is freaking the crap out right now making sure he doesn't drop it or lose it, or that no one else in the fellowship is eyeing to steal it.

It could consume his thoughts on every river crossing, every bump while riding a pony, during combat when he thought he felt the pouch fall. It could very well be a source of corruption (or anguish if he did lose that much money). That's how I see it.

Granted we don't always play that "oh you found a small pouch of silver, KEEP TRACK, add encumbrance, etc, etc." But if my players found a small troll hoard of a few hundred treasure points I'd sure question how they plan to transport that back to a sanctuary (for it to be invested or what have you). This is why I feel that Francesco had it right that 1 gold coin = 1 treasure point = 1 encumbrance... more or less.

Here's the only real problem I've had with abstract wealth in the game.

You're a hobbit visiting Lake Town. You have enough money to buy a pony, but your woodmen friends can't afford them. You go on some adventures in the wild and lose your pony. Your party returns to Lake Town, where you can afford only one pony for yourself. For some reason you can afford this second pony now, but you couldn't before.

Any out-of-pocket expense you're put to is a quality of you, not your money, and has no limit placed on it.

Well, one of my character's conceit is that he's a Mirkwood elf who's 1/4 Noldor, 3/4 Sindar, who's got a 1st age blade from the ancient city of Gondolin. It started as merely a grievous longsword (the character's initial reward), and with XP, it was keened. IC, a full blooded Noldor elf living in Mirkwood touched him in and powered it up, and now there are runes clearly visible on the blade. When I next get the 4 XP I need to make 10 and Valor 4 myself, the character will 'interpret the runes', find the name of the sword, and it'll be Fell thereafter (and fully activated to the state it was in when it was forged.) It'll also glow in the dark like Sting and Orcrist and Glamdring and so on do, under the same conditions.