Roleplaying or "boardgaming" the fellowship phase?

[Platon]

I'm curious how you people handle the fellowship phase, do you roleplay it, having encouterns, narrating what you do and why, having the loremaster act out NPCs etc etc. Or do you do it "board game-style", just distrubuting AP/Exp, upgrade your skills, choose undertakings and be done with it in a half hour or so?

[aramis]

Somewhere between.
I resolve it in boardgameish mode, but treat it as an open ended list - if players come up with something nifty that makes sense, I'll come up with what to roll...

And I let players narrate a bit, too, how and why, if they want to.

[zedturtle]

I encourage (and sometimes narrate) 'training montage' scenes when they're appropriate and try to have NPCs drop hints as to what might be happening in the next Adventuring Phase. But I do that after the players have told me what undertakings and improvements they're making. Some players get a kick out of narrating their own Fellowship phases, some approach it more mechanically, and either is fine by me.

[Hamarr]

As a player when we ran through DoM and TFW we ran a fellowship phase usually more mechanically, at the ens of the adventure. We spent XP and AP and sort of loosely described how our characters spent the phase. With our LM occasionally describing events that took place wherever we were staying, and us players getting a chance to intervene with a roll or two.

[Kirppu]

I try to provide undertaking options that are in keeping with events in the adventures, and sometimes directly tied to events going on around the party. For instance rather than provide the option of receiving a title in a boardgamey style, my players encountered a hag that linked back to the now dead widow of a Woodman hero long presumed dead since the Battle of Five Armies. Bringing back some trinkets after their adventure that allows them to make these connections to the long empty hall in Rhosgobel seems a fitting reward by the locals that are happy for their aid. Of course they dont have to take it and can spend their time doing things they have on their mind, but it opens up the option with a narrative involvement instead of a bit of book-keeping. They pretty much provide adventure seeds if you chose to thread them in. It would make sense for the party to put down roots there and helps in later adventures/character development.

Other than that its nice to offer the players the chances to describe what they are doing when not adventuring, I prefer to keep it fairly loose and lowkey though without too much pressure. Again it can help develop involvement with whats going on in the campaign/adventures.