Help me out to figure if One Ring is a game for us

[ThrorII]

Journeys: When we played the intro scenario from the Loremaster's book I felt the journey to be lots of dice rolling that in the end didn't really support the story. Maybe it was bad preparation from my part, but the hazard presented in the book didn't really feel to be suitable for the situation. Our group doesn't like rolling a lot of dice so what I'm looking for is making less rolls in a way that they don't interrupt the story. Also if the players need to roll while travelling I would like to find a way how to get to do this without saying "Make a travel roll". And how do you incorporate player storytelling to the journeys?

We altered the Journey rolls as follows: instead of 4 TN14 Travel rolls, with each potentially giving you 1 Fatigue point, we changed to 1 TN14 Travel roll, giving you 4 Fatigue. If you got one Tengwar, you reduce your Fatigue points by one; if you get two Tenwar, you reduce your Fatigue by two.

The trick is to not have extended distances in each Travel roll. I suggest one Travel roll per Terrain Region on the Loremaster map. If you are journeying from Dale to Beorn's House, around northern Mirkwood, your players make a check in the Northern Dalelands, another in the Grey Mountain Narrows, one in the East Upper Vales, and a final one in the East Middle Vales. If you have encounters in any particular Terrain Region, then break the Travel checks in to pre-encounter and post encounter checks. As each Terrain Region is different in feel and appearance anyway, it gives you a chance to narrate the region to your players.

[ThrorII]

The abstract combat is tricky, because in order to know what is possible you need to know exactly how the surroundings are, where the others are related to you etc. How do you describe the scene before the battle starts and how do you make sure everybody knows if they can interact with something. How much story are the players expected to tell with every blow/dice roll and are they allowed to come up with helpful things such as big stones to stand on to gain +2/-2 to the target number? Do the players also tell the story when they miss a swing? My worry is that in long battles (which the system can boil down to) the players get weary of telling how their amazing swing cuts off another orc head. How do you make things interesting?

With encounters your previous example was golden, but it still seems to me that I really need to make a in depth chart of the encounter that shows how much to reveal and how to change my tone of voice and attitude with successes/failures. It is very hard to "wing" an encounter in TOR.

Encounters are broken, there is no other way for me to say it. In the Marsh-bell adventure, if your beginning characters fail their Encounter with Gloin (a very possible outcome, as they only are allowed 2 failures, and probably have only 2 die in social skills), they are effectively out of the adventure (now, it full disclosure, the adventure tells how the players can 'find out' and 'go out on their own', but my group at least would be like "Hey, Old Dwarf, you don't want our help? Fine...good luck getting your bro back." then they'd go and do something else. They don't believe in helping those who don't want your help.

It would be the same thing if AD&D G1 (Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain) started with "...have the players roll to see if they find the Steading, if they don't roll a 18+, they don't find it. Put the adventure away..."

Combat is a tricky thing....

you are right, from a D&D (or standard rpg) perspective, it puts a lot of onus on the players. Also, since there is no concept of 'flanking' or other 'bonuses', it boils down to the player saying "I move behind the troll to strike from behind", and the LM saying "sorry, you didn't get a bonus battle die, you don't seem to be able to get behind him".
Or, after describing the room with Orcs, and a table, the player says "I jump up on the table and swing to cut the Orcs head off (implying high ground bonuses), and you tell them either, "OK, you jump on the table, but you don't get any bonus from it since you didn't roll an extra battle die." or "You can't get to the table, the Orcs block your way (because you didn't get an extra die)".

Combat's abstractness and lack of consistency (see above) killed it for my group. I want to play this game so bad, but it really takes a group of starving thespians to make it work. I'm trying to 'fix it' for our group, so we can try again.

[ThrorII]

We also found that trait invoking created unwanted and awkward funny moments, when the character always pushed to invoke the trait even if it didn't really fit the current moment. For example we have a Dwarf who is both Vengeful and Wrathful, in other words a very pleasant chap. So the player constantly has to play the character as being angry or getting angry or doing something in anger. Since we tend to be quite exploitative when it comes to rules systems I'm thinking of changing the advancement system to reward good roleplaying/storytelling rather than invoking the trait all the time. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Yes, my players also started silly "Trait hunting" or "Skill hunting" to get advancement points. They did it, they hated it, and they pointed out that the game kind of encourages it.

There are house rules floating around here about giving a flat rate XP (5 or so) per adventure, and flat rate AP (10 or so) per adventure. This alleviates the AP hunting silliness, but removes the penalty for overusing Traits.

[Yusei]

it boils down to the player saying "I move behind the troll to strike from behind", and the LM saying "sorry, you didn't get a bonus battle die, you don't seem to be able to get behind him".

The rules don't say you're not allowed to give bonus dice for good ideas, or reward them as you like. On the other hand, if they didn't earn their bonus die with a Battle roll, I'd require an Athletics roll to get behind the troll.

[HorusZA]

Combat is a tricky thing....
you are right, from a D&D (or standard rpg) perspective, it puts a lot of onus on the players. Also, since there is no concept of 'flanking' or other 'bonuses', it boils down to the player saying "I move behind the troll to strike from behind", and the LM saying "sorry, you didn't get a bonus battle die, you don't seem to be able to get behind him".

To be fair you're referring to more modern versions of D&D. OD&D + Chainmail and BECMI had hardly any combat manoeuvres, bonuses and no concept of things like attacks of opportunity. Even up to and including 2e (unless you used supplements), combat was usually a case of "I hit the Orc." or, depending on DM, you'd describe a cool move and get some arbitrary bonus for your efforts... In other words, pretty much like you described above.
I'd even argue that TOR has way more choice, subtly and options that early(ish) D&D.

[Mordjinn]

Tons of thank yous to all posters, especially Rich H and SirKickley. Also comments from groups who share our doubts are very helpful too, because they help me understand better what are the things that are not working for us.

Yesterday we had another session and although it wasn't very fluid we had ok good time. We played the beginning of "Don't leave the path" and ended the session with the company leaving the Woodland Hall.

Reviewing the rulebooks and Tales from Wilderland I understood one reason for me not getting a real good grasp of the system combined with storytelling. The rulebook doesn't really give you good written examples with engaging storytelling. For example in combat example of Loremaster's book p.50 reads:

The first hero to attack is the Bride - her TN for the roll is 10 (6 for the forward stance, plus the spider’s Parry rating of 4). She swings her long-hafted axe with one hand and scores a hit, reducing the Attercop to 7 Endurance. Then it is the turn of Beran to attack with his Great axe (again against a TN of 10)...

There's just mechanical explanation, no storytelling...

Or in Tales from Wilderland there's no fluff or descriptive text. Just very dry (imho) explanations how the story progresses. I understand that the idea is that the Loremaster and the players bring the environments and charaters to life, but having this little to lean on is a bit of a problem. I don't have a clue how to describe many things. I'm considering getting Heart of the Wild and the Darkening of Mirkwood to get more ammo for my stories.

If anyone has ideas/recommendations how to make the rest of the Don't leave the Path more exciting they would be highly appreciated. I think if I can make this scenario really take off we will continue happily and get a chance to experience TOR in all its glory.

Anyways we're on our way. Thanks for the encouragement and help.

[Mordjinn]

Also yesterday one of the Players said that what he wants out of the game is tough moral dilemmas and choices. The one problem of having likeminded "hero" group (and Tolkien in general) is that distinction between good and evil is very clear. I haven't had a chance to read all the source materials, are there moral dilemmas and "choosing between two evils" written?

[Jez]

easy as: give them choices in which no matter the outcome, innocent people are going to suffer. the players get to choose which people will meet a dark fate: if the players are able to miraculously swing it so that both dooms are thwarted, they really are heroes.

[Mordjinn]

easy as: give them choices in which no matter the outcome, innocent people are going to suffer. the players get to choose which people will meet a dark fate: if the players are able to miraculously swing it so that both dooms are thwarted, they really are heroes.

This is good advice. But what I was asking if Tales from Wilderland (only read the first two adventures so far) and Darkening of Mirkwood offer plots, encounters and adventures which have more possibilities for moral dilemmas and players arguing which is the right way to approach matters and kind of "the little child will grow to be a tool of shadow, we have to kill him" kind of "there's no good choice, just various bad ones" kind of gaming?

[Stormcrow]

I understood one reason for me not getting a real good grasp of the system combined with storytelling. The rulebook doesn't really give you good written examples with engaging storytelling.

If by storytelling you mean composing a literary passage after each roll, there's a reason for that: it's not part of the game. You can do it if you want, but I for one find it ridiculous and boring.

The game requires that you explain what happens when you make your roll, not that you tell a story, however short, about it. Storytelling comes when the game is over, and you're relating your adventures to others. That's when you get to embellish your story however you like. Doing so during a game turns it into Amateur Theatre Hour.

I know I'm going to get a lot of objections to this, because I'm sure there are a lot of Thespian Wannabes out there. But really, the interesting part of the game is not in the dice-rolling; why would you want to slow that part down? Get it over with and get back to the adventure!

"there's no good choice, just various bad ones" kind of gaming

In Tolkien there is always a right choice, though it's often not the easiest choice. Tolkien doesn't mess around with angst-filled paladins deciding what to do with orc babies. Making the wrong choice leads to corruption, but there's always the possibility of redemption.