New LoreMaster- a Company of Two?

[Anglo-Saxophonist]

Greetings all,

To start, let me apologise if this is in the wrong place, or if I’m posting something that has been answered elsewhere- I did a search and couldn’t find anything, but I’m happy to be redirected if needed!

Now- my main point. Does anyone have any recommendations/tips/rule tweaks to make playing with a Company of 2 a bit more viable? General advice would be great, but I’m going to be starting off running The Marsh Bell (original, I know…) so any focused advice would also be great. Thematically I think it's Ok as we see a few small companies in the books, but I don't won't my players to have quite as rough a time of it as Frodo and Sam...

I say a company of 2- there will be three people round the table, with myself as Lore Master- I’m doubtful about players running two characters in games generally…

Besides the adventure, the main problems I can see are not having enough members to fill all 4 travelling roles, and generally not having a wide enough range of skills. I’d also say maybe a lack of Specialities, but I’m less certainly about that…

I know that the easiest answer to my problems is ‘Get more players’, and whilst I’d like to set up a larger regular group, it’s not possible for this group. The three of us are old friends, all Tolkien fans, but sadly live in different cities now.
We all visit each other fairly regularly, but gaming sessions are part of our way of catching up. Unless I can convince the other guys to use roll20 or something similar, then our journeys in Middle-earth are going to be quite loosely connected.

Finally, anything in particular I should be aware of when running games of TOR?
Thanks, all

[Indur Dawndeath]

I think you'll have a lot of fun with this game.
While you'll be able to play with a party of 2, It'll be costly for the players to survive. Spending Hope to avoid Hazards and such.
I recomend that they hire trackers when they need to hunt some pray and a guide when the need to cross Mirkwood...
Introduce those types of NPC's insted of changing the rules.

I did the Marsh Bell with only two players as my first adventure. And it went very well, so you should be ok!

You could let one of them be a Ranger...

[bluejay]

I have run a long campaign with 2 players. It's my second time through Darkening of Mirkwood but it's working exceptionally well. With two players they'll get a lot of Advancement Points so they end up very well rounded. Conversely they will likely end up spending a lot of Hope.

It's really been a spectacular campaign and does not feel like a compromise in any way.

[Glorelendil]

What if, in the books, the only player-heroes were Hobbits, and the 13 dwarves, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas, and Gimli were all Loremaster characters?

Pursuant to other threads, I wouldn't treat these LMCs as player-heroes that happen to be controlled by the LM.

[Otaku-sempai]

Pursuant to other threads, I wouldn't treat these LMCs as player-heroes that happen to be controlled by the LM.

No, but NPCs can still be quite helpful be they Wizards, Elf-lords or just hirelings. The LM just can't allow them to dominate the game!

[bveld]

I have recently finished Marsh Bell with my wife being the only player. Before starting our game I have read through these forums and compiled a huge list of tweaks and house rules to make the game work for solo.

However, when we started finally playing (Theft of the Moon initially) the only house rule I ended up using was to give her Hobbit character a dog (a completely leveled up Hound of Mirkwood) so she will have an easier time if she wants to use her favourite bow.

Even that small house rule turned out to be unnecessary as being a charming Hobbit lady she befriended some NPCs on the road (e.g. Turn the Tinker from the Heart of the Wild ). Interestingly enough I didn't really plan this, it just happened very organically. So there are two NPCs following her now with their own backstories and goals. When I saw that they are likely to stick around, I have made them full fledged characters (with own character sheets). I always role play both of them (i.e. talking), but she does the rolls and make some of the decisions for one of them. After playing through a couple of published adventures already I can say it works perfectly and I have not needed to be easy on them so far.

[Otaku-sempai]

I don't know that I would allow a Hobbit to have a Woodman Cultural Virtue. I do think it should be possible to train other animal companions: dog, horse, falcon, etc.--just not to the degree of the Hound of Mirkwood unless special rules permit (for example: see New Fellowship Phase Undertaking: Train your Horses in Horse-lords of Rohan, page 144). Perhaps something based on the Training undertaking could be invoked, applied to the creature to be trained and requiring the expenditure of Experience and one or more Craft tests. The Hero would either need an appropriate trait (Horsemanship, Animal Handling, Falconry, etc.) to allow him to train the creature himself or he would have to hire a trainer.

But I don't want to bog down this thread with details, perhaps the topic could be discussed in the House Rules forum.

[Mikha]

I would say this sounds exeptionally promising!
Being in a company of two should be very interesting, I dream of it for myself sometimes being in a company of eight and running an intense DOM campain wich I suggest you running for your two adventurers too!

Your heroes will have much fun in figuring out what is to be done, being only the two of them, to slay the Werewolf of Mirkwood or to enter Dol Guldur alongside Radagast
Travelling roles should be assigned as per rules in my opinion, with the guide and only another role covered for the lenght of the journey. Expenditure of hope will be extremely likely if they want to hunt something to eat on their way, i.e.
I humbly suggest something that I think might work in your case:
- Adopt the Taking Courage set of rules for your heroes right from the start and encourage the increasing of maximum hope score where possible;
- Focus are another good source of hope
- Heroes must work their level of standing up as soon as possible, so they could be in charge of something greater than their small company by the time events start to get darker and grimmer. Make powerful allies will be as much as important
- Patrons should have high impact on their lives, so you could use them as deus ex machinas (as much as I don't really like entirely this kind of approach I think you'll need that at some point)
- One of your heroes should be a Woodman, so he'll have access to the War leader election or to the Hound of Mirkwood in the future (or you could allow these privileges to be given to a high standing friend of the Woodmen instead)

I hope this was useful