The One Ring "Living Rules": Journeys revised II

Hi all! Following a fruitful discussion over at the Cubicle 7 forums for The One Ring, I revised my alternate rules for journeys. As I explained before, these modified rules are aimed to reduce the number of required rolls, at the same time preserving (or enhancing!) the mood and objective of the original mechanics.

For those that read the previous version, know that, following the suggestions of players, I made all Fatigue increases be applied immediately (and not at the end of a journey). Additionally, companions now do not necessarily see their Fatigue increase at the same pace, as they are sometimes required to make individual Travel rolls.

All in all, a good result, that preserves the goals I set for myself when I approached the variant.

One thing: the writing is rather 'terse', meaning that I didn't make any attempt at adding flavour to the rules as written - it was already difficult to make everything clear (not sure I succede, you tell me). So, I didn't specify what the challenges that target a single travelling role or all companions are meant to represent. You are of course invited to suggest what kind of trouble is represented by a challenge requiring the Guide to intervene, or the Scouts of the company, etc. Luckily, the books are filled with vivid examples...

Journeys Rules Revision II (JRR II!) - removed!

Edit for the 28th of August

Time for JRR III already! This time including ponies! This new version is the result of the discussions over at the Cubicle 7 forums, and of my own ponderations with the help of Southron chieftain Amado Angulo. All I have written above stands, so click on the link at see how it came up. 

Many thanks to everyone who gave his comments on the subject matter, here and over at the Cubicle 7 web site. I hope this is going to be the final version, at least for a little while... :)

Journey Rules Revision III
(link removed, as I am pretty happy with the new Revised rules for TOR! :)

The One Ring "Living Rules": Preliminary Rolls

Here I am again ("So soon? What's going on?"). Does someone remember the discussion over at the Cubicle 7 forums about my 'revised journey rules'? Well, something interesting came out about unifying the mechanics that let player gain some advantages during the three main 'heroic ventures' of the game - journeys, combat and encounters.

Well, here's my first stab at simplifying those procedures, as suggested in particular by user Undeadtrout - basically, to treat the 'Planning ahead' of journeys, 'Combat advantages' and opening phase of encounters in the same way. The changes do not produce exactly the same results of the original rules (especially as far as journeys are concerned), but certainly streamline the design and are easier to remember. But see the linked .pdf to see what I mean.

Now, a disclaimer: again, this is not my attempt at 'officially' revising the rules of the game. These are just my 'house rules', devised to answer some of the criticism I see pop up here and there, or simply to answer my own gaming needs. These 'living rules' installments might eventually be taken into consideration for a future revision of the game, or just continue to exist only in your games (or mine). Use at your own risk! ;)

So, enjoy, and please let me know what you think.

TOR Preliminary Rolls Document

Thinking about TOR - Moderate Difficulty (TN 14)

One of the things that strikes me as most odd when I see someone play The One Ring as the Loremaster (the GM), is how frequently the recommendations I put in the rulebook about not changing the difficulty level (Target Number) of an action are ignored. It seems coded into the procedures of many gamemasters to consider closely every occurrence requiring a die roll, to evaluate it in terms of how ‘objectively’ difficult a task should be (“this wall is very high”, “this door is very sturdy”, etc.)

Now, I understand perfectly where this line of ‘simulative’ reasoning comes from, and I am not really interested in debating the amount of power this way of playing gives to the Loremaster, as many people went that way before. What I am interested about is to weigh the pros and cons of such behaviour in terms of practical play, as it is part of the everyday business of playing The One Ring. Of course, my aim is to demonstrate that you should really just stick to TN 14 for the vast majority of times! But you are free to try and prove me wrong. ;)

To change or not to change the TN - that is the question

Greg Stolze’s ‘How to Run Roleplaying Games’ (found here) highlights some of the factors GM’s consider when deciding how challenging a task should be. The reason I find to be the less interesting is: How difficult is a task within the game setting? Unfortunately, in my experience it is also the most popular one.

Now, is it really important to consider how something is ‘difficult according to the logic of the setting’? And especially, is it so important that you feel like considering it every time someone picks up the dice? Should you really care about how ‘objectively’ difficult it must be to move that pile of rocks blocking the entrance of the cave? Maybe this might be interesting if the heroes are hard pressed by pursuers, but under less dramatic circumstances it is hardly so. So, why not go for a simple TN 14 roll?

You might ask why roll at all in those cases. Of course you have a point, but there’s a reason to, the main reason why you roll dice in the first place if you ask me - and that is to highlight the differences in competence between player-characters. If there’s heavy lifting involved, let the big guy do it; if what you need is persuasion, let the silver-tongued guy handle it. Etcetera etcetera. 

But to achieve all the above it is not necessary to change the difficulty of an action - more proficient heroes will have better chances to succeed than less proficient ones anyway, and they will be easily getting higher levels of success. Defaulting most rolls to TN 14 doesn’t mean you are making it too easy for your players. TN 14 is a ‘moderate’ challenge, meaning that you have 3 chances out of 10 to fail even rolling 3 Success dice. 

And what do you get in return for not minding about how ‘objectively difficult’ is a task? Faster gameplay. If 90% of the times a roll will be vs TN 14, everyone at the table will quickly develop the ability to ‘eyeball’ a die roll, and rapidly assess if they made it or not. Change the TN often, and you’ll hear the same question over and over again: “How difficult is the roll?” Small ‘speedbumps’ placed along the course of play, but ‘speedbumbs’ nonetheless.

Next time: if you really want to change the TN of an action, at least give something in return (or, tweaking how you gain Advancement points).

'Interesting times', as they say... !

April, then the last day of June! Wow, time presses on... I won't bore you again with the details about why it takes me so long to post here, suffice it to say that I have been rather busy - luckily! As the economical juncture gently squeezes life out of most of the endeavors I am involved with, at least I can say I tried to do something about it.

But always look at the bright side of life! Here I have a couple of things to share... one is a snapshot of a game that I am developing that will probably tell something only to the most hardcore Tolkien (or WotR...) fanatics - but that I won't reveal right now, to leave whoever is interested a chance to guess...

Another is a document presenting a small tweak to the journey rules of The One Ring rpg that I came up with some time ago, when a few comments about the amount of dice-rolling involved with journeying started to pop up around the web. I am pretty happy about how this revised mechanic speeds up play, in my opinion making the whole process more fun and flavourful at the same time - also, it makes it more of a 'group effort', something that in a game about fellowships is never a bad thing!
If any of you wants to try the mechanics, just replace the appropriate step in the journey process, as specified in the document I prepared for you guys - let me know if you like it! It might end up being published somewhere sooner or later...

TOR Journey resolution revised (link removed! See the post for the 23rd of August)

And now for the final bit of happy news (at least for me): thanks to a very nice Norwegian friend who is going to let us stay in their house, I'll be heading to Oslo next week with my family. Fjords! Viking ships! Stave churches! Draugr! Naglfar! Well, maybe not the last couple ones... :)

Cheers!

Back from the Apocalypse!

I am back in Venice, after the six-days trip to Edinburgh for Conpulsion 2012! I had a fantastic time, thanks to the marvellous people I met there. Gregor Hutton, Phil Harris, Cat Tobin and their friends made sure I enjoyed the visit, caring for me and showing me around Edinburgh. Particular thanks go to Gregor, who made sure my luggage was packed with games, books and t-shirts on the return trip, and among other things has made me want to write an indie style rpg... I actually started on the plane! ;)

Also, many thanks go to all the green and blue shirts I saw every day at the con working to make sure everything was going well - the end result has been amazing, to everyone who attended the various seminars I was in, and my fellow players in the TOR game conducted by Gar - Liam, Steven, Gecko, Jo, Charles, and the other guy I couldn't grasp the name, sorry! I enjoyed myself a lot playing with you! Finally, I have met a lot of really nice individuals, gamers and professionals, and I hope I'll meet them again. I chatted pleasantly at the pub with artists like Dave Allsop, Andrew Hepworth and Scott Neill (Scotty?), and kindred spirits like Stuart Boon and Georgios Panagiotidis (aka Jo) to name a few.

The convention has also given me the chance to meet for the first time most of the people who work with me on The One Ring: I got to meet our fundamental pillars - Jon Hodgson (plus his lovely wife Nina) and Paul Bourne, and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, whose talent is turning into reality a number of books I could only wish one day would exist. Dominic McDowall was there with us too, and we even put together a twenty minutes business meeting at a local Starbucks! New things coming up for all TOR fans...

From the left: Gareth Hanrahan, Cat Tobin, Phil Harris, Gregor Hutton and Paul Bourne posing on the Antonine Wall.

...expanding boundaries

Now, why no two cartographers can simply agree? :)

Now look at that...

The picture above comes from Jan Pospíšil's blog found here. It was brought to my attention by TOR's very own Jon Hodgson, who unsurprisingly enough seems to feel a strong artistic bond with Jan (also known as Merlkir).

I was familiar with Jan's previous work, but something about this one strikes me as so just right. So, I wonder, is there anyone who like Jon wants to see more Middle-earth stuff from this talented czech artist? I certainly do.