Hi everyone,
I don’t know whether the book explains this clearly; I can’t find it, so I was hoping someone could help me. When a company travels under the Journey rules, how are rests applied? According to the journey roles, the Scout is the one in charge of setting up camp. In that case, would only one long rest be allowed per march? Would that single roll, if successful, mean that the company takes a long rest for each day of the march, with its benefits applied only once? I find it confusing. I have a lot of questions.
Do you know whether the creators/authors have clarified this? If not, has any consensus been reached here on the forum about this topic?
As for foraging, how do you apply it? Since the Hunter’s role is to find food in the wild, I give them 1 ration token for each success on that roll, plus 1 additional token for each Elvish rune. I have a note here about an Empty Belly rule, though I don’t know whether I made it up or read it in the rulebook. It consisted of gaining 2 points of Fatigue when going to sleep without eating and/or drinking, which could not be reduced with the Travel roll at the end of the Journey. In addition, I require them to make a Wisdom roll to avoid losing 1 Hope point, due to exhaustion and the doubts that come with surviving one more day. I think I got this from the adventure book set in the Shire.
Could you please share your thoughts on this?
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- Linklite
- Posts: 361
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
You get a Prolonged Rest at the end of each day (so normally each hex you traverse), hence Endurance loss is irrelevant to Journeys, usually. The only time I can think of where Journeys interact with Endurance is if your Wounded (so instead of recovering your full Endurance, you recover equal to your Strength Rating each hex and you decrement the time remaining on you Wound by one). No rolls necessary.
In terms of food, it is all abstracted and you don't track it at all. The occasional Event targeting Hunters represents the potential for losing your food, not getting enough to eat, lack of water, etc. Your rules about this are House Rules rather than actual rules in the game.
In terms of food, it is all abstracted and you don't track it at all. The occasional Event targeting Hunters represents the potential for losing your food, not getting enough to eat, lack of water, etc. Your rules about this are House Rules rather than actual rules in the game.
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- Narrador Maestro
- Posts: 9
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
Thank you so much for your thoughts and enlight these considerations.You get a Prolonged Rest at the end of each day (so normally each hex you traverse), hence Endurance loss is irrelevant to Journeys, usually. The only time I can think of where Journeys interact with Endurance is if your Wounded (so instead of recovering your full Endurance, you recover equal to your Strength Rating each hex and you decrement the time remaining on you Wound by one). No rolls necessary.
In terms of food, it is all abstracted and you don't track it at all. The occasional Event targeting Hunters represents the potential for losing your food, not getting enough to eat, lack of water, etc. Your rules about this are House Rules rather than actual rules in the game.
I think it’s important for the subject of food to be implemented, since the game is about “wanderers” and the core theme is survival. I think this is something that D&D takes properly into account, and in the case of The One Ring, travel is decisive. Obviously, it’s something that should be agreed upon with the players, but in Middle-earth more than ever, if you want to portray the setting as it should be, surviving hunger and thirst should be a fundamental rule.
And I feel the same way about rests during travel. Not only for the Wounded status recovery you mention, they should be better detailed, since the maps define difficult and dangerous terrain, which would mean the company would not have as many opportunities to recover ENDURANCE, and taking turns keeping watch to spot threats would be the most realistic approach.
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- Linklite
- Posts: 361
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
The mechanics do take difficult terrain etc into account - via Fatigue, which cannot be mitigated through normal rests. Instead you need to take your Prolonged Rests in a safe location - which is normally only feasible in a friendly settlement such as Bree.
Foraging is mostly taken take care of with the Hunters roll in Journey Events. You could apply a -1d or -2d penalty if you're in an area where forage and game would be scarce. If it's particularly lean, could add an additional point of Fatigue for each Event rolled. I'd be careful of that though - it limits the length of viable journeys quite substantially, which then limits what stories you can tell (or rather, where you can set them). Going to, say, Amon Guruthos would be a no-go if you're being harsher than RAW with Fatigue.
Foraging is mostly taken take care of with the Hunters roll in Journey Events. You could apply a -1d or -2d penalty if you're in an area where forage and game would be scarce. If it's particularly lean, could add an additional point of Fatigue for each Event rolled. I'd be careful of that though - it limits the length of viable journeys quite substantially, which then limits what stories you can tell (or rather, where you can set them). Going to, say, Amon Guruthos would be a no-go if you're being harsher than RAW with Fatigue.
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- cpt.goblin
- Posts: 1
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
My dear loremaster colleagues!
Nice to chat with you, this is my first message in this forum. First of all I'm very happy to have reached this game. It is no easy to master, even after aprox. 6 sessions and lot of reading nights I'm struggling with the rules and some parts I've even set them aside for now.
Regarding rests during Journeys, I was thinking a lot about, because there is no any clear statement in the core rules, I guess. My interpretation is that there is no rest during Journeys, unless the characters decide to "end the Journey" and set a temporary camp for a rest. This never happened yet in our group, and I even didn't introduced them the suggestion, waiting them to discover by themselves. What I understand is that travelling in the "middle age" is a rough job and there is no safe settlement on the road, exposed to foot pains, light food, cold at night and dry sun or wind at march, insects, etc. So, the Journeys mechanic can be understood like an abstraction to the adventure phase, and the company needs to "arrive somewhere" to start resting and healing wounds.
I'm trying to run Journeys relatively fast. First sessions delayed a lot, trying to narrate encounters and descriptions, but I noticed that this approach distracts from the main quest. Now we calculate hexes, start rolling encounters, if something happen I let the affected player to narrate what happened to him or her, apply the fatigue and consecuences and move forward towards the end of the journey. It can be see like being too "mechanical" or losing depth in journeys, but I understand the game intends to do it in this way. Is OK that travelling is a rich experiencie, and in our real life experience during journeys sometimes every minute is like an adventure; but after all, what you remember after journeys is a fast resume of that memory, only the memory of some emotions from memorable events. And after a long journey you feel very tired and even a long travel lets you only a quick memory of the travel itself, but at this point your main emotional feeling is the fatigue, the pain, the hungry... you are wondering to arrive quickly and find a rest, to take account of your pains,you are worrying about your penalties for the incoming adventure phase, etc. I think this "moment" is more important in this game that the narrative itself of the events and "rests" every night during a two weeks travel...
In some locations there are different encounter tables, for example travelling the Green Way the players can choose to explore ruins at the side of the main road. If they wish this approach, then some "mini-games" or mini-adventure phases can be played. But in my short experience after doing this once, the players then prefer not to distract themselves from the main route and to arrive quickly as possible.
What do you think about? I would like to read your experiences
Nice to chat with you, this is my first message in this forum. First of all I'm very happy to have reached this game. It is no easy to master, even after aprox. 6 sessions and lot of reading nights I'm struggling with the rules and some parts I've even set them aside for now.
Regarding rests during Journeys, I was thinking a lot about, because there is no any clear statement in the core rules, I guess. My interpretation is that there is no rest during Journeys, unless the characters decide to "end the Journey" and set a temporary camp for a rest. This never happened yet in our group, and I even didn't introduced them the suggestion, waiting them to discover by themselves. What I understand is that travelling in the "middle age" is a rough job and there is no safe settlement on the road, exposed to foot pains, light food, cold at night and dry sun or wind at march, insects, etc. So, the Journeys mechanic can be understood like an abstraction to the adventure phase, and the company needs to "arrive somewhere" to start resting and healing wounds.
I'm trying to run Journeys relatively fast. First sessions delayed a lot, trying to narrate encounters and descriptions, but I noticed that this approach distracts from the main quest. Now we calculate hexes, start rolling encounters, if something happen I let the affected player to narrate what happened to him or her, apply the fatigue and consecuences and move forward towards the end of the journey. It can be see like being too "mechanical" or losing depth in journeys, but I understand the game intends to do it in this way. Is OK that travelling is a rich experiencie, and in our real life experience during journeys sometimes every minute is like an adventure; but after all, what you remember after journeys is a fast resume of that memory, only the memory of some emotions from memorable events. And after a long journey you feel very tired and even a long travel lets you only a quick memory of the travel itself, but at this point your main emotional feeling is the fatigue, the pain, the hungry... you are wondering to arrive quickly and find a rest, to take account of your pains,you are worrying about your penalties for the incoming adventure phase, etc. I think this "moment" is more important in this game that the narrative itself of the events and "rests" every night during a two weeks travel...
In some locations there are different encounter tables, for example travelling the Green Way the players can choose to explore ruins at the side of the main road. If they wish this approach, then some "mini-games" or mini-adventure phases can be played. But in my short experience after doing this once, the players then prefer not to distract themselves from the main route and to arrive quickly as possible.
What do you think about? I would like to read your experiences
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- Sebastian
- Posts: 289
- Joined:
Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
Concerning prolonged rests: The definition is a night of sleep, so yes, there are prolonged rests on a journey. But not in s safe location, i.e. on the road, which means, you don’t recover from Fatigue.
But you do recover Endurance, while your wounded slower snd finally you could also recover from wounds during a journey.
As for the mechanics, I‘d recommend to narrate a lot during a journey and keep the dice rolling in the backround.
But you do recover Endurance, while your wounded slower snd finally you could also recover from wounds during a journey.
As for the mechanics, I‘d recommend to narrate a lot during a journey and keep the dice rolling in the backround.
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- Runang
- Posts: 35
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
Cpt. Goblin,
this weekend I tried something that might be helpful for LMs to have truly engaging journeys (if you don´t do this anyway). Usually I improvise journey events along the game mechanics, often using the respective tables provided by TOR. However, since the tables are necessarily limited in numbers and need to cover more than our specific adventure at hand, I felt sometimes that my hastily invented journey events felt a bit odd and stayed at the surface, not really providing the meaningful encounters / events the players enjoy.
So I prompted duck.ai (or any other genAI) with the 5W of the journey (who, where, what, when, why) and explained that I need 10 terrible, 10 fantastic and 10 edifying journey events. The player-heroes were on their journey from the Old Dwarf Mine to the White Towers (both Landmarks in RotLR), traveling on land to the river Lune, trading for a fisher boat from river fishermen and sailing to the Grey Havens and so son.
Long story short: the journey events the AI came up with were so extremely good and perfectly fitting to the player-heroes, to Tolkien Lore, the TOR game mechanics for journeys and to the geographical surrounding (also suggesting which song to play when the player heroes approach the White Towers of Lindon (built by Gil-Galad), see https://youtu.be/HUPFwrmgLvQ?si=WdX5N4Ja0Fgplop7 , which turned ot to create a great atmosphere, being sung by Braswen and Edris), that, instead of 30 to 45 minutes, the journey took us 3,5 hours and was so very rich and rewarding that it truly became an integral part of the adventure itself, very much contributing to the content and atmosphere that makes TOR such a special TT RPG.
I understand that so much time (3,5 hrs) for a journey might not always be appropriate and feasible. But since we played for all in all 16 hours that weekend, this seems to be balanced.
In a nutshell: "customizing" the journey events precisely to the anticipated journey turns out to be not a lot of work for the LM to prepare the adventure, if one uses a good AI, but can make the journey a chain of mini-adventures, greatly enhancing the game experience.
Maybe instead of using an AI to create specific journey events, FL could one day come up with a big Book of Journey Events Tables? I would enjoy using such a book more than using an AI, but until such a book is published, I recommend giving it a try...
this weekend I tried something that might be helpful for LMs to have truly engaging journeys (if you don´t do this anyway). Usually I improvise journey events along the game mechanics, often using the respective tables provided by TOR. However, since the tables are necessarily limited in numbers and need to cover more than our specific adventure at hand, I felt sometimes that my hastily invented journey events felt a bit odd and stayed at the surface, not really providing the meaningful encounters / events the players enjoy.
So I prompted duck.ai (or any other genAI) with the 5W of the journey (who, where, what, when, why) and explained that I need 10 terrible, 10 fantastic and 10 edifying journey events. The player-heroes were on their journey from the Old Dwarf Mine to the White Towers (both Landmarks in RotLR), traveling on land to the river Lune, trading for a fisher boat from river fishermen and sailing to the Grey Havens and so son.
Long story short: the journey events the AI came up with were so extremely good and perfectly fitting to the player-heroes, to Tolkien Lore, the TOR game mechanics for journeys and to the geographical surrounding (also suggesting which song to play when the player heroes approach the White Towers of Lindon (built by Gil-Galad), see https://youtu.be/HUPFwrmgLvQ?si=WdX5N4Ja0Fgplop7 , which turned ot to create a great atmosphere, being sung by Braswen and Edris), that, instead of 30 to 45 minutes, the journey took us 3,5 hours and was so very rich and rewarding that it truly became an integral part of the adventure itself, very much contributing to the content and atmosphere that makes TOR such a special TT RPG.
I understand that so much time (3,5 hrs) for a journey might not always be appropriate and feasible. But since we played for all in all 16 hours that weekend, this seems to be balanced.
In a nutshell: "customizing" the journey events precisely to the anticipated journey turns out to be not a lot of work for the LM to prepare the adventure, if one uses a good AI, but can make the journey a chain of mini-adventures, greatly enhancing the game experience.
Maybe instead of using an AI to create specific journey events, FL could one day come up with a big Book of Journey Events Tables? I would enjoy using such a book more than using an AI, but until such a book is published, I recommend giving it a try...
Through the Darkness to the Light.
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- Alatar, The Blue
- Posts: 1
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
Welcome! That is some great insight on the Journey phases. I really enjoy your idea about the mini-games or mini-adventures while exploring ruins by the Green Way. I had this idea about creating a forgotten barrow over the hills by the side of the Green Way, upon entering the barrow, the players find themselves in a mini dungeon crawl. Still tinkering with the idea if it should be "theater of the mind" based or I whip out a classic D&D grid maze for the crawl. A spooky enemy encounter could be a level appropriate Barrow-Wight protecting some ancient items... One that I came up with is the "War Horn of Númenor": upon use it intimidates enemies for the rest of the round and the user or players gain some sort of advantage no matter the fighting stance they are in... Still brainstorming but I do love me some little side quests with useful artifacts rewardsMy dear loremaster colleagues!
Nice to chat with you, this is my first message in this forum. First of all I'm very happy to have reached this game. It is no easy to master, even after aprox. 6 sessions and lot of reading nights I'm struggling with the rules and some parts I've even set them aside for now.
Regarding rests during Journeys, I was thinking a lot about, because there is no any clear statement in the core rules, I guess. My interpretation is that there is no rest during Journeys, unless the characters decide to "end the Journey" and set a temporary camp for a rest. This never happened yet in our group, and I even didn't introduced them the suggestion, waiting them to discover by themselves. What I understand is that travelling in the "middle age" is a rough job and there is no safe settlement on the road, exposed to foot pains, light food, cold at night and dry sun or wind at march, insects, etc. So, the Journeys mechanic can be understood like an abstraction to the adventure phase, and the company needs to "arrive somewhere" to start resting and healing wounds.
I'm trying to run Journeys relatively fast. First sessions delayed a lot, trying to narrate encounters and descriptions, but I noticed that this approach distracts from the main quest. Now we calculate hexes, start rolling encounters, if something happen I let the affected player to narrate what happened to him or her, apply the fatigue and consecuences and move forward towards the end of the journey. It can be see like being too "mechanical" or losing depth in journeys, but I understand the game intends to do it in this way. Is OK that travelling is a rich experiencie, and in our real life experience during journeys sometimes every minute is like an adventure; but after all, what you remember after journeys is a fast resume of that memory, only the memory of some emotions from memorable events. And after a long journey you feel very tired and even a long travel lets you only a quick memory of the travel itself, but at this point your main emotional feeling is the fatigue, the pain, the hungry... you are wondering to arrive quickly and find a rest, to take account of your pains,you are worrying about your penalties for the incoming adventure phase, etc. I think this "moment" is more important in this game that the narrative itself of the events and "rests" every night during a two weeks travel...
In some locations there are different encounter tables, for example travelling the Green Way the players can choose to explore ruins at the side of the main road. If they wish this approach, then some "mini-games" or mini-adventure phases can be played. But in my short experience after doing this once, the players then prefer not to distract themselves from the main route and to arrive quickly as possible.
What do you think about? I would like to read your experiences
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- andrepollux
- Posts: 2
- Joined:
Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
I agree, like most of you, that Fatigue points and the "Hunter" actions during Journey are already abstractions of that.
I know it's a bit of a niche point, but I wanted to flag that Hobbit Tales / the Hobbit Starter Set already has sneaky rules for "Finding Food to Go" (introduced during the Involuntary Postmen adventure). In the same way that "Hobbit Walks" exist as an alternative to Journeys, I think this could be a nice hook for anyone interested in implementing rules around gaining and/or suffering from a lack of food — probably most relevant for Hobbits who love their meals.
FINDING FOOD TO GO
The Loremaster can resolve any foraging action attempted by the Player-heroes using [appropriate skill roll depending on the action/method].
A success means they've found enough food to feed themselves for one day. Each additional Success icon yields enough food for one more day — or enough to feed themselves plus another Hobbit.
Any Player-hero who goes to bed with an empty belly gains 1 point of Fatigue (on top of anything gained from travelling), and must make a WISDOM roll to avoid losing 1 Hope, suffering the indignity of going to bed with no supper.
I know it's a bit of a niche point, but I wanted to flag that Hobbit Tales / the Hobbit Starter Set already has sneaky rules for "Finding Food to Go" (introduced during the Involuntary Postmen adventure). In the same way that "Hobbit Walks" exist as an alternative to Journeys, I think this could be a nice hook for anyone interested in implementing rules around gaining and/or suffering from a lack of food — probably most relevant for Hobbits who love their meals.
FINDING FOOD TO GO
The Loremaster can resolve any foraging action attempted by the Player-heroes using [appropriate skill roll depending on the action/method].
A success means they've found enough food to feed themselves for one day. Each additional Success icon yields enough food for one more day — or enough to feed themselves plus another Hobbit.
Any Player-hero who goes to bed with an empty belly gains 1 point of Fatigue (on top of anything gained from travelling), and must make a WISDOM roll to avoid losing 1 Hope, suffering the indignity of going to bed with no supper.
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- tbiamf
- Posts: 6
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Re: Question about rests and foraging during Journeys
The TOR 1e product titled Journeys and Maps had "Regional Hazard Episodes" and some guidance for "Tailoring Hazards to Named Regions."
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