Fria Ligans forum

Okay so I'm running this for the first time for my family party, just had our first session. I've noticed a slight problem with the skill roll requirements where it relates to the pregenned characters in the Mathom-House section.

My players (parents, sister and sister's BF) have been rolling pretty badly through the night. About their only massive success so far was that they managed to all sneak through Michel Delving to the Mathom-House without detection. They only managed to cross the Water because Primula (played by me along with Lobelia to make up the numbers though I'm not really RPing them) managed to scrape a Bow skill win to get the log with no LM dice-fudging required.

Now, they're inside the Mathom-House now. Need three successful Scan rolls to find the map. Two failures and the dog wakes up.

The problem: Only two characters have any skill whatsoever in Scan; Rorimac (sister's BF) and Lobelia (me). Both of them failed their rolls. With nobody else being even favoured or having any points invested in Scan, their only hopes are to either invest Hope points (very finite resource) or bank on getting the Gandalf-rune for an insta-success.

Theoretically, if you kept on failing your rolls (which seems like par the course so far), you could sit there frittering away Hope points from then until Doomsday and just end up locked out of the campaign in the end because nobody has any Hope left to buy more Success dice to even attempt winning the Scan roll.

Does anybody have any advice on how to surmount this? Because I might just be missing something or letting it get to me more than I should but right now I feel like I spent over £100 on a faulty system.

I'm going to assume you're just using the rules from the Starter Set here.

First off - the consequences of failure - waking Firework up isn't the end of the world, you can get him back to sleep with a Courtesy roll, otherwise you lose a point of Hope while he gets in the way. If you do happen to get him back to sleep, he doesn't wake up again.

Secondly, the system isn't broken, but if you take the text literally (which I guess if it was your first ever game, you might), this particular part of the scenario may seem very black and white.

Leaving that aside for the minute, as you pointed out, Rory and Lobelia have the best shots at finding the Map, Lobelia's roll is Favoured. Remember that both of these characters have the "Keen-Eyed" Distinctive Feature, which they can invoke on the roll (see p.13) and that will make them Inspired, granting 2d instead of 1d for a Hope point.

So basically, Lobelia rolls two Feat dice (keeps the highest) plus a Success die. If she spends a point of Hope and invokes her Feature, she can add another two dice. (Rory could theoretically do the same, but he'd only get the one Feat die and his TN is a bit higher).

Remember to look at Degrees of Success as well - its not explicitly spelled out in the scenario, but I'd count each Special Success rune as reducing the number of Scan rolls needed.

One thing in the Core book that isn't in the Starter Set is the Support action, which allows a second character to assist in the search and spend a Hope point to add an extra die to Lobelia's, so she'd have three to play with.

Even with the Starter Set, you could also look at other "assist" options - maybe instead of just a Scan, you could allow Esmeralda, say, to make an Enhearten Skill roll to keep everyone's spirits up (with success reducing the number of Scan rolls required).

But if you STILL fail after all of this, you have options as the GM - its an rpg. You could have the search continue until near dawn, allow the PCs to eventually find the map but drop their Endurance to reflect the exhausting search. Just be flexible as a GM and keep the story moving.

The Important thing is to enjoy the game: it's an overriding principle to me. So be flexible as LM. If your family is hitting a series of low dice rolls you as LM can offer "Success with Woe"*, which is something where a failed dice roll is considered a Success so you achieve your ambition/aim EXCEPT that then you have a further twist to your Success.
e.g. As LM you are free to invent a mini-quest within the quest; The hobbits find a large cabinet labelled "Maps and Portraits" but it is locked. NOW the hobbits have to sneak downstairs to the main door where the key cupboard is kept. This is a principally a Stealth test now. Which should cheer up your players I hope.
e.g. have one of the PCs lose something important. Lobelia might be carrying her portable "SPORK" - for sudden al fresco picnics opportunities. She uses it as a lever to open the case with the map in it - only to have it broken forever!! (Such an event may even trigger her obsession with collecting spoons and forks in the future, and the feeling that Bilbo owes her some spoons)

*Success with Woe is an accepted feature in the main game's Core rule book that broadly works along these lines. So feel confident to employ it.

If this is your first roleplaying game, count yourself lucky. You play one of the best games ever! Just try to remember, this is story focused, which means, the rules should bend towards the story, not the other way around. Meaning, don’t let them stop players with good ideas. Let them roll different skills, if something doesn’t work out. Use Hope and help each other out.

And most importantly: Have fun! This is not about winning the game!

if your family fails all the rolls, the dog wakes up and alerts everyone. This isn't like a videogame where a big "game over try again" screen comes up, failure shouldn't grind the game to a halt, it should escalate things and push onwards, Firework waking up is just another development in the story. Maybe instead of making a sneaky escape like they imaged the players hear people coming just as they see the map, and have to smash it out of it's frame and run out of town in the darkness with their faces covered. Then through the rest of the game there are some cartoonishly inept Hobbit police detectives looking around for the "dangerous criminals" who stole Old Tooks map.
As a LM you should roll with the punches to make the adventure react around the players successes and failures, it can make even a catastrophic disaster funny and enjoyable instead of a dead end.

Also encourage the players to try different things. Sure Bilbo thinks the players will have to steal the map. But maybe Lobelia can convince the Hobbit lass who owns the manthom house to let her borrow it. Then the encounter could be a series or persuade and courtesy tests to convince them that they have nothing to do with Bilbo. If they fail they still get the map, but a clock gets ticked and the company will be closer to getting Hobbit bounders arresting them. Involuntary Postmen is the weakest of the adventures, and maybe you only run it if the players get into too much trouble in the previous adventures.