Chatter: Advancement

[Vardaen]

If a player succeeds at an action he may invoke a Trait to gain an Advancement point: if the Trait is deemed to be pertinent to the action, the player earns the point and checks the appropriate box.



So far Hardy, Borir was able to just say, "I'm hardy, I don't need to roll. And we don't roll for him. If he wants to roll, and take the same chances as the others for that check, then sure it would get a point."

Cooking trait related to what skill that we tested? I don't think we made a Crafting check to boil water and make toast do we?

[Muskrat]

Oh, so my original understanding was right. I would think I could invoke the Merciful trait both in talking the bandits down and in the major risk I took in being the one to cut Baldor down.

It does seem like some Traits might be easier to use to gain Advancement Points than others. This could be problematic. V, is this something you want to consider house-ruling? Or at least looking around and seeing how other GMs handle it?

[Vardaen]

I was going to try and search online for how others use it. I MIGHT just end up giving out a set number of AP to everyone. With bonus AP for those people that make the serious'y hard rolls or something.

In the end you combo all your APs and spend them on anything you like, its not like an AP in Search has to be spent on Search skill.

[Trogdor]

So it seems like Pipkin will get the short end of the stick with at least some of his traits. I strongly suspect that we'll be seeing a lot more opportunities to use Hardy than Pipeweed.

[Vardaen]

I'm considering something like this for awarding AP. Similar to how I was giving out XP in other games.

Award AP based on the following:

Good posting speed (did you get 3 day ruled? Or combat day ruled?)

Good post quality (is it fun to read your posts, do you account for other's posts in your reactions, grammar, spelling punctuation are at least on par with my disastrous typing)

Proactively assisted the story (are you interacting, not always reacting, do you take a leadership role in adding to the story at times)

Used any number of skills during the adventure (are you just fighting, or do you try and call on skills and traits during the game)

You make an insanely hard roll, or your roll saves the party some terrible consequence.

Etc...

[Vardaen]

As we come to the close of Book 1: Act 1 its time to award points to the characters.

Since we are going to change things up a bit from how the book has this handled I thought I would go over this a bit.

First lets look at Advancement Points. These can be spent on Common Skills only. Normally earned for good rolls and trait uses, it became clear that this was going to set things off balance to a point I wasn't interested in.

So I'm taking a different approach:

a. Good Posting Speed: 2 Point
b. Good Posting Quality: 3 Points
c. Proactive Story Telling: 3 Points
d. Solve Problems with Various Common Skills (not just calling on your traits): 2 Points
e. Make Skill Check of a TN18+: 1 Point
f. Completed the Adventuring Phase without dying: 2 Points

Normally the max APs you could hope to get are 18 (3 per category of skills: Personality, Movement, Perception, Survival, Custom, Vocation). However it seems far more likely that the best you could reasonably hope to achieve is 12 points (2 per category).

Using these metrics, our awards so far are:

Aerth: a,b,c,d,f = 12
Borir: a,b,c,d,f = 12
Pipkin: a,b,c,d,f = 12
Varuthil: a,b,c,d,f = 12
Wren: a,b,c,d,f = 12

Awarded on your Fellowship Tab

How to spend them can be found on the Adventure's Book page 171

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Now for Experience Points. At the end of the gaming session each hero receives one Experience point. Moreover, if the group of heroes has made significant progress toward the completion of the chosen Company objective, each character receives an additional Experience point.

The concept of a Company Object becomes rather muddled when you are presented with an adventure, like what we just had. The object was to get through Mirkwood alive! In the book it even says, "The Loremaster should let the heroes gain the supplementary Experience point under most circumstances, unless there are very good reasons to consider that the group hasn't progressed toward its goal (i.e. the possibility of denying this Experience point ‘award' should not be used as a form of generic ‘punishment' for the group)."

I would assume this would mean, in our current adventure that you let Baldor or Belgo or both die! You robbed the man and stole his things, or otherwise abandoned the quest part way through.

In light of this piece of information I didn't have before I basically will be awarding you 2XP at the "end of each session". What makes a session is up for debate on the PbP format. I'm going to go on the basis that one session makes up about 10 pages of PbP. This would mean since we started, it was 3 game sessions. We would have had 3 combats, several RP sessions, even a scene with Tolerance being set among the Elves. Plenty of travel, a Hazard, and general game play. I think it makes sense. I don't expect that you would attempt to fill the game with extraneous posts just to fill pages, since 1. you are all so much better Gamers than that, and 2. it would hinder your AP awards based on some of the metrics.

So that means, everyone is awarded 6 Experience Points. Which are spent on Weapon Skills and Valor or Wisdom. How to spend this can be found in the Adventurer's Book page 171 as well.

Aerth, Borir, Pipkin, Varuthil, Wren: +6 XP

Combat Tab Updated (Sheet also updated to v 2.1 for better XP tracking

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[Shurijo]

Do we spend our XP and AP prior to the Fellowship Phase or after the Fellowship Phase? I don't remember reading which comes first. This sorta matter since some of the options requires skill checks that might change when you spend your AP.

[Vardaen]

During. I'm fine if you want to spend your point now, at this point in the adventure. You'll be spending months in the Fellowship Phase, until late spring rolls around.

[Vardaen]

I just read this:

The suggested pace for a The One Ring campaign sees the Loremaster and his players take part in four to six sessions of play for every year of game time. This translates roughly to an average yearly rate of 13 Experience points for every character, enough to see them rise to excellence in about 15 years. If a hero has gotten this far with his body and spirit intact, he should consider himself very lucky and seriously think about retiring voluntarily from active adventuring.

I'm not sure how they expect that to happen when 4 sessions would net 8 XP at the most, but they have very funny organization of the books. I expect the next year to run two adventures, with a very short Fellowship Phase between them in the summer months, so I guess that will kinda happen.

[Muskrat]

I've spent Varuthil's AP & XP. I've picked up the Elven cultural virtue The Speakers that lets you talk to animals and inanimate objects and given myself one point each in the skills Insight and Courtesy.