D&D 5E Anyone Using Adventures in Middle Earth Journey/Rest Rules in Regular 5e Game?

[Ilbranteloth]

I'm currently re-reading the Lord of The Rings (man, this takes me back. I was 14 years old when I first read that scene where Gandalf faced the Balrog. Blew me away!) and well... has anyone used the game itself to run a Middle-Earth game? Does the 5e version work?

The last Middle-Earth campaigns I ran was using ICE's Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP), which did a great job of evoking the feel. In reading the 5e version, I get the sense that it will do an even better job of that. The classes, backgrounds, and new rules all fit together and tie closely to the setting, something D&D in general doesn't do well. But that's partially because D&D has to be the base for many settings.

Having said that, it's still up to the DM to make Middle Earth come alive. Everybody's interpretation of what is Middle Earth will vary, but I think the system will support most approaches well. One of the things I think it will also do well, is focus on the character and their development. While I approach these sorts of problems a bit differently, their approach of one major journey/adventure cycle per year, along with their Fellowship Phase to tie their growth to downtime and the setting, further helps immerse players in the setting and alter the focus away from the magic, treasure, and the usual D&D feel and approach. All good things in my opinion.

While I might modify some of the rules, I'm seriously considering running the first adventure that comes out shortly, and it has been probably 20 years since I've run an alternate game system or setting, so that's saying quite a bit about how impressed I am with it. For the most part I'll run it as is, to see if the different approach might surprise me and work better for my other campaigns than I think. Regardless, there is still a lot I'll be taking from their approach to improve my regular D&D game.

 

[Majestic]

While the Journey rolls for AME are okay (it's the one system I think I prefer TOR in, when comparing the two), I'm really liking the restrictions on rests. I've considered moving something similar over to my regular 5E game, where it seems that resource management is just too easy for the players.

 

[Bacon Bits]

"No Long Rests in the Wilderness"

And thus the barbarian hordes lost the war.

"I dunno, chief, I was filled with battlelust before we marched, but after a couple skirmishes, I really feel like I need some peace and tranquility to get my rage back. I can't get a good night's sleep with all these guards around, and my tent is soooo uncomfortable."

The actual rule is:

While on the Road, Player-heroes may only take short rests. Long rests are only available as part of a successful journey event, or at the discretion of the Loremaster who has decided it necessary.

A "journey event" is an encounter that happens on the road. Here, it means that it's possible for the party to, for example, encounter a particularly hospitable and accommodating homestead on the road where they're able to long rest for the night. It doesn't mean, "If you happen across some giant spiders in Mirkwood, you get to long rest after killing them off." The example given in the Player's Guide is the party finds an idea camping location. The Scout (a role a character may take during travel) rolls an Investigation check (base DC 12). If the roll beat the DC by 5, the location can be used for a long rest.

Are you at a city? You can long rest. Are you in a dungeon of some sort? You can long rest (assuming you can find someplace comfortable and safe, both of which AiME requires for a long rest). Are you travelling from a city to a dungeon (or vice-versa)? No long rests without loremaster approval. The idea is to make the journey more interesting and risky feeling, and since both stories in Middle Earth involve very long journeys through dangerous lands that take their toll on the characters, this does a good job of representing that.

I'm playing in a AiME campaign currently. We haven't bothered with the really crunchy embarkation rolls and such, but we've really liked the "no long rest on a journey" mechanic.

Keep in mind, however, that the Scholar (Healer) and the Warden both have out-of-combat healing that refreshes or is used on a short rest. So, the PCs can still recover lost HP. You just can't recover actual long rest abilities, recover Hit Dice, recover hp for free, etc. Also keep in mind that there are essentially no spellcasting classes in AiME (you can learn to cast a very small list of spells with "Feats").

Here's what the Loremaster's Guide has to say about it:

The reasoning here is two-fold. First, journeys are dangerous, challenging and tiring. Player-heroes must make judicious choices on the Road. The peril of travel is a key part of Middle-earth and is where much of the adventure and character development occurs. Second, the inability to fully rest while travelling heightens the importance of Sanctuaries. Players will soon realise that they cannot thrive in Middle-earth without friends and allies willing to show them hospitality. This mechanical push towards Sanctuaries promotes these key themes of the setting. A company of heroes simply cannot live forever on the Road, without engaging the peoples they meet along the way.

 

[ad_hoc]

I really love these rules, but I've never played Adventures in Middle Earth. So I am curious what others have experienced with these Journey and also Resting rules, and whether anyone is using them in their regular 5e games? I think, with some adaptations, they could be run in any 5e game. And I think it would enhance my games at least to adopt them. But, before I go further down that road, I would like to hear other people's experiences with these rules.

I've been using similar resting rules for some time and they have gone very well. Long rests release the tension from the story.

Short Rest - 2-4 hours. This involves cooking, taking a nap, repairing gear, etc.

Long Rest - 8-24 hours. Must be free from threat. Must be able to rest comfortably without worry of attack. (this is very similar to the Middle Earth rules)

The party then faces decisions in game. Do they press on to finish the current mission? Or do they return to town and allow their enemies to reinforce, flee with the treasure, other adventuring parties to swoop in, etc.

 

[habahnow]

This!

Some designers realy overestimate importance of a 5 star hotel as essential to get a good night sleep.

bedroll and blanket is all you need in a temperate climate. And not to be bothered for 6-8hrs

I was actually thinking of a way of making travel a bit more dangerous, and what i came up with(but haven't implemented) is having a constitution save for being able to recover during a long rest in the wilderness.

There would be 4 d20 rolls made for each long rest made in the "wilderness": one to see if you GAIN a level of exhaustion(lower DC), one to remove a level of Exhaustion, one to regain your full HP, and one to regain any long rest related abilities.

I imagine the DC for the latter 3 rolls to be equivalent and higher than the roll for avoiding gaining a level of exhaustion.

What this means is that the players will be slowly losing "resources" when they take long rests throughout a long trip. They have the potential for regaining all of it, or even ending up worse than before.
The players still regain hit dice as usual, which may sometimes mean that they will need to use them to regain their HP if they failed their HP recovery roll. Additionally, any abilities recharged on short rests are automatically recovered(reasoning being they are basically taking 8 short rests per long rests). So this pushes a party to covet short rest characters more, while also pushing long rest characters to be a bit more mindful to the amount of abilities that they use while taking a long journey.

If anybody uses a similar system, I'd like to know how it has gone for you.

 

[Majestic]

Thank you for your reply. I hope you won't mind a few follow up questions...

1: In a review I read, one reviewer commented that a significant weakness was that he felt that the classes were poorly balanced in combat - classes that in classic 5e had significant magical power now had said magical powers curtailed but without an increase in combat potential. As a result, the more martial classes dominate combat. Is this true?

2: Why are you switching from The One Ring system to the quasi-5e version?

3: How does the One Ring system work anyway? I know next to nothing about it...

I'm so sorry for taking so long to answer (I don't make it over here that often).

1) There's been a bit of a disparity in combat, as one of our PCs clearly outshines the others (by virtue of having three attacks to everyone else having one). But he's not even as impressive as the Hobbit Treasure Hunter, who can occupy the same space as the opponent, who thus can't then attack him.

2) I just answered this today over on rpg.net, so let me copy and paste some of what I wrote there:

As much as I love TOR, I started to become a little disillusioned with the Audience rules (both games have three core pillars: Journeys/Travel, Audiences/Encounters, and Combat). Basically my PCs became proficient enough that they could quite easily and simply breeze through any encounter, getting the best results possible. At the same time, while I like TOR's combat system, my preference is for the more visual and tactical options in 5E/AME than the theater-of-the mind/stylized TOR method.

I ran a single test session of AME, and my players preferred it to TOR as well (we're all fans of 5E, and I'd say generally it's everyone's favorite edition of D&D). I think I prefer Journeys in TOR, but overall I'm glad we made the switch. The core story is exactly the same, and my players treat the source material and Middle-earth the exact same way (in other words, they didn't suddenly turn into the stereotypical loot-grubbing murder hobos).

3) The One Ring is a more narrative, stylized game. The core mechanic is that you roll a number of d6s equal to the rank you have in a skill, plus a d12 that has a Gandalf (good) and Sauron (bad) icon. The ordinary TN is 14. The narrative bit is that there are traits one can invoke, for instance. As I mentioned before, there's three core elements, and there is much more emphasis on travel (Middle-earth is a key character itself in the setting). I know that's not much, but hopefully it gives you a taste of how it plays.

I really need to set things up so that it will ping my email when somebody responds, as I didn't intend to take so long to get back to these forums!

 

[GlassJaw]

Cool thread, lots of good ideas.

Overall I like the idea of making long rests more difficult, especially in the wilderness, if for no other reason than making the wilderness feel harsh and unforgiving and one of the reasons why most people don't leave their village or town.

That said, my designer sniff test says (depending on much wilderness travel occurs in a given campaign) that classes that rely more heavily on long rests to recharge their abilities are going to really feel the pinch, whereas classes like the fighter, monk, rogue, and warlock are really going to shine.

Has this been the case in your experience? If so, how do you balance that? Fewer wandering monster or combat encounters while traveling? Introducing spots that can be found to allow a long rest (like AiMI)?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Cool thread, lots of good ideas.

Overall I like the idea of making long rests more difficult, especially in the wilderness, if for no other reason than making the wilderness feel harsh and unforgiving and one of the reasons why most people don't leave their village or town.

That said, my designer sniff test says (depending on much wilderness travel occurs in a given campaign) that classes that rely more heavily on long rests to recharge their abilities are going to really feel the pinch, whereas classes like the fighter, monk, rogue, and warlock are really going to shine.

Has this been the case in your experience? If so, how do you balance that? Fewer wandering monster or combat encounters while traveling? Introducing spots that can be found to allow a long rest (like AiMI)?

The classes from AiME dont rely as much on long rest as in 5e because of the lack of full spellcasters, but I dont see the fact that wizards/cleric/bard have to manage their slots as a bad thing; we've seen so many threads here about the difficulty to implement the 6 encounters/long rest. I find the idea to let the possibility to long rest while traveling be decided by a random roll quite elegant. Even in the encounter table in AIME guide, there's not a lot of unavoidable encounters, there's a lot of exploration skill challenges but few combat that would strain the resources of long-rest-based classes if there's no opportunity to long rest before the arrival roll.

 

[Cendragon]

In addition, I'm not entirely clear on the math of this check. Normally your Survival proficiency bonus would include your Wisdom modifier. Does that mean it includes 1 1/2 times your Wisdom bonus? With a maximum Peril Rating of 5, that means that at 1st level you could conceivably have somebody with a +2 proficiency bonus +5 Wisdom bonus (maybe another +2 Wisdom bonus) and a maximum -5 Peril (not likely at first level). So that's a minimum of either a +2 or +4 to your Embarkation Roll, meaning that you cannot roll a 1 or 2 (which have entries on their table).

In which case (assuming a 20 Wisdom):

I'm not clear about what they mean by Survival proficiency bonus plus 1/2 Wisdom modifier because the Survival skill would normally include one's Wisdom modifier However, in regards to starting with a 20 Wisdom this is not possible under the fairly standard point-buy system which only allows one to buy up to a 15 starting score (17 with some racial modifiers for standard 5e D&D but only 16 with AIME cultures). Thefore, this is a +3 instead of a +5 maximum possible at first level for Wisdom modifier. If someone is "rolling ability scores" and has the luck to get an 18 they could still only get a 19 with AIME cultures so a theoretical +4, not a +5 at first level.

 

[stavka]

In which case (assuming a 20 Wisdom):

1st level: +2 proficiency, +2 expertise, +2 Wisdom for +6, Peril -5, minimum roll 1 (one point of shadow corruption and other bad stuff)
10th level: +4 +4 +2 -5 = minimum roll 5 (one extra level of exhaustion)
17th level: +6 +6 +2 -5 = minimum roll 9 (All terrain is one grade easier - no negative effect at all).

So my approach would be entirely different:

Ilbranteloth's 5e Version of Embarkation Roll
You (most likely the character with the highest score, possibly with help granting advantage) would make a Survival check against the Peril Rating (the usual DC table, the five steps from Easy to Nearly Impossible).

Success: Advantage on your Embarkation roll.
Failure: Standard Embarkation roll (1d12).
Failure by 5 or more: Disadvantage on your Embarkation roll.

Simple, and uses existing 5e mechanics. I might also expand the Embarkation table to 20 entries and just use a d20 instead of a d12, but it's really not that important.

I thought of another approach.
Based on the navigation test.
Fail - Roll 1d4 in Embarkation table
Success - Rolling 2d4 in Embarkation table
Success with margin of 5+ - Roll 3d4 in Embarkation table