I see what the issue is, Grimbeorn is under the gandalfofborg login while all my other characters are under durgil.  Moved things around now, hopefully this will help.

Can I just say, I'm loving the flavour text as we come close to Dol Guldur.  Tomcat and Telcontar are really selling the whole 'blighted place where nature has become twisted and malicious' thing. 

EDIT: forgot to add - we have a long weekend coming up here in eastern Australia.  I'll try to make it to the computer when I can but I'm likely to be wrangling small people and cleaning my house for most of it.  Don't let me hold things up if this troll thing turns into a fight!

I totally agree with Paul. The approach to Dol Guldur feels malevolent. Can't imagine what you have in store once we get inside. Great work guys.

Thanks guys, Doug and I appreciate the praise.

I have some work stuff to do thisweekend so the game may slow down a bit over the next couple of days.

No worries. I have plenty of RL things to fill the time.

Great Posts guys. I am getting sucked into some work travel but hope to get a post up soon.

I just want to say that this is a living campaign and what I mean by that is that the character's actions, interests, and internal plot points will be a factor for this game. If anyone has previously looked at the Cubicle 7 source material Doug and I are using it as hand rails but not the blue print for the campaign. I encourage everyone to get engaged and interact with the story because all of the characters input in the game will shape ultimately how the story goes.

Just a heads up... I have a bunch of RL stuff coming up over the next week and a half -- a funeral, my son's birthday party, Canadian Thanksgiving, and then a work conference next Tuesday to Friday to Houston. Probably will affect my ability to post... feel free to NPC as needed.

Ah, I miss having Thanksgiving in October.

I thought I should post this here so as not to break the mood in the game, but holy crap, Dol Guldur sucks!  I vote we give this place a really bad review on Middle-Earth Yelp and then never come here again. 

Everyone will be spending a Fellowship Phase in counseling! 

  
I see you. 

This game is a blast!

guys, I know this is a break from our usual style, I tried to think of ways to make this more interesting for the players since the die rolling drama is absent in a pbp. If I ever run this scene again I'll try to present it different but the ramifications and structure lends itself to an extended roll mechanic. When we are doen with this adventure phase I would be interested in hearing your comments on how it went structuarly and pBP wise.

I think that, time permitting, this might have been better managed by doing the die rolling in sequence and giving a piece of information for each success (nota bene, I can't remember if this is possible given the description of the scene in TDoM).  I think this might result in a little less confusion as multiple people post rolls as an when they can - it might also allow for folks to suggest other skills to use in order to shed some more light on what gets turned up. 

On another subject, I wanted to ask whether our GMs are holding fast to the one-adventuring-phase-per-year idea, or if there is some scope to have more than one per year.  I think the second option makes things like opening Sanctuaries more feasible, as it means the PCs can do this without risking hard-won Standing. 

Allowing multiple Fellowship Phase activities each year's end would achieve the same result, but has less story goodness. 

in my mind there were two approaches to deal with this. One was to drop bits of informstion as the players proceed into the High Keep and the other was to create a narrative around a handful of rolls.
Obviously I chose the second one. I agree that the first option would have given more information and allowed the players to be more creative with their interaction with the story. However, I was considered with the amount of time it would take to do that. It seemed like the design of this extended roll mechanic is in the dice rolling at the table, which we obviously dont have. Also, with two of the players not being able to get into the high keep and real life issues and events my thought was to try and have the die rolling up front in order to expidite the process.

So from a mechanical perspective, would you guys rather roll as you go or do up front skill rolls for extended tests?

As for multiple adventure phases per year Doug and I had talked about this during the first adventure. I think we are both leaning towards doing more than one per year, with free play character narrative between scenes. I would like the story to really be a combination of ehat Doug and I are doing and what you guys come up with for your characters. I think the Fellowship Phase concept allows you guys to really tell the lives of your characters, especially since the campaign spans such a long period of time. Since our goal is to do the whole thing it might help to work on the second generation early!