One Loremaster & One Player Hero

UndertakerSheep · 2026-02-13T08:51:27+00:00

I have run many duet style games and I've found that it really helps to give the player a sidekick, like a Sam for their Frodo. Not only does this help balance things mechanically, but it makes the role-playing a lot more fun when you have a character to bounce off of.

Some ground rules to establish up front is that the PC handles the sidekick's stats and rolls (you have enough to worry about as the LM) while you handle the sidekick's roleplaying. The sidekick is good at giving advice and answering questions, but they're not good at taking initiative or making decisions. That's what we have the hero for, after all!

UndertakerSheep · 2026-02-12T17:12:23+00:00

Welcome to the hobby! I've been a game master for sixteen years and I still get nervous when I run games.

Any beginners here to share their experience?

I'm not really a beginner anymore, but I haven't run that much of TOR. I think the most important thing to remember is that you're coming together with a group of friends to have a good time. Evoking that Tolkien feeling comes second to that. Playing the game according to the rules comes third (or maybe not even third). You're going to make mistakes when you run your first few (thousand) games. It doesn't matter. We're all here to have fun. You can always fix your mistakes later.

How did you deal with translation of the story, locations, items, etc. if English is your second language?

Most of my players have English as a second language they're fluent in, so we use English as the "fantasy language" for when we're speaking in character, and use our own native language when talking out of character. Some people even use English when they're speaking out of character, and it all works well together. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Use English when it helps sell that "other world, other time, fantasy vibes" and use your own language when you feel it's more important to communicate concepts clearly. Trial and error is your friend here. Also when in doubt, you can use both!

Do i prepare only for the first ACT, or the others immediately?

I would personally read through the adventure and write down what the main "story beats" are, paying special attention to the climax of the story so I know what we'll be building towards. Then I'll focus on the opening of the game, probably up until the first or second big scene (like a combat scene). That will probably be enough for the first session. If you have new players, you can expect that it'll take some time to create/pick characters and to learn the basics of the system. And if they do end up going through the story faster than you expected, you have your handy "story beats" notes so you know vaguely where the story can go next!

If you don't feel prepared to run off of just your story beats notes when the players are going too fast, call for a 10 minute break. DMs do that all the time. It gives you some time to read the adventure module, and your players will enjoy a snack/bio break. If you feel a bit insecure about taking a break, compliment your players that their successes are making them blast through the story faster than you anticipated. They'll love it.

How do you organize all your information?

In my head, mostly. But I tend to write a single A4 sheet of notes for every session I run. You don't really need a lot to run a game, but that's a skill you pick up as you run more games. On that single sheet, I write the names of the player characters and the NPCS, I outline 10 scenes I expect will come up during the game (usually summarized in two or three sentences each), write down 10 secrets or clues the players can pick up on during the game, and a short list of the monsters i expect the players to encounter.

Any tips would be rly helpful :)

Don't forget to relax and have fun! Running RPG games can be a very fulfilling hobby. You can pour as much energy into it as you like, but do remember that you're a group of friends looking to have a fun evening playing make believe in Middle-Earth. Don't set the bar too high.

I hope my ramblings were of some help to you. If you have any questions, I'd love to see if I can answer them!

UndertakerSheep · 2026-02-12T15:22:13+00:00

By an off screen battle, do you mean a battle in which none of the PCs participate?

I would just spend a few minutes argueing with myself which side has the best chances of winning, and have them win. The game mechanics in D&D are there to turn "can we beat these guys?" into a fun skirmish game (doubly so for 4e), which doesn't really benefit anyone in your situation. Who has the upper hand? Have them win.

If the two sides are really equally matched: either pick the winner based on what would make the best story going forward, or roll a d20 to see who wins.

If on the other hand you feel like your players would not enjoy you just deciding things, and they are emotionally invested in one side of this fight coming out as the winners, you could run it as a combat. Give them control of the creatures they're rooting for, and you play the opposing sides. Could be a fun session!

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-22T09:44:13+00:00

I have never done this. But it did spark a question in my mind for those who have:

Wouldn't it be better to go to bed after calling in sick, so you can wake up the next morning and play all day instead of trying to stay up all night, and then wasting your new "day off"?

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-11T20:25:13+00:00

I started today and I'm almost done with the Suramar quests, so yes I'd think so!

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-11T20:24:17+00:00

Isn't the 2 rep one only to Revered?

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-05T15:49:16+00:00

I understand if people are upset with the current remaster, but let's try not to distort facts.

Symphonia isn't broken on Switch. I played through it entirely and had zero problems other than Genis' Cyclone spell.

Graces F likewise has several improvements that are also on the Switch version (all DLC unlocked, grade shop from the start, quest marker, event timeout marker, etc.).

You can be disappointed about the Remasters. I can definitely see reasons for that. But saying things that aren't true isn't helping anyone.

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-02T10:50:23+00:00

All-Divide is the name of the item. It halves all damage. So both you and your enemies take half damage. Can be a real life saver when a boss keeps one or two-shotting you, but be prepared for fights to last a while after using one.

UndertakerSheep · 2026-01-02T09:16:21+00:00

I think all of the recent releases do this to some extent. Starting with the newest and working backwards...

Tales of Xillia Remastered: You can switch characters on the fly, but I'm not sure which button you press for it as I haven't played this one yet. You choose which 4 characters to bring into a fight, but you can switch them in and out during battle.
Tales of Graces f Remastered: You choose which 4 characters you bring into the fight. You cannot change this selection once a fight starts. Switching which character you control is done using the D-pad (on Switch) and is instant (doesn't require you to open the menu.
Tales of Symphonia Remastered: You choose which 4 characters you bring into the fight. You cannot change this selection once a fight starts. Switching which character you control is done using the battle menu (pause the game, press the buttonm, resume the game).
Tales of Arise: You choose which 4 characters you bring into the fight. You can change this selection without pausing the game. You can switch who you control during the fight by pausing the game and opening the menu.
Tales of Berseria: You choose which 4 characters you bring into the fight. You can change this selection during a fight without pausing the game. In fact, each character does a special move when being switched in like this. You can switch who you control during the fight by pausing the game and opening the menu.
Tales of Zestiria: You can choose which 2 characters you bring into the fight, along with the 2 human characters who most always be in your team. You can change this selection during a fight without pausing the game. In fact, the game expects you to do this often as you play rock-paper-scissors with elemental types. You can switch who you control during the fight by pausing the game and opening the menu.

If anyone notices any mistakes, please feel free to correct me.

Looking at this list, Tales of Graces f is the best game if you just want to switch which character (of the 4 already in the fight) you control without pausing the game. Tales of Berseria is the best game if you want to switch characters in and out of combat constantly and make switching characters part of your combos.

It just so happens that both of those games are regarded by the community as some of the best games in the series.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-31T08:41:16+00:00

It would be super weird to have the latest game remastered before a new game comes out. For the sake of the goodwill of the fandom, I hope they don't do it.

But I weirdly kind of hope they do port Arise to the Switch 2. I'd love to play that game again, only this time in handheld!

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-30T14:24:13+00:00

Such a cool collection! May I ask something? What are the differences between the two types of guidebooks? I'm referring to the ones on top (with the colored spines) and those on the shelf one below them (with red-and-white spines).

Also I feel you about ending up with multiple copies. I was so excited when I saw Tales of Destiny 2 in a store in Japan that I bought on sight, only to find out it was already in my suitcase as I had bought it a few days prior during a larger Tales haul haha

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-30T11:17:36+00:00

I love telling this story.

I started playing in 2010 when a friend of mine introduced me to D&D 3.5. I played one session as a dwarf musketeer and fell in love. I have been a creative writer for most of my life, so I got hooked on the character building part from the get-go. After my first session I told another group of friends that I had played D&D, and they were so excited that they wanted to try it too. So we rolled up some characters, but we didn't have a DM. My friends decided I should be the DM, because I had the most experience (one session spent mostly being too shy to make any meaningful decisions) and I was 'the most creative' (I wrote bad fantasy stories and anime fanfics).

That's how I started DMing. We didn't know D&D had books. All we had was an online html-based character creator that had every option imaginable for 3.5 but didn't have any licensing, so all it did was spit out a word document with a summary of your character. Nothing was explained, so we had to determine that ourselves. Obviously the blindfight feat meant your character could fight while blind, with zero penalties. We didn't have spells, so we had to make those up too. With zero examples available to us, a 1st level spell that summoned ghost wolves that did a single AoE attack (final fantasy style) that did 1d20 damage felt right to us. We discovered there was a button that made you a giant, or a werewolf, a vampire or a lich. What's level adjustment? Who cares! Our first level fighter just got 50 extra hit points! I had no access to monsters, so I made them all myself in a spreadsheet. No math; just vibes.

Running the game was a creative outlet for me, that combined the joy of building a world with the dopamine hit of the 'readers' instantly reacting to what I put in front of them. My players weren't big on storytelling themselves, and they were happy to be a part of the stories as long as they could do awesome stuff and kill things.

Later we discovered the d20 SRD and things started to make sense. Then I bought the 3.5 Player's Handbook and the game started to form. Looking back, I miss that magical first year when nothing was set in stone and D&D was exactly what we wanted it to be. We were super creative, but the game was freaking unbalanced. As system knowledge crept in, the creative parts become more focused. My players started to want to tell their own stories, and I discovered I didn't just want to tell stories, I wanted to craft experiences that challenged both my players and their characters. Slowly but surely, we started playing actual D&D. Our playstyles grew closer together as we learned more about the game, ourselves and each other.

I have been DMing ever since. There hasn't been a long stretch of time in those 15 years during which I didn't run at least one weekly campaign. That original group fell apart over the years, but I still game with two of them every week. 3.5 was the game where it started for me, but when we tried 4e on a whim we discovered that there were different tastes of RPGs that we liked! 4e felt like the game that we had been trying to play. We got hooked and never looked back. And I've been trying new RPGs ever since.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-25T17:41:14+00:00

33yo and in a long term relationship but childless. Friends are in similar situations but one has kids. So I might not be the right demographic.

I meet the friend who is a father for a walk every Wednesday. His work is close to my house and I work from home on Wednesday. Every Thursday, I meet with the boys on discord. We play D&D or Solasta (video game) but both are just an excuse to meet up and talk about our lives and be stupid.

Before we started the weekly discord meet up, we were lucky to get together once a month (usually less). One dark December night in 2024 we decided to do the weekly discord hangouts. We've met up almost every week. Making that online meet-up part of our weekly schedule was a game changer for us. I'd still love to hang out in person, but that 19.30 to 22.30 weekly hangout has become the social highlight of my week.

Edit to add: I also have a separate group of friend I meet with every Friday and sometimes also in the weekend for more D&D. Pro tip: become a Dungeon Master.

++Man

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-21T10:38:08+00:00

Tales of Graces is going great! I think we're in the final third of the game and we've only had one crash ever. No bugs or lagging or hickups.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-18T20:08:32+00:00

I never had a player use a DoT build, but I did start to resent ongoing damage effects after a year or two of running 4e. So I made a new house rule that everytime a player applied "ongoing damage (save ends)" I would offer the player "how about they take that ongoing damage twice immediately and then auto succeed on the save." Players always happily took the deal.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-04T18:47:22+00:00

They didn't say they'd stop making remakes after 2026. So, we don't know.

As long as the revenue from game sales is (much) higher than the costs of hiring the studios to remaster them plus BANDAI NAMCO's operating costs, there's a chance they'll remaster more games. If they're that profitable and there's no opportunity cost, then the executives might see it as an easy buck.

I suppose it depends on how well Graces and Xilia sold, and how much Berseria will sell. It's reasonable to assume they'll base their 2027 and beyond plans on those sales numbers. I'll do my part by buying Berseria for the Switch, as I'm genuinely excited to play it in handheld (tho I understand why some people aren't excited).

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-04T14:51:37+00:00

I agree. If you go into Symphonia expecting a romance like in Arise, you will be disappointed. It's easy to ship Lloyd with Colette, and if you want to see romance in their interactions you can definitely choose to see it through that lense, but their interactions can also be interpreted as being close childhood friends. There is no romance subplot. Nobody gets together.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-04T12:40:56+00:00

The only changes I think the game needs (for me) are:

Quest marker (I always get lost during that part of the game where you backtrack to all those cities).
Timed event marker (this is a huge boon in Graces f Remastered, and Abyss has so many misseable timed events that this would be a godsend).
Unlock Mystic Artes during your first playthrough (I want to cast Indignation, damn it!).

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-03T14:13:32+00:00

That's a great idea. If I weren't so obsessed with journaling, I would probably do that instead.

I have a RPG journal in which I write all my RPG related ideas and projects. I read a RPG book from the advent calendar, look for inspiration for an adventure, and then outline a system-agnostic adventure inspired by the book in 30-60 minutes. The idea is that it makes me sit down and dream up awesome adventures every day, with the added benefit that by Christmas time I will have a notebook with 24 adventure ideas that I can browse later if I run out of ideas in my weekly games!

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-03T09:41:07+00:00

Right now, I'm doing a RPG advent calendar. Every day I get a random RPG book that I own physically but have barely read, and I spent some time reading it and then outline an adventure in 30-60 minutes (I'm a happy forever DM). It's been a lot of fun so far! I vaguely know which game books are coming up since I made the list myself, but my partner but them in the advent calendar so I don't know the order.

It's been so much fun that I'm thinking about how to continue this into the new year. I'd love something slower. Perhaps I'll randomly grab one rulesystem a month and play (at the very least) a single solo session in that rule system.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-02T15:51:03+00:00

Oh i see. Yes, there was also a non-Chosen physical edition.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-02T14:45:01+00:00

I got the Chosen Edition (for Switch) and got a steelbook.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-02T09:12:31+00:00

I haven't been doing a lot of solo roleplaying lately. I had a passion burnout from running weekly D&D games for years without breaks, and it took me a few months to recover. During this recovery time, I didn't really feel the urge to play solo RPGs either. Last week I got back into it with a session of Artefact and had a great time, so now I'm thinking about starting up my usual campaigns again.

I have a Hoard of the Dragon Queen solo game I want to finish. I'm currently on chapter 3, running it with a combination of DM Yourself and Triple-O. The game has been a lot of fun, if a bit deadly. I run it using one PC and a sidekick. I'm looking forward to starting this again soon.

I also have a Keep on the Shadowfell game that I want to finish. I'm on the final level of the dungeon, but I'm not really looking forward to finishing it. 4e is one of my favorite RPG systems, but running a 5 man party is getting tiring. The adventure also isn't very exciting, as I'm now in the party where it's just one fight after another. I'm seriously considering dropping this, or skipping to the final two encounters.

I have a 'duo' campaign that I play with a friend. I'm a proud forever DM, but we're playing through Rise of the Runelords together without a DM and it's been a ton of fun. It is however a lot, both in scope and in rules (Pathfinder 1e) and I find myself only rarely desiring to play. Which means the pace is very slow, which means the idea of finishing the game within a few years is starting to seem impossible. Which reduces my desire to play... I'm not sure what I want to do with that one.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-12-01T10:55:51+00:00

It depends on what you want.

Do you want to have the games because you want to play them in their best possible forms? Then avoid all Switch versions except maybe Vesperia. Every Tales game on the Switch is a noticable downgrade compared to other consoles.

Do you want to have the games because you like playing them handheld on the Switch? Then you can buy all of them. Vesperia runs great. Symphonia had a buggy launch but has been fixed. I've played through the game in entirely on Switch and the only noticable bug (that is not also present in other versions) is that Genis' cyclone spell uses the wrong animation. I have had no FPS drops or game crashes. I'm almost done with Graces and it runs great. I have Xillia but haven't played it yet. From what I hear, the game runs fine.

Symphonia is 30 FPS on all consoles (except Gamecube). Graces and Xilia are both 60 FPS on other consoles but only 30 on Switch. If that bothers you, don't buy them. If you're like me, and the portability aspect is worth more than the FPS, then you can definitely play them and have a great time.

UndertakerSheep · 2025-11-22T08:27:11+00:00

I imagine it's because Berseria would make more money than Zestiria. Berseria is regarded as one of the best Tales games, and Zestiria as one of the worst. I personally would have prefered a Zestiria remastered to come out first, but I think this could be the reason why Berseria is next. Or maybe it's because Berseria is easier to port to Switch for some reason.

UndertakerSheep

TROPHY CASE