Advice for running Stone Dragon Mountain (1e adventure)

Torchbearer An Adventurer's Essentials
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Hello,
I’'m very new to running Torchbearer, and I’m quite taken with the 1e adventure, Stone Dragon Mountain. Thor has said on this forum that it should run fine in 2e even though was written for 1e, but I have a couple of questions.

  1. It refers to ambushes a couple of times. Were there mechanics for ambushes in 1e? How should they be handled in 2e? Increased disposition for the ambushers?

  2. I love the way this adventure simulates the challenges of mountaineering, so I’d like to use some kind of travel rules. The 2e travel rules seem mainly suited to abstracted journeys between adventure sites, but SDM involves a multi-day journey interspersed with bits of adventure at keyed locations. Any suggestions on how to handle this? I want the journey to feel challenging, without being too punishing for my inexperienced players.

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  1. One way to simulate a group being ambushed is to limit (or perhaps even set) what types of conflict the party can engage in; for example, “you are already surrounded, so can’t attempt a Flee conflict but can choose between Kill and Drive Off”.

  2. In the last campaign @Mark_Watson ran, we used tests for route planning, following it without issue, and finding camps to rest if we chose. So, you could do the initial journeys with one test that covers everything, e.g. a test to follow the route without issue, with cartography &c. as acceptable help that imposes a condition on failure (for example, Exhausted) then scale up to a more complex Identify Route > Follow Route > Respond to issues chain.

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Thanks Dave.

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