New Rule: Roving Character Space for Multiple Party Dwarves

[Frodo]

Greetings!

In my games in the States, my players and I have found, perhaps the same as you, that there are so many low-mind Dwarves in the game, yet if you include them all in your ARDA set, it seriously dilutes the Roving character pool, and makes it difficult to find a good choice of characters to bring into play. On the other hand, removing all or most of the low-mind Dwarves robs the game of the fun element of seeing a gigantic (and somewhat unexpected) party of little dwarves. Therefore, I came up with the following optional rule, and it seems to work very well. So enjoy, and feel free to let me and everyone know in this forum what your own experience is!

OPTIONAL RULE: FOR MULTIPLE PARTY DWARVES
When a low-mind Dwarf (i.e. a Dwarf of 1 or 2 mind) would be normally drawn and placed into the Roving Character area, and the Roving Character area is currently empty of low-mind Dwarves, an additional “unexpected party” dwarf appears. Search the Roving Character deck for the next low-mind Dwarf (the “party” dwarf), and place both dwarves together on the same space in the Roving Character area (so they make a pile of 2 dwarves).

However, when a low-mind Dwarf would be normally drawn and placed into the Roving Character area, if the Roving Character area ALREADY CONTAINS a low-mind Dwarf, then you do NOT place this extra “party” dwarf. Instead, simply place the drawn low-mind dwarf on the same space with the other dwarves (so that the single pile of dwarves grows). This means that low-mind Dwarves will never occupy more than one space on the Roving Character area.

Finally, when a player brings into play a low-mind Dwarf from the Roving Character area, he may choose to play any number (even all) of the Dwarves in that pile (the rest are left there).

And so, the party begins...