System Brief: The Fellowship Companion
A Journey-Supporting System
Table of Contents
1. What We are Building
Throughout this course, you will work as part of the Fellowship on its journey from the Shire to Mordor.
The Fellowship is already on the move. Your task is not to simulate the journey - but to support it while it is happening.
You will build The Fellowship Companion: a small digital product that helps the Fellowship make decisions, stay aligned, manage resources, and adapt to changing conditions along the way.
Think of this as a tool the Fellowship would wish they had - not another weapon, not magic, but information, structure, and clarity.
2. What the Companion is (product view)
From a product perspective, The Fellowship Companion is:
- A decision-support and communication tool
- A shared situational overview
- A living record of the journey
It answers questions like:
- Where are we right now?
- What options do we have, and what do they imply?
- What is our current state (resources, risks, party status)?
- What have we already decided, and why?
The Companion evolves while the journey unfolds.
It is not finished upfront - it grows as the Fellowship encounters new problems.
3. Core Capabilities (MVE)
By the end of the course, The Fellowship Companion should allow a user to:
- Understand the current situation
- Where the Fellowship is
- Who is present
- What resources and constraints exist
- Explore decisions and paths
- Possible routes, actions, or strategies
- Consequences and trade-offs
- Track change over time
- Resources increase/decrease
- Party status changes
- Decisions
- Share a common understanding
- One interface the whole Fellowship can use and understand
- No hidden knowledge, no guesswork
- Document the journey
- Decisions, assumptions, outcomes
- The Red Book as a living reference
4. How Your Assignments Contribute
Each assignment delivers a piece of the Companion, not a standalone exercise:
- You will map decisions before they are taken
- Design interfaces that make information usable
- Implement behavior that reacts to change
- Integrate everything into one coherent system
Individually, these artifacts may look simple.
Together, they form a working product.
5. Important Notes on Assessment
- Some activities (peer engagement, Red Book updates) are not graded.
They exist because the journey cannot work without them.
- Code reviews act as validation checkpoints, not as graded deliverables.
Grades focus on what you build, not on performative effort.
- If you skip the foundations (The Red Book updates), the journey continues - but without guidance.
6. Your Role
You are not just writing code.
You are building a companion that others rely on while moving forward:
- Design decisions matter.
- Clarity matters.
- Consistency matters.
The Fellowship is already on the road.
Your task is to make sure they don't walk it blindly.