Hullo –

I have been posting here at the Forge for about a year. After much strenuous encouragement I have decided to post a portion of a play session. I’m not sure how to go about it other than to just start. I’m not sure that I am looking for anything in particular or anything at all. Read, and if possible, enjoy…

I’ll start off with a little bit on the system. The game system I play with is home brew. Other than the combat system and elements related to it, there is no written rules system even for the DM. Character design is a peculiar process with no real formalized procedure. Yes there are physical and mental attributes, which all have an effect on all the combat related sections, but they are all subject to character design ideas. Sometime we as players say we have an idea for a character and other times the DM says he has character ideas in mind for us players. On a certain level everything is open to negotiation. The game is basically a skills based system with certain throw backs to certain D&D concepts. One has an AC, but it is based on the notion of the ability to avoid blows and is considered in light of reflex, hand eye coordination, intelligence, wisdom, and body mass and size. Weapons skills are based upon the difficulty of the employment of the weapon, the strength and dex of the character and background considerations. We use a combination of stamina (which goes up with levels and varies with race and culture) and “personal body points” which is more or less fixed which represents the physicality of the body based on Con and height and weight and race. These values are usually addressed at level roll up – though based on certain extraordinary circumstances during play they can go up between levels.

The Character also has about 30-50 traditional “secondary skills” the starting values of which are assigned during character creation. If the players have some “good” ideas about there character consideration is given during this portion of character creation. This can mean high or low values or even not having a typical skill at all or creating an unusual one. There are no fixed templates though there are some rough norms based upon race (type of Elf, type of Dwarf, Hobbit, Dunedain, man, etc.), culture (Rohirric, Ithillian or any of the other fiefdoms of Gondor, the men of Dale, Khandian, Easterling, Southron, etc.), class (Wizard, cleric, paladin, etc.) or profession (ranger, mercenary, sailor, cavalryman, rancher, farmer, black smith etc.). These secondary skills go up through regular use, luck, and skillful employment and are not level dependent.

Levels are attained through fairly traditional means, but with a twist. Combat is the typical means of level attainment, but a player cannot roll up unless they have attained 10 times the next level in “wisdom checks.” These checks are handed out for effective role-play. Thus a player who is only interested in combat will not find much advancement. At the end of the night “player ratings” are awarded which are discounts to the next level. Thus if a player plays a diplomat, a coward, or wounded, or etc. he still is rewarded. Finally at the end of the night a single player is awarded a “star” for best roleplay. The accumulation of said stars results in certain privileges as certain quantities. These stars are based upon the players current roleplay skill and how far they reached past it – IOW if a new player comes to the table he is given much consideration based upon his newness to the world and style we play. It is not uncommon for new players to win the “star” the first time they play. Life experiences also garner experience as well. Thus the defeat of a foe counts as well as seeing something fantastic or life altering for the first time.
There are no rounds, segments, initiative rolls, classes (per say – though there are wizards and clerics), or alignment systems. Combat is deadly even for those of “high level.”

Armor absorbs damage, but does not make a character harder to hit. All piercing weapons, arrows, daggers and spears bypass stamina and do straight PBP damage. So a 20th level character can be felled by an arrow just as easily as a 1st level character – once they are actually hit. The difference is that a 20th level character is much less likely to be struck for a great number of reasons.

Initiative is seized and goes to the quick of mind as well as quick of body. This can be the case with any situation, not just combat.

Almost all rolls based on a D20. About half the time we don’t know what we are rolling for other. Intensity of play as well as cleverness all count and are factored in. Die rolls typically are not the final arbiters. To quote the DM – “Dice add spice.” High is usually good with natural 20’s always good and natural 1’s nearly always bad, but not always. We trip and fall breaking our ankle, but the arrow speeding for our head passes harmlessly through where our head would have been. Not everything requires a roll and much can be accomplished without – Drama. Dice effects Drama, and Drama effects die rolls.

The whole thing is fairly loose and designed to be very fast. We play a perception based game. Many times what we are told is filtered through the character’s perception process. This makes for very unique gaming experiences even among the various players at a given session. We play a folio of characters all in the same world. The philosophy is that a single character cannot encompass all the possibilities that life and the Dream has to offer. There is no parity among the races. Non-human races are clearly superior in their gifts, they are just hard to earn.

As you have probably surmised the game is set in Middle Earth. We are currently about 30 years before the War of the Rings.

July 4th about a dozen of us rented a ranch house about 3 hours from Los Angeles and took off for a week of roleplay excess! So off we trooped with food, dice, pens, character sheets, a DM’s screen, a portable stereo and about 200 CD’s (mostly motion picture sound track music). This campaign has been running for over 20 years. The DM and another player (his writing partner and system co-creator) moved out from New Jersey about 12 years ago. On this retreat two other players, the “easterlings” as we called them, flew out from New Jersey to join us “westerlings” for a week of play. These two players were there at the beginning of the campaign, and though they have not played regularly since the game came out west, we have encountered many of their characters over the years.

One of the most important was a Dunedain by the name of Turandir. This character is almost 20 years old real time. He is highly accounted among the Dunedain and the Elves. In play long ago he found a child in the wilderness that would turn out to be Aragorn son of Arathorn. This player/character took this babe and delivered him into the hands of Elrond. During the time of the east coast game the two spent time together and eventually adventured together. Just as a quick aside, all of us are just absolutely fanatical about the Dunedain. They lead incredibly difficult and dangerous lives and their only refuge is in Rivendale where Elrond gives them their only shelter and succor. About 15 years ago in real time, the DM built towards a scenario whereby the remaining Dunedain finally decided to come together and start their own settlement. The player of Turandir was given a vision of a city rising out of the sea and the player had decided to go out to pursue this vision and see what it held. By the time the player reached the ocean a trap was sprung upon the Dunedain where they were meeting – a city of old called Tharbad. Thousands of Danes and Vikings poured into the Dunedain. A mage who had gone dark (he had originally been part of the White council) cast sleep upon the out watches. NPC’s known as black commandos (think Nazi storm troopers) killed the sleeping out guards and prepared paths for the incoming troops. 24 Olog-hai (armored trolls) and countless ogres we sent pouring into the masses of Dunedain men, women and children. On top of that the Lord of the Nazgul came upon them. The carnage was horrible. Players lost multiple characters. Dunedain members of the Coiroth (the life watch) we sent to kill the women and children so they would not be captured and tortured and perverted in evil things by Sauron. It was hellish. While all this was going on the player of the Dunedain Turandir was in tears screaming at the DM in real life – “Let me die with my people.” Of the nearly thousand Dunedain men, women and children who were present, only about 30 survived. This was after a player rolled 7 20’s in a row which resulted in a contingent of Elves arriving. The survivors were carted to Rivendale where an injured Black Commando had snuck in among the survivors. As the wounded lay in the houses of healing sleeping, the Black Commando arose and went from bed to bed killing many of the remaining Dunedain before he was caught. There was born an undying hatred by the players for the Dunedain. As for Turandir he never forgave himself for not being at the carnage and from that point on always threw himself into any opportunity to bring harm to the enemy – either Sauron or Aria (the home city of the Black Commandos).

Finally I should note that much of the history of Turandir was bound up with Turan Turinbar. His ancestor who was cursed by Melkor way back in the first age. Turardir also bore the sword Gurthang. The most powerful sword ever forged in the history of Middle Earth. As it was, a doom was pronounced upon Turandir when he took up the sword which had caused so much grief for his ancestor ages past. Turandir would not perish until Gurthang had betrayed him three times.

Cut to about 4 years ago. We westerlings were playing a game in which a disheveled man of great prowess was encountered who seemed to be lost. The long and the short of it was that he was Turandir who had lost his mind due to many reasons, but no longer had the sword. As it was he was being pursued by about 500 orcs. All of got cornered in a small grotto and it was utterly hopeless. We were all going to die. So the DM had Turandir who NPC’d at the time, give himself up to the orcs who in their jubilation forgot the rest of us in the hole and took off with him to Dol Goldur. At this point Turandir did not have Gurthang upon him. Ever since that time all of players had been itching to play the “Turandir rescue party.” We knew the odds were terrible and that the Dark Lord wanted him bad as he had killed two Nazgul in the past. But it did not matter. The Dunedain look out after their own and would not abandon any of theirs especially after the disaster of Tharbad. Four years we had lobbied to play that scenario out. 30 Dunedain against 500 hundred orcs who could kill him at an instant making the whole mission moot.

Cut to July 4th weekend 2004. We had been told prior to that weekend that we were going to play that scenario out. We were nervous and excited. All of us dusted off our Dunedain and half-elf characters. Two of the players there were playing sons of Elladan and Elrohir who were in turn sons of Elrond. I don't know how to say it, but being allowed to have such Character's was a tremendous sign of stature at the table. Conversely because we all loved Elrond, and his sons Elladan and Elrohir, there was tremendous pressure not to lose the Character's to death because it would be a tremendous blow to the world as well as losing the children of "people" that we as players genuinely loved. Elladan, Elrohir, and Elrond were NPC's the players had read about AND roleplayed across from.

Given that there was going to be only 30 of us, the entire contingent of the remaining adult male Dunedain which included Aragorn as well as all the male offspring of Elrond, we were especially concerned.

We spent about the first half of the night (our first day of play on this week) answering the summons and collecting together. It was particularly cool for me, because as my brother and I were running through Dunland, I called upon Arien, the maia Maiden of the Sun, to tarry her journey just a little, so that we could pass in sunlight caves that were filled with wights. I rolled a 20 and for a short while the sun stood motionless in the sky! I had no such skill, so such a success was reaaaaly cool!

We finally came together and for the first time my 7 years gaming with that group I finally had any character meet Aragorn! It was cooler than could be described! At any rate we set off in pursuit. We were gaining ground, but before we could catch up with the group of orcs they had split into two uneven sized groups. The larger went East to Mordor and the smaller continued north to Dol Goldur. We had to split out group into two and continue. In the larger went Aragorn and the majority of NPC Dunedain and a number of player character Dunedain. They played that hunt out and as it turned out the group they were hunting was a decoy. A player character who was playing a hound of Orome was dispatched to aid in our cause. We in the smaller group, which included Elladan, Elrohir, and their two sons the PC’s found our quarry.

While the battle was raging with the decoy group, the DM was playing Turandir tied to a post and out of his wits – eye rolling, mumbling, etc. The owner of Turandir was at the table, but as his character Turandir was bound and functionally not capable of much, was playing another character. He did however want to get to play Turandir badly so was very eager for the rescue to happen. We crashed into the orcs and started cutting them down as all the half-elves pushed on ahead to get to Turandir before he could be killed by the orcs when they realized what was happening. The player of Turandir started to play the character pulling at the straps that bound his arms and was starting to make progress. He was getting caught up in the moment. He sensed rescue coming. The DM had him roll a 20 sided. He rolled a 1. Fate.

The straps broke. The half-elves has fought their way to him. Turandir called for Gurthang. Either Elladan or Elrohir tossed him his sword. Turandir caught it and started swinging. At this point we had not taken a single loss. There were a few injuries, but no deaths.

…

In the chaos of the moment, all the players were screaming, the CD player was blaring Last of the Mohicans track 8, the DM said to Turandir you see two men running at you. The player did not pay attention to what the DM said and screamed – I swing, I swing! As you remember from above he rolled a 1 and the DM prior had played him as disoriented. In a matter of literally in two seconds Turandir cut down Elladan and Elrohir with Gurthang. The shock was staggering. I cannot understate just how devastating those losses were. There were only two other characters that were there, the PC sons of Elladan and Elrohir who tried to knock down or otherwise incapacitate Turandir. They two were also cut down in single blows moments (in real time) later. Then the hound of Orome arrived, and seeing what was going on, the player chose to burn a “perfect 20” to knock down Turandir and subdue him.

The table went dead silent for 10 minutes. NO ONE said a single word. The air was completely sucked out of the room. The player who was playing Turandir was stunned into silent tears. The rest of us were in quiet tears as well, even those of us who had not lost characters. We were absolutely staggered. We had not suffered a single loss until now. The curse of the house of Turin, as well as the 1st curse of Gurthang had played out.

The DM moved things along a bit as he had Aragorn arrange the bodies of the sons and grandsons of Elrond. Not long afterwards a number of great eagles arrived. Aragorn arranged matters such that the dead male heirs of Elrond would arrive one hour before Turandir was also bourn to Elrond’s house for healing. When the DM played the scene out of the arrival of the eagles and their awful charges, the DM placed his hands upon the table as if he were on a balcony watching the arrival of death. He simply said, choked up, his voice breaking for real - "My sons..." We knew it was Elrond. The game ended that night in absolute suffocating mourning and sadness.

At that point I would have traded in any of my characters to save any of those character's lives. This was not seriously considered, because it would never be allowed to happen. (The reason being that such a change to erase such a staggering loss would weaken the intensity of the Dream). Nevertheless such is the love of the world that I seriously considered sacrificing any one of my own characters to bring an NPC back.

One by one we staggered out into the darkness and tried to collect out thoughts.

Little did we know, we had a long week ahead of us.

Many of out games are extremely emotionally intense, but this was a new one had to rank up with the fall of Tharbad and destruction of the Dunedain as people.

I would change everything and nothing. I still get teary eyed thinking about it, and I got teary eyed writing this post.

Hello,

I have a few questions, which kind of bounce around a variety of topics.

1. There are currently both westerling and easterling games going on, right? I imagine that everyone keeps everyone else posted about the respective games? Are there just two, or splinters/sets for either or both?

2. I don't understand where the players' "undying hatred for the Dunedain" comes from. The characters got attacked ... they had to kill their own women and children ... they laid up at Rivendale ... another Black Commando came and killed a bunch more. I realize that a truncated account like this isn't going to provide full explanations, but this was the one point that simply bucked me off. Was that a typo, and the undying hatred was for the Sauron/Aria villains?

3. Does a given player typically play several characters at once? Or perhaps more clearly, does a given player have a stable of characters, rather than a single character? (Concentrating on one out of the stable during a given session still counts as multiple characters.)

4. I'm fascinated about the role of character death. On the one hand, we have a scenario from 15 years ago which was apparently very rewarding in part because player-characters died. On the other, we have a situation in which an NPC's decision saves several player-characters from certain death, and you've phrased that in a kind of "GM saves the party" way, if I'm reading correctly. And finally, we have some canonical characters whom some players are "permitted" to play, with attendant social pressure among everyone that they shouldn't be played in such a way as to kill them.

When and how have various player-characters died in your game(s)? Do such situations seem, to you, to be couched in special dramatic circumstances? Does a shared understanding of "hey, some or all of us might die here" get set up during play before the dice start hitting the table? And if such circumstances are not being established, but the dice might insert some unwanted death, then do tactics such as the GM's "saved by the NPC's decision" get employed?

You mentioned at one point that a 20th level character can be hit by an arrow and killed. (Bad AC moment, but damage works normally for everyone, as I understand it for your game.) When did this or something similar last happen, in real time? And further, back in the day when you were all 15-20 years younger, were there any incidents in-game which led to this specific feature of the rules?

5. So Turandir is all maddened and pulling on his straps. I gather from your post that rolling a 20 is rockin', the best success ... but a 1 is apparently something called Fate. What does that mean?

I ask this because I was under the impression that a 20 is character success, but apparently a 1 can also get a success (the straps broke). Does a 1 mean that "GM says," without the added constraint that the action must fail?

Related: what is "burn a perfect 20"? It sounds a little bit like a metagame mechanic (so-called) in which the player can state a successful action.

6. I am given to understand that the player who controlled Turandir announced his attack on the elven fellows without understanding the situation fully, or rather, without having had heard the GM properly. Do I understand that, among this group, it is acceptable for a player's disorientation, leading to a particular announcement, to be binding? Along the lines of, "You should have been listening better"? If so, that's very interesting, as a certain amount of emotional frenzy, to the point of distraction, seems to be a highlight of what you guys enjoy most.

Now, maybe this was an exceptional moment, and the special case of (a) disoriented player plus (b) disoriented character accounts for the group's acceptance of Turandir's action. (By "acceptance," I mean, "includes in SIS.") Was this a unique phenomenon in your game? Or have there been other cases in which a player announces X because he or she doesn't quite grok what's happening, and that disorientation is taken to indicate that the character is similarly disoriented and taking an inappropriate (not quite the right word) action? If so, what happened in those cases?

7. Any women among the participants in any of these games? Long-term? And what's the age range? I'm getting the idea that most of you started together, but I'm curious as to whether play has picked up any young'uns along the way.

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I was beginning to become dismayed at the prospect that no one was interested in what I had posted.

Ron Edwards wrote: 1. There are currently both westerling and easterling games going on, right? I imagine that everyone keeps everyone else posted about the respective games? Are there just two, or splinters/sets for either or both?

Ron Edwards wrote: 2. I don't understand where the players' "undying hatred for the Dunedain" comes from… Was that a typo, and the undying hatred was for the Sauron/Aria villains?

Ron Edwards wrote: 3. Does a given player typically play several characters at once? Or perhaps more clearly, does a given player have a stable of characters, rather than a single character? (Concentrating on one out of the stable during a given session still counts as multiple characters.)

Ron Edwards wrote: 4. I'm fascinated about the role of character death. On the one hand, we have a scenario from 15 years ago which was apparently very rewarding in part because player-characters died. …

Ron Edwards wrote: … On the other, we have a situation in which an NPC's decision saves several player-characters from certain death, and you've phrased that in a kind of "GM saves the party" way, if I'm reading correctly. …

Ron Edwards wrote: … And finally, we have some canonical characters whom some players are "permitted" to play, with attendant social pressure among everyone that they shouldn't be played in such a way as to kill them. …

Ron Edwards wrote: … When and how have various player-characters died in your game(s)? Do such situations seem, to you, to be couched in special dramatic circumstances? …

Ron Edwards wrote: … You mentioned at one point that a 20th level character can be hit by an arrow and killed. (Bad AC moment, but damage works normally for everyone, as I understand it for your game.) When did this or something similar last happen, in real time? …

Ron Edwards wrote: … And further, back in the day when you were all 15-20 years younger, were there any incidents in-game which led to this specific feature of the rules? …

Ron Edwards wrote: 5. So Turandir is all maddened and pulling on his straps. I gather from your post that rolling a 20 is rockin', the best success ... but a 1 is apparently something called Fate. What does that mean?

I ask this because I was under the impression that a 20 is character success, but apparently a 1 can also get a success (the straps broke). Does a 1 mean that "GM says," without the added constraint that the action must fail?

Ron Edwards wrote: …Related: what is "burn a perfect 20"? It sounds a little bit like a metagame mechanic (so-called) in which the player can state a successful action.

Ron Edwards wrote: 6. I am given to understand that the player who controlled Turandir announced his attack on the elven fellows without understanding the situation fully, or rather, without having had heard the GM properly. Do I understand that, among this group, it is acceptable for a player's disorientation, leading to a particular announcement, to be binding? Along the lines of, "You should have been listening better"? If so, that's very interesting, as a certain amount of emotional frenzy, to the point of distraction, seems to be a highlight of what you guys enjoy most. …

Ron Edwards wrote: … Now, maybe this was an exceptional moment, and the special case of (a) disoriented player plus (b) disoriented character accounts for the group's acceptance of Turandir's action. (By "acceptance," I mean, "includes in SIS.") Was this a unique phenomenon in your game? Or have there been other cases in which a player announces X because he or she doesn't quite grok what's happening, and that disorientation is taken to indicate that the character is similarly disoriented and taking an inappropriate (not quite the right word) action? If so, what happened in those cases?

Ron Edwards wrote: 7. Any women among the participants in any of these games? Long-term? And what's the age range? I'm getting the idea that most of you started together, but I'm curious as to whether play has picked up any young'uns along the way.

Hey Jay, Fascinating stuff. I can't figure out why you would think shareing this wouldn't be that important. You've got a pretty unique roleplaying background going on there.

I'm going to fire some questions at you kind of bullet style, in no particular order than the order they came to me in.


1) Is this campaign your primary roleplaying experience historically? Is the majority of your current roleplaying still with this group and campaign or do you play other games and other campaigns as well? How often do you play a session in this campaign? How often do you play sessions of other campaigns?

2) If you play other games regularly (or did) are they / were they with this same group or did you play other games with other gamers? If you've played other games with the same group did they generally maintain the same approach and play style (perhaps scaled down) or was playing with them in other games almost like playing with a completely different person? If you've played other games with other groups, particularly if you did so concurrently, how difficult was shifting gears between that other group and this group's play style.

3) You highlighted several emotionally intense dramatic scenes above (the death of the elf brothers et.al.) about how often do such scenes occur. Once every couple of sessions? Once every couple dozen sessions? Once every couple of years? If you thought back over your last 7-8 years of involvment in this campaign, and not including stories you've heard about episodes you weren't present for, about how many such incidents have you experienced in the campaign that were emotional enough to nearly bring you to tears or cries of rage, or memorable enough to be able to relate as above?

4) Are such moments the primary reward for play for you? Do you consider most of your play to be build up and preparation (perhaps even due paying) for the next big emotional charge? If not what do you find most appealing about the "normal" moments of the game in between the hyper drama moments?

5) If those hyper drama moments are highly prized by you (and the others to the extent you know) how many sessions can pass without approaching one before the game seems to go stale for you? Does the group consider this a sign that its time for a change? Perhaps time to introduce a new batch of characters and a new situation in the world because the story of the current characters has been fairly tapped out?

6) Do you tend to view the new characters as temporary characters marking time until there's a good opportunity to return to the previous characters, or are the previous characters now largely retired except for exceptional circumstances?

7) Are there any techniques that you've can identify that your group uses to get these emotionally draining scenes. You mention the GM running for several hours intentionally to wear the players down...presumeably to make them more susceptible to upcoming drama. That's a pretty fascinating technique. How common is using player fatigue as a means of enhancing emotional engagement? How common are 30 hour marathon sessions? What other techniques do the GMs or players use to achieve these level of intensity in your play?


I'm sure I'll think of some more...but that seems plenty for now.

Ted Striker: "I flew single engine fighters in the Air Force. But this plane has four engines. Its an entirely different kind of flying, altogether."
Elaine, Rumack, and Flight Attendants [all together]: "It's an entirely different kind of flying."
- Airplane

Hi Jay,

Oh, I'm interested all right. I think part of the reaction (or apparent lack of) that you're seeing is "we're not in Kansas any more" disorientation. Twenty-year campaigns? Week-long sessions? Ten players at the table? Individual player folios of fifty player-characters? At first reading all I could think of to say was to imitate a tourist from the boonies and blurt out, "Wow, sure is big!"

And I'm no stranger to "big" productions. I've run LARPs that involved up to 200 players and two dozen gamemasters for 48 straight hours. (One example is partially described here.) 'Til yesterday, I used to think that was large-scale. Consider how unfamiliar the territory you're describing is to most of the correspondents here. It's going to take a lot of discussion to get the lay of the land, even more to begin to offer critical insight.

Toward that end, I'm going to start with a few specific questions and observations.

It's ten hours into a session, there are ten players around the table screaming at the top of their lungs while music blares. Does everyone's actions get heard and put into effect reliably? You've discussed players having to act on incomplete or misunderstood information, and they only have one GM to listen to. Can the GM really assimilate all the information going the other way? Do characters miss actions if the player doesn't yell loudly enough? How often if ever does the GM ask for players to announce actions one at a time? I'm just trying to get a mental image of what the play actually looks like at routinely stressful moments.

Unless what I'm seeing is purely an ex post facto selection effect, there seem to be a lot of 20s being rolled at crucial moments. The odds against seven 20's in a row are 1 in 1.3 billion. Is a certain amount of let's say erroneous dice reading accepted? "Drama affects die rolls," after all. For every instance you've related of a player beating the odds for a character to make a grand near-impossible gesture, there should be a dozen or so of attempting to make a grand near-impossible gesture and rolling a 19 or less. Are there?

In the famous Fall of the Dunedain adventure, was there anything the players might have done to make it come out any differently? I'm not talking about altering which specific characters survived or made grand sacrifices, I'm talking about a significantly different history emerging, such as preventing the attack, a much larger group surviving, or (on the flip side) no Dunedain survivors.

You mentioned, if I'm interpreting right, that two main characters in Tolkien's version of the War of the Ring have been killed, prior to the War of the Ring, in your campaign. From this I gather that you're consensually playing an "alternate history" version of Middle Earth, one in which the War of the Ring might (in your campaign's "future") be lost. And the possibility of that loss adds weight to events. Am I right? This is a cool and interesting way of approaching source material. Is the possibility of changes in favor of the West in the War of the Ring equally open (such as, I don't know, the Orthanc Palantir being destroyed or something)?

Could you, from what you've experienced as a participant, imagine actually playing out the War of the Ring in this campaign someday? Or does that present too many problems, and better left perpetually on the distant horizon?

- Walt

Jay--

I'm going to echo Ralph and Walt here. I agree that I can't understand why you would ever think a post like this in Actual Play wouldn't be worthwhile. I think this post is very telling in terms of what your game experience is and such. And like Walt, I'm a bit boggled by it all, since this is very different from my style of play.

I also have some questions. (If you answered these questions in a different post, I apologize. I'm actually on my way to class right now, so I'm reading and typing quickly.) You said that there were no written rules system outside of combat, and that pretty much everything was open to negotiation. With that in mind, I'm very interested in some of the details of play. For example, levelling up can't be done with a certain number of "wisdom checks", that were "handed out for effective role-play." What exactly was the definition of "effective role-play" and who decided what role-play was "effective" or not. Was it solely the GM, or could other players say, "Hey, I think Doug deserves a wisdom check for that last scene"? The same question for the "stars" that were given out for "best role-playing"? You said, "These stars are based upon the players current roleplay skill and how far they reached past it"--who rated a players "current roleplay skill"? What exactly is a "roleplay skill"? And how does one reach past it? You said new players were given consideration, so is "roleplay skill" something someone doesn't start with much of and gets better at as they play longer? And, "Life experiences also garner experience as well. Thus the defeat of a foe counts as well as seeing something fantastic or life altering for the first time." Again, who decided that a character's life experience was worth experience? Did the group decide as a whole? Was it just the GM? Or did players make suggestions with the final arbiter being the GM?

I'm tempted to assume that "roleplaying" means "getting into character," but I don't want to make assumptions without more info. Also, if every player has a "folder" of 18-50 characters, it seems really damn difficult to "get into character" with that many different characters.

I guess I'm interested in the social contract stuff, especially with new players coming into the group. How were decisions on rating "roleplaying" and the doling out of awards handled in the group? Was the social contract information made explicit, either in written form or verbally ("If you want to play with us, here's how the game goes?")? Or was it implicit--and if so, were there a lot of cases of new players not fitting in because they couldn't get a handle on such things as the definition of "roleplaying" or how the non-written rules were handled? Were long-time players given more voice than newbies?

Okay, that's all for now, although I may have some more questions later. Thanks for the post.

Hello,

More questions for the pot. You're going to have fun when you return to the thread ...

1. You play with the westerlings, right? Is Cary your regular GM? How often does this game meet, aside from great big grand cross-continental events?

Does Steve GM the easterlings currently? If so, has he done so since Cary moved west?

2. I was a little confused about your answer regarding female players. The key variable as you see it is the female players' emotional experience under "hard leadership" situations, correct?

Also, when you talk about 3% vs. 10%, are you talking about how well the in-game situation turned out? E.g., in terms of whether the leader's decision led to a non-tragic outcome? Or are you talking about how many new players tend to stick around (1 in 10 for men, 1 in ~30 for women)?

3. Tell me if I'm getting a good picture with the following. It seems to me as if a prime survival trait to participate in this game is to out-shout and out-emote other players, in the strongest sense of character-identification possible, with the rewards being a combination of:
- getting the star ("best role-play")
- receiving Wisdom checks ("effective role-play")
- more frequently (constantly?) being able to draw the GM's attention to what one is doing in a sea of emotive input, which then leads to more skill checks and more combat opportunities

All of this seems to be embedded in a very challenging matrix of setting knowledge and overt commitment to the integrity of the source material's assumptions.

4. I'm interested that way back when, Steve apparently said that running games in Middle Earth would sully the setting, yet he and Cary were already running games set in Narnia. I realize this is long ago and far away, but do you have any information or insight as to how that could have ... um, well, could have made any possible sense?

And furthermore, when Steve switched to Middle Earth, why he might have decided either that the setting was not being sullied, or that the sullying was acceptable after all?

Finally, as I understand it, both easterlings and westerlings now consider themselves to be playing the same uber-game. However, Steve and Cary were running games set in very different time periods. Is that time-period separation still hold? (I realize that many players have characters in both games)

Well, that oughta do it for a while.

Best,
Ron

Jay,

I'm just posting to keep my hand in. Yes, I'm reading, but most of my questions have already been asked.

I must say that I have always been mesmerized by the idea of the 20-year campaign with thousands of known characters, and here it is! So I'm following along, slowly. I'll let you know when I have something more to say than what's been said already....

Hey Everyone!

Thank you for your questions and time. I owe everyone an apology. I have reread both of my previous posts and I keep cringing while I continually trip over simple but very serious grammatical errors, omissions and what not that make my posts difficult to understand. I do try to proof them, but I see that I need to do a better job. Thanks for your patience. Anyway…

Hey Ralph,

Valamir wrote: 1) Is this campaign your primary roleplaying experience historically? Is the majority of your current roleplaying still with this group and campaign or do you play other games and other campaigns as well? How often do you play a session in this campaign? How often do you play sessions of other campaigns?

Valamir wrote: 2) If you play other games regularly (or did) are they / were they with this same group or did you play other games with other gamers? If you've played other games with the same group did they generally maintain the same approach and play style (perhaps scaled down) or was playing with them in other games almost like playing with a completely different person? If you've played other games with other groups, particularly if you did so concurrently, how difficult was shifting gears between that other group and this group's play style.

Valamir wrote: 3) You highlighted several emotionally intense dramatic scenes above (the death of the elf brothers et.al.) about how often do such scenes occur. Once every couple of sessions? Once every couple dozen sessions? Once every couple of years? If you thought back over your last 7-8 years of involvement in this campaign, and not including stories you've heard about episodes you weren't present for, about how many such incidents have you experienced in the campaign that were emotional enough to nearly bring you to tears or cries of rage, or memorable enough to be able to relate as above?

Valamir wrote: 4) Are such moments the primary reward for play for you? Do you consider most of your play to be build up and preparation (perhaps even due paying) for the next big emotional charge? If not what do you find most appealing about the "normal" moments of the game in between the hyper drama moments?

Valamir wrote: 5) If those hyper drama moments are highly prized by you (and the others to the extent you know) how many sessions can pass without approaching one before the game seems to go stale for you? Does the group consider this a sign that its time for a change? Perhaps time to introduce a new batch of characters and a new situation in the world because the story of the current characters has been fairly tapped out?

Valamir wrote: 6) Do you tend to view the new characters as temporary characters marking time until there's a good opportunity to return to the previous characters, or are the previous characters now largely retired except for exceptional circumstances?

Valamir wrote: 7) Are there any techniques that you've can identify that your group uses to get these emotionally draining scenes. …

Valamir wrote: You mention the GM running for several hours intentionally to wear the players down...presumably to make them more susceptible to upcoming drama. That's a pretty fascinating technique. How common is using player fatigue as a means of enhancing emotional engagement? How common are 30 hour marathon sessions? What other techniques do the GMs or players use to achieve these level of intensity in your play?

Hey Walt!

Walt Freitag wrote: It's ten hours into a session, there are ten players around the table screaming at the top of their lungs while music blares. Does everyone's actions get heard and put into effect reliably?

Walt Freitag wrote: You've discussed players having to act on incomplete or misunderstood information, and they only have one GM to listen to. Can the GM really assimilate all the information going the other way? Do characters miss actions if the player doesn't yell loudly enough?

Walt Freitag wrote: Do characters miss actions if the player doesn't yell loudly enough?

Walt Freitag wrote: How often if ever does the GM ask for players to announce actions one at a time?

Walt Freitag wrote: Unless what I'm seeing is purely an ex post facto selection effect, there seem to be a lot of 20s being rolled at crucial moments. The odds against seven 20's in a row are 1 in 1.3 billion.

Walt Freitag wrote: Is a certain amount of let's say erroneous dice reading accepted?

Walt Freitag wrote: "Drama affects die rolls," after all.

Walt Freitag wrote: For every instance you've related of a player beating the odds for a character to make a grand near-impossible gesture, there should be a dozen or so of attempting to make a grand near-impossible gesture and rolling a 19 or less. Are there?

Walt Freitag wrote: In the famous Fall of the Dunedain adventure, was there anything the players might have done to make it come out any differently? I'm not talking about altering which specific characters survived or made grand sacrifices, I'm talking about a significantly different history emerging, such as preventing the attack, a much larger group surviving, or (on the flip side) no Dunedain survivors.

Walt Freitag wrote: You mentioned, if I'm interpreting right, that two main characters in Tolkien's version of the War of the Ring have been killed, prior to the War of the Ring, in your campaign. From this I gather that you're consensually playing an "alternate history" version of Middle Earth, one in which the War of the Ring might (in your campaign's "future") be lost. And the possibility of that loss adds weight to events. Am I right?

Walt Freitag wrote: Is the possibility of changes in favor of the West in the War of the Ring equally open (such as, I don't know, the Orthanc Palantir being destroyed or something)?

Walt Freitag wrote: Could you, from what you've experienced as a participant, imagine actually playing out the War of the Ring in this campaign someday? Or does that present too many problems, and better left perpetually on the distant horizon?

This is fascinating stuff Jay. I'm glad you shared it. I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to get down while they were fresh, but I certainly understand there are alot of other queries that have been thrown out there at you.

One thing that caught my attention was your description of Gap Reversal and the Legolas trap. Was that a situation where:
1) The GM had planned all along that Legolas was not actually captured and that it was a trap, but made sure that all the evidence that he gave to you sold you on the idea that Legolas was a prisoner and needed to be free.
2) As number 1 but there were actually ample opportunities for you to have learned or at least gotten suspicious about it being a trap before going in and you just missed them for whatever reasons.
3) The GM had originally planned that Legolas was, in fact, captured but then decided that this would be a good dramatic spot for a reversal and came up with the vision and trap idea on the fly.

Do you as players ever really know for sure which of these such reversals actually are?


The second thing that comes to mind is wondering how much Illusion the GM is weaving into the game. Not a criticism because its obviously working for you marvelously...truly talented GM illusionists are pretty rare and rather priceless when you find one...but several comments you've made about how things get adjucated and how in the dark you often are lead me to wonder.

Frex you indicate that you often aren't told what you need to roll or even what you're rolling for. The GM awards roleplaying bonuses periodically (and presumeably most often secretly) based on what appears to be quality of player of immersion, and you indicate that the GM is primarily responsible for managing the drama by cranking up the tension and stress levels.

It seems to me that the situation you describe is a near perfect operating environment for a talented Illusionist GM. Encouraging a fair degree of character connectedness and immersion makes it more difficult for players to notice meta level tweakings. Having players roll and stressing how important the rolls are and not to cheat gives a good solid feel that the dice are having a meaningful impact but keeping target numbers largely secret and having the power to arbitrarily assign roleplaying and other bonuses for dramatic purposes gives the GM the ability to almost determine pass or fail as he desires simply by manipulating the TN and bonuses. Combine that with a graduated degree of success where a miss by 1 is almost successful and a made by 1 isn't all that much better and you have a situation where the GM can get his desired outcome from the roll almost no matter what the roll is...with the exception of the 1s and 20s which have special meaning. I suspect that's a big part of why the 20s and 1s are so memorable for you because those are the occasions where even the GM doesn't know what was about to happen.

Now by this I don't mean rampant railroading. Obviously the GM gets a lot of joy out of encouraging you to figure out solutions, and I don't want to suggest that he's railroading your decision making. Rather, I get the sense that when you come up with a solution that makes the GM pause and say "wow, what a great idea" that he's inclined to interpret the dice generously (except for those nasty 1s) and when you come up with an idea that the GM finds less inspiring he's less inclined to interpret the dice generously.

In other words, almost turning the Fortune mechanic into a Drama mechanic where the real success/fail determination is based on the GMs judgement on the dramatic suitability of your characters actions more than on the actual randomness of the dice rolls.


Does that sound reasonable or is my speculation way off base there. I'm thinking your GM sounds like that most elusive of quarries...the master illusionist who actually manages to maintain the illusion without resorting to participationism.

Hello,

I suggest that the 1 and 20 results have a great deal in common with The Questing Beast's Guided Event and Monologue of Victory, respectively.

In agreement with Ralph, the intermediary results look like Guided Events to me as well, just not openly acknowledged as such. I'd be very interested to see what kinds of IIEE techniques accompany most dice rolls, in terms of how much "action" gets established simply through announcement alone, and how much is resolved by the roll itself, and how much is retconned from the result.

But that's a side point. To focus on the 1 and 20 alone for a minute, it's worth pointing out that with ten players, if everyone's rolling a lot, that the chances of someone getting a 1 or a 20 leap up dramatically. Since 1's and 20's seem (as far as I can tell) to have effects on the scene rather than simply one character's action, there is apparently a shared-dice-pool effect occurring when a whole bunch of people are rolling. Sort of a Story Engine group-roll phenomenon.

Best,
Ron

Jay, thanks for answering my questions. I appreciate your going to the trouble to include examples from play, which really help clarify things.

Since you still have others' questions stacked up, I'm not going to queue up any more questions of my own. A few quick comments, though.

I did notice that you'd mentioned two nazgul having been killed. But I also recalled Gandalf saying something about nazgul never being fully destroyed as long as the One Ring existed. So I wasn't sure if that was a real West-favoring change to the pre-LoTR timeline or not, which is why I asked the more general question about such changes. (Which you've now answered more than adequately.)

Also, I did know what you meant when you said "drama affects die rolls." I was deliberately twisting those words in an ironic way. But I have, in fact, occasionally been in groups where the principle of "drama affects die rolls" in the way I twisted it to (that is, dramatic significance provides license for the roller to unilaterally and secretly overrule the actual roll) was accepted. (With players on the same Abashed Nar page agenda-wise, this can be a completely functional drama mechanism, since in most systems the player rolling is already the one with the most credibility to make the drama decision.)

Ralph, I'm thinking along the same lines as you are with respect to the Legoas rescue example. I'm beginning to see the outline here of a GM skillfully wielding a lot of Illusionist technique, including a lot of improvisation not (obviously) of setting but of situation (as in the Legolas rescue) and (NPC) character. For instance, I see minor NPCs turning out to be Black Commandos in disguise, and I think, what a useful tool to be able to pull out of your bag when improvising dramatic tension on the fly (as long as you don't overuse it) -- since there's no need to decide whether someone's a Black Commando in disguise or not until an opportune dramatic moment to attack arises.

One quibble, however: I'd be cautious to specify that by "illusionist GM" you mean "one who uses illusionist techniques" rather than "one who uses Illusionism." That latter term is unfortunately still generally associated with use of illusionist techniques to enforce a pre-planned plot or pre-planned climax situation, which is not what seems to be happening in Jay's game. (And I'd hate to see the thread diverted into "is not/is too Illusionism.")

- Walt

Jay,
Just wanted to let you know that I'm following along with this thread. Very interesting stuff....

Cheers
Jonathan

Well I’m back for another installation!

Hey Joshua!

joshua neff wrote: You said that there were no written rules system outside of combat, and that pretty much everything was open to negotiation.

joshua neff wrote: What exactly was the definition of "effective role-play" and who decided what role-play was "effective" or not. Was it solely the GM, or could other players say, "Hey, I think Doug deserves a wisdom check for that last scene"?

joshua neff wrote: Was it solely the GM, or could other players say, "Hey, I think Doug deserves a wisdom check for that last scene"?

joshua neff wrote: You said, "These stars are based upon the players current roleplay skill and how far they reached past it"--who rated a players "current roleplay skill"? What exactly is a "roleplay skill"? And how does one reach past it? You said new players were given consideration, so is "roleplay skill" something someone doesn't start with much of and gets better at as they play longer?

joshua neff wrote: Again, who decided that a character's life experience was worth experience? Did the group decide as a whole? Was it just the GM? Or did players make suggestions with the final arbiter being the GM?

joshua neff wrote: I'm tempted to assume that "roleplaying" means "getting into character," but I don't want to make assumptions without more info. Also, if every player has a "folder" of 18-50 characters, it seems really damn difficult to "get into character" with that many different characters.

joshua neff wrote: I guess I'm interested in the social contract stuff, especially with new players coming into the group. How were decisions on rating "roleplaying" and the doling out of awards handled in the group? Was the social contract information made explicit, either in written form or verbally ("If you want to play with us, here's how the game goes?")?

joshua neff wrote: Or was it implicit--and if so, were there a lot of cases of new players not fitting in because they couldn't get a handle on such things as the definition of "roleplaying" or how the non-written rules were handled? Were long-time players given more voice than newbies?

Jay,

Count me in as another interested thread-reader.

I'm wondering about the "PC-spits-in-a-dwarf's-face" moment. You wrote that the GM said Without rolling or asking for a roll, the GM said “he splits you from top to bottom.” You then suggested that something could be done to avoid it; that the player could have worked within the structures of your group's play style to prevent it.

Did the DM's assertion that "he splits you from top to bottom" mean that that actually happened, no reactions, no take-backs? Or did it mean "Unless you, the player, can react RIGHT NOW, this will actually happen"?

Could the player in question have responded "Of course, I knew that would make him angry, so I'm ready for this. I deflect his axe with my shield"? or maybe "Another of my characters (player waves a character sheet in the air) screams 'Noooo!!!' and dives between us as the axe descends"? or even just "I was afraid of this; I'm going to dive out of the way, but I'm pretty sure I can't make it in time - his axe would hit my arm instead."

If not, how could the player have responded to this?

(IIRC, in the "Seizing the battle standard" anecdote, the process went something like p:"I'm going into the fray to hold the line" - g:"if you do that, you will get killed" - p:"I don't care, I'm not letting it fall" - g:"Don't even talk to me unless you roll a 20". Thus it would seem that players can, in their own ways, call for rolls on the hopes that fate or fortune might see them through.)

Am I anywhere near on target?

Another question I thought of right after I posted that -

If I were playing a stalwart, stubborn, fearsome-in-combat dwarf a la Gimli, Thorin, or Dain, and an NPC spat in my character's face... would I have free license to say "I split him from top to bottom", and have that be accepted at face value? Or would the GM force a roll?

Hey Ron!

My verbosity is really taking its toll!

Ron Edwards wrote: 1. You play with the westerlings, right? Is Cary your regular GM? How often does this game meet, aside from great big grand cross-continental events?

Does Steve GM the easterlings currently? If so, has he done so since Cary moved west?

Ron Edwards wrote: 2. I was a little confused about your answer regarding female players. The key variable as you see it is the female players' emotional experience under "hard leadership" situations, correct?

Ron Edwards wrote: Also, when you talk about 3% vs. 10%, are you talking about how well the in-game situation turned out? E.g., in terms of whether the leader's decision led to a non-tragic outcome? Or are you talking about how many new players tend to stick around (1 in 10 for men, 1 in ~30 for women)?

Ron Edwards wrote: 3. Tell me if I'm getting a good picture with the following. It seems to me as if a prime survival trait to participate in this game is to out-shout and out-emote other players, in the strongest sense of character-identification possible, with the rewards being a combination of:
- getting the star ("best role-play")
- receiving Wisdom checks ("effective role-play")
- more frequently (constantly?) being able to draw the GM's attention to what one is doing in a sea of emotive input, which then leads to more skill checks and more combat opportunities

All of this seems to be embedded in a very challenging matrix of setting knowledge and overt commitment to the integrity of the source material's assumptions.

Ron Edwards wrote: 4. I'm interested that way back when, Steve apparently said that running games in Middle Earth would sully the setting, yet he and Cary were already running games set in Narnia. I realize this is long ago and far away, but do you have any information or insight as to how that could have ... um, well, could have made any possible sense?

Ron Edwards wrote: And furthermore, when Steve switched to Middle Earth, why he might have decided either that the setting was not being sullied, or that the sullying was acceptable after all?

Ron Edwards wrote: Finally, as I understand it, both easterlings and westerlings now consider themselves to be playing the same uber-game. However, Steve and Cary were running games set in very different time periods. Is that time-period separation still hold? (I realize that many players have characters in both games)

Hey Ralph,

Valamir wrote: One thing that caught my attention was your description of Gap Reversal and the Legolas trap. Was that a situation where:
1) The GM had planned all along that Legolas was not actually captured and that it was a trap, but made sure that all the evidence that he gave to you sold you on the idea that Legolas was a prisoner and needed to be free.
2) As number 1 but there were actually ample opportunities for you to have learned or at least gotten suspicious about it being a trap before going in and you just missed them for whatever reasons.
3) The GM had originally planned that Legolas was, in fact, captured but then decided that this would be a good dramatic spot for a reversal and came up with the vision and trap idea on the fly.

Do you as players ever really know for sure which of these such reversals actually are?

Valamir wrote: The second thing that comes to mind is wondering how much Illusion the GM is weaving into the game.

Valamir wrote: …gives the GM the ability to almost determine pass or fail as he desires simply by manipulating the TN and bonuses. …

Valamir wrote: In other words, almost turning the Fortune mechanic into a Drama mechanic where the real success/fail determination is based on the GMs judgement on the dramatic suitability of your characters actions more than on the actual randomness of the dice rolls.

Does that sound reasonable or is my speculation way off base there.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'd be very interested to see what kinds of IIEE techniques accompany most dice rolls, in terms of how much "action" gets established simply through announcement alone, and how much is resolved by the roll itself, and how much is retconned from the result.

Ron Edwards wrote: To focus on the 1 and 20 alone for a minute, it's worth pointing out that with ten players, if everyone's rolling a lot, that the chances of someone getting a 1 or a 20 leap up dramatically. Since 1's and 20's seem (as far as I can tell) to have effects on the scene rather than simply one character's action, there is apparently a shared-dice-pool effect occurring when a whole bunch of people are rolling.

Hey Ralph,

Valamir wrote: One thing that caught my attention was your description of Gap Reversal and the Legolas trap. Was that a situation where:
1) The GM had planned all along that Legolas was not actually captured and that it was a trap, but made sure that all the evidence that he gave to you sold you on the idea that Legolas was a prisoner and needed to be free.
2) As number 1 but there were actually ample opportunities for you to have learned or at least gotten suspicious about it being a trap before going in and you just missed them for whatever reasons.
3) The GM had originally planned that Legolas was, in fact, captured but then decided that this would be a good dramatic spot for a reversal and came up with the vision and trap idea on the fly.

Do you as players ever really know for sure which of these such reversals actually are?

Valamir wrote: The second thing that comes to mind is wondering how much Illusion the GM is weaving into the game.

Valamir wrote: …gives the GM the ability to almost determine pass or fail as he desires simply by manipulating the TN and bonuses. …

Valamir wrote: In other words, almost turning the Fortune mechanic into a Drama mechanic where the real success/fail determination is based on the GMs judgement on the dramatic suitability of your characters actions more than on the actual randomness of the dice rolls.

Does that sound reasonable or is my speculation way off base there.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'd be very interested to see what kinds of IIEE techniques accompany most dice rolls, in terms of how much "action" gets established simply through announcement alone, and how much is resolved by the roll itself, and how much is retconned from the result.

Ron Edwards wrote: To focus on the 1 and 20 alone for a minute, it's worth pointing out that with ten players, if everyone's rolling a lot, that the chances of someone getting a 1 or a 20 leap up dramatically. Since 1's and 20's seem (as far as I can tell) to have effects on the scene rather than simply one character's action, there is apparently a shared-dice-pool effect occurring when a whole bunch of people are rolling.

Hey Walt,

You’re welcome!

Walt Freitag wrote: I did notice that you'd mentioned two nazgul having been killed. But I also recalled Gandalf saying something about nazgul never being fully destroyed as long as the One Ring existed. So I wasn't sure if that was a real West-favoring change to the pre-LoTR timeline or not, which is why I asked the more general question about such changes. (Which you've now answered more than adequately.)

Walt Freitag wrote: Also, I did know what you meant when you said "drama affects die rolls." I was deliberately twisting those words in an ironic way. But I have, in fact, occasionally been in groups where the principle of "drama affects die rolls" in the way I twisted it to (that is, dramatic significance provides license for the roller to unilaterally and secretly overrule the actual roll) was accepted. (With players on the same Abashed Nar page agenda-wise, this can be a completely functional drama mechanism, since in most systems the player rolling is already the one with the most credibility to make the drama decision.)

Walt Freitag wrote: I'm beginning to see the outline here of a GM skillfully wielding a lot of Illusionist technique, including a lot of improvisation not (obviously) of setting but of situation (as in the Legolas rescue) and (NPC) character. For instance, I see minor NPCs turning out to be Black Commandos in disguise, and I think, what a useful tool to be able to pull out of your bag when improvising dramatic tension on the fly (as long as you don't overuse it) -- since there's no need to decide whether someone's a Black Commando in disguise or not until an opportune dramatic moment to attack arises.

hanschristianandersen wrote: I'm wondering about the "PC-spits-in-a-dwarf's-face" moment. You wrote that the GM said Without rolling or asking for a roll, the GM said “he splits you from top to bottom.” You then suggested that something could be done to avoid it; that the player could have worked within the structures of your group's play style to prevent it.

Did the DM's assertion that "he splits you from top to bottom" mean that that actually happened, no reactions, no take-backs? Or did it mean "Unless you, the player, can react RIGHT NOW, this will actually happen"?

hanschristianandersen wrote: Could the player in question have responded "Of course, I knew that would make him angry, so I'm ready for this. I deflect his axe with my shield"? or maybe "Another of my characters (player waves a character sheet in the air) screams 'Noooo!!!' and dives between us as the axe descends"? or even just "I was afraid of this; I'm going to dive out of the way, but I'm pretty sure I can't make it in time - his axe would hit my arm instead."

hanschristianandersen wrote: (IIRC, in the "Seizing the battle standard" anecdote, the process went something like p:"I'm going into the fray to hold the line" - g:"if you do that, you will get killed" - p:"I don't care, I'm not letting it fall" - g:"Don't even talk to me unless you roll a 20". Thus it would seem that players can, in their own ways, call for rolls on the hopes that fate or fortune might see them through.)

Am I anywhere near on target?

I understand what you are getting at Ralph, but I think which method is employed (force, clearly open numbers, or something in-between) depends on the drama of the moment and which method will likely create the greatest drama, not which will allow the events turn out the way the GM wants them to.

Hey, so I have a question.

Let's take the dwarf example. The GM calls for the roll of a 20. Afterwards, he calls for a 20 again. The player makes it both times. There have been several stories like this coming out.

Probability would have it that for every time this happens, 19 times the player rolls a 20, the GM demands another 20, and the player failes. (actually, there are certain rolling methods that reduce this, and further most 20-sided dice are weighted, but that's neither here nor there.)

When this does happen (a twenty followed by a non-twenty), is there a sense of player entitlement? In other words, are people upset at the wasted 20? Is there pressure for the GM to provide some sort of compromise because "hey, he still rolled a twenty?"

I mean, I know that if I were at the table, there would be.

yrs--
--Ben

Hi folks,

Hey, everyone, let's give Jay a rest, shall we? Posting and responding was an extraordinary amount of effort and, if I'm correct, quite a mental and emotional stretch on his part.

The reward really shouldn't be in number of posts to reply to, especially if Jay gets hit by trenchant questions by six people every time he logs in. I think it lies more in all of us taking a little time to reflect back on earlier Silmenume postings.

Jay, I strongly suggest that you will benefit greatly not only by enjoying this thread, but from branching out and taking a look at the Actual Play discussions going on simultaneously or recently. Perhaps what they are doing will strike you as socially or creatively interesting, at least for purposes of comparison, as your stuff has been for a number of others. Actual Play threads have a strong tendency to overlap and refer to one another in a highly productive way - even without posting being involved, although of course the more the better.

It also might be valuable to do a little reconaissance. It is fairly astonishing that you've been posting at this site for months and not be familiar with, say, The Pool. Another suggestion is to check out one of the most striking discussions we had during The Infamous Five, called Social Context. I'd be very interested in your answers to the basic questions I posed in the initial post of this thread. However, not now, but later, after the whole Actual Play concept (and the diversity we see in it) is more familiar to you.

I'm definitely not closing this thread, by the way. But it might be good to consider that it currently represents a pretty hard-core drain on Jay's time, and I certainly stand as responsible as anyone for slingin' a barrage of interrogation. Maybe some posts which aren't interrogations would do.

Best,
Ron

Well, I have no questions for Jay. What I would like to say is: you've been holding out on us! I'm starting a new campaign because of this thread. I love Middle-Earth, the Silmarillion, and LOTR and I'm saturated with knowledge about the setting. But, up til now, I'd never considered running a game in any other age save the Fourth Age. I pretty much moved all the campaigns to the East a little ways and allowed a few elves into the campaign. Why have I never put a campaign during the First or Second Ages? Or even the early Third? Why?

I'm sure that my GM style leans much more toward Nar and I certainly don't have my players have more than one or two characters, but the ideas you've presented have inspired new ideas. The one similarity I see is that the system I use is derived from Rolemaster - in lieu of the d20, I'm using a basic percentile system. Thank-you. Thank-you.

Cheers
Jonathan

Hey Ron,

I just want to tie up some loose ends real quick, then I am going to back off a bit, relax, do some reading here, and in time answer the questions you posed in that thread from the days of yore! Excellent advice!

Hey Hans,

I forgot to answer your second post. Sorry. I was starting to get a little punchy.

hanschristianandersen wrote: Another question I thought of right after I posted that -

If I were playing a stalwart, stubborn, fearsome-in-combat dwarf a la Gimli, Thorin, or Dain, and an NPC spat in my character's face... would I have free license to say "I split him from top to bottom", and have that be accepted at face value? Or would the GM force a roll?

Valamir wrote: Which is almost certainly why you you have such a low rate of new players sticking around.

Ben Lehman wrote: Let's take the dwarf example. The GM calls for the roll of a 20. Afterwards, he calls for a 20 again. The player makes it both times. There have been several stories like this coming out.

Probability would have it that for every time this happens, 19 times the player rolls a 20, the GM demands another 20, and the player failes. (actually, there are certain rolling methods that reduce this, and further most 20-sided dice are weighted, but that's neither here nor there.)

When this does happen (a twenty followed by a non-twenty), is there a sense of player entitlement? In other words, are people upset at the wasted 20? Is there pressure for the GM to provide some sort of compromise because "hey, he still rolled a twenty?"

Jay wrote:
I don’t know if I answered your question in an effective manner or not. I can only hope that I have.

I am not really presenting a question here, but i do have a comment that i think is quite relevant. The most interesting thing to me is that this game reached some "critical mass" (or something) of players such that they were able to turn away new players without kililing the game. Additionally, and this is the key i believe, they had the wisdom to do it.

My own, more limited, experience with this sort of thing (especially in light of this thread) leads me to believe that without a rigorous screening process the game will wither and die. I am coming to believe that i am responsible for that happening locally. The group i am with currently started out as a small group who played pretty much every week. They played a homebrewed system in a homebrewed setting for about eight or nine years prior to my arrival. In that time they had (as far as i can determine) few additions to the group. I was introduced, and after that i do not believe we got more than two or three sessions with the same characters before things just fell apart.

Since then two of the key players have moved on from Role Playing in general, pursuing other interests (more power to them), and the remaining players have been drawn rather strongly to Narrativist play. I am not sure, but i suspect that if i had not been introduced to the dynamics that play would continue to this day.

One other thing i wanted to comment on, mainly because it is so alien to my own personal experience, is that Jay mentioned that the average play session lasts around 12 hours. I was somewhat taken aback at the idea... What kind of experience do other people have with such "marathon" play?

Thomas

What kind of experience do other people have with such "marathon" play?