Oh well, as you've asked twice, I'll take the bait...
I suppose I'm of the "old fashioned brigade", but I think it's a very
odd thing for you to have been spending your time on. I think that the
company and the GMs should stay out of the "player collated
information." To be involved in it is like having sports referees
involved in the team talk and tactical discussions.
On one level (but see mitigation later) the game was reduced when the
Mouth of Sauron editors first started collecting encounter response data
and publishing it widely. There were always players who opposed it, but
once the cat's out... When you know exactly what to respond to a
specific dragon in order to recruit him, and it works for the same
dragon every time, you not only have a dull encounter, but a technique
which radically alters the balance of the game (compared for example
with the intitial play tests where the dragon encounters would not all
have been known.)
Even so, for many years the companies owning the Mepbm license kept a
distance from the activity, many players did not discover the MoS data
until they became experienced and the total volume of that data, the
number of "known" and proven responses was much lower. I thought it a
mistake when you first got involved in the disemination of player
collated data by appending it to the ME Guide.
I personally have my own versions of the MoS/Bobbins data, with a few
valuable additions. But I certainly shalln't be broadcasting them.
Like a fisherman's knowledge of the best "swims" or a secret bait
recipie, these secrets are a part of the fun. I share them with new
team mates as and when they might be needed. Tell the world, lose the fun.
There is however a mitigation for what the MoS editors and others since,
chose to do: It is that the enconters themselves are actually very
feeble, with a very large number of "no result" responses. Like the
naval rules, they are one of the game's conspicous weak points. For
example in the last few turns I had back, I have about six encounters:
- an unavoidable death
- an unavoidable smashing for a weak character by ruins spirits and wights
- a "trail" where I know there's an artefact, but must waste a turn
investigating
- a trail which was unexpected and which I won't bother to investigate
- an encounter where I know the response to avoid combat, but will lose
an order in consequence
- an encounter with an NPC who does nothing useful
With a re-write, it could be SO much better. Riddles could come from a
growing list, so that there's more chance one actually has to be thought
about or researched. (Free turn for a riddle good enough to be
accepted, perhaps). Dragon encounters could sometimes vary, to allow
the dragons some changes of mood simulating personality. There could be
a greater range of encounters which give more chances of small rewards/
small penalties with better clues in the encounter descriptions as to
what might be coming or what might be risked. And there should
certainly be a lot less responses where the result is nothing. How
often have you seen something like this:
9.9 The Boring Man
Location: Anywhere you like, when a character is doing something important.
Description: The character is meets a boring man, who yawns.
Options Free Peoples Neutrals Nations Dark
Servants
ATTACK the man combat combat combat
THROW stones combat combat combat
COUNT his teeth escape escape escape
SAY (one word)
SAY "Hello" escape escape escape
SAY "$%**!" escape escape escape
FLEE combat combat combat
Characters winning the combat are rumoured to win a toffee apple. The
challenge rank of the boring man is
about 75. (So your camping emissary, who 9 times out of 10 is liable to
be the one encountering him does not
stand a snowball's chance in a fight.)
Boring boring boring. An interesting exercise might be to look at a
"grudge" game, and log how many of the standard (as opposed to artefact
yielding or dragon) encounters are simply ignored, or responded to with
a known safe escape response. I'll wager that you'll find it's the vast
majority. Maybe even 90%+ That surely isn't in the spirit of Tolkien's
stories.
And THAT... I politely suggest is what you could be spending your excess
time on, rather than doing the players' work and spoiling the fun
element of "trade secrets". Get some better encounters into the game,
or even redesign the whole encounter system.
You asked.
···
On 18/04/2008 ME Games Ltd wrote:
Any other feedback? Is it useful, simple to use and amend? Any other
comments?
--
Laurence G. Tilley http://www.lgtilley.co.uk/
http://www.buav.org
<http://www.buav.org/>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Check out the link to that if you get the time for a "flavour". We went with the wikki so that we could assist players collating information if they wanted to.