I hope someone (Dave Holt again?) can help me clear out a small rules dispute I have (again) with my teammate Mike Sankey
Here is the case: We have an encounter with a recruitable dragon, but we have a second character in the hex as well and neither are in company.
MS claims that he can just ignore the encounter with the character who recieved the encounter and then recruit the dragon with the second character. I tell him that if he does that, the first character will die as he will automaticly chose “Flee”, but the other character would then recruit the dragon. But MS is stubborn as a donkey and claims that the first character will not be involved in the encounter, if the second one reacts as well. To my knowledge this can only happen if they are in company.
Who has the right to call himself “Master of the middle-earth rules” this time ?
It is my understanding that any character in a hex can respond to the encounter, not necessarily does the character have to be in the same company that encountered the dragon. The original character who had the encounter at first will not be killed since someone else is actually reacting to the dragon. Also, multiple characters can attempt to react to the dragon but only one will get the encounter at random. This is especially useful if there is a Freep character in the hex who can potentially “steal” the encounter away from the DS, thusly preventing the DS from recruiting the dragon.
Kim, Mike is correct. I hope that helps.
Think about it. If you respond to the encounter, the encounter is used up for that turn. Two people can’t have the same encounter, the same turn. The response doesn’t have to be from the character with the encounter (this is true for dragons, artifact encounters, riddles, etc.). Company/army membership is of no consequence. If no one responds actively to the Encounter, then yes, your character who got the encounter will be treated as if they issued “FLEE” orders.
In fact Kim, an enemy can respond to the encounter and if there are multiple people responding, it’s a toss-up as to who will get to actually answer the encounter and the the reward/results.
Finally, while we’re on this subject, here’s a HUGE trick (pay attention all of you artifact hunters out there). If someone has done the InvEnc on a riddle, but it hasn’t yet been answered correctly, or a Spirits encounter has been triggered unsuccessfully, the artifact hidden by the riddle encounter MAY NOW BE PICKED UP. Yes. The 900 order is now effective. Thus it’s possible to nab an artifact before a riddle can be answered or Spirits defeated. Frank Redmond taught me that trick. I’ve successfully used it on a bunch of occasions in GB games, but oddly enough, never in grudge games.
Well that depends on what kind of encounter we are talking about - Riddles or NPC encounter !!!
I know for a fact that in artifact spirit encounters multiple characters can react the same turn and eventually beat up the spirit if its a tough one. I thought this also was true for dragons and other character encounters with NPC, and which is also what Tom Walten states in his original dragon file.
So you are telling me that Tom Walton is wrong ? You are saying that only one character can react to a dragon before it moves away and that its completely random who reacts to the dragon if several characters is trying to react, even though one of the characetrs recieved the encounter?
You are saying that if only one character is issuing 285, then this character will react with the dragon regardless of who has the encounter ?
MS is right again. Tom Walton’s “opinions” are 20 years old… Whomever gets to go first goes first. If Bob issues 285 in Hex A42 and the computer discovers a dragon is also there, it runs the Ando Anca subroutine on Bob, regardless of who happened to randomly recieve the encounter message at pervious turn end. 100 year old program, don’t give it so much credit and you’ll be amazed at what opens up…
If Dave says you can 900, you can 900. I’m grabbing Miramarth this turn as a result of exactly such a technicality and never have to worry when my company commander gets the Dragon encounter - because he’s ferrying around my Dragon Slayer…
The Other character can take the dragon encounter with only one exception – if he is an army commander or a character attached to an army that is there then they can’t take it – found this out the hard way in a game !!
Blue Knight - good point. Army commanders never get the dragon encounters, so don’t respond to an encounter that’s only for non-army commanders with an army commander or character attached to an army.
Kim - the grudge team that I’m on were just discussing this multiple death possibility from uber spirits in same encounter on the same turn. It seems to be consensus opinion that yes, multiple characters can respond to that type of encounter until someone succeeds in beating the spirits. Then it’s used up. The dragon encounters are one-shot/turn. The riddles are one-shot/turn. I suspect Celgor and Shelob and the others are also one-shot. Perhaps the Spirit encounters are the exception.
All cool questions. Hope you didn’t lose more than a pint of ale on the bet.
Dave
Oh, and also Kim - I wrote the original NG strategy article in Mouth of Sauron. I’m here today to say that I didn’t get it so very right. It wasn’t bad for the time and how people played back then. But today, I have LOTS of options for how to play NG, almost all of which are much more sophisticated in planning and execution. Brad’s right in that MOS was cool because it collected data and opinion, and educated guesses from a lot of folks and made it available to everyone. But that was a LONG time ago and we’ve all learned a lot since then. So I’m 100% positive that there is stuff in the MOS that is just flat out wrong and it hasn’t been updated. Now that we have a wiki… perhaps all of that will change?
I think he got pushed by Big Brother a bit. Had a hard time with perspective in public at least. I’ve heard both reasonable and outrageous things about him in-game on a team. Although, he did once send me a very pleasant email saying he knew where I lived and was going to fly all the way to Canada just to take a piece of me in front of my family… Between those types of interactions and his public forum linguistic challenges, I can certainly appreciate that very few in the community actually “miss” him…
Golly Brad… What did you say to him to cause that reaction? hmmm? most streets are two-way…
I always found Frank to be a fantastic teammate and extremely knowledgeable. It’s true that on the BBS he was frequently inflammatory. But he was/is not alone in that category.
Anyway, he was a very good player and teammate. And I do miss playing with/against him.
I may have posted something 10% as inflammatory. I recall a few others who made the same claim of him issuing threats. The guy simply wasn’t stable, sorry. I do recall some heated flame wars against him, those weren’t me. He went over the top well beyond the line into Unacceptable behaviour, period, full stop.
Kim: I’m with Mike; he is correct in your current discussion.
Dave: I’m with Brad; the absence of “vandel” (as he would be wont to capitalize/spell) on this forum is a good thing.
All: there are multiple errors people have posted above on game mechanics. I’ll leave it to you all to discover which are which “in the course of play” …
Well Drew, I miss playing with/against Frank. I don’t miss the absence of Vandel from the BBS…
And if I made errors in game mechanics discussion, please email me or post. I don’t mind being corrected if I got something wrong. Wouldn’t be the first or last time!
Vandal on the forum was great. Absolutely nothing more entertaining than reading his posts. Frank is still available via email as I did swap a few emails with him at the end of last year.
I can’t comment on his threats and his stability, but I enjoyed playing with him.
As for his posts, the forum at least to me was enjoyable reading what he said. I know I was the recepient of a few of his tongue lashings when I ventured into a debate with him.
