Dorjcal
Posts: 81
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Tue 27 Jul 2021, 08:46

I missed that #2, but it's not the same as prep dice, and my 1E experienced players all feel like song is too nerfed, too. (it was great when they fould a book of the official tunes to songs from tolkien; when one of those was sung by players, I dropped the TN by the number of players.

everyone singing to impress The Lord of Eagles?How many? Ok, roll song at TN-X and need Y successes - but each failure counting against the Notoriously short tolerance of Gwahir and his lot for any of the ground-folk save Ystari... and downright hate for goblinkinds...

Decreasing TN by number of player is not contemplated by RAW. I fear you could have made most task much easier than supposed to (of course your player are missing that!).
It is like now you would extend of +1 roll for each player that attempts the action.


2E, it's been massively reduced, and due to basics of dice math, and TN's that are often near or above the average roll for skills, it's no benefit to need X of X rolls (which is the default for prolonged);

Uh? It is not. X of X rolls is only when the company has short time to execute the action. Which in 1E would have advocate for a TN + 2.
The default is X of X +1 rolls.

Even X of X+1 isn't good. In fact, it's worse on average to extend it unless your average roll is well above the TN, but then you don't need to anyway.

Not really. Check the table below of probabilities.
Also more rolls = more chances of getting greater successes (which was not evaluated below).

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Asrath
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 03:10


Prolonged actions were a simple but powerful tool in 1E; the lack of the reduction in difficulty for help feels counter to the value of Felloship and Camaraderie in the works of Prof. Tolkien. It was one of the things that really stood out... everyone singing to impress The Lord of Eagles?How many? Ok, roll song at TN-X and need Y successes - but each failure counting against the Notoriously short tolerance of Gwahir and his lot for any of the ground-folk save Ystari... and downright hate for goblinkinds...
I may have overused the tolerance rules, but it made failures matter a lot. I also haven't found any intolerance reference in 2E. It was a hassle, but a good one.
I think that would still be possible in 2ed. The players need to get Y successes and instead of reducing the TN a LM can allow them +1d6, if that can be justified.
Point is, that you open the challenge for other skills (but song in your example). If the players are able to argue different skills, fine. It could be more fun for the players, giving them more room for creativity and a cool story, instead of just rolling dice.

A song to impress Gwahir is not just a melody, there is text and emotions too, so why not allow Lore or Inspire or Awe or even Battle (if the song is about that) - there are many possibilities for the players to argue.

Bottom line: Prolonged Actions for me are kind of Skill Endeavors now.
 
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aramis
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 05:41

A song to impress Gwahir is not just a melody, there is text and emotions too, so why not allow Lore or Inspire or Awe or even Battle (if the song is about that) - there are many possibilities for the players to argue.

Bottom line: Prolonged Actions for me are kind of Skill Endeavors now.
Attempting to use Awe on Gwahir? Not until they add Ystari as PCs. He's not very fond of featherless folk. I'd set the 1E difficulty at ᚠꞆ Ꞇ (which is valid ... anything harder is automatic failure)
Riddle would also be a bit dicey; my read of Gwahir is as a plain speaking and slightly standoffish type, offended by indirect approaches.

I also prefer the much more general uses of 1E's Tolerance - one set for the town, another set for any given meeting. Each fail spends one. When out, you're done with anything social in that circumstance. Tolerance kept down the number of rolls in towns.

I think there is too much simplification, and my favorite tools have been removed. Specifically the cooperation rule, and the prep dice (and sharing thereof). I dislike the increased difficulty; it was bad enough in 1E.

I even know how I'm going to houserule... but I'm not going to discuss it here. Especially since my players will want to have a say over the houserules. And I consider that their right.
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Smith & Wesson: the original point and click interface...
 
gyrovague
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 05:54

Attempting to use Awe on Gwahir? Not until they add Ystari as PCs. He's not very fond of featherless folk. I'd set the 1E difficulty at ᚠꞆ Ꞇ (which is valid ... anything harder is automatic failure)
Riddle would also be a bit dicey; my read of Gwahir is as a plain speaking and slightly standoffish type, offended by indirect approaches.
As has been discussed elsewhere regarding secret TNs, what I still struggle with in TOR2 is how to make an NPC more resistant/open to various approaches without it being obvious to the players, and discoverable only through prior research, trial and error, or using something like Insight. I mean, sure, I guess I could let them roll, then say, "Gwahir frowns at you. Remove your highest success die." But that feels unsatisfying.
 
Glorfindel
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 06:42

Attempting to use Awe on Gwahir? Not until they add Ystari as PCs. He's not very fond of featherless folk. I'd set the 1E difficulty at ᚠꞆ Ꞇ (which is valid ... anything harder is automatic failure)
Riddle would also be a bit dicey; my read of Gwahir is as a plain speaking and slightly standoffish type, offended by indirect approaches.
As has been discussed elsewhere regarding secret TNs, what I still struggle with in TOR2 is how to make an NPC more resistant/open to various approaches without it being obvious to the players, and discoverable only through prior research, trial and error, or using something like Insight. I mean, sure, I guess I could let them roll, then say, "Gwahir frowns at you. Remove your highest success die." But that feels unsatisfying.
It's sort of my understanding that this is where degrees of success come in. This would give the LM a way to hide NPCs being more resistant to players by requiring a 6 or even two 6's (or more) if the NPC is extremely resistant for whatever reason. This does not, however, solve the issue of how to make NPCs more open to players without it being obvious.
 
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aramis
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Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 06:59

Attempting to use Awe on Gwahir? Not until they add Ystari as PCs. He's not very fond of featherless folk. I'd set the 1E difficulty at ᚠꞆ Ꞇ (which is valid ... anything harder is automatic failure)
Riddle would also be a bit dicey; my read of Gwahir is as a plain speaking and slightly standoffish type, offended by indirect approaches.
As has been discussed elsewhere regarding secret TNs, what I still struggle with in TOR2 is how to make an NPC more resistant/open to various approaches without it being obvious to the players, and discoverable only through prior research, trial and error, or using something like Insight. I mean, sure, I guess I could let them roll, then say, "Gwahir frowns at you. Remove your highest success die." But that feels unsatisfying.
Since I'm using a digital diceroller (which I wrote), and I keep the rolls in generated order, rather than sorted, I can say, "Lose the two rightmost"... but I haven't been doing that except when someone submits a roll before I've set difficulty. On a textual basis, this alone makes 2E slower than 1E, since the player's spends determined what they rolled, and the GM's adjustments all adjusted the TN, allowing simultaneous processing by player and GM.

Grabbed from sunday's discord game:
[code]«GM» — 07/25/2021
.[fr]4t
SCTrack BOT — 07/25/2021
fr (ᚠ ) ᚠ +Σ(6Ꞇ 4 2 1 ) = ᚠ 1×Ꞇ
= 0

Message Total: 0
Frerin Son of Cian Son of Bror — 07/25/2021
.2tf
SCTrack BOT — 07/25/2021
TOR (𝄐 4 )↑ 4 +Σ(3 5 ) = 12
= 0

Message Total: 0
Frerin Son of Cian Son of Bror — 07/25/2021
.3tf
SCTrack BOT — 07/25/2021
TOR (7 4 )↑ 7 +Σ(6Ꞇ 4 4 ) = 21 1×Ꞇ
= 0

Message Total: 0[/code]

For reference, I used the fermata (a musical symbol, u+1d110 𝄐 ) for the Eye, and u+16A0 ᚠ Feoh rune as the gandalf rune. (In the younger futhark, and especially in the later Medieval runes, it can be rendered curved.)
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gyrovague
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 07:13

It's sort of my understanding that this is where degrees of success come in. This would give the LM a way to hide NPCs being more resistant to players by requiring a 6 or even two 6's (or more) if the NPC is extremely resistant for whatever reason. This does not, however, solve the issue of how to make NPCs more open to players without it being obvious.
So where the "old" way might be to let the player roll and say, "Nope, a 15 fails", in TOR 2E you'd let the player roll and even if they beat their nominal TN but don't have a Tengwar you'd say, "Actually, she doesn't seem very impressed...".

Hmm. Yeah, I can see that working approximately the same way. Except, as you point out, there's no elegant way to make them more open to a given approach. (And, either way, I'd try to broadcast hints and not just leave it up to guesswork and dice.)

Now, the tricky step is to find a fun and relatively straightforward (YMMV) way to make Councils more dynamic. For example:
- If a check is failed with an EoS, the NPC's Resistance* to that skill increases by one for the duration of the Council (e.g. from normal to requiring one Tengwar)
- If an NPC is resistant to a skill, the character may use their turn to make an Ill-favoured check using that skill. If a normal success is achieved, the Resistance is reduced one step.
 
Dorjcal
Posts: 81
Joined: Sun 11 Jul 2021, 10:22

Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 08:16

Attempting to use Awe on Gwahir? Not until they add Ystari as PCs. He's not very fond of featherless folk. I'd set the 1E difficulty at ᚠꞆ Ꞇ (which is valid ... anything harder is automatic failure)
Riddle would also be a bit dicey; my read of Gwahir is as a plain speaking and slightly standoffish type, offended by indirect approaches.
As has been discussed elsewhere regarding secret TNs, what I still struggle with in TOR2 is how to make an NPC more resistant/open to various approaches without it being obvious to the players, and discoverable only through prior research, trial and error, or using something like Insight. I mean, sure, I guess I could let them roll, then say, "Gwahir frowns at you. Remove your highest success die." But that feels unsatisfying.

You can always let your character use Insight before the interaction to get some "insight" on the best approach if your players ask about it.
IRL if you never met someone before you also do not know what is the best way to approach them, why would be different in game?

If there is any obvious knowledge your character would know/sense, you just provide it to them without rolling.
 
Glorfindel
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed 28 Jul 2021, 06:37

Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 11:36

It's sort of my understanding that this is where degrees of success come in. This would give the LM a way to hide NPCs being more resistant to players by requiring a 6 or even two 6's (or more) if the NPC is extremely resistant for whatever reason. This does not, however, solve the issue of how to make NPCs more open to players without it being obvious.
So where the "old" way might be to let the player roll and say, "Nope, a 15 fails", in TOR 2E you'd let the player roll and even if they beat their nominal TN but don't have a Tengwar you'd say, "Actually, she doesn't seem very impressed...".

Hmm. Yeah, I can see that working approximately the same way. Except, as you point out, there's no elegant way to make them more open to a given approach. (And, either way, I'd try to broadcast hints and not just leave it up to guesswork and dice.)

Now, the tricky step is to find a fun and relatively straightforward (YMMV) way to make Councils more dynamic. For example:
- If a check is failed with an EoS, the NPC's Resistance* to that skill increases by one for the duration of the Council (e.g. from normal to requiring one Tengwar)
- If an NPC is resistant to a skill, the character may use their turn to make an Ill-favoured check using that skill. If a normal success is achieved, the Resistance is reduced one step.
I very much think the tengwar is key to this sort of thing, and is very much in the vein of how many other games that have target numbers for success visible to the players handle the GM being able to be flexible with difficulty. I play a few of these games; Call of Cthulhu is a popular one, for example, and in Call of Cthulhu players roll percentile dice and try to hit numbers under the score that they have in the relevant skill. So if the skill is 50 and you roll a 45 on the percentile it's a success, and this information is known to the players at all times, and so the GM will go around the table and everyone rolling their rolls will say if they succeeded or not, much like how TOR 2e is currently set up in that regard. Beyond normal successes there are Hard successes and Extreme successes all of which are based off of a fractional number derived from the number you have in that skill, and is increasingly harder to hit because of it. While this can represent how well something is done, it is very commonly used by the GM behind the screen in order to not divulge that something might be abnormally difficult for some reason. Requiring 1 or more tengwars for these types of situations accomplishes a similar thing, really.

I'm not entirely certain that this is the intent with the 2e alpha as it is written. It is kind of the conclusion I have drawn from reading the PDF, but if it is the intent I do feel like this thread is proof enough that there needs to be more of a mention/focus somewhere on how a loremaster can use degrees of success to modify a situation's difficulty. If it is not the intent, I feel like it would be a worthy (and incredibly easy) inclusion to the system. It'd be easy to add to the book (possibly taking up a small paragraph), and would offer a little flexibility for the LM in creating adventures and modifying difficulty while still having the current TN system.

I do like your initial idea about how to make councils more dynamic by including these concepts though. I'll have to reread that section and actually playtest the council phase myself in order to have any relevant additions, but I think it would be worth looking into and possibly expanding on.
 
Asgo
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:18

Re: A pattern in criticism?

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 14:16

..I'm not entirely certain that this is the intent with the 2e alpha as it is written. It is kind of the conclusion I have drawn from reading the PDF, but if it is the intent I do feel like this thread is proof enough that there needs to be more of a mention/focus somewhere on how a loremaster can use degrees of success to modify a situation's difficulty. If it is not the intent, I feel like it would be a worthy (and incredibly easy) inclusion to the system. It'd be easy to add to the book (possibly taking up a small paragraph), and would offer a little flexibility for the LM in creating adventures and modifying difficulty while still having the current TN system.
...
I might be wrong, but my understanding of the alpha rules and some of the comments the designers made in the videos is, that they basically just removed difficulty of tests because they felt that it was too difficult for the players and/or LMs. ;)
There seem to be two exceptions on that theme.
- One is the "consequences of failure", which is more about how bad failure is for you than about the difficulty of the test in itself, e.g., the same jump distance can have very different results depending on if the jump is over a small rivulet of water, bridging the distance between two rooftops or a pit of lava.
- The second are the complications and advantages in combat, but since they are also part of the tactical battlefield abstractions they serve multiple purposes.

For the rest the RAW assumption seems to be that tests fall into three cases:
- no roll needed: you should be able to do that without being able to fail
- a test at standard TN
- no roll needed: you should never succeed on that
So compared to a system with test difficulties you narrow the band of cases where you roll to something very close to just the standard difficulty and shove a lot of other cases into auto succeed and auto fail.

That is at least my read on it, I may have missed something - basically I hope I missed something. ;)
It is an OK abstraction if you don't like dice rolls and are willing to loose some world detail to achieve that.
For all others it should be easy enough to add it back in so it is not that big of an issue.

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