Dunheved
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Tue 25 Jan 2022, 01:21

I have definitely NOT done any maths. (My skills at stats are minimal.)
I feel that using statistics can be fraught with the dangers of misinterpretation. Models with thousands of trials might lead to wholesale general patterns - but how many dice rolls does each player complete in a session/chapter? Or in an adventure? So a general pattern might need a health warning because it works with big numbers, but may not be replicated that often in play.
On the other hand, all information can be useful, so I am still keen to read the numbers. I don't want to sound too negative about something I cannot do well!

Keeping option B as a fix for broken maths, I am thinking a little about these possibilities

I think that the difficulty of the Council should be down to the people that the players are speaking to, not the skill level of the players. How experienced are players going to be with level 5 in a wide range of abilities? None of my PC have reached that yet in TOR1e games. So in this case, the LM needs to step up to the plate. Which is the purpose of my question of course !

E.g. Why not make an Easy Council one with favoured rolls, and a Hard Council one with ill-favoured rolls?

E.g. the first Failure changes the subsequent rolls to ill- favoured, until a tengwar can be spent to cancel that?
 
a2le
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Wed 26 Jan 2022, 23:04

I read this thread with great interest, thank you for all your advice.
I'd like to add my two cent point here: the rules state that the Council Rule should be used only when "the stakes are high and [...] the Company stands to win or lose something valuable".
My question is: what are the "stakes" you used in your adventures? Have you followed this rule or not or only partially?
As an example, I don't think you should apply the rule for councils when the meeting is with your patron unless your group is asking a very unseemly question. Do you agree?
 
Niallism
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Thu 27 Jan 2022, 10:49

Yes, absolutely. Councils (continuing on from the themes in 1E) are supposed to be when you request something from a powerful non-enemy who doesn't want to help.

The Stakes are mostly whether they help, or let you do the thing they want you to do, or whether they insist on some kind of payment, such as a quest for them or turning over something valuable. So you should never have a Council if you don't know what to do if the PCs fail. For example my adventurers went to Rivendell uninvited, but with good reason and an elven companion, and had a Council with elven 'rangers' on whether to let them in. If they had failed, that would have been just fine by me.

You might have a Council with a Patron if you wanted them to do something they just don't want to do. But Patrons are usually genial and helpful, and also there's a bit of an issue with the gaming social contract of 'the players won't disrupt my plans by refusing to do what the Patron asks'. I could only see a Council with a Patron happening very late in a game, when the players have gained a lot of power and influence, and have their own goals, and maybe are in disagreement with their initial Patrons on the right course of action.
 
Dunheved
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Mon 14 Feb 2022, 11:09

Fresh idea but I would need somebody to consider exploring the Math. Just because I think it should work, doesn't mean that it will!

Anyway here's the idea.
The Time allotted to a council equates to the number of skill rolls permitted. With a simple Success in the introduction a hard council has a Time limit of 9 + 1 = 10. Then the players start to narrate and to roll.

But what if the Time limit is immediately reduced by one as soon as a Failure is rolled, and so on for EACH additional roll that is a Failure?

Using the example of a Hard council above. The players start with Time = 10. Their first four skill rolls happen to come up as basic Success, Failure, Failure, basic Success. Using the RAW, the Time available would reduced from 10 to 6 because four skill rolls have been used. But the two Failures cut into the Time remaining: limiting it now to only (6 - 2) 4 more attempts at rolls.
At this moment in my example, there have been only 2 Success, so 7 more Success are needed, and now there are only four more rolls (or Time) before the council ends.

This seems to me to make things harder, and means that if you fail early in the council it does get much more difficult.

I just don't have the maths to reinforce my house rule/amendment.
 
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Rafamir
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Tue 15 Feb 2022, 01:25

At this moment in my example, there have been only 2 Success, so 7 more Success are needed, and now there are only four more rolls (or Time) before the council ends.

This seems to me to make things harder, and means that if you fail early in the council it does get much more difficult.

I just don't have the maths to reinforce my house rule/amendment.
I'm not a maths guy either, but I like where you're headed with this line of thinking. In terms of narrative tension, an extraordinary success, or burning Hope to improve chances of getting multiple Tengwar, becomes much more needed and would make Councils more tense rather than a dice-rolling chore in need of embellishment.
 
Niallism
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Tue 15 Feb 2022, 06:44

At this moment in my example, there have been only 2 Success, so 7 more Success are needed, and now there are only four more rolls (or Time) before the council ends.

This seems to me to make things harder, and means that if you fail early in the council it does get much more difficult.

I just don't have the maths to reinforce my house rule/amendment.
I'm not a maths guy either, but I like where you're headed with this line of thinking. In terms of narrative tension, an extraordinary success, or burning Hope to improve chances of getting multiple Tengwar, becomes much more needed and would make Councils more tense rather than a dice-rolling chore in need of embellishment.
I think systems like this or Skill Endeavours, or Extended Skill Rolls or Skill Challenges, in other games, suffer from not stating, in bold type, twice, that every roll should have the players state what they are doing and what they want to achieve by that, and that the GM MUST change the situation due after every skill roll, whether a failure or success.

That's where the drama comes from. Otherwise it's like having a battle without any talking or surprises.
 
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Rafamir
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Wed 16 Feb 2022, 02:35

... the GM MUST change the situation due after every skill roll, whether a failure or success.

That's where the drama comes from. Otherwise it's like having a battle without any talking or surprises.
Excellent point. The Dwarf in the party rolled an extraordinary success early in a council with Hartfast at Mountain Hall and it allowed the council to proceed with a lot of flavor (Hartfast wanted to hear more from the Dwarf while gruffly rebuffing the other adventurers). I'm realizing there was a missed opportunity to translate some of those narrative elements into advantages for the Dwarf and complications for the rest of the party.
 
baldrick0712
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Fri 18 Feb 2022, 09:35

Sorry if this sounds dumb but what exactly is the problem with Councils?
 
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Harlath
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Fri 18 Feb 2022, 10:06

Sorry if this sounds dumb but what exactly is the problem with Councils?
This is a good summary, essentially higher % to pass councils and skill endeavours that are supposed to be harder once you hit mid to high skill ranks. Or even warier via Hope and other bonus dice. Various easy ways to fix it, I like increasing successes required faster than resistance.

viewtopic.php?f=129&t=8509
 
Mercator
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Re: How will you sort the problem with Councils?

Sat 19 Feb 2022, 15:57

Fresh idea but I would need somebody to consider exploring the Math. Just because I think it should work, doesn't mean that it will!

Anyway here's the idea.
The Time allotted to a council equates to the number of skill rolls permitted. With a simple Success in the introduction a hard council has a Time limit of 9 + 1 = 10. Then the players start to narrate and to roll.

But what if the Time limit is immediately reduced by one as soon as a Failure is rolled, and so on for EACH additional roll that is a Failure?

Using the example of a Hard council above. The players start with Time = 10. Their first four skill rolls happen to come up as basic Success, Failure, Failure, basic Success. Using the RAW, the Time available would reduced from 10 to 6 because four skill rolls have been used. But the two Failures cut into the Time remaining: limiting it now to only (6 - 2) 4 more attempts at rolls.
At this moment in my example, there have been only 2 Success, so 7 more Success are needed, and now there are only four more rolls (or Time) before the council ends.

This seems to me to make things harder, and means that if you fail early in the council it does get much more difficult.

I just don't have the maths to reinforce my house rule/amendment.
I like the idea of this a lot in terms of making the process more suspenseful; the problem is that it more or less affects all difficulties equally and to some extent is more punishing on easy councils. e.g. a failure on the first roll of an easy council leaves the company with probably 1-2 more chances to get 3 successes. A second failure pretty much immediately ends the council. Two failures at the start of a hard council is rough but you still have something like 5-7 chances to get the 9 successes.

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