Started following this thread from the RPG.net forums yesterday and thought folks might have some interest: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?675407...-are-killing-me!

To summarize - an LM presented his players with a gritty, ambiguous situation, which resulted in some difficult decisions, and ultimately, to Shadow Points (and, player remorse). Players complained. OP wants feedback on whether he made some mistakes and, if so, how to structure gameplay in future.

My personal opinion is that, if he made a mistake, it was in, perhaps, allowing the dice to dictate (or, setting the TN too high?), resulting in a key social encounter failure, which lead to the PCs making a fateful and poorly thought-out decision. On the whole, I think he got it right. He didn't remove player agency, thereby forcing the decision on the PCs (although, I guess he could've suggested to them that there were alternate outcomes).

Honestly, it sounds like a great in-game experience, one with gravity, that hews pretty close to the purpose of Shadow Points and in-game PC anguish. Clearly, though, people play TOR to have fun . . . not feel bad.

In any case, a great discussion around the fine art of game-mastering and some good exposure on an alternate forum for The One Ring.

Enjoy!

Fascinating thread, Evocatus. Thanks for sharing.

I think it's interesting how it's almost hard-coded into gamers that you must make progress in every encounter and that progress is often connected to killing something.

In real life, police and soldiers must frequently make decisions where success is linked to restraint rather than getting the bad guys. I can think of several occasions where we let bad guys get away rather than risk collateral damage. Likewise, it is often more satisfying to capture a bad guy than kill him, and that's an assessment totally divorced from any sort of moral question. Finally, I can think of several examples from Iraq and Afghanistan where former foes became powerful allies; it can be difficult to work together with someone who killed fellow Americans/Brits/whatever, but that's often the only way to make real progress in complex, real life situations.

Indeed - the ol' "murder-hobo" playstyle, i.e. kill things and take their stuff, has deep roots.

I admit that it was an adjustment for me to grok The One Ring's XP system, that is to say, experience is awarded for sessions played not monsters defeated - what, you mean I get XP for simply showing-up?! It's really a not-so-subtle difference.

Clearly, the systems I grew up with (and, I'm specifically referencing D&D - B/X, RC, and 1e) reward experience for completing campaign objectives, masterful role-playing, and/or feats of derring-do, however, the main sources of XP were treasure and monsters, in that order. The lethality and resource mini-game of the system often tempered the impulse to fight everything you ran across but, there is no question that, at least in my groups, encounters were most often resolved with the business-end of a sword. Understand, this is not a knock at B/X et al., rather a comment on my younger self. I'm still a fan and player of my old favorites and the rule-lite aspects of the system have, in later years, resulted in much more nuanced gameplay.

However, I really like how TOR has implemented this, to my mind entirely in-keeping with the setting, and I have to constantly keep this in mind when developing scenarios - hey, there goes a group of orcs, remember you don't have to fight them, in fact, you get no real reward for doing so. And, despite the charge that the Professor's "world" is too binary, too black and white vs. shades of grey, there is real nuance here, with interesting mechanics for curbing player aggressiveness, expanding player agency, and providing for a broader degree of choice in encounter resolution.

Certainly, you can hack-and-slash your way through The One Ring, and sometimes you will need to but, it's not the only or even the most interesting way to design sessions. That is, if you and your players are into that sort of thing.

I've always found it peculiar that people will go to the cluster**** that is rpgnet with questions concerning a game, rather than posting on the parent game's forum.

Still in many cases you'll get a lot more replies on RPG.net. It is without a doubt the biggest and most active non-D&D tabletop roleplay community.

I'm surprised that some posters on RPG.net think the spider-vs-witch story was not appropriate in a Middle-Earth setting. I like that story a lot, and will probably use it when my players cross Mirkwood again.