The Attention of Sauron (Zed's new EoM)

[Glorelendil]

You know I love your work, Zed, but there are few things about this approach that gives me pause. (While acknowledging that I have yet to come up with something better.)

First, I do think that Eye Awareness should be tied to the fellowship, not to individuals. It's thematic, both for the books and for the game. That said, it also shouldn't penalize larger parties (as RAW does) both because it's contrary to that important theme, and because it's not anything players actually have control over (except in a meta sense: "Sorry, Fred, you can't play with us tonight...bad for our Eye Awareness.") But that observation isn't really useful feedback because it would involve starting from scratch in this case.

Perhaps more useful, it seems that adding points for moving across a border seems to imbue the actual imaginary/arbitrary line of the border with power. Hopping back and forth over the border of Mirkwood shouldn't be worse than camping out in the middle of it. And leaving a nasty region for a better one should improve the situation, not worsen it again. Maybe each region could grant a fixed number of temporary points? So that temporary points go down when you move from a terrible place to a merely bad one?

I like the notion that engaging with powerful adversaries can raise score, but I worry that "engaging" being the trigger is a bit like the border problem. Maybe something like: you gain a point whenever you "defeat" (kill, vanquish, chase off, or even thwart the plans of) a Servant of Shadow of Attribute Level 6 or higher.

[Robin Smallburrow]

Zed, kudos for the idea of the starting Eye Awareness score being linked to Valour & Wisdom, but I have to agree with Glorendil's comment that the Eye Awareness should also be linked to the Fellowship as a group - recall Gandalf's comments to Boromir (I forget but it was in Book 2):

"When you came north Boromir you were one lone individual wandering in the wilderness, but now you are travelling back south with some important individuals" (or words to that effect).

Perhaps starting Eye Awareness could be Wisdom + Valour halved, then add a factor depending on the size of the Fellowship, say +1 for a group of 6, +2 for a group of 12? (these are just arbitrary figures off the top of my head).

I also agree with Glorendil that Eye Awareness shouldn't go up just for 'crossing a border', unless it was into a dangerous place such as Mordor. Maybe suggest to the LM that moving between different regions only applies after the Fellowship has travelled in the new region for at least one hex??

I have to reread the Rivendell rules on this as well!
Robin S.

[Falenthal]

Zed, kudos for the idea of the starting Eye Awareness score being linked to Valour & Wisdom, but I have to agree with Glorendil's comment that the Eye Awareness should also be linked to the Fellowship as a group - recall Gandalf's comments to Boromir (I forget but it was in Book 2):

"When you came north Boromir you were one lone individual wandering in the wilderness, but now you are travelling back south with some important individuals" (or words to that effect).

Maybe the Fellowship Eye Awareness should be the highest score of the group?
So, every member could calculate his "personal" EA at the begining of an Adventure phase.
Then only the highest one would be recorded and used to calculate when the entire Fellowship has triggered a Revelation Episode.

Maybe the Magical Artifacts should be added all together in top of that.
But I haven't got the numbers with me, so I don't know how that would result.

[zedturtle]

First, I do think that Eye Awareness should be tied to the fellowship, not to individuals. It's thematic, both for the books and for the game. That said, it also shouldn't penalize larger parties (as RAW does) both because it's contrary to that important theme, and because it's not anything players actually have control over (except in a meta sense: "Sorry, Fred, you can't play with us tonight...bad for our Eye Awareness.") But that observation isn't really useful feedback because it would involve starting from scratch in this case.

You're right, of course. We need a way to generate a score that properly accounts for a group of High Elves being a spectacularly bad choice for covert operations but also allows us to tell the difference between a party with two hobbits in it and one with four hobbits.

The reason I say that is that one relatively obvious idea would be to add the highest and lowest scores together... but that's a bit unsatisfactory, and (for those who like to maximize their utilization of the rules) puts someone in the situation of being purposefully lower than everyone else.

Maybe adding the second highest of Valour or Wisdom to the second lowest of the same? Seems fiddly.

Perhaps more useful, it seems that adding points for moving across a border seems to imbue the actual imaginary/arbitrary line of the border with power. Hopping back and forth over the border of Mirkwood shouldn't be worse than camping out in the middle of it. And leaving a nasty region for a better one should improve the situation, not worsen it again. Maybe each region could grant a fixed number of temporary points? So that temporary points go down when you move from a terrible place to a merely bad one?

An interesting idea. It seems like tweaking the Threshold would be easier (simpler) than adding or subtracting Eye Awareness.

I like the notion that engaging with powerful adversaries can raise score, but I worry that "engaging" being the trigger is a bit like the border problem. Maybe something like: you gain a point whenever you "defeat" (kill, vanquish, chase off, or even thwart the plans of) a Servant of Shadow of Attribute Level 6 or higher.

Hmmm. Good point.

[zedturtle]

Sorry but what are the changes regarding the geographical areas? I can't see that.

They're more specific, and tied to the difficulty of the terrain... now only Hard difficulty and higher adds to the Eye Awareness and only one time per Adventuring Phase per region.

As for the Thresholds, I can't give an opinion not having played with the EoS rules, but it seems logical from a thematic point of view that a Noldor with Valour and Wisdom 6 (or even 5/5) would be inmediately noticed by Sauron and his minions. That's one reason why Elrond and Galadriel didn't leave their havens and need their rings for concealing (among others). Also, this tells us that Glorfindel was, at most a Valour 5/Wisdom 4 or the like.

Good points. I think I was chasing the math earlier, rather than the story. Thanks!

[Glorelendil]

I've been thinking about the math of this a bit and have an idea regarding regions. It's probably too fiddly, but might provoke a discussion.

I think the goal we're going for here is that your actions are more likely to increase the attention of the Eye in lands where the Shadow is stronger. That can either be accomplished by having a lower threshold, or an increased chance of gaining points.

To reiterate the problem with the former (RAW): numbers that seem reasonable at low levels and in moderately corrupted lands break at higher levels in Shadow/Dark lands, leading to too frequent Revelation episodes or even a constant state of Revelation. So it's basically impossible to avoid either too few episodes at low level or too many at high level. The root of the problem is the reliance in RAW on integer math; it's too coarse to address the range of scenarios.

The problem with the alternative approach, i.e. varying the probability of point gain based on region, is that RAW is not only simple and clean, but atomic: roll an Eye, get a point. You can't roll half an Eye, and you wouldn't want to raise that threshold to above an Eye for at least two reasons:
1) It strips the Eye of it's special status and it becomes "just a zero"
2) The math is wonky (I just deleted a long paragraph explaining why; if anybody doesn't see it I can write it out again.)

So think about this straw-man proposal: You get a point only when you roll an Eye on a common skill and the total of the roll is greater than the threshold of the region (20 for Free, 12 for Dark). I'd use the total actually on the dice; spending Hope shouldn't trigger Eye Awareness. So the odds of gaining Awareness increase both with the region and with the relative experience of the character. Threshold would then become a fixed number (10?). The chance of getting a point goes way down because you're starting with a Feat Die value of zero, so the threshold would have to be relatively low.

One flaw with this idea is that it once again removes the penalty for rolling with your bad skills hoping for a lucky Gandalf. You could reverse it: if you roll under the TN for the region (the Travel TN, not the Hunt Threshold, so 12 for Free, 20 for Dark) you get a point. But then powerful characters can start to roll Eyes with impunity, and you never trigger them with your "good" skills.

I don't love this idea, but wanted to throw it out there to stimulate some ideas about how we can vary the frequency of eye increase instead of just adjusting the threshold.

[zedturtle]

Hmm... In a similar vein, what if Eye Awareness increased more when you roll an Eye and succeed at the test? Of course, new heroes will not often do this. But experienced heroes rolling four or five dice will. As for whether or not a roll made successful by Hope counts, well I think it'd be more interesting if spending Hope was a hard choice (meaning that you could choose to fail the roll and only increase EA by 1, or spend Hope and increase EA by 2).

[Glorelendil]

Hmm... In a similar vein, what if Eye Awareness increased more when you roll an Eye and succeed at the test? Of course, new heroes will not often do this. But experienced heroes rolling four or five dice will. As for whether or not a roll made successful by Hope counts, well I think it'd be more interesting if spending Hope was a hard choice (meaning that you could choose to fail the roll and only increase EA by 1, or spend Hope and increase EA by 2).

Or to simplify even further, what if you simply gain a point when you roll an Eye and succeed? That doesn't fix all the problems, but it would have an interesting effect. Low level characters would almost never increase Eye Awareness, but it would increase as everybody gained power.

[zedturtle]

Hmm... In a similar vein, what if Eye Awareness increased more when you roll an Eye and succeed at the test? Of course, new heroes will not often do this. But experienced heroes rolling four or five dice will. As for whether or not a roll made successful by Hope counts, well I think it'd be more interesting if spending Hope was a hard choice (meaning that you could choose to fail the roll and only increase EA by 1, or spend Hope and increase EA by 2).

Or to simplify even further, what if you simply gain a point when you roll an Eye and succeed? That doesn't fix all the problems, but it would have an interesting effect. Low level characters would almost never increase Eye Awareness, but it would increase as everybody gained power.

Good point. It allows us to be closer to the Hunt Threshold, or not worry so much about crossing it on the first roll.

Currently, I'm thinking:

Highest of Valour or Wisdom

+

Lowest of Valour or Wisdom

+

Remarkable Magical Items (and perhaps disqualifying some things that are presently on the cusp of qualifying)

=

Starting Eye Awareness

and the Hunt Threshold is set by the most notable member of the party (i.e. the one with the lowest personal Threshold... so 12 for the party of a Ranger, Mirkwood Elf and Dwarf).

Of course one of the other points of the system is so that my magical virtues can fit into the AoS/EoM ruleset; I'd like to keep those in mind.

[Glorelendil]

Of course one of the other points of the system is so that my magical virtues can fit into the AoS/EoM ruleset; I'd like to keep those in mind.

I think they fit in beautifully with what we're discussing. If we assume that one's use of magic stays constant, then if Awareness increases less frequently from skill use, the contribution from magic use becomes relatively larger.