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Hi.
For a long time I was thinking about running fully improvised sandbox campaign using TOR with its setting book plus Wild Tales. It’s like playing old-school D&D except less dungeons and more, you know, Tolkien themes. I always loved concept of fully random world where players can do whatever they want. There are two mechanics in old-school gaming that could be useful here. I’m going to steal it from Adventurer Conqueror King System and try to make it work with TOR. I’m not that experienced with this system to know for sure it it’ll work so please comment and improve.

First is reaction roll. When PC meet NPC we roll to see how they are going to react toward players. I’m thinking of straight roll of Valour or Wisdom.

Eye - attack right away
Failure - unfriendly, may attack if provoked, -1 to Tolerance
Success - neutral, may parley or bargain
Great Success - uninterested, will not harm adventurers and will more likely talk to them
Extraordinary Success - like adventurers and even help them,+1 to Tolerance


Second is morale of the enemies. I’m not a fan of fighting until death. I like when enemies have chance of running away. Here are my quick rules. Again, not sure if it’ll work.
Roll for morale in two situations:
a) when one of the monsters is killed (or solo monster lose half his Endurance)
b) when half of the group is killed or run away
It’s like normal roll with Hate instead of skill and TN14 unless both above situation happen, than it’s TN16.

Gandalf - monster will run away as soon as he can (free attack for the hero)
Failure - monster will try to disengage if allowed and than run
Success - monster will fight on but will not chase disengaging characters
Great Success - monster will fight on and chase disengaging characters
Extraordinary Success - like above but no need for more rolls

I would be very wary of the reaction system. I think LM discretion is much better here. What if a Fellowship of thirteen Dwarves bumbles into Thranduil's hall again? An Extraordinary Success would just not make sense. And any NPC attacking the PCs right away due to chance could be game breaking. Every time they interact with a new person, there's a one twelfth chance that they get in a fight with someone and get run out of town. Adding an element of randomness to NPC attitudes is one thing, but I think that should only supplement common sense reactions.

I like the idea of the morale system, but the mechanics might not work out. First, it may be hard in some cases to determine what is a "solo monster". Second, using Hate to roll would mean that weak monsters may almost always flee, and strong monsters almost never flee. Only in monsters with 2-4 Hate would this system work ideally. It could make for some weird situations. A dozen goblins attack three heroes. One goblin dies, the rest go screaming. Or a Great Orc is at half Endurance, fighting five heroes, and decides he should stand his ground. Also, would the roll use current Hate or maximum Hate? Once again, LM discretion may be best.

I know you're going for an unpredictable sandbox experience, but I think using the mechanics you've laid out may make for some situations that just don't make much sense at all.

I would reject any Reaction system where a hostile reaction immediately and automatically provokes an attack. A high-ranking NPC might summarily end the interview, dismiss the Adventurers out-of-hand or even order them to be imprisoned (if circumstances warrant it) without physically attacking them or order an attack upon them.

I've been reading this and some of the other rules threads with interest. It seems to me that many of them are about the balance between dice rolls and player/LM decision-making to control PC/NPC actions. For example another thread is about PCs being potentially being controlled by flaws which are themselves driven by dice rolls.

Personally speaking as a DM/LM or as a player, I always hated the loss of control over my PC (even something as simple as one of my regiments in Warhammer suddenly suffering from loss of morale and running away - so frustrating!)

As a result I would tend to negate the use of dice rolls except for testing feats such as combat and allow for LM or player fiat when controlling PCs/NPCs. I agree with Otaku-Sempu and Robert_Pat above.

It could make for some weird situations. A dozen goblins attack three heroes. One goblin dies, the rest go screaming. Or a Great Orc is at half Endurance, fighting five heroes, and decides he should stand his ground.

That's not weird. It's random. LM has to think why. It's "old-school" way of running games.

This method would be used to "control" NPCs, not PCs. PCs don't have Hate to roll.

I'm not sold completely on Reaction rolls as in Middle-Earth good and evil are so distinct. On the other hand it could create so many unexpected possibilities like heroes entering village and getting attacked. LM have to think why (maybe they are corrupted or are scared of strangers) or band of goblins suddenly is friendly to adventurers (maybe they have common enemy?).

Morale rolls are bit more easy. Fights are quicker and you don't have to beat all of the last bit of Endurance from every single goblin. Problem might be with powerful enemies as they might score Extraordinary Success and don't need any more roll fighting to the death. Unless morale roll is done when their Hate is depleted. It's not a bad thing. "Bosses" will stay and fight (battle between Aragorn and Uruk-Hai in movie) while heroes will scatter lesser minions. Great orc will probably never run (Hate 8, so even depleted will be quite high, enough to score double 6 at some point) but Snaga Trackers might run away quite often if some of them get killed.

Probably need to test it in real campaign to know for sure.

Again, this is not idea for LMs running any pre-planned adventures. it's tool for improvisation used together with Wild Tales.

Koniu wrote:That's not weird. It's random. LM has to think why. It's "old-school" way of running games.

AD&D, arguably the second most "old-school" RPG out there (and the oldest that I'm familiar with), had random encounters. But not in that sense. They were planned encounters, just without a specific situation that would trigger them. Even with random NPCs, the DM may roll to decide certain characteristics, but would then be expected to play that NPC rationally. The closest it got to the kind of randomness you're describing is when PCs encountered something and the DM genuinely had no clue how that "something" would react.

As far as morale goes, AD&D did have a system for that. As far as I know, it only specifically applied to hirelings and the like. And even if it applied to monsters, its system was far less random than the one you're proposing. The rolls occurred less frequently, had less variance in their outcomes, were less dependent on wildly varying monster statistics, and included hefty modifies based on an individual's attitudes.

This all may seem like a bit of a strong reaction, but I very much dislike when people claim they're "old school" in order to justify what they've said. It comes off as condescending, in my opinion.

TOR has "Craven" to cover morale, for the sort of creatures that are subject to morale failure.