Fate and Free Will

[aramis]

My real wake up call was running Mouse Guard. But that comic DAMiller linked to is a good explanation...

But also, for a mission based game, it's the same basic premise for the chapters.

Each chapter is a setup, a problem, and a reaction.
The first chapter is a setup - getting them there, and getting them worn down a bit.
The second chapter is the "problem" - finding the bigbad.
The third is solving (or not successfully solving) the problem.

So...
problem - an orc chief raiding a village.
Chapter 1 - setup - talk to Beorn, who tells of the issue
Chapter 2 - find the village and the orcs
Chapter 3 - dissuade the orcs

Chapter 1
Setup - encounter with Beorn
Problem - getting information from Beorn (beyond "go here, solve their orc problem")
Resolution - (plan for chapter 2)

Chapter 2
Setup - the journey to the remote village.
Problem - travel hazards - provided by the mechanics
Resolution - As long as they don't turn back, anything is good. No planning needed. End Narration by GM of "And so you get to the village..."

Chapter 2.1
Setup Describe the village and the elders.
Problem - get the information about the orcs. (A direction is auto-given... anything more is a Tolerance limited encounter)
Resolution - give them the information they earn.

Chapter 2.2
Problem - Getting to the village
Resolution - Travel (again, but short trip. One roll, if that.)
Final Narration: "And there, you smell roasting manflesh and woodsmoke, and hear chants in Uruk..."

Chapter 3.1
Setup - same as final narration of 2.2
Problem - how to dissuade them
Resolution - they'll tell you. Trust me, they will. Probable outcomes are either Attack, Burn, or Convince...

3.2A Attack
Setup - describe the village
Problem how to get them all
Resolution - one big fight

3.2B Burn
Setup - describe the wood conditions, and the available management techniques.
Problem - burning out the Ukuk without burning the whole valley
Reactions - depend upon chosen solution and success.

3.2C Convince.
Situation- they are talking with the Uruk (Hey, the Dwarves tried it!)
Problem - low tolerance encounter.
Resolution - depends a lot on what they try... but it sets up a new situation/problem/resolution cycle.

There's plenty of room for free will in there. Exactly which route? Sneak Attack, Frontal Assault, Subterfuge? Press on or give up? The net result is the same most of the ways - the Uruk wind up not being here, and some wind up not being, period.

I can, in that context, plan out several encounters, and might not use them all, but any I don't use I can later reuse...

[damiller]

Mouseguard is a PERFECT example of mechanics that enforce the 3 act structure, with one caveat:

The GM turn is the Context (Act 1)
The Twists/Conditions are the Opposition (Act 2ish)
The players goals are Act 3ish, but not really because they are separate from rest of the narrative (explicitly required by the rules in Mouse guard)

In fact when I found that link I thought: This is what Mouseguard was trying to do! BUT without all the rules.

[Otaku-sempai]

One of the real spine tinglers for me working on TOR has always been the disappearance of the Woodmen. That's just a superb example of what there is to do in Middle-earth. We know that at point A we have lots of settlements of Woodmen at the eaves of Mirkwood. By point B they are gone.... and as I'm typing this I'm getting goosebumps... And that's the Darkening of Mirkwood right there.

How do we know that the Woodmen have all but disappeared by the time of the War of the Ring? It does make sense that at least some of the Woodmen settlements might have been abandoned during the Darkening of Mirkwood. However, if the reasoning is that we don't hear anything about the Woodmen in the account of the War of the North, that may just be because most of those settlements and holdings are on the west side of Mirkwood and simply don't factor into the conflict. Yes, I know that no settlements show up on Tolkien's map of Middle-earth in LotR, but that map also covers a greater area (all of Western Middle-earth) and can be expected to show less detail.

Or, is there something else that I'm missing?

[Tolwen]

One of the real spine tinglers for me working on TOR has always been the disappearance of the Woodmen. That's just a superb example of what there is to do in Middle-earth. We know that at point A we have lots of settlements of Woodmen at the eaves of Mirkwood. By point B they are gone.... and as I'm typing this I'm getting goosebumps... And that's the Darkening of Mirkwood right there.

How do we know that the Woodmen have all but disappeared by the time of the War of the Ring? It does make sense that at least some of the Woodmen settlements might have been abandoned during the Darkening of Mirkwood.

I just made a quick check in the LotR, and they are at least mentioned there.
At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf speaks of them when narrating Gollum's escape and how the Woodmen fear him as a blood-drinking ghost that would creep into cradles.
Later on in Appendix B, it is told that the great middle part of former Mirkwood was given to the Beornings and Woodmen after the victory in the War of the Ring.
Finally, in Appendix F the speech of the Woodmen is mentioned.

All of these suggest IMO that the Woodmen existed in that era, and not as a negligible force or people, but an important factor in the power and politics of the Anduin Vales.

Cheers
Tolwen

[zedturtle]

One of the real spine tinglers for me working on TOR has always been the disappearance of the Woodmen. That's just a superb example of what there is to do in Middle-earth. We know that at point A we have lots of settlements of Woodmen at the eaves of Mirkwood. By point B they are gone.... and as I'm typing this I'm getting goosebumps... And that's the Darkening of Mirkwood right there.

How do we know that the Woodmen have all but disappeared by the time of the War of the Ring? It does make sense that at least some of the Woodmen settlements might have been abandoned during the Darkening of Mirkwood. However, if the reasoning is that we don't hear anything about the Woodmen in the account of the War of the North, that may just be because most of those settlements and holdings are on the west side of Mirkwood and simply don't factor into the conflict. Yes, I know that no settlements show up on Tolkien's map of Middle-earth in LotR, but that map also covers a greater area (all of Western Middle-earth) and can be expected to show less detail.

Or, is there something else that I'm missing?

Yeah, I've never been really comfortable with that decision on C7's part... it seems to be based on the fact that Radagast went missing. I prefer to think that he (and some PCs) went to confront some big-bad and stopped Sauron's forces at the cost of their lives. I can see the Beornings and Woodmen remerging into more northerly population centres and thus effectively all becoming Beornings.

But it's a choice that they've made; the end of Darkening makes it clear that you have the option to make another choice but that you shouldn't expect too much support from C7 for that choice.

[zedturtle]

Ok, thanks to everyone's feedback, here's an expanded version of the essay's introduction and a bit more content:

• Fate and Free Will: Roleplaying in Middle Earth
  
  'And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will.'
  
  'And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite.'
  
  Many a long year ago, I bought my first ever roleplaying game… Middle Earth Roleplaying by Iron Crown Enterprises. After I had some vague understanding of the rules, I gathered together my friends, made the Fellowship of the Ring for them and tried to tell the story of the Lord of the Rings in roleplaying form. It will (probably) not surprise you that it failed horribly.
  
  What went wrong? Well, a lot of things, but trying to tell the story according to a fixed immutable sense of a ‘canon setting’ where nothing can change and nothing exists if it’s not explicitly spelled out in the source material was a major contributing factor to the game’s quick demise. Since that time, I’ve done a lot of thinking about Middle Earth, a lot of roleplaying (mostly not in Middle Earth), and a lot of thinking about gaming in Middle Earth. I’m also lucky enough to have The One Ring roleplaying game now, which helps facilitate this much better than other offerings and the opportunity to run it on a regular basis.
  
  Echoes of my original failed attempt at roleplaying in Tolkien’s world show up often when gaming in Middle Earth is mentioned. People say things like “This is the problem with any highly self-contained, character-based piece of fiction being turned into an RPG. When a bunch of pre-defined characters do everything of note, there isn't much room for player characters to come in, be big heroes, and have the world revolve around them. They are pretty much playing in someone else's world, where they can't change anything or else it ceases to be that world and a lot of appeal in playing it is lost.” or “The One Ring has always seemed to capture the ‘feel’ of Middle Earth in many ways, but sometimes it can be really hard to imagine exactly how to fit a campaign that feels meaningful into the context of the events that happen in the Lord of the Rings, without overshadowing those events. The balancing of canon with new material and adventures can seem daunting.” or “This is the problem I have with Tolkien role-playing. For me, anything that steps even a few inches away from the path immediately stops feeling Tolkieny. But not stepping away from the path just leaves you with the same old stuff.”
  
  This usually prompts a lot of discussion; folks talk about how to create adventures that support the ‘onstage’ action, or how to add threats that didn’t make it to the stage because the PCs defeated said threat. One of the approaches that I find the most useful is the ‘unreliable narration’ aspect. When we read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, we are reading stories that Tolkien wrote in conscious imitation of his professional studies (translating and teaching what remained of old stories). In other words, we never get quite the whole story, nor are all the events contained within supposed to be a literal recording of what people actually said and did. Instead, we get a story about those events, added to and amended by the scribes who recorded the version that Tolkien translated for us. If you buy into this fictional framework for the legendarium; it has great benefits... who's to say that there aren't versions of the story where Aragorn marries Eowyn instead? Or that some of the Fellowship are anachronistic insertions for political reasons? This approach allows you to add to the canon or change it, because the canon becomes mutable. Each referee must decide where the line between a mutable canon and too far off the page lies, I suspect it is at least slightly different for everyone.
  
  This approach helps, but it relies on positioning yourself outside of the source material, looking in. Another approach, more heavily invested in the source material, is what I'm going to call the "Fate and Free Will" model. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and one of the questions that he had to answer, both for himself and for his story, was 'If God is at once all-knowing and all-powerful, then how does Man have Free Will?' Various thinkers have offered answers, but Tolkien was especially fond of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. The answer given by Boethius is that causality is an artifact of our nature as limited beings, travelling only one direction in time. For God, standing outside of time, everything looks very different: all of time seems like a book, ready to be rewritten at any time. If you intended that the villain be killed in Chapter 30, but your hero has chosen otherwise, go back to Chapter 1 and add a new character. Or, perhaps, killing was the wrong answer. Foreshadow the need for pity in Chapter 2. All of time is able to be rewritten at any time, but each character makes their own choices within the part of the story that they can see.
  
  Tolkien liked Boethius and had his characters echo the Consolation of Philosopy; the quotes from the Ainulindalë are an excellent example of this. The Ainur are free to choose what music to perform, if they are inspired by the themes of Ilúvitar, but are not required to do so. Melkor rebels against the theme, but as Ilúvitar explains in the second quote, his rebellion is taken into account in the music and the
  final product is the triumph of Ilúvitar, not Melkor. But how does this help us, if we choose to game in Middle Earth?
  
  The player characters are (presumably) Children of Ilúvitar, given the grace of free will by their creator. They are able to (and encouraged to) make use of their free will; their choices drive the game forward. The referee must take the part of all other characters; I suggest that you seek to emulate Eru. The PCs are free to choose, and you are free to modify the story based on their choices. Now, I am not suggesting what is sometimes derisively called quantum GMing, where no matter what fork in the road the players take the big bad is waiting at the end for them, but an openness to player free-will and seeking to engage the players based on the choices that the players make, not on preplanned set pieces.

---

As always, feel free to tear into it!

Thanks,

Zed

[Jon Hodgson]

Or, is there something else that I'm missing?

This could easily be my failing memory - I was under the impression there was mention of the search for Radagast, and that neither he nor the woodmen could be found. I know that came up in development discussions, but I couldn't point you at a quote.

Let's not derail a fine thread with my misrememberings though.

[Otaku-sempai]

This could easily be my failing memory - I was under the impression there was mention of the search for Radagast, and that neither he nor the woodmen could be found. I know that came up in development discussions, but I couldn't point you at a quote.

Let's not derail a fine thread with my misrememberings though.

Yes, in the chapter "The Ring Goes South" it is mentioned that Radagast went missing. Nothing is said,though, about the Woodmen.

[zedturtle]

So I'm struggling with the next part of the essay, which is all about how to be flexible when the players do something unexpected but make the story being told be the story worth telling about. Any other advice anyone has for how to handle things not working out as expected would be very helpful...

Thanks!

[Rich H]

So I'm struggling with the next part of the essay, which is all about how to be flexible when the players do something unexpected but make the story being told be the story worth telling about. Any other advice anyone has for how to handle things not working out as expected would be very helpful...

If in doubt... Ninja attack!