Kinstrife & Dark Tidings: Unforeseen Actions

[Heilemann]

Then it's pretty much your job to communicate that to the players and, more importantly, their characters as those kind of things *are* important to the people of Middle Earth even if they aren't to the players. So, if something is important to a character then a player has a responsibility to play it out in such a way.

Sure, but it is with this as with everything else (and I enjoy these kinds of post-game discussions), that when you're in the middle of the game, the dice roll where they may. Both figuratively and actually, and so while I personally felt that I'd a) pre-educated the players as to how the world works, b) been clear in my descriptions etc., they still made the decision that they made. If I were to try and amp up my descriptions after they started talking about entering the camp, we enter into railroading territory. Instead I distracted them with a patrol, which I have to say I personally felt was a little railroady, even if it's AAW (Adventure As Written).

My group tries to be true to the world, and they do a good job. Again, I don't fault them for thinking that their options were limited; this is the classic investigation RPG problem; how are you supposed to know what you don't know? If the AAW was clearer about presenting the company with their options, then this would be less of a problem.

Of course, it doesn't help that my group is HORRIBLE at encounters, to the point where I have to carry their sorry ass over the finish line (without them knowing it) half the time. I try to highlight to them after each adventure what options they missed out on in the hope that maybe it'll incentivize them to focus more on social skills.

Is that because they aren't social characters, players that don't like interacting in that kind of way, some issue with the rules, or a combination of them?[/quote]

On the one hand the rules are just a little hard to apply a lot of the time. The stricture of Encounter RAW demands Introduction and when Oderic is hogtied on the back of some person and they're moving through the forest while talking to him, it's a little hard to apply Encounter RAW. There's also the thing where the more successes you have, the more 'reward' you get, which if you have one social skill that's good, you can really amp that up, even if it's artificial to do so.

Personally I've started to use the Encounter AAW descriptions in a much looser manner. I love that they provide a variety of outcomes, that's extremely helpful to me, but social interaction just doesn't fit well into that framework for me.

Beyond that, they're just lousy at rolling and haven't been able to get beyond the lower tier of Encounter outcomes so far

[Otaku-sempai]

...the fellowship in my campaign is made up of a Woodman, Barding, Dwarf, and Elf - I think Valter would be highly suspicious of the last two and it would make convincing him extremely difficult. Although, having a Barding to question, and recruit, would be desirable.

The Dwarf might not present much of a problem. Tolkien did write aboout there being Dwarves who are less than good-natured, some of whom actively ally themselves with the dark powers.