Player knowledge of adversaries

[bveld]

Hi all, I have been around the forums for some time, but so far I have been only taking advantage of the excellent Palantir!

I have recently started playing TOR with my wife following the many good suggestions on this forum on how to run a solo campaign. It works much better than I would have thought. After finishing adventures “Theft of the Moon”, “Marsh Bell”, “Don’t leave the path” (with almost a TPK in the final encounter), “Of Leaves & Stewed Hobbit” we have encountered the following questions, which I would like to have your views on:

How do you decide how much adventurers know about the adversaries they are about to face? For example knowing the special abilities (e.g. fear of fire, craven, denizen of the dark, just to name a few) and other statistics (e.g. hate score) could often provide a significant advantage in a combat encounter and make a very difficult encounter manageable.

Would you just do a Lore check and for TN 14 the adventurer knows the name of the monster and one special ability; for TN 16 the endurance and another special ability; for TN 18 hate score and another special ability, etc?

What if the adventurers have shadow-lore? Based on the description of this specialty, it refers more to a high level knowledge of the Enemy (i.e. shadowy thread unifying most of what is malicious) as opposed to “monster knowledge”. Are there any other traits you would allow players to use?


I would take this opportunity to also ask something else. In D&D the DM often rolls secretly on behalf of the players so they do not exactly know whether they succeeded or not. For example, for Stealth or Insight checks. I have a hard time doing this in TOR as this way the player cannot really decide whether to spend a Hope or not. Also RAW doesn't mention anything about hidden rolls. How do you handle situations like this?

Thanks a lot!

[Indur Dawndeath]

Would you just do a Lore check and for TN 14 the adventurer knows the name of the monster and one special ability; for TN 16 the endurance and another special ability; for TN 18 hate score and another special ability, etc?

What if the adventurers have shadow-lore? Based on the description of this specialty, it refers more to a high level knowledge of the Enemy (i.e. shadowy thread unifying most of what is malicious) as opposed to “monster knowledge”. Are there any other traits you would allow players to use?

Welcome to the forum!
To answer the question about adversaries, then it's all about individual tastes and what works best for you, but I find the approach of increasing TN for more knowledge to work better in a D&D ruleset.
Instead, set the difficulty on how rare the knowledge is and then grant the basic information on a normal success, more on a great success and all on an Extraordinary success.
That way the player with shadow lore can invoke the trait for basic knowledge or roll to gain more knowledge.
Some creatures are so rare the you can only roll a lore if you have a trait to invoke.
The traits I would allow would be Beast lore, old lore, Shadow lore and some region lores, if the creature is encountered in the region. And the specific enemy lore such as orc lore...

[Otaku-sempai]

Another interesting aspect of the rolls in TOR are the possibilities for great success and extraordinary success. There are some bits of folklore that you might assume more-or-less everybody knows, such as "'Every worm has his weak spot,' as my father used to say." That does not guarantee that the Hero knows where the weak spot is found or how to best exploit it.

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I personally do not like giving out information in any game system that is of a purely mechanical nature, like Hate score. That is something that does not translate well into in-game knowledge. For things like that just make a list that breaks down all possible scores into groups, like 3 or 5 points per, then give each group a name, like mild or strong or whatever, and then give that more vague description to the players if they roll well enough on a lore check.

[Halbarad]

There is also the Slayer calling and it's accompanying Enemy Lores.

[Otaku-sempai]

I personally do not like giving out information in any game system that is of a purely mechanical nature, like Hate score. That is something that does not translate well into in-game knowledge.

I would agree with you. It's one thing to say that a given Hero knows that Wargs have aversion to fire and the White Wolves of the North (probably) even more so. It's another to state how that breaks down mechanically.

[bveld]

Thank you for all the suggestions.

As I think about it I also agree that sharing the actual Hate score would not be very thematic so I think I will just focus on providing information on the special abilities along the lines of what Indur proposed.

What do you guys think about my second question above: hidden rolls for some of the tests?

[Wbweather]

What do you guys think about my second question above: hidden rolls for some of the tests?

In over three years of running The One Ring, I have never had occasion to have a hidden roll. I don't think that TOR really needs to keep anything hidden from the players. I'm not saying that a hidden roll mechanic couldn't be employed, but it is not really built into the system.

If I were to use a hidden roll, I would probably use it to do something like randomize events that I had preplanned or to determine the actions of an NPC from a table, but I generally would avoid hiding a roll that directly impacted a player character. That may just be a difference in playing style though.

[Falenthal]

What do you guys think about my second question above: hidden rolls for some of the tests?

That could be done for Insight, Search or Awareness rolls that I think of.

Depends probably on your players: if they're going to take advantage of knowing the result of the roll, then you can opt to hide the rolls. If they role-play with the result of the roll and don't metagame, then there's no need.

I also haven't done any hidden rolls in any of my games.

[bveld]

That could be done for Insight, Search or Awareness rolls that I think of.

Yes, these are the tests I have usually used hidden rolls for in D&D (+ Stealth). For example, it adds an additional level of tension when the player doesn't know whether the innkeeper they are talking to is telling the truth or they just cannot tell...

Anyway, thanks for your input.