OOC THREAD

[tomcat]

Remember, though, one wight fled the chamber where you guys battled. It's not dead...we'll it is, but you get my point. Any Sunsteaders who visit are going to be in for a surprise.

[Eclecticon]

Arboéagen  

'Inherited Eyes'.

Lafwyne  

'Wine of Life'

Cyffa  

A keg or tankard.  

All translations provided courtesy of the Old English Translator

[Eclecticon]

Grimbeorn sniffed the air that blew atop the Carrock.  A stench rose out of the south, something that reminded him of the fell stronghold Do Guldur.  A dank, rotting smell came from the North and the West that was well familiar to him.  Other fragrances encircled him and his father that told more of the strife in the lands near and far.  But there was one note he detected... it was faint and fresh, something moving around cleansing the air.  He didn't know what to make of that.  "Father," he growled.  "What is that? Something strange is awakening away to the south and west."

The grizzled older bear took in a deep breath.  "Change and a renewing of old ways.  Time passes my son, but history comes to meet us.  Mind you we have darker days ahead and ..." Beorn pauses to look at the stars.  "That change will come sooner than we think.  Gone are the days of great alliances, men and elves and dwarves."  A cough out of nowhere wracks the old bear.  "The stars show the evil stretching out like tendrils of the great water beast of Moria, but we will endure.  We are Men of the Bear!  We can always return to the woods and the mountains, to our caves and to our precipices, and eventually to the rock of the earth whence we came."

"But what of those who cannot?  What of our people that aren't like us?" inquired Grimbeorn.

The old black bear growled and coughed again.  "That is not my concern," he replied.

This is really cool stuff.  Good writing! 

[Posterboy]

Hey Guys,

Little update from me: I will need to step out a again. Thanks for setting Idunn aside for me to pick up at a later date.

Still trying to work through stuff with my wife's family. Still trying to work out some peaceable arrangements with the tenants who rent the basement apartment. Work is at it's busiest season at the moment. And my son just started some intensive therapy for some mental health issues (about 8 / week).

I'm neck deep in RL and its got by gonads in a vise grip.

So, that's what's up. I'll be out for a while I imagine.

Peace,
Ayrn

[Telcontar]

All sources indicate we will be here still when you return.

[GandalfOfBorg]

We aren't going anywhere and good luck!

[tomcat]

Hey guys, I will have a post up this weekend. I am waiting on Steve to chime in with a post, if he wants.

I am working on my Sixth Fleet med conflict game, so I will be out of LotR RPG for a night.

[Eclecticon]

Cool.  We're just working on step 1: Gather the party. 

[Telcontar]

Doug,
 You want me to do a post on talking to ingomer about a folk moot or are you going to add/ ajudicate that in your post?

[tomcat]

That is fine with me, Tom.

You guys are welcome to do any preparations for the new chapter's direction you want to go, except defining what Radagast might say about the River Maidens, or Beorn might say about Vigdis to the north.

Bofri wants to talk about recruiting to re-build the road, so i am fine with preliminary conversation there.

You all know pretty much about Sunstead.

[Eclecticon]

You guys are welcome to do any preparations for the new chapter's direction you want to go, except defining what Radagast might say about the River Maidens, or Beorn might say about Vigdis to the north.

Viglund?  I've gone through the archive and I'm not sure we know anyone called Vigdis.  Could be a plot development we have yet to run into, in which case I'll stop drawing attention to it. 

[tomcat]

 

No, not a plot development. It is a GM error for Viglund - posting before checking my books.

[Telcontar]

My GF hates my meme app, I love it.

[Telcontar]

I found these House Rules for Standing, may be worth a look and some comments.

STANDING RATINGS

• A character will have a standing rating recorded for each culture.
• Wisdom and Valour DO NOT affect the Tolerance as outlined in the RAW.
• A standing rating for all "outside" cultures always starts at (-1) when the character is interacting with an "outside"culture. It can be raised from there.
• For their own culture the standing rating is 0.
• If a character acquires a Patron of the culture (ie. Thranduil for the Woodelves) the Standing is raised by one. Radagast as a patron counts for the Woodmen.
Standing = (-1) - (must give some form of gift or money to be considered for an interaction)
Standing = 0 - (if there is one dice roll failure during the interaction, it ends by the LM narrating why)
Standing = +1- (one dice roll failure is allowed during the interaction; another failure means it ends by LM narrating why)
Standing = +2 - (two dice roll failures are allowed...)
Standing = +3 - (three dice roll failures are allowed...)
Standing = +4 - (four dice roll failures are allowed...)

• Prejudice drops the standing value by 1, and therefore will affect the Tolerance modifier. The Standing could become (-2) if the Standing was (-1) to begin with. Dwarves generally dislike the elves and vice-versa so (-2) would be certainly representative of this, unless one of the culture is known and liked by the other (Legolas and Gimli)!
• Standing is increased by two methods:
1.   A great deed that is performed by the character that benefits the people of a culture.
   A great deed affecting the well-being of a people of a different culture for at least a month (economy, threat reduced) adds +1 to a standing score for that culture.
   A great deed affecting the well-being of a people of a different culture where people's lives were saved or outright devastation prevented, adds +2 to a standing score for that culture.
2.   Gifting gold to the people of a culture for their cultural development(fellowship phase)
   Gifting gold to promote culture and to the benefit of the town structure follows the rules in the LM book.
   This must be taken on as a Fellowship task, spending time with the people. However, the cost of raising standing is reduced by one half than that listed in the AB.
All other mods. for Tolerance ratings (LM book, p.53) apply


STANDING RATINGS AND TOLERANCE
The Standing ratings of each hero are used in determining the Tolerance of the encounter with a culture.
For example: 4 characters meet a person of a culture that they must interact with. The Standings of the characters for that culture are: 0, -1, +1, +1. Add these and the characters' cultural Tolerance rating is 0 (rounded down).
If all characters have a -1 standing with a particular culture they have encountered, they will be generally shunned: "We don't want your kind here!"
However, this can be overcome in these ways:

1.   Give a valuable token as a gift to receive audience: coins, rare item, or sack of orc heads. This will increase the Tolerance by one to 0.
2.   Modifiers may vary as outlined in rulebook.


So using these rules Bandy's Standing of the Woodmen would be:
-1 Starting, +1 For Radagast, +1 for slaying Bloody Muzzle, +1 for forging the helm and delivering the bride, +2 defeating the Orcs at Mountain Hall, +1 for Fighting the Wights, +2 killing the Spider.

 So using that method and accepting my math Bandy would have a Woodmen Standing of 7. That's pretty high, but if you think about all the things that we have done in the area I don't think any other heroes have moved the length and breadth of the Woodmen lands like we have, which would also give us a higher Eye of Sauron Score. Our names and deeds are known, but only among the Woodmen, no one else really cares.

[Eclecticon]

I'm really not wild about the above, for a couple of reasons:

1.  It's a lot more book-keeping to have to keep track of where we stand with various cultures. 

2.  It's less flavourful - in this case, it comes down to Standing and Valour/Wisdom producing different effects in the game world. 

The high and mighty respect valour and wisdom, even from Standing 0 murderhobos, because they themselves get prestige by having their halls visited by notable heroes.  The concerns of the common people, though, are much more about getting the through damn lambing season, or fixing their leaking roof, or whatever.  Standing measures your esteem among those guys, and it won't go up unless you put the hours in helping them out, (re)building connections and (as was pointed out by someone on the Cubicle 7 forums whose name escapes me) compensating them with Treasure for the value of your lost labour.  Basically, they don't care that you slew a great orc-chieftain beneath the Misty Mountains (or whatever), because their perspective isn't broad enough for them to see any benefit from that, and because you were gone a third of the harvest couldn't be gathered so everyone's going to be hungry all winter. 

I think that Standing should almost always take an Undertaking to increase, because taking the time to point out to your extended family that that dead orc means fewer (or weaker) raids on the homestead this year is part of what makes it happen.  That said, I think there's definitely room for temporary bumps in Standing to represent the transient popularity that can come from a single great (and clearly beneficial) deed. 

Sanctuaries are an exception to all of this, as I've said before, which is why I think Standing should apply there, regardless of culture. 

3.  The new rules for calculating Standing/Tolerance seem to produce score bloat.  The life and times of a 'standard' group of adventurers would produce plenty of great deeds affecting the well-being of a culture and saving lives and property.  That's no reason for the party to shoot to super-royal (Standing 6 is 'king' level) prestige, even among the people they've been helping out. 

Honestly, were I running a game of my own I would probably use the Standing rules more or less as written.  I would probably start beginning characters off at Standing 1 if they hadn't spent a significant time away from their people, and I would announce temporary bumps for great deeds, with an option to make them permanent by way of a Fellowship Phase undertaking.  Those would be fairly rare, though, and mostly reserved for occasions where the deeds were done in front of one or more witnesses of good standing of the character's culture.  I might also look at lowering the Treasure cost of raising Standing - I'm not sure yet and I don't want to seem overly self-serving, given that Arbogast has been putting all his treasure to date towards that...