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I did not quite understand what this meant. can you elaborate?



Based on my experience (a few one shots for various level characters (3-5)):

Shire (At beginning of the LotRs): 2
shire (end of the books when Saruman is in control): 4 or 5
Mirkwood, Rohan and Gondor: 5-6ish
Helms Deep (during siege): 6-7
Mordor: 8 (bad juju)

One of the things I thought might be interesting is Situational doom. So that is you are form a place, or have some specific Passion or Trait the doom would be less.

Example for Middle Earth:

Wood Elves might have a Passion like: Love Greenwood the Great (4).

Then maybe they get a reduction on the Doom in Mirkwood. 1/2 the passion, the full passion. one point. whatever.

just my thoughts.

Gives home field advantage in a way.

Much clearer!

some of the dooms are crazy high, aren't they.

but think of it this way. Doom does not cause complications that stop you from fixing a wagon, making a horse shoe, or growing crops. They are to stop people from being Heroic. They are to stop people who are calling upon their Inspirations. As long as you keep your head down, you don't Love, you don't Care then the Doom drifts on by. sure your life is a gray meaningless slog, but hey, that's life.

But when you push yourself. not making a Horse shoe, but making a magical horse shoe, when are making swords of legendary sharpness, when you are standing up for yourself. that is when Doom notices. when it slaps you down.

so Kings that are having problems focus their anger and increase the Doom. making it more difficult to be heroci, to push yourself.

Though Doom does not make everything more difficult all the time. one should assume that a high doom brings out the worse is people. that accidents happen more frequently, disease is more rampant and people are angrier. exactly the type of situation that would cause heroes to spring up, and try their best to make things "right."

the game talks about the "Say Yes" rule. if it is a simple task, the GM should just say yes, or give a good bonus. This is the fact that as far as the mechanics of the game care ( ormatter) it is the Heroic actions that need to be tracked. The game mechcanics ar enot designed to address farming, basket weaving or wood cutting. The game only care about people (such as the characters) who are fighting against the way things are. People who have something they want to accomplish. That is when Doom starts to come down. that is when the rules of the game kick in.

If your players want to settle down to gray lives growing corn instead of fighting for what they believe in, let them. ;)

Yep, I'd make the happy-fun Shire a 2 or 3 and Mordor probably a 15 before the PCs did anything about it. Part of the crazy-high Doom numbers is the idea that the GM can reward the players by lowering the Doom, at least temporarily or for the PCs only. For example, if the PCs cleanse and raze an orc citadel, the Doom is lowered by 1; if the PCs bring together all the relevant organizations in an alliance against the rising evil, the Doom is lowered by 1; etc. And for a place like Mordor, I might not let it go lower than 10 or 12, so that even after completing some quests to lower the Doom, the PCs still find when they enter that the place is seriously tough. In the revised version, spending a Mood point gives you max. on your current roll, so if you have a d10 skill or a d12 characteristic, you can still succeed when you absolutely need to with a 10 or 12 Doom - but your Mood dwindles as you do so.

I fully endorse what khelek says here:

"Doom does not cause complications that stop you from fixing a wagon, making a horse shoe, or growing crops. They are to stop people from being Heroic. They are to stop people who are calling upon their Inspirations. As long as you keep your head down, you don't Love, you don't Care then the Doom drifts on by. sure your life is a gray meaningless slog, but hey, that's life.

But when you push yourself. not making a Horse shoe, but making a magical horse shoe, when are making swords of legendary sharpness, when you are standing up for yourself. that is when Doom notices. when it slaps you down.

so Kings that are having problems focus their anger and increase the Doom. making it more difficult to be heroci, to push yourself."

And what IC says too: "Doom breeds corruption, higher crime rates, disease etc. Gloom basically." When people can't be heroes because the Doom is too high, when they think it's hopeless to even try, when they're afraid to Love because any attempt at Love just makes the King punish the people more, things get gloomy real fast. There's no music from street performers - that might stir people's spirits. There's no poetry or story-telling around the supper fire - that might spur people's dreams. There's no hero to look up to - all the heroes have died off, incapable of overcoming the Doom. There's only the street, only the fire, only the rattle of wagons on cobblestones and the insipid yellow broth in the ladle. It's a positive feedback loop. High doom causes heroes to fail, and that allows monsters and diseases etc. to spread, and that makes heroes rarer and Kings stronger, and that makes it easier for the Kings to raise the Doom whenever they wish.

I am thinking along the theme of power corrups. I am not sure thre are meant to be any "good" kings.

However, where it falls down for me (but is completely ignorable because its an abstract narrative mechanism for heroic play) is where a save is against doom . For example disease. With a Doom of 16 isn't a common cold going to wipe out the entire kingdom?