NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertsconley" data-source="post: 9641221" data-attributes="member: 13383">That’s a fair concern, but it doesn’t match how World in Motion play actually unfolds at my table.First, I strongly emphasize first-person roleplaying. My players don’t interact with NPCs as abstract entities; they treat them as real people with motives, cultural beliefs, and histories. Most of the campaign’s tension and drama arise through these interactions. As a result, players naturally engage with moral and social concerns, whether through loyalty, faith, ambition, or survival, not because the system enforces them but because the world reacts to those decisions meaningfully.Religion, culture, and personal history aren’t narrative backdrops, they shape outcomes. When players act in line with their character’s culture or faith, they often find new allies or open up opportunities they wouldn’t get through pure pragmatism. And when they violate those norms, consequences follow. So moral play does emerge, but it’s driven by circumstance, not theme.As for Middle-earth: I didn’t want to run a campaign that felt like another Tolkien novel. I wanted to run a campaign that felt like being in Middle-earth. What made using World in Motion possible was how the Adventures in Middle-earth line handled setting detail, especially the Shadow. It’s not a narrative arc or mood dial its a supernatural corruption rooted in the metaphysics of the world, the Marring of Arda by Melkor. Like sanity in Call of Cthulhu, it emerges from how the setting works, not from narrative tone.Likewise, their audience system, while not something I used mechanically, was invaluable as a guide to what different cultures and NPCs value. Because of that, my players' decisions in Middle-earth campaigns weren’t just tactical, they were moral and cultural. The system didn’t need to push them to act a certain way; the world made their actions matter.</blockquote>

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