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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5512781" data-attributes="member: 18280">It should be noted that, within the novel, both the forces of Saruman and Mordor converge on the Fellowship shortly after the battle with the Balrog.  The Fellowship gets a respite in Lorien, but then the orcs of the Red Eye, of the White Hand, and of Moria all know the rough area they are in.So, one could say that Gandalf's magic did, indeed, alert both Sauron and Saruman as to his whereabouts.I could go into the string of coincidences that prevents Sauron from noticing Frodo creeping into Mordor.....certainly the film version screwed these up.  Once the Fellowship parted, Gandalf was freer with the magic because he wanted to draw Sauron's attention, rather than avoid it.  He wanted the Eye looking where he was at.  The whole point of the last march to the Black Gate was to prevent Sauron from paying attention to his own back yard.We know that Sauron's power is greatly increased within the confines of Mordor.  I am not at all certain that, should Gandalf even know "teleport without error", that Sauron could not bend it to his will.Yeah.  And that's fine.For my tastes, though, I'm not writing a novel when I play a role-playing game.  There is no Chapter 1 or Chapter 19, or Chapters 2 to 18 in between.  The narrative is what happens in the game, how the players choose to interact with the situations I (or they) have set up.Success, failure, life, death, wealth by level .... None of these is known until it happens.There are days, as I am working on my own version, when I wonder why I don't just go back to 1e.  No.  There have been modules going back to 1e that suggested there was a place nearby (or even hidden within the dungeon) that was safe.  But, of course, the DM knowing it is safe =/= the players knowing it is safe.There is a major difference (IMHO; YMMV) between sleeping in a dungeon as a tactical decision ("Guys, we might get eaten by a grue, but I think we're going to have to take our chances") and sleeping in a dungeon as the only smart thing to do ("We take an extended rest.  Guards?  Why would we set guards?  We're not in an encounter area, are we?")And I don't blame 4e for the latter; the blame lies squarely with 3e.Once a game's combat system takes so long to resolve anything that GMs are being advised to drop wandering monsters and other "unimportant" combats, there is no real decision involved.  There's no reason not to burn everything in every encounter, then sleep it off/reset before the next.In turn, this means that to be "challenging" an encounter must be "challenging to PCs at full strength", which further reinforces the nuke-sleep-nuke style of gameplay.(And if I am not careful, I am going to begin to discuss in great detail how this gives rise to the "lets-control-all-variables-of-encounters-because-balance-and-challenge-are-otherwise-difficult-to-achieve" Delve format that arose in 3e and continues into 4e.)Actually, how well balanced is something, if it cannot survive large changes of its variables and remain intact?  I.e., would something really open like Keep on the Borderland or Steading of the Hill Giant Chief work in 4e without massive changes?  Has anyone tried?  Want to fork a thread about your experiences?RC</blockquote>

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