Foresight of their Kindred

I have two Rangers in my campaign, and my players and I are curious to know how others have handled the very cool but to me somewhat ambiguous Cultural Blessing Foresight of their Kindred. One of my players found some related posts in the old forums but no one gave specific gameplay examples. To start, I admit that we have been using the trait incorrectly up to this point in that the Ranger who invokes Foresight has been receiving a vision, a portent of the future. The rules indicate that the Ranger receives a vague warning tied to a skill in a specific situation. Despite being against the rules, I do like using revealed visions because they have led to some great role playing and contributed significantly to the narrative. Still want a better handle on how it is supposed to be used RAW.

1. We understand that Foresight works like any other trait in that it can be used to achieve and auto-success, to gain AP on a successful roll, or to make a roll when no roll would be normally allowed. In what situations do you use it, and how specific are the warnings the Ranger receives?

2. How do you handle Foresight with more than one Dunedain in the company? Do they operate independently or are the two attuned and perhaps share different aspects of the same warning?

3. Ours is a play-by-post game and the rules stipulate that the trait can be invoked for one session. How do you handle that when there are no sessions in PbP? One option is to permit a certain number of invocations each adventure phase and after that the trait cannot be invoked until the after the next fellowship phase. Another option is to say that since each published adventure is divided into parts to say that two parts (or some other number) is equivalent to a session.

I am probably overthinking this, but any suggestions or examples would be most welcome.

I have no direct experience with this and its been a while back since I have read about this Cultural Blessing, but here goes.

I have always believed that it could be used once a certain situation arises. So lets imagine that your party is being ambushed; your dunedain could suggest that he has foreseen this and that the party is therefore aware of the ambushed. Or maybe he invokes his attribute during a puzzle; giving him a ‘vision’ of an important clue.

I like the sandbox aproach of this method, though I understand that some might want an important clue on forehand, about whats to come during the adventure (though this might be more realistic, I do not believe that this is the actual mechanic and it raises more issues during the game).

As for your questions:
1) it doesn’t matter how specific the warnings are if you auto succes a roll, hand out AP & allowe for a role, since your are giving them a ‘reward’. However, it does add to the flavour of the storry, so thats up to you.

I wouldn’t make it to obviouse and give them a solvable riddle, if you would opt for a clue on forehand. Visions tend to have a hidden/double meaning, which usually take some effort to figure out.

2) very interesting. Depending on how often they would use their cultural blessing, I would either let them have their own or they would receive a less impacting warning. I think it would depend on the situation if it would be about the same thing or something different.

3) I have no ecperience with pbp, but my guess is that you would allowe it once per time frame (once per week/month/etc) depending on your groups ritm. Or maybe x amount per adventure phase.

I personally tend to have ‘chapters’ during my adventure phase, with each chapter taking place during one session. So you could also use those intervals, if you have chapters or if you have devided your adventure into parts.

For many years now I have only been gaming TOR with PBP. (I am also LM for three games and PC in two others.)

Foresight of the Rangers is tricky. But I split the games that I am LM for into Chapters, and permit the use of virtues and talents like Foresight once per Chapter. (Fellowship pool is refreshed and Courage points renewed in each Chapter as well.) As an aside, some parts of an adventure are aided by breaking it down into Chapters as it is easier to find an earlier post in a thread of only 100 or so posts rather than 300+. But to avoid having a game breaking plethora of refreshed points, I also split my Chapters in Parts. So in one Chapter there was nearly a total of 1000 posts- but I split it into three parts so there was only one Fellowship Pool throughout the whole event.

As for the Ranger Virtue. It can become overpowerful if the Player swings the narrative that way: solving difficulties and events before other players can even get the time to log on and read the previous posts. To avoid this Virtue short-circulating any mystery I like to request which particular skill or trait is being exploited to gain the Foresight.

Questions I might ask include: "what is it that (Dunedain Name) has observed that triggers their perceptive thought?" ; "it is said in the halls of Imladris that the old tales of the (insert Culture) warned of such cases, what did they used to say?"
My aim here is to make the PLAYER come up with what they are looking at and describe how they feel about their sixth sense. I don't want a player to say 'I invoke my Foresight and so you have to tell me what will happen next' as this makes the narrative rather flat. Applying the results of Foresight should produce a pointer and not a spoiler. (Imo)