Category: Middle-earth (Page 5 of 5)

We continued our adventures in Middle-earth. In the three months since our last adventure, the heroes were doing everything from fighting Orcs and building settlements, to starting Bardic performance circuits and making schemes to open lucrative trade routes.

A trip to rescue the hobbit Dindy Brandybuck gained added urgency after Barlimun received this perfumed letter:

(Click to view full PDF document)

The heroes journeyed south, crossed the Anduin, and headed into the orc-infested mountains.

Once there, as night fell, they spied a light in the distance. As the heroes forced marched through the darkness they found none other than Dindy Brandybuck and his companions, hunkered down in an old earth-works ringfort. The heroes arrived just in the nick of time since orc warhorns sounded and two dozen orcs and goblins attacked!

The Ringfort

The heroes fought off the assailants, but in the fray, Dindy was captured and taken to the Goblin caves. The heroes ventured down into the dank darkness. This song rang through the caves:

Goblins live down in the caves,
Ain’t had nothing to eat for days!
Empty bellies, sharpened teeth,
Sharp blades in a blackened sheath!

Goblins are a courteous folk
Always polite and real well spoke!
After a fight when we’re the winner
Bring the foe back home for dinner!

Dwarves is tough and mostly beard.
Elves are stringy and taste weird.
In better times we eat Man-flesh
Smoke it, cook it or eat it fresh!

Put the Hobbit in the pot!
Eat him up, we’ll have the lot!
Bring him to the Goblin feast!
Bring him to the Goblin feast!

After some heroics and several dead goblins and orcs, the heroes save not only Dindy but also Landana who (it turns out) had also been captured by the orcs! Barlamun was unconscious and dying by that point, but Landana’s healing powers revived the heroic bard, whose near-death bravery elicited eternal gratitude from the wood-elf.

Barlamun and Landana subsequently ventured to Bree, Barlamun’s hometown, with plans to build a life together, free (they hope) from the influence of the domineering elf-king Thanduil.

Ran a kickoff game of Middle-earth adventuring! We ran late and grew weary in the game, much like the characters we were playing. I really liked the hex-crawling, but I do think it could be even better in the context of a long-running campaign, and with using the actual The One Ring D&D rules once they come out this summer.

Barlimun befriended the Elf King Thranduil’s niece Landona. I’ve got a feeling that won’t go without repurcussions!

Wanted to toss out something I’d like to keep an eye on for a potential post-50 Fathoms campaign for the Saturday Night group.

As you know 5e D&D version of The One Ring is coming out this summer. I would strongly suspect their current The One Ring products for Middle-earth will all be ported to 5e later in the year. I did some reading on their various products. While I would like to run a T.A. 1400-era campaign in Arnor at some point in the years to come, I believe The Darkening of Mirkwood may be a great campaign to run first.

The Darkening of Mirkwood hits all the notes of what our group is looking for, including kingdom-building rules. Keep reading for details!

Rating

There are over 300 RPG products rated on Enworld.org, and this is the ONLY product I’ve ever come across that has a rating of 100%! What folks are saying:

The scope of this campaign is massive, and it is so very well done. Maybe the best campaign ever made for any game.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?409294-The-Darkening-of-Mirkwood#ixzz43asko2eF

One of the best RPG campaigns I have ever played… and I have played many!

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?409294-The-Darkening-of-Mirkwood#ixzz43aszlO8H

This is an epic campaign setting for The One Ring and I love it (despite the bittersweet nature of trying to fight the encroaching shadow).

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?409294-The-Darkening-of-Mirkwood#ixzz43asxRWqA

This is an epic 30 year campaign for The One Ring Roleplaying Game. Very few campaign books are on this level of excellence. For a long time The Great Pendragon Campaign was the best out there. In my view, The Darkening of Mirkwood has now taken that top spot.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?409294-The-Darkening-of-Mirkwood#ixzz43at8gseG

What it is

The Darkening of Mirkwood is a complete campaign for The One Ring, set in Mirkwood over the course of three decades. It allows you to tell your own epic saga, following your heroes in their quest as the tale of years unfolds before them.

The Story

The Necromancer may have been cast out of Dol Guldur, but a lingering darkness remains over Mirkwood, a shadow that will grow ever longer as the years draw on – unless a band of brave adventurers step forward and hold back the gloom.

Stand firm against the Shadow and maybe the Darkening of Mirkwood can be averted. Falter for even a moment and all that you know and love will be lost.

Timeframe

The Darkening of Mirkwood takes place between 2947 – 2977, placing it a few years after the death of Smaug and the Battle of Five Armies, but ending with at least another 40 years before the War of the Ring. For reference, King Theoden of the Rohan is born in 2948. The campaign covers over 30 years of adventuring, with humans passing the torch to their sons as the campaign advances.

Campaign Structure

Each campaign Year includes a Fellowship Phase with some mechanics for the ‘between adventures’ events. Some years might just indicate a slow in the spread of Shadow, making it easier to maintain personal assets. Other times, events might give a hero the opportunity to assist the Dwarves in reclaiming their territory, provide the chance to consult with Saruman, or aspire to title in the clans of the Woodmen.

Kingdom Building

The campaign includes rules on Holdings, that allow the heroes to establish their own places in the region – like farms, small commercial ventures, or similar. Such Holdings require attention and maintenance, but they help involve the character and support their drive for greater Standing and improved Wealth. They make for personal assets that invest the heroes in the protection and prosperity of the region.

Author’s note: this page has a lot of high-res images. Be patient as they load. Don’t forgot to scroll down to see all the images and comments!

I’m doing some long term planning about an epic, multi-year Middle Earth RPG campaign. One key element my game group guys want is Kingdom building rules, so we’ll likely hack the Pathfinder ‘Kingmaker’ OGL rules to serve this purpose. Kingmaker rules presume you have 12 mile hexes, and they have rules about exploring and settling (and defending) hexes, so this should work well. But — we’ll need an epic map to make this work like I want. Here’s my prototyping so far.

First up is taking a high-res fan-made map and cropping it to fit on an 18×24″ aspect ratio. This will be our World Map we work with for the campaign.

Next up I zoom in on the top left corner. I could make this NE quadrant into an 18×24″ map if we decide we need that.

Then I overlay a hex grid over the quadrant. Each hex is 60 miles, which is the D&D 5e Kingdom scale, which will play well with setting up 12 mile sub-hexes inside them. We’ll be adventuring in the Third Age, around T.A. 1400-1600 (centuries before The Lord of the Rings adventures). This area of Middle-Earth has several MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying, the old 80’s RPG) modules we may want to leverage so I think this is a great place to adventure. Also, it’s close to Angmar and near enough to the Witch-King to get into trouble with his foul minions. But I digress…

So I overlay a the sub-hex map with a rectangle that will, once zoomed, make for another nice 18×24″ map, this time portrait instead of landscape.

Here’s what it looks like zoomed in.

The above topography is simple enough we can ‘explore’ in traditional hex-crawl format and draw in features as we explore using wet-erase pens on the poster frame in which I’ll put it. Alternatively we could use the uber-awesome Peter Fenlon map from the MERP products. Looks really cool. If I go this route I’ll need to fix the colors in the scans and also sharpen and possibly re-typeset the labels for legibility.

A third option would be to use a hex map that has no details at all and we draw in features as we explore or as they become relevant. Anyway, lots of cool option.

Want to track my progress? Follow me on Google+ where I’ll share out once in a while the maps and other tools as they progress 🙂