Hello,

long time if somewhat infrequent lurker, first time poster here. I bought TOR almost as soon as it came out, but between limited time for RPGs and ongoing campaigns, did not get the chance to play it yet. But I finally assembled a group and we will play for the first time tomorrow.

I wrote a short adventure for the first session. Usually, I do not write out adventures this way (mostly I just pen a few notes and names), but since this our first experience with TOR, I decided to do a full write-up for my own sake - remembering rules, what skills to use and so on. The adventure is meant to be a tie-in to the excellent Tales from Wilderland with the Gibbet King being the unseen but driving force of the plot.

Without further ado (except to note that English is not my first language, so please excuse some rough patches), here are two links, the first to a full-colour version, with the second version being more printer-friendly:

Blood in the Waters colour

Blood in the Waters printer-friendly

I hope that others can find something useful in the adventure, and I am really looking forward to finally playing this great game.

Wow, what a great first post. Welcome to the Forums Eclispe, you are most welcome.

Great little starting adventure, with quite a bit that can be used in later games, (the Dragon's Head Inn, Grenedun, Rigurz, etc).

Would love to hear more about Grenedun, I was wondering if you've developed it any further.

I was actually looking for a starting adventure to play through for my new players (along with 2 old ones who have already done the Marsh Bell adventure) and I think I will be able to use this. So thank you.

Thanks Eclipse. Very nice work indeed. I really like what you've done here and I entirely agree with ...

I am just playing through The Marsh Bell with my group and have been giving a lot of thought to the benefits of generating bonds between player-heroes and Loremaster characters in upcoming sessions, as I agree this will really enhance the campaign. I plan to move on to Tales From Wilderland next so your adventure, or an adaptation of what you have here, would be an ideal start. Many thanks indeed for sharing it.

Thanks for the kind welcome!

@Poosticks7: I did not do any further work on Grenedun, mostly because this campaign will move slowly, a session every few weeks at most. I will probably play The Marsh Bell after the first adventure, so I have plenty of time. The other reason is that I will wait and see what the players want and like. No use fleshing out a place that might end up unused. But I do hope that I can use Grenedun as a centre for an adventure or two before delving deeper into Tales from Wilderland.

@Fictionaut: This plays into the second reason: it is sometime difficult to predict which Loremaster characters and plots catch the players, and which leave them cold. So I intend to present a lot of hooks and possibilities and see where they want to go.

Absolutely. I agree. Having plenty of different Loremaster characters crop up in the adventures, seeing which ones appeal and then bringing these back again in future sessions, as well as enabling the player-heroes to pursue courses of action that involve the characters they are interested/invested in, is definitely the way to do things, I feel. In my own campaign I haven't really done this so far (it's still early days) but I would really like to gradually build a world where the Loremaster characters seem to have their own motives and agendas and events/adventures have the appearance of arising organically from things that are happening in the wider world. Your adventure certainly works towards that end.

I very much hope you will be sharing more of your ideas as you develop your campaign. I'd really like to see (and no doubt steal ) more of your adventure concepts.

And let us know how your first game goes.

I like this. You've written an intriguing & unique adventure with a feel for the flavor of Middle-earth.

For example, I don't want to spoil this for anyone who hasn't played, but Rigurz provides a great villain.

Very Nice adventure which I could certainly see myself using to create the door to a campaign. Well done. Thank You so much for sharing it with us.

This looks brilliant. I reckon I might use it as a side quest for when my players show up in Laketown. I have one minor quibble however. I feel like there are almost too many characters being introduced in a short space of time. I know I had difficulty following who was who while I was reading through it. Other than that, the adventure itself is very well structured and there are various things I will probably use when I make my own, thank you

@Fictionaut: That is my goal as well. It is difficult to achieve, but during some of the longer campaigns it worked, and it is really rewarding - and makes Loremastering easy, as the player-heroes can be motivated by the Loremaster characters.

I use a Wiki to coordinate my RPG campaigns, and I do write-ups of every session played to provide my players with a chronology and reference. I could re-post them here, if people like to read about the campaign.

@Mim: Thank you. I actually plan to have him try and win the company's trust, playing the role of the gruff but honest outdoorsman.

@Beleg: One can probably reduce the number of Loremaster characters without doing any harm. I would just remove Vetis and her son, and maybe one of the boatmen. I included them because I wanted to provide roleplaying opportunities from the beginning, but maybe they actually are more of a distraction during the crucial first meeting of the player-heroes.

Ah, very nice. I'm planning on starting a new game sometime this month (or early next) and may use this. I'll give it a read-through, and possibly a play-through.

Eclipse & Beleg,
I have not read the adventure just yet. But you could always downgrade the direct participation and interaction of some of the NPCs. For instance, if Vetis & Son are not critical to any events, maybe have them doing things in the background, so the LM describes the characters, but does not name them.

So the NPCs enter the settlement and see a young man/boy playing, a woman looking on fondly for a moment before going back to her work. That's it. First contact between the PCs and NPCs is done. Nothing more is said at this point.

At some later point, when the PCs are in the same area, they might see either of these NPCs again. Either as background material once again or doing/saying something relevant to the adventure.

I'd definitely like to read your session write-ups, so please do post them.

So I just finished reading through, and I have to say that this would make a good starting point indeed. It ends with promise of further adventure, and with a new group (two who have never played role-playing games, and another two who are new to this one) I feel that this hook may be a little needed. Also, the write-up at the end on all characters involved (particularly that of our potential BBEG) is most welcome.

We played the first session and it went really well. Some had already rolled up characters, while others had concepts that we clad into numbers beforehand. Character creation is relatively easy and while I had to explain the game concepts, it did not take long before we delved into the adventure.

@Garn: Reducing the amount of Loremaster characters is easy, as some of them are only there to provide roleplaying opportunities or background. Vetis and her son can be omitted without damage to the plot, the captives can be reduced (or some of them can be found slain at the inn, if the Loremaster wands a darker atmosphere).

@Fictionaut: I like reading reports from other gaming circles, too. They often provide inspiration, and some are highly entertaining. I shall ask my players if I can post them here.

@Munkerz: My plan is to keep foreshadowing the Gibbet King and use the major villain of the adventure as the first "stepping stone". If all plays well, he might even try to win the heroes' confidence ...

Eclipse, very nice! I'm amazed at the graphics skills by so many here! Thanks also for sharing your adventure!

I too love reading about other campaigns. I do the same thing (writing a summary of the characters' adventures), as I find it much easier to keep track of who went where, when. I've been doing it for other campaigns, and one regret I have is that I didn't do it for our old Lord of the Rings campaigns.

I also approach storytelling much the way you describe it here, or at least I've started to with another campaign (d6 Star Wars). Instead of continually making plots up myself, I've been doing more of an organic approach based on the interests and directions the players choose. Sort of like what you see with an MMORPG. So the players might go into a town, meet many interesting NPCs, and have a choice in what direction they take and what missions/adventures they decide to follow. With our Star Wars game I've had to swing the pendulum a bit back the other way, as one session's pacing slowed down too much for my tastes. But I'm still trying to leave things very much up to the players.

Very nice, very nice. One question where do you guys find the fonts and the banners and so on, it looks super cool and I would love to know where to find it.



/Khamul

There are discussions about the fonts and backgrounds here and here. I did the header and footer in Photoshop using a screenshot of an official pdf. I hoped that it would be OK with Cubicle 7 and the design team as I saw that other fans had used them as well.

@Majestic: I regret not starting journals for campaigns sooner. We have a long campaign that we started about 13 years ago; in the beginning, we played weekly, and it was quite easy for me to keep everything in memory, but since people moved away and found less time for RPG, we only play a couple of times each year, and I fear that a lot of history has been lost and forgotten. Since I set my wiki up, I have done at least short texts for every session played of all our games, and it really helps a lot.

Most of my plots are just basic ideas to be filled when the players actually chose to follow them. Especially on the longer running campaigns, it is much easier this way. But for the start of a new campaign, like TOR, I found more "railroad-y" adventures to be better, as player heroes often lack a clear motive or connection to the world. As soon as the players get a grip on the setting, the major plots, their characters motivations, desires, hates and interests, I try to present them with options or just listen to what they want to do/achieve.

Thank you Eclipse!

Here's a link to a document template, Khamul: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/79541775/1.%20Template.doc

You'll still have to purchase the fonts, which are named in the document, but this should give you a steer as to what font to use, when, what size it should be, etc and there's also the background that I use for mine.

Hope it helps you.

Thank you Rich!

My pleasure!

Hi Eclipse, just want to say thanks. I used your adventure as a intro adventure for my new players and a reintro for my other players. It worked well.

They really went to work on the poor goblins, one of the dwarves killing the orc soldier in one mighty blow, but their woodswomen healer rolled an eye to save Lyskar and I judged that he'd died from his wounds (though I forgot to make them make corruption rolls, small mistake on my part).

I tied Grenedun into the background of one of the dwarf PCs and hope to set a few adventures there. Any extra info you come up with concerning Grenedun I would very much like to hear.

The fellowship aced the encounter at Bard's halls, I was slightly amazed how well they actually did, left everything very upbeat as we finished the session.

I've modified the idea of the map that Rigurz took, it's actually a map to a secret door into an old dwarf hold called Glisterhold, lost to orcs during the orc dwarf wars. The map was given to Theustal by the Grandfather of one of the Dwarf PCs and he asked him to deliver it to one of his line in Erebor. The hold is the family home of the two dwarf PCs and I'm going to have them come across Rigurz at a later date and reclaim the map.

So again, thanks for sharing and I suggest you post a link to you adventures in you sig, so other players can have a look at your adventures (I just spotted your new one, not read it yet).

@Poosticks7: That is nice to hear. I am happy that all went well with the adventure. Our first session was great and we had lots of fun. I think that the challenges in the adventure are on the easy side; maybe I was too cautious because I am not familiar enough with the rules. On the other hand, our company is quite large, so combats with a fixed number meant for less player-heroes can be expected to be easier.

I have two dwarves not directly from Erebor in our company, too. Maybe I will use your idea to tie the map to their background story. It should not be too much of a problem. Thanks for the input!

EDIT: If I get around to fleshing out Grenedun I will post all material here.

Hey eclipse, very nice adventure!

few questions, though.
I really dont want to get my characters confused with too many unfinished corners (Rigurz, the dwarven tower) so i just wanted to know if there is some continuation for this adventure (cant find a mention of Rigurz in tales from wilderland) or is it up to you writing it?

No, Rigurz needs to be done by the GM. To simplify, one could always have the Orc at the Goblin Camp be the villain behind the attack and just remove Rigurz. Then you just need a less open-ended motivation, so no dwarven map probably. It should be fairly simple to make this adventure with a more finished conclusion.

Thanks

Im thinking of changing the "map" idea into some precious gem, intended to be delivered to the lord of the eagles with the invitation (thus linking to Marsh-
Bell), but i still have no idea on what to do with Rigurz (but i do want some sort of villan). Perhaps he could fit in inside Marsh-bell somewhere?