Need some inspiration from you great guys in this forum.

I'm gonna kickoff my TOR Campaign in two weeks and I was thinking how my players Heroes got together?

The party is of a Barding, a Beorning, a Longbeard dwarf, a wood elf and a Hobbit...

How could this unlikely party have meet?

Your thoughts please


/Yours Khamul

Just a few initial thoughts/questions...

1) Do you *need* to bring them together before the game begins? Could the first adventure be the forming of this great fellowship?

Usually, I look at the backgrounds of the PCs to get ideas as to how they know each other AND also let the players decide as well. So:

2) What are their character's background concepts and/or have you thought of telling them to come up with their internal relationships? As LM you have loads of other things to do after all!

Lake-town. Place of commerce and meeting of cultures.

It might be worth deciding that the company either forms just before the adventure, to some common purpose which makes up the first adventuring phase, or that there are more than one small groups. Perhaps the Dale-man and the Dwarf have travelled together. The fellowship focus isn't mandatory, so the company doesn't have to be strongly tied at the start. As friendships form, the players can pick the focus for their character.

For my personal tastes it really all depends on what adventure they're about to embark upon and the histories and personalities of the individual characters. Between all three aspects, something will come to mind.

Get a few preliminary ideas together and offer them to the players. See which of the ideas seems to work for them. Note that the players may choose individual ideas or break up into groups - possibly different from those offered above. All of which is fine. They might even come up with something different entirely. This is also fine so long as it doesn't interfere with your intended campaign.

You can either role-play these pre-game histories or they can just be an agreed upon story with as little or as much detail as everyone is happy with.

For instance, the Elf, Barding and Dwarf might know each other or represent a small sub-group. Maybe they meet in Lake-town or the vicinity. The Hobbit might have run into trouble and been assisted by the Beorning (better yet, turn this around and have the Hobbit save the Beorning!).

Now, the above might not make sense if, for instance, the Dwarf says he's from the Blue Mountains. Or the Hobbit is a cowardly burglar who avoids combat at all costs. Heck, your campaign could be set in Eriador with the intent to go after the Witch-King of Angmar - making most Wilderlands ideas useless.

Like I said, you just have to find an idea that works for the unique combination of characters (in whole or in smaller groups) and the setting/campaign.

The Barding is a Lore-seeker
The Wood-elf is a Wander and a good shot with the bow
The Dwarf is a bold Slayer
The Beorning is a Determined Slayer
The Hobbit is a True Hearted Treasure Hunter

I treat the time before the first adventuring phase as a simplified fellowship phase, and ask the players to tell me why they are adventuring together.

Step 1: Ask the Hobbit player to make a new character that is not a Hobbit.
Step 2: You'll find it a much easier task to have all these groups come together.
Step 3: Enjoy TOR!

Ok, I'm being cheeky, but in all reality, and I think TOR (as well as every other RPG/MMO based on imddle earth) failed in this; I don't think Hobbits belong as adventurers, especially not in Wilderland.

I realize much of the appeal of Middle-Earth is the ability to play a Hobbit as a player-character, but unfortunately it's almost as contrary to the lore of middle earth as playing a "wizard" of some sort.

After all, let's review the facts:
-Adventures make one late for dinner.
-Adventures are nasty, disturbing uncomfortable things.
-Hobbits are plain quiet folk and have no use for such things.
-Bilbo was widely regarded as queer and eccentric after his adventure.
-His adventures were the source of much gossip, heresay and uproars within the Hobbit community.

Is this to say there are NO Hobbit Adventurers? Not at all.
But, per the TOR Author's words on the matter (and I'm paraphrasing here): "For every member of the wise & learned, for every great elf-lord and man of Westernese, there are countless scores of common men who never strayed beyond the borders of their homeland. This is the world that Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild is meant to convey..."

And for that reason, I disallowed Hobbits in my campaign world (not that I think anyone wanted to play one).

I know what you're getting at Rocmistro and I did consider it myself but to quote The Hobbit

"once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures"

and even Gandalf was "responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures"

Now admittedly they are a quiet folk as a rule but adventurers are supposed to be exceptional members of their society. I agree it's a push to see them in Wilderland but not something that for me spoils the game. Of course YMMV.

I thought about the fact that the men of Gondor and Rohan hadn't seen Hobbits before but as far as I'm aware they'd not seen Dwarves or Elves either.

Well my initial group (A young Took Treasure Hunter, a Barding Slayer, and two Dwarf Brothers (one a Treasure Hunter and another a Slayer)) was easy enough to gather together. They were all in Lake Town and did gravitate towards the nearest inn where they all learned about Gloin requesting aid and all met up outside of his mansion.

An Elf Warden showed up partway through their meeting with Gloin and opted to join them. Later on in the lair of the Marsh Dwellers they met an Elf Scholar who had fallen into the trap and was helping Balin and Oin to hold down the fort.

After returning to Lake Town the Dwarf Treasure Hunter almost drowned while diving for pieces of Smaug's coat and was rescued by the final member of the group: a Man of the Lake who was a member of the town guard.

Best ways to bring a party together: booze, dungeon traps, and treasure.

For my group I'm allowing the players themselves to pick their Fellowship Focus, based on what feels natural to them after they've gotten to know the others a bit. For the bulk of our party, I simply made it that they had met each other at the Battle of Five Armies. I'm introducing at least one character a little later into the story, however, when the party gets to that character's realm.

Your players might come up with something that seems odd at first, but recall that it was strange for Gimli and Legolas to form the bond they had, but it ended up working!

We have three characters in my group. A dwarf, a barding and a beorning.
They are all wanderers.. The Beorning is a story teller and seeks new lands and new stories, which is how he ended up in Esgaroth, the Barding had taken by hammer and anvil, so he basically had taken to the forge under a dwarf smith, hence he already knew the dwarf. They were down ready for the battle of the five armies’ celebration.
I got them to basically meet with the beorning when a pickpocket stole the barding’s purse as part of the role play, he rolled high on his awareness and then used awe to make the little scamp poop his pants. The barding then used persuade to make the young chap give up his errant ways and got him a job in a forge 
They repaid the barding with a meal in a local inn and therefore they all met and bonded.
hope that makes sense

Thanks guys. I think I will sit down with them and brain-storm a background I guess the Dwarf, elf and Barding could known each other since the big battle.

....and also...there are always some hobbits with some Tookish-blood hehe

They're so interbred that there's practically Took and Brandybuck blood throughout all Hobbits families! I'm surprised there aren't more Hobbit adventurers to be honest not less.

They could all meet in a Tavern and....

*ducks incoming blows*

I certainly don't want to get into a nerd-rage "balrog has wings...no it doesn't!" debate but while Tooks might have more inclination to do adventurous things, I don't think Tolkien meant to infer that they were prone to be adventurers.

By being a bit more adventurous, I think he meant Tooks might do things like:

-smoking longbottom leaf when the family tradition was to smoke old toby.
-go for a walk south along the brandywine instead of north.
-have ham for supper instead of chicken.
-visit Bree once in their whole lifetime.
-be open-minded enough to talk to a Dwarf traveller through the Shire.

...and thats why they where so rich, right?

There is bristling trade in the Laketown area, thats why it is a good place to start for a party of adventurers.
It is sort of a melting pot of mixed folk and with various needs and wants.

The most difficult one would be the Hobbit. As I recall there was a mountain pass over the Misty Mountains that was made accessible by Beornings at or around the TOR timeline.

Maybe he was part of a trade expedition and for some reason became separated from his group who traveled on to Dorwinion or maybe back home or something and has found himself alone and seeking like-minded individuals to garner some treasure and make enough to eventually travel back home.

Maybe the reason he got separated could be an adventure unto itself, maybe he fell in with some robbers and was rescued by members of his new fellowship.

I like your thoughts Venger, thanks.

You are most welcome

One of the campaigns I run has a hobbit, an elf, a dwarf and a woodswoman. As well as a Barding who sometimes shows up
There were two bardings, but my brother got bored *sigh*
Anyway, the way I solved the hobbit issue was background related. Her family kept bees (the player wanted an excuse to try to get bees from Beorn) and as such their main source of income was selling honey and mead. Since I chose to start my players off at the Battle of Five Armies reunion, I said the hobbit and her family were present because they were supplying the mead. Worked perfectly, and meant that I could send the party across mirkwood to accompany the family the the west of the misty mountains

Thats a great idea beleg.

We'll just agree to disagree then.

Thanks Khamul

When I think of hobbit adventurers, I also think of prior "Gandalf experiments" before Bilbo, a practice of Gandalf that probably dates back to the times of the Bullroarer. Obviously, none were as famous as Bilbo and none left such a mark in the eyes of the Wise (except for Gandalf, who obviously had enough experience with "adventuring hobbits" to consider Bilbo as a prospect burglar for an expedition of such importance as Thorin's). Gandalf seem to have known the old Took at any case, and it isn't impossible that some of its "standing" was purchased after some lucrative adventures of his own.

This is somewhat supported in the first pages of The Hobbit, where Bilbo recognizes Gandalf for the excellence of his fireworks, but also hints about how Gandalf was known as a peace-disturber even back then:

"Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves - or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!"

No doubt this is exaggerated, but rumours always have a foundation of truth. In Lord of the Rings, it is also said that Tom Bombadil thinks highly of Farmer Maggot, and that he used to visit the Old Forest in his youth.

So even if it stretches Tolkien's canon a bit, I don't mind hobbit adventurers in my games, and find that they are not that harder to fit than any other character.

The earlier hobbits were only essays in the craft of adventurer-finding before it was full-grown, and to Gandalf they were but amateurs—but still to my mind heroic adventurers.

To support my own side a little, I'll only add that there are different types of adventurers.

There are those who go off in ships and see the world, or explore hitherto unforseen places or travel to distant lands to trade with men and elves and dwarves.

And then there are the types of adventurer's featured in RPGs...the kind that go willingly and often into combat, into caverns filled with death and danger, who seek out Orcs and minions of evil to slay and keep at bay.

I can somewhat see Hobbits being "common" for the former...not as much so for the latter.

Gandalf only starting dealing in Hobbit's because they served one purpose and one purpose alone: The made excellent Hope Batteries.