Advice on knitting together Darkening of Mirkwood and Ruins of the North

[Dawngreeter]

Hi all. It's been a long while since I poked my nose around these parts and now I'm back again, with a very peculiar set of circumstances that I'm hoping friendly TOR community can help with.

Some context - I used to run a TOR campaign years back, when the RPG was still very young. Even though we all loved it (hell, after the movies and everything that followed soured me on Middle Earth, TOR reminded me why Tolkien's world is actually awesome and deserving of love) we stopped playing halfway through Tales from Wilderland. Fast forward years later, my wife and I are now playing with some new friends. Because both me and her know Tales from Wilderland, I figured let's instead start this new group with the Bree adventures, and then have them hop over to Mirkwood where they can do the last three Gibbet King adventures my wife isn't yet familiar with... and that naturally lends itself to being weaved into Darkening of Mirkwood. Which was the goal all along. Because all of us are totally crazy about TOR at this point and, by the gods, we just might have a shot at playing through that gigantic masterpiece.

But then I started reading Rivendell, and then I found out about Ruins of the North, which sounded like a pretty cool thing to also have players visit. So why not do Bree, stop at Rivendell, do Ruins and THEN hop over the Misty Mountains and start weaving the players into Darkening of Mirkwood storyline. Genius plan, right? There's literally no way this can go wrong.

So now Bree adventures are done, players are planning on going to Rivendell in our next week's session and I opened Ruins of the North book for the first time yesterday. And noticed the recommended years. Well, looks like I found a way my plan went wrong. Turns out, Ruins is chronologically at the tail end of Darkening. Which makes sense, considering what the story is about. Which would've been a good thing for me to look into BEFORE making my genius plans...

So. I'm open to any and all suggestions and other people's experiences - how does one make Ruins of the North work with Darkening of Mirkwood? Am I just better off having the players play through Ruins and start a new adventure for proper Darkening playthrough afterwards? Any and all comments are very welcome as I try to salvage this wreck I built for myself...

[Indur Dawndeath]

Hi Dawngreeter,
I have combined Ruins, Tales, Darkening and Bree.
But I started with Darkening and then adding the others as side quests. I will be difficult to get the feeling of a new hope from the beginning of Darkening, when you have already introduced so much evil from Ruins and Tales, but if you just accept that things are already dark and Wilderland is already struggeling, then you’ll be alright.
I would use the adventures in Darkening, but start it at a later date and have 2 adventures per year until you catch up.
It require some rewriting of the tale of years in the Darkening campaign.

[Pence95]

Hi Dawngreeter,
I have combined Ruins, Tales, Darkening and Bree.
But I started with Darkening and then adding the others as side quests. I will be difficult to get the feeling of a new hope from the beginning of Darkening, when you have already introduced so much evil from Ruins and Tales, but if you just accept that things are already dark and Wilderland is already struggeling, then you’ll be alright.
I would use the adventures in Darkening, but start it at a later date and have 2 adventures per year until you catch up.
It require some rewriting of the tale of years in the Darkening campaign.

May I ask you in which year did you match Ruins and then Bree? How does the players move from bree to Mirkwood? :O

Thanks in advice

[Indur Dawndeath]

May I ask you in which year did you match Ruins and then Bree? How does the players move from bree to Mirkwood? :O

Thanks in advice

There are a Hobbit, an Elf and a Dunedain in the party, and when they were in Eriador for years end, I decided that they would meet in Bree before returning to Wilderland. The Dunedain was also tasked to check up on a certain person, to see if he was still on the right path. He turned up dead and the circumstances were a little strange...

As for the Ruins adventures. I started Nightmares from Wilderland as part of a mission to find support against Viglund in the Vales of mt. Gundabad.
Harder than Stone and the Hobbit archers followed when the party made their way to Rivendell to research lore about the Werewolf and other non official adventures hooks.
But they are always returning to Wilderland to continue the fight. Can’t remember the specific year I did the sidequests, but we are in 2957 now.

[Indur Dawndeath]

May I ask you in which year did you match Ruins and then Bree? How does the players move from bree to Mirkwood? :O

Thanks in advice

There are a Hobbit, an Elf and a Dunedain in the party, and when they were in Eriador for years end, I decided that they would meet in Bree before returning to Wilderland (the Woodman and the Barding did not participate in Bree adventure). The Dunedain was also tasked to check up on a certain person, to see if he was still on the right path. He turned up dead and the circumstances were a little strange...

As for the Ruins adventures. I started Nightmares from Wilderland as part of a mission to find support against Viglund in the Vales of mt. Gundabad.
Harder than Stone and the Hobbit archers followed when the party made their way to Rivendell to research lore about the Werewolf and other non official adventures hooks.
But they are always returning to Wilderland to continue the fight. Can’t remember the specific year I did the sidequests, but we are in 2957 now.

[Dawngreeter]

So I decided to finally not do Darkening of Mirkwood as part of the same storyline. I horribly misjudged the timeline so I'll end up Finishing Ruins of the North and if we decideto play Darkening it'll be a new group of characters. I'm a bit sad for this, but eh, it's better than butchering a good storyline...