Just completed Darkening of Mirkwood

[Captain fluffy]

On Thursday night I completed Darkening of Mirkwood (as a player). What a great campaign. I have been playing for 30+ years and this was one of the most satisfying character and campaign arcs I have experienced.

We have been playing this at a club in Peterborough (www.peterboroughrpg.com) that meets every week. Our games run in a series of two month 'rotations' and popular games get repeat rotations. Obviously The One Ring has proven popular as it has taken 7 rotations (about 62 sessions) since summer 2013 to complete the campaign. In that time a few players have come and gone but a core of 3 has made it from first session to last and there are a couple of others who have made it to most. Our LM started with Tales from the Wilderland and then transitioned into DoM when he got that.

I thought I would post this just to let people know that you don't need a regular home game to complete a monster campaign like this. I am stepping into the LM's shoes for the next One Ring campaign and really looking forward to it.

[Artaxastra]

I ran my first game in 1980 at the age of 12, and Darkening is the best campaign I've ever bought and run, in any game system, hands down. With Tales from Wilderland and Ruins of the North, it was just an amazing campaign for my group.

[Rue]

How wonderful—thanks for letting us know. I was in a PbP but haven’t managed to play in a FtF game (yet). Have you decided what to run as LM yet? And who was your PC for DoM?

[Captain fluffy]

I played Valdimar, a man of the Lake. He was envisioned as a wandering wood carver who travelled around the wilderland making wood cuts and whittling miniature representations of things he had seen. Craft, Persuade and Courtesy were his focus and he was happy as the face of the company. However, it soon became apparent that there were lots of things that needed killing so he slowly transitioned into a front line warrior. 60 sessions later he had a sword skill of 5, a battle skill of 6 and was absolutely lethal. I liked to think he still whittled miniatures of the creatures he encountered and it was by toying around with these (maybe on a map with some dice?) enacting past fights that justified his massive battle skill.

Due to the cultural make-up of the original fellowship (Valdimar, a dwarf, an elf and a woodman) it made sense for all of the other characters to chose Valdimar as their fellowship focus. This trend stayed true as new players joined and so the party quickly became known as the Company of Valdimar. This focus did cause an interesting tension because the Men of the Lake cultural virtue means it can be beneficial to get wounded. Obviously as the fellowship focus of the party then the potential harm to them of Valdimar getting wounded far outweighed the benefit to Validmar himself. As such the rest of the party of spent a lot of time trying to stop Valdimar getting hurt.

I will probably end up running a mix of the Bree adventures, Ruins of the North and stuff of my own creation. I will find out what type of characters player want to play and let that guide me. The Bree stuff will work better with more down to earth character I think.

[Rue]

Sounds like lots of fun--you'll have to let us know how the new campaign shapes up.

[Corvo]

On Thursday night I completed Darkening of Mirkwood (as a player). What a great campaign. I have been playing for 30+ years and this was one of the most satisfying character and campaign arcs I have experienced.
(...)

Congratulations!

If you don't mind some spoilers... What was the situation at the end of the campaign?
How much was lost?
Did some major NPC die?
What's the situation of the Woodmen?

[Ecorce]

On Thursday night I completed Darkening of Mirkwood (as a player). What a great campaign. I have been playing for 30+ years and this was one of the most satisfying character and campaign arcs I have experienced.
(...)

Congratulations!

If you don't mind some spoilers... What was the situation at the end of the campaign?
How much was lost?
Did some major NPC die?
What's the situation of the Woodmen?

I would really love to read that too. Tell us everything.

[Captain fluffy]

It didn't quite finish how I was expecting to be honest but that is probably a good thing.

Our company was pretty focused on southern Mirkwood (We very much viewed ourselves Radagast's fixers). Black Tarn was a second home to most of the characters and we even had a shield maiden of Black Tarn as a PC. My own character had a daughter born to a shield maiden that I had named as a heir. As the campaign had progressed I had moved my family to Lake Town as Southern Mirkwood was becoming very dangerous. Then we had a couple of years where duties kept us up in Dale and by the time we got back south Black Tarn had been lost and the woodmen were in real trouble. Somehow out of this mess we decided to assault Dol Guldur. This was no doubt influenced by our own shield maiden, my aged character's desire to try and make Mirkwood safe for his daughter and a little by the fact that I had watched The Two Towers the night before this session. The spirit of Theoden was with me.

We realised this was a suicide mission and the party was a little bit split. Four of us were happy to ride to our deaths and three weren't so keen. We also did not want to lose the Lamp of Balthi to the shadow. So we came up with the following plan. We would muster the woodmen and every ally we could for an attack on Dol Guldur. The Lamp would come with us accompanied by an honour guard. When the battle turned against us this honour guard, which incuded at least 2 PCs, would retreat and the rest of us would lay down our lives to save the lamp. I must admit that most of the army did not know this plan (what a father would do to protect his family).

In reality the plan went better than expected. We collected a lot of allies (we had a lot of favours to call in) and my character was elected War Leader. The campaign uses a simple number to represent army strength and our was 21. We were ambushed on the edge of Mirkwood and took a lot of damage but then managed to take Fenbridge Castle in a single day. So far so good. We then marched across the causeway to attack Dol Guldur whilst turning Fenbridge into a place to deal with the wounded.

The battle used random rolls to determine the foes that were coming out of Dol Guldur. The LM let us roll so we are settling our own doom in a way. However the rolls seemed to go well. We were hit by Tyulqin the weaver in the first wave but then faced mostly easier opponents.

We had one character spend most of the battle wounded and hovering between 3 and 9 endurance but somehow he stayed on his feet. My character managed to gandalf every armour roll I had to make.

When we got down to a strength of 6 the lamp and its crew headed north. I managed a TN30 battle check to organise a fighting withdrawal over the causeway to cover their retreat. However, by then it turn out that we had drained Dol Guldur's defences enough that we let the lamp go and then retreated with the injured. I think about one sixth of our force actually survived.

[Corvo]

Captain Fluffy, thanks for the report.
By the way, I dare say that you and your fellowship managed the last battle damn well.

If you don't mind, can you tell me what was the destiny of Beorn in your campaign?

[Agnot]

I love reading about how others have completed or are still working their way through the Darkening of Mirkwood. My fellowship is less than a third of the way through and we have enjoyed it immensely. The stories are rich and each companion is developing one or more personal story-arcs that help keep everyone deeply engaged. We are still years away from completing it, but reading posts like yours is very encouraging and helps reinvigorate me to work harder to make each session the best it can be for my players. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.