The Marsh Bell - is it fun?

[Zulgolra]

Yes I ran the adventure. If my players where unsatisfied? Probably not, at least nobody complained. But after I ran an adventure I often think about it and I did not find it that potentially good.
I did not like the troll encounter, I found the dungeon was not designed mittleearthly, i did not like the attacking weeds (in middle earth) etc. Bottom line: I am not a great fan of this adventure.

You asked me about players:
I would say it could be always a problem, if you have the typical RPG Player in your group, who did not really read "Lord of the Rings", but just saw the movies, or is expierencend in pathfinder/D&D etc. But as said, this could always become a problem and is not specific about this adventure.

[Indur Dawndeath]

I think it is a very nice starting adventure in Tolkiens spirit.
It is based on a Tolkien poem.
The Mewlips was a poem from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil about a potentially mythical but evil race that made habitat somewhere in Middle-earth.

The Troll is a great opponent, that you can customize for low Xp Heros by having Balin wound him...

I’ve used the locations again later in my campaign, and everyone loved it as the starting adventure.

[Earendil]

I think it is a very nice starting adventure in Tolkiens spirit.
It is based on a Tolkien poem.
The Mewlips was a poem from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil about a potentially mythical but evil race that made habitat somewhere in Middle-earth.

The Troll is a great opponent, that you can customize for low Xp Heros by having Balin wound him...

I’ve used the locations again later in my campaign, and everyone loved it as the starting adventure.

That reminds me of a couple of things I forgot to mention before:

If you have "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", definitely read the poem and use it for atmosphere. It's great!

If you have the Lake-Town sourcebook, it might be worth swapping the Troll for a Marsh-Ogre. (The adventure predates that book, so Marsh-Ogres didn't exist in the game at that time.) I did that and felt it worked well.

[Moria Firefly]

I have my first TOR game with my home crew (previously D&D players since the First Age), two have never played and two others played one Gen Con game.

I have 6 or 7 Gen Con TOR games under my belt but never played a Loremaster, just a player. I got to play in Theft of the Moon and loved it for showing all the aspects of the game.

I'll be running Theft of the Moon as the intro to the system to my players (using the supplied pre-gens) then after that one-shot is done, we will go to actual character generation.

I will use The Marsh Bell, with the PC generated characters, and go into the Tales of the Wilderland adventures from there.

[Majestic]

My group enjoyed it enough that they said straight up after finishing it that they have put it on their list of things to comeback to and workout what exactly these ruins were, why they were here and who the marshdwellers are. That seems to say that they enjoyed it.

My players (like probably most) were forced to flee when they ran into the horde of Marsh-dwellers. But I brought it up numerous times in the following years, and eventually they decided to go back and clear it out. Their return ended up being about twenty years later, and this time they rolled through those hordes, cleansing Middle-earth of the foul creatures!

[Cleggster]

Just a small point I would bring up. I ran this with my currant group back when we first started. It was fun and everybody enjoyed themselves, they got into the creepy nature of it and were not even tempted to fight the Mewlips. But the one downside from my point of view is how gun shy they became about Shadow. For a first time adventure, the party gets hammered with shadow rolls constantly. To the point that my group, much later and much more powerful, are still scared of getting ANY shadow. Bit of an issue when slowly falling to shadow is the idea of heading towards retirement.

Just food for thought.

[Geomtje]

I have played it once and I am currently LM’ing the Marsh Bell.

To put in my two penny worth; I really enjoyed playing the Marsh Bell. It was my first experience with actually playing a table top RPG. I explicitly remember battling the Troll, which felt impossible at the time, so we all fled after one round of combat. Mind you that none of use had any experience with RPGs and neither had the LM, so we made multiple mistakes and we stumbled trough the entire game, but had fun doing it non the less.

I do remember that the end being very anticlimactic. Yes we did fight some Marsh Dwellers, but having to flee again was a bummer. Then finding the dwarfs and it already being the end felt a bit abrupt. It might have been the inexperience, but it is a introductory adventure, so I personally would have liked some more guidance.

Having already played the adventure ones and multiple other adventures helped me with adding some flavour to the game as a LM. I must say that I enjoy the story more and being able to use previous experience really helps me out a lot. However, I am still a bit doubtful on how fulfilling the end will be as a standalone adventure, so I will probably be trying to make the end a bit more rememberable. Time will tell.

I personally feel that the story of the Marsh Bell captures the feeling of the Hobbit quite well, though it being less grand. Which probably has to do with the lack of a dragon and it being a less world altering quest. But don’t go in and expect a Lord of the Rings-esque story. I think that Theft of the Moon, though I have only read the adventure, captures that feeling better.

It’s a fun adventure that introduces a bit of everything during the course of the story and it has some great hooks to start and create your own follow up quest. Definitely worth playing as a first game or to place somewhere during your own adventure.

[Indur Dawndeath]

At the end of The Marsh Bell I had the players defeat a group of Marsh dwellers to rescue the dwarves, that was a success and felt like a win for the group.
Only when the group went searching for a way out and treasure did I hit them with an owerwhelming force. Escape with the dwarves was a success again.
I like the idea, that you cannot clear the dungeon like we did in D&D.

Regarding Shadow, I agree that the Marsh Bell is a tough adventure for noobs, who spends several days finding tracks...

[Jussi Marttila]

I ran Marsh Bell as a slightly modified version, tying it to that one Dwarf from Darkening of Mirkwood wanting to open the Old Forest Road. I wouldn't run it as a first ever adventure, because it's not great at telegraphing to the players what is actually expected of them. The first adventure from Tales from the Wilderland is in my opinion a better first adventure.

[The_Vanguard]

My players had a blast with Marsh Bell. Solving the mysteries surrounding the drowned city is one of their main goals now and they frequently go out of their way in order to learn more about it. The city, the crows, the bell, the marsh-dwellers themselves - so many questions are left unanswered. If their enthusiasm persists this will certainly play a major part at the end of DoM (going full circle would be really sweet).

We expanded a lot on the ending, though. The companions had failed to find the dwarven treasure, so the two dwarves insisted on going back to the camp. The gore-crows persued them relentlessly and soon they spotted marsh-dwellers lurking behind the trees, seemingly always one step ahead of them. The companions were spooked and decided to press on through the night.
When they reached the campsite they found two marsh-dwellers huddled over the corpse of the troll, but the wretches hissed and ran away when they approached. They found that they had covered the corpse in mud and leaves as if to bury it. Had their nightly advance prevented something terrible from happening here? Yet another question left unanswered...
When they reached the edge of the woods suddenly a great murder of gore-crows descended, cawing frantically. A large tree came falling down, blocking their exit route on the river. Then, from the murky waters arose a host of marsh-dwellers, aided by a marsh-hag, completely surrounding the boat. Yet the elf’s arrows flew true and the vile beast was slain. The remaining marsh-dwellers fled howling into the woods and the companions could escape to safety with what little stamina and will they had left.