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2947 - Last week of autumn: Words of the Wise + The Wizard's Man

The company had been invited to the Last Hunt of the year by the Woodmen. It took place in the last week of autumn, to hunt for meat for the winter, when all doors would be kept close and none would venture into Mirkwood until the next spring.

I used Words of the Wise as written (one of my players is a Woodman, and I made his brother one of the hunters that go with them), but changed the ambushed part to fit The Wizard's Man in:
The group splitted when hunting the deers (as in WoW) and the NPCs where ambushed by orcs. When the PCs rushed to help them, they stumbled upon Radagast's scout. After taking care of him in a haste, they attacked the orcs. After the first round, Mogdred's men arrived and scared the orcs. I explicitly told the group that Mogdred's people didn't attack the orcs, they just intimidated them.

After that we played the return to Rhosgobel as in The Wizard's Man and Radgast's message to Thranduil as in WoW. In the journey, during winter, the group found the Easterly Inn a day before reaching the Elf Path. There they met everyone that's described in Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit.
In fact, the group had already met Dindy in Dale during the celebrations of the Battle of Five Armies: he had smashed them in a Riddle contest, and invited the group to stay at the Easterly Inn should they travel along the Elf Path. Also, I changed the dwarf to Thalin, who was an NPC in an earlier adventure. He was an old dwarven trader, that was always thinking of retiring. The Easterly Inn seemed like a good place to retire, and that also served me to show the players that their character should also retire some day. In the inn, the beornings where talking about some group of violent men to the north (the Viglunds), and that Beorn had send them there to keep an eye on the hobbits. After all, Beorn had granted them protection. In this fashion I introduced rumors of the Viglunds to the players.
As for the elves that waited for the company at the entry of the Elf Path, I made Ruithiel (from the Questing Beast) their leader. I told them about the magnificient bow she had, embroided with mithril threads.

The rest was played as Words of the Wise explains. The group managed to impress Thranduil during the Encounter and in the battle.

At the end of the Year's End Phase I told the group that they had received and invitation to go hunting from Thranduil himself (The Questing Beas) and that rumor had arrived at Rhosgobel that some hostilities had taken place around the entry to the Elf Path between the beornings and the viglunds. Some of those hostilities had nearly arrived to the Easterly Inn.

My group decided that they wanted to help the beornings and the hobbits and declined the offer by the elves, so that I'm running Kinstrife and Dark Tidings next, but with Valter changed to Viglund.

In fact, Oderic will be in love with Aestir, daughter of Viglund (HotW 31), and the discovering of that love will be what made Rathfic argue with him. I'll set Stonyford to the north of the Carrock (in the frontier between beorning territory and that of the viglunds) and Oderic will flee to the town of the viglunds, where he wants to gain their trust and meet with Aestir.

Nice, Falenthal. I like how you've interwoven and incorporated so much of the published material into your own campaign, mixing and matching stuff for your own group.

Thank you, Falenthal, for sharing that. A well composed campaign, exemplary for making good use of all the interesting npc's from the TOR supplements! The way you introduce them and let your players establish relationships (if they want to), seems to be very fruitful.
Greetings, q.

That's truly inspirational, Falenthal! Congratulations for such a well interwoven campaign. I wish I could have players to recruit for a similar epic journey (I have only 2 or 3 if I'm lucky, at the moment)

Incredibly enough, moreover, I use almost the same home-rules as you!

Falenthal wrote:Woodmen
+1 Body and -1 Wits

[The Body of a Hobbit and the Wits of an Elf? I can’t agree with that… even if I don’t play with the +2 / -2 that I would consider more realistic. No Virtue nor any Reward from the Woodmen relies on their Body or Wits, so I don’t think there should be any unbalance, except for breaking the nice symmetry of the starting cultures.]

I agree so much, and I applied it as well!

Falenthal wrote:Mirkwood Elves
*Starting skills scores:

“…for Elves (even more than Hobbits) could walk when they wished without sound or footfall.”
“They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise.”

Stealth 3
Lore 2

[Hobbits have Stealth 3. With their higher Wits if a Hope point is spent, Mirkwood elves should now be equal or better than Hobbits when stalking.
Rivendell elves have Lore 3. All other cultures have either Lore 0 or 1, except Rangers of the North who have Lore 2. I think Lore 2 is more adequate to Mirkwood elves.]

*Cultural blessings:
Folk of the Dusk doesn’t apply underground.

Same here, exept for Folk of the Dusk: in my campaign, it works only for Heart based skills, but ALSO for Fear and Corruption tests (when in a forest or at night).

Falenthal wrote:Hobbits

“Bilbo, too, claimed a blade: merely a dagger by the standards of Men or its original Elvish makers, and but a tiny pocket-knife for the trolls whose hoard it was found in, but it made an excellent short sword for a Hobbit.”
“For each of the Hobbits he chose a dagger… 'Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people,…'”

Hobbit-sized weapons have a -2 to Damage. Edge and Injury remain unchanged.

Same here as well, except that it's just -1 to Damage.

Falenthal wrote:Optional Starting Endurance
Use Body instead of Heart:
Bardings, Beornings, Mirkwood Elves, Woodmen: 22 + Body Attribute
Dwarves, Rangers of the North , High Elves: 24 + Body Attribute
Hobbits: 18 + Body Attribute

I use Body as well, but with the following starting values:
Dwarves: 25 + Body
Bardings and Beornings: 23 + Body
Woodmen: 22 + Body
Elves: 20 + Body
Hobbits: 19 + Body.
These values will assure the same scores as in the RAW, so game balance is unaffected, except that now you have to choose a background with a high Body to get high Endurance, rather than with high Heart.


Keep writing, this thread is very entertaining

Thanks for all the kind words!

Miche, what other house-rules do you apply? Seeing that we have a similar criteria, probably you've come up with something I even didn't think of.

As for the cultural house-rules, I've changed Hobbits even more since the beginning of the campaign, but as none of my players choosed a halfling, I haven't bothered optimizing them.

Falenthal wrote:Miche, what other house-rules do you apply? Seeing that we have a similar criteria, probably you've come up with something I even didn't think of.

Not much more than what I've said, sometimes I try to balance some Virtues or Rewards that have particularly weak maths (Spear of King Bladorthin, Deadly Archery, Water Legs, just to mention some), but I don't bother if nobody wishes to choose one.

The most game-impacting house rule I've created (and that I'm still using) is that Weary condition doesn't need a prolonged rest to be erased. That is to say, if you're in the middle of a combat and your Endurance drops below Fatigue, you become Weary: but if during the same combat your Endurance goes above Fatigue again (thanks to Rally Comrades, for example), you stop being Weary altogether.

Finally, Wounded also makes you Weary (I believe this is a commonly adopted rule). I just wanted some more emphasis on the advantages of armour (which, by the RAW maths, is actually a disadvantage in many circumstances).

Oh, I was forgotting... I also make these options available for Woodmen:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1652&hilit=woodmen+cultural

On a phone now, so I´ll keep it short. The Weary and, specially, the Wounded equals Weary rules, seem brilliant to me. I used the Armor Damage Reduction, but yours is easier and more in line with the RAW.

2948 - The Questing Beast

The group had received an invitation to join the Mirkwood elves in their hunt for the white deer, but they had also heard rumors about hostilities near the entry of the elven path that might have affected the beorning lands and even the Easterly Inn. My players decided to go help the beornings and their little friends in the inn, so everything was prepared to play a variant of Kinstrife.

But realtime kicks in and, 2 hours before our meeting, the beorning player called sick. We decided to improvise a bit and played a single session adventure with The Questing Beast. It took place during the first week of spring, just before meeting with the beorning in the Easterly Inn to hear the news he might bring.

The Beorning hero could be excused by saying that he went to see how his family and the beorning lands were faring, while the rest of the group went to the hunt just to keep a good relation with the elves (none of them likes elves very much. And I happen to be an elven lover. Sad times for me ).

I didn't change many things of the adventure, but it was a good oportunity to introduce new things to the world of the campaign: Ruithiel was their companion during the hunt, as they had already met during Words of the Wise as Captain of the Elven Path. The hunt took place around the shelter where the players had met Thranduil in Words of the Wise, not in his Halls. I explained that Thranduil was hunting the white deer when he was interrupted by the heroes and Radagast's plea: elves don't hunt only for a week, they hunt for entire seasons, and they don't mind the cold of the winter. That way, also, the adventure didn't stray to much from the Vales of the Anduin.
While preparing for the hunt, the group met some diplomats and nobles from Esgaroth and Dale. There they knew that Bardings and elves where having diplomatic troubles because of the axing of some "holy trees" in Mirkwood. This invitation was a way of solving their issues. Also, they told the group that the gossip in Dale was that Bard had obviously fallen in love with a dorwinrrim noble, Una, and that word was spreading that they might marry in brief.
Legolas was chosen to guide the Dale-men in their hunt, and my players all shouted "Now we know who is going to hunt the first white deer! This is all a fake for diplomatic reasons!"

The hunt went as per the written adventure, only that I introduced an attercops' ambush (using an Eye from the Fatigue tests as an excuse for it) so that there was an explanation of why Ruithiel split from the group.

The dwarven player, who was very interested from the beginning of the campaign in the Greydelve, managed to negotiate a release of the elve in exchange for help in the retaking of the dwarven fortress. Also, he decide to stay with the dwarven refugees and wait for Frár, the Beardless. Our dwarf has some Status among the dwarves and has also Glóin as a Patron. He wants to use try and use his influence to persuade Dáin into helping Frár recover the Greydelve, now that maybe some elven forces might join too. Will have to play this out, but it will be nice to see.

And then, after returning to the hunting shelter without a white deer, but with Ruithiel safe and her silent gratitude, the comrades rejected the invitation to the party that was to be held in Thranduil's Hall and marched to the Easterly Inn, eager to hear what news the beorning had discovered.

In fact, playing The Questing Beast helped advance the Greydelve history and also set a believable background for Those Who Tarry No Longer. It won't be far fetched for Thranduil (maybe even influenced by Ruithiel) to think of the heroes to escort Irimë through the beorning's lands.

A great read as always. Keep up the good work Falenthal; and keep posting it here!