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I'm wanting to use these to make one mega-campaign. Does anyone have any advice as to when the adventures from the Tales book could be best implemented?

Our group had already played through three of the Tales adventures before I got DoM in my hands. They also like to play two adventures per year, which means that our timeline has quite many changes. Still this road map I made for us could be of some use. SPOILERS for both books naturally.

2946
- Spring Marsh-Bell
- Late summer Don't Leave the Path (plus a visit in the Eyrie to give the invitation)
2947
- Spring Steed of the Moon (my own adventure in Vales of Gundabad, I set up other Tales adventures)
- Autumn Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit
2948
- Spring Kinstrife and Dark Tidings,
- Autumn Those Who Tarry No Longer, with heroes sent to meet Radagast in the end, also the 2947 encounter from DoM (at this point I got the book)
2949
- The Folk-Moot and A Darkness in the Marshes back-to-back in Midsummer
- The Old Forest Road (my own adventure, not played yet), heroes travel the Road with Bofri, they plan to meet Gandalf in the Gathering next year to ask questions
2950
- The hunt from year 2949 for Summer if the players like that (otherwise skipped)
- The Crossings of Celduin
- The Watch on the Heath
2951
- Searching Dol Guldur in early spring with Radagast
- Sauron returns late this year

I like this structure because it has the players moving from less to more powerful enemies. After defeating "King" Valter in the big battle of the Old Ford they feel like the worst is now behind them. Then The Gibbet King enters the stage. After dealing with him the Enemy himself returns and the Nazgûl become the big bads. Tales also gives many plot hooks to insert between DoM adventures when the players want to see more of the world around Mirkwood.

I don't have Darkening yet, but I can tell you that Tales has seven adventures that work excellently run consecutively, one after another. Any time after the initial setting (2946) works well for them. One of the later adventures in Tales is set during a Gathering of Five Armies, which could be in 2946, or you could have it be any later year (some have them in their campaign every five years, so 2951, 2956, etc.).

Guess I could just run those first and lead up to 2951 to start the Darknening campaign. There are also the Words of the Wise and core rulebook adventures. Wonder if I can fit 9 adventures into 5 years

You certainly could! Tales points out how to run things at a pace of two adventures per year.

If you ran those nine it would exactly match up with the first nine adventures for my campaign. I did "Words of the Wise" first (occuring the spring after the first Gathering of Five Armies), then "The Marsh-Bell", then rolled into the seven from Tales (planning to do two per year). Travel-wise it worked, too, as we started out near Rhosgobel, moved on to Dale, then Tales starts off in Dale.

I'm about to start a campaign, and my plan is to have a small intro scenario to get the Company together. Then I'll run the Tales from Wilderland first, starting only 2 1/2 years after the Battle of Five Armies and fitting all 7 adventures into about 2 years. After that we'll go into the Darkening of Mirkwood pretty much on the regular timeline outlined in the campaign.
I won't be running the Marsh Bell for this group at all, since I already ran it for some of the players earlier as a sort of test scenario.

Great ideas here, but I feel some people are getting too fixed on the mostly non-canon storylines that are presented in the sourcebooks. It clearly states in several of the sourcebook introductions that these timelines are not set-in-concrete and the storylines can vary as to where they are placed in the overall Tolkien canon.
Many of these stories by the writers of the sourcebooks can be interchanged as to what year they are presented.
Sometimes it does take some time drawing up a storyline using the reference materials of cubicle 7; go with your gut feeling about what suits Tolkien's vision without contradicting his magnificent world. Cubicle 7 has provided purely reference materials as add-ons to Tolkien's world and that is all. If you are a diehard fan, your own vision of how these materials should fit in to your Middle Earth will come to fruition, acknowledging that most of the material in these supplements are not Tolkien canon, and are meant to be "possible events" in his world.
Enjoy this incredible system!
Mike

This is something I am dealing with now (and seeking counsel on). I'm new to Loremastering (DMing, GMing, whatever) and I feel I've gotten a good hold on things -- everything except the timing. One problem is that I'm just not keeping good track of everything, the other is that my players seem to be cramming stuff in.

So we started with The Marsh-bell, in which I worked in Belgo, and then a mish-mash of Rich H's To Journey's End and Don't Leave the Path (they rolled well enough to convince Oin to go to the Lord of Eagles himself). That was the Spring of 2946. Then was a short Fellowship Phase and last week they breezed through Stewed Hobbit. We're now, roughly, in the fall and they want to keep cruising so we will end 2946 with Kinstrife.

I struggle because I want to paint a lot of background in these first few quests of the state of affairs in the vales of Anduin and Mirkwood as a whole but I'm not sure exactly how to do that. I don't want the adventures to feel like one-off tasks, so I guess I need to just take what's happening in the stories and make sure they get worked in whenever we start off on DOM proper. I also want the players to develop their characters and find some stakes in the world.

So, I suppose, I'm concerning myself with stuff that will work itself out naturally as we keep playing

But Lugjia, your timeline is rather helpful, especially in light of what windsurfjunkie is saying. Thanks!

The only thing I would say is don't be afraid of utilizing time skips. I.E. narrate "after rescuing the hobbit, you are welcome company at the Inn during the autumn and winter. Occasionally you accompany Dody on trading trips to Beorn's hall and it is at one such trip early in the spring of 2947 that you find..."

I think it's important to convey that there is a different pace of life and modern transportation and communication are just not present.

I ran Marsh Bell/Eagles Eyrie into Kinstrife into Darkness in the Marshes, all in 2946 (we're in mid-October, and we're going to continue into the end of Tales without too much rest, simply because I knew we had a potentially limited time to run the campaign (a year to a year and a half of real time), and I thought the dramatic impact of having the end of Tales intersect with the first Dragontide celebration would be better than 'one of the other Dragontide celebrations.

In hindsigt, if we pick up the same campaign again later, I'll be going for one to two adventures per year instead as we go into Darkening, and 2946 will be known as 'The Big Year'