I decided to stop lurking and ask for assistance

[Majestic]

Great to hear, pestigor. Best of luck with your games, as a player, and (later) as a LM!

[Robin Smallburrow]

I like poosticks7's idea of a "Player's Guide for players", and will happily offer up my Introductory Handout I give to newbie players to Middle-earth as a start...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/656 ... layers.pdf

Also available in my sig!
Robin S.

[TheMonarchGamer]

Howdy all y'all.
Thanks for the PDF. It's basically exactly what I was looking for.
One question: beast speech. How do y'all describe/show this in your games? One of the players was speaking to an intelligent animal in my last game, and I ended up describing it like the animal wasn't 'talking' to him but he could 'feel' these emotions or thoughts coming off the animal, but in a way, that seems sort of cliché. Thoughts?
-TMG

[Majestic]

We have an Elf (of Mirkwood) who speaks to everything: animals, streams, trees, rocks. Most of that stuff doesn't "talk" back, but he seems to communicate with it nonetheless.

For animals, I think I've had them "chitter" or make their ordinary animal noises (so a raven might 'caw') or the like.

[Elmoth]

I always thoughts that the ravens of erebor were special in that sense. We also have animals talk and move in their natural fashion, and the character get to understand them while the others can't.