Tolkien has several powerful friendships develop across the course of either the Hobbit or LotR. Friendships that perplex and even annoy others.Glorelendil wrote:That's certainly logical (in a weird RPG-only sense) but I believe what Stormcrow is saying...and if he isn't then I am...is that it's not very Tolkien-esque.Deadmanwalking wrote:
Well, by the second or third adventure, I'd expect that friendship alone would do this job. I mean, Companies are supposed to be close personal friends, and if your friends are gonna go do something dangerous, I'd expect you to go along. So...motivate two or three, or even one if they're the right one, and you've got the rest by proxy. Plus anyone who's a Wanderer is pretty much in as soon as there's a trip to go on.
And yeah, the group I'm in have pretty much become professional adventurers at this point. We just completed Tales From Wilderland (plus bits of DoM) and at the point where you're basically agents of Radagast and are personally asked to perform investigations by kings upon occasion...I think that makes us adventurers. I think that's actually a pretty likely outcome if campaigns continue long enough. I mean, you wind up getting a certain reputation if you save entire communities from attack and the like enough times and people come to you when there are problems of a similar scale.
For example, once Sam and Frodo take off, the company doesn't exactly disperse immediately. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Merry and Pip remain the company, even as the Ringbearer and Sam have ditched them, and Boromir betrayed them all (driving off Frodo) and dying for it (at the hands of Orcs, not the company).
Merry and Pip have no reason to remain with the company other than having befriended Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. They already have "failed the quest"... and they most certainly should find comfort of home preferable, and they really don't believe until later that Hobbits matter much (At least, not until after Rohan, IIRC)...
And both are young, brash, and rather prone to self-aggrandizents, so its not even obviously seeking safety in numbers...
Adventuring companies provide multiple benefits: stories and songs to share at home, treasures to spend, and trusted companions for the road. Even if the character isn't motivated per se by the adventure's pretext, being able to benefit along the way and be benefit, in a society where social debt is the norm, rather than fiscal debt... that's a wealth right there.
Only the first adventure needs to be a shared hook. After that, the promise of reciprocity and trust should be enough, provided later adventures hook different characters. The debts of honor and the duty of reciprocity are a real and tangible force for maintaining a company...
The scholar goes not because he knows himself to be gaining from this trip, but because he knows his knowledge will be useful to the wanderer, and that it indebts the wanderer to him for his expedition to the old ruins planned for the next year... but the treasure from it also helps his cause for going the next near to the ruins...