After the Folkmoot

[Arkat]

*This contains spoilers for Darkening of Mirkwood *

So my campaign is right now dealing with the fallout of the Folkmoot at Rhosgobel. And it has turned out to be a proper mess. Mogdred’s demands were turned down, in no small part due to the player characters’ efforts. They were very vocal about rejecting Mogdred’s demands and even managed to insult him personally in the process. But wait, it gets worse!: In an earlier adventure the PCs allied themselves with a clan of Wild Men of Mirkwood (Long story short: They liberated the clan from their arachnid “gods” and promised to protect the clan in exchange for the wild men serving as guides for the trade route the players wanted to establish through The Narrows). The players even managed to get the folkmoot to bless the alliance since it would ease the communications with Sunstead. In the time since the moot a very angry Mogdred has been busy enforcing his claim on southern mirkwood and the narrows, and in the process exterminating/driving away the wild men clans. And in last night’s session representatives from the wild men spoke before the council of elders in Woodland hall demanding that they stick to their vows of friendship and help them against Mogdred’s warriors. So what are you going to do: go to war against Mogdred to defend a wild man clan or break your promise? In the end the elders decided to swallow the Shadow and deny the request. Now the players have to decide if they want to stick to the elders’ decision or keep their personal promises to the wild men.

I swear, if Sauron had declared himself already they would probably have heard his gleeful laughter all the way from Barad Dur. And while the campaign might implode before we get started properly, it is going to be a fun ride.

So what happened after the folk moot in your campaigns? I’m especially interested in hearing what happened in campaigns were Mogdred was turned down.

[Falenthal]

In my opinion, Mogdred can be much more fun if rejected from the Moot than if accepted.

My advise would be to play him grey and bitter, not a dark, evil minion of Sauron.

The way I picture him, he was a brilliant boy among the Woodmen, the heir to a great chieftain, and a great warrior himself. And with that future ahead, Sauron caught him and broke him.

He now tries to fit again in society, but his life has been broken, and he doesn't know how to be a good man anymore. Show him as the kind of guy who builds a façade of despise and violence, because he wants to have friends and laugh like before, but doesn't know how to do it anymore.

He wants to belong (and return) to the Woodmen, but he's not a Woodman anymore.
He'd like to confront those who made him suffer (Sauron and his minions), but Mogdred himself has done very wrong things that he can't forgive himself.
And the more the Woodmen reject him, the lonelier (and bitterer) he feels.
He has the martial force to resist orcs, but not the moral one, and that is what he is looking for, although he'll never ask for it. If the players are able to see through his outer appearance of self-sufficience, they might be able to see the scared kid he still is, longing for his father's approval and love.

Don't make him ally with the orcs and the Nazgûl right away once Sauron reveals himself. Mogdred is trying, with the little social abilities he still has, to belong to the Free People and be forgiven of his past crimes (he goes to the Folk-moot, and also travels to Lake-town to offer his help in rebuilding the Old Forest Road [see Murder in Lake-town adventure in DoM]), and maybe, if all his clumsy offers are rejected, he'll decide to resist the darkening by himself (thus leading all his people to a certain death) before submitting himself again under the thumb of the Dark Lord's minions.

There's an adventure (I can't recall exactly which) where a group of Woodmen with the PCs among them are attacked by orcs. Suddenly, Mogdred's men appear and drive the orcs away, scaring them... without killing any one of the creatures. That's the spirit with Mogdred: he won't choose anyone's side but his own. He'll try to resist the lure of darkness, but on the other hand he knows he belongs there more than to his long past bright side.

[Arkat]

Those are great pieces of advice. Thank you! I agree that rejecting him is a much more interesting option.

And it fits with how I see him. He is not yet a villain (and might never be if he is handled correctly), but he is a very proud man. In my campaign he'll avoid antagonizing the woodmen unless sorely provoked. He will enforce his claim to rule southern mirkwood without acting against his neighbours in the north. But at the same time he want them to realise the mistake they made when they denied his requests. He still wants to join forces with the woodmen, but now they'll have to beg for it. I'm considering using a variant of Words of The Wise at a later point where the woodmen get to choose between asking his help or face the enemy alone. And then there is the wonderful tension in Ingomer's relationship with Mogdred. While Ingomer supported the decision to deny Mogdred, anyone who talks too harshly about Mogdred will notice Ingomer growing colder with them.

What a fantastic tragedy!

[Elmoth]

He can also recruit some of the wildmen communities to his side. He also needs to populate the area that he wants to dominate after all. They might become way less welcoming in the future, and open up movement and trade routes for him instead the woodmen and the fellowship. Shifting alliances et al.

[Earendil]

I haven't run any of Darkening, so can't really give you any specific advice. But I just wanted to say i thought this sounded great, and I really hope when I do eventually run it my game will be as interesting!

I think whichever way the heroes jump now, there should be consequences. If they defy the Woodmen council and Mogdred, they'll obviously make an enemy of him, and the Woodmen may well refuse to help them in future. (Or they may agree to help but at a heavy cost...) And if they betray the Wild Men they'll get Shadow points, and perhaps a reputation for being untrustworthy. And of course the Wild Men may try to take revenge!

I think from a Tolkien point of view, betrayal is the worse option in the long run. But it might not seem that way initially, and there should be pressure to go along with their leaders. There are several instances in LOTR of people disobeying orders to do the right thing, and being vindicated (but not necessarily let off scot free).

[Falenthal]

I'm considering using a variant of Words of The Wise at a later point where the woodmen get to choose between asking his help or face the enemy alone.

That sounds great and exactly the kind of interesting situation that might arise from the Folk-moot decision!

Also, think that if the players are becoming the heroes of the woodmen lands, then Mogdred might grow really jealous of "those strangers that stole my rightful place at the side of my father". He could accept helping the Woodmen only if the heroes sacrifice something themselves.

[Elmoth]

I'm considering using a variant of Words of The Wise at a later point where the woodmen get to choose between asking his help or face the enemy alone.

That sounds great and exactly the kind of interesting situation that might arise from the Folk-moot decision!

Also, think that if the players are becoming the heroes of the woodmen lands, then Mogdred might grow really jealous of "those strangers that stole my rightful place at the side of my father". He could accept helping the Woodmen only if the heroes sacrifice something themselves.

Love it!

[Falenthal]

An option would be that Mogdred accepts to help the woodmen only if the heroes are assigned under his own command.

If you play an Encounter with him, some of the outcomes might be:
1-4: Accepts to allow some of his soldiers to be hired for an amount of Treasure. (You can even assign Dagmar, from "The Wizard's Man" as the commander, if you want to use known NPCs). [That can gain the Free People a degree of victory if you're using some Battle Rules like this ones viewtopic.php?f=56&t=3519&hilit=mass+combat]
5-7: Mogdred goes himself for a price, with some of his best men, but demands that the heroes stay under his command.
8+: As 5-7, but only demands that his men loot the orcs corpses once the battle is over, before the woodmen burn them.

He would, of course, put them in difficult fights during the defense.
If you portray him as a suicidal guy, with a deadly desire for attunement, he could even lead the players to some unwinnable confrontation against a Shadow leader or a group of Trolls. The players might disobey his orders and let him die or drag him out of a certain death.

[Majestic]

Great discussion!

One important thing I'd like to point out is the note at the bottom of page 60 (of Darkening); it's something you might want to keep in mind as you weave Mogdred into your campaign.

You can read about how my group has handled the character on the thread with our adventure summaries; Mogdred himself only appears once you get to the last page (6) of the thread (so it should be easy to catch-up on the stuff with him in it).

I didn't have The Darkening of Mirkwood when I started my campaign, so I played through Tales first (after doing Words of the Wise and The Marsh-Bell); I finally started incorporating Darkening (and weaving it in alongside Tales) towards the end of playing through Tales from Wilderland. Because of this, chronologically the Folk Moot had already passed when we got into Darkening proper.

So I just figured the Folk Moot out "off screen", factoring in what the various participants and representatives would do. The gathered elders and leaders in my campaign ended up rejecting Mogdred (which is pretty much what I figure my PCs would have done anyway). It's then been interesting to see how things have played out since then, as my players started with that as a backdrop (one of the PCs is a prominent member of the Woodmen community; in fact he's practically become their overall leader, and likely will be when Ingomer passes away).

So when the Council of the North occurred, the PCs literally stood and chastised Mogdred when he made his appeal. At that point, just a few years ago in the campaign, they were firmly in the "anti-Mogdred" camp. But then things have happened, even with suspicions of Mogdred's men making raids on the travellers between Western Mirkwood and Sunstead, that the PCs realized the wiser course would be to have Mogdred as an ally. They decided that he still is a Woodman, and that all of the Free Peoples should be united against the Shadow. I should point out that they came to this conclusion on their own, with no real "encouragement" from the LM.

So in a recent adventure the PCs went to Tyrant's Hill and tried to extend an olive branch to their former enemy. They seem to have patched things up somewhat, and in our latest session, when the woman Athala wanted revenge on Modgred, the PCs were able to talk her down, and - though they are suspicious and not completely trusting him - they met up with the man again (at a neutral location, arranged by Radagast) and listened patiently as Mogdred made excuses (about his involvement in the slaying of Athala's parents two decades ago, and the raids on the villages in the East Nether Vales).

So they've got a tenuous peace with Mogdred at this point. That after having him as an enemy, more or less, for quite some time.

[Ernst-Jan]

Mogdred is War-Leader of Woodmen in my game, as of last session, and has managed to do so even when the Companions had directly witnessing him involved in some very shady things (the Companions aren't in a very favourable standing with the Woodmen either). So that's how wrong things can go.