Elephant in the room: Moria

[bluejay]

So I am hoping that eventually there will be an adventure/campaign where you join Balin's quest to retake Moria. That really could be spectacularly epic.

In the short term for a similar "Dwarves retake doomed ancestral home filled with Orcs" there's always the Greydelve in DoM.

[Rich H]

Here's a suggestion...

A Moria boxed set (gotta have one) could bring to a close the TOR line. It would have all the usual great C7 art and writing; filled with the history of the place, maps, underground delving rules (just pay Glor for his work on this!) and all sorts of cool stuff but would come with a campaign set after the Return of the King with the goal being the reclamation of the great city; which is why it would need to be after all the other products had been published.

The campaign could interweave flashbacks to the ill-fated undertaking of Balin with the players using a different set of characters for that campaign but designed in such a way so that events and actions taken by the players within that historic campaign would shape and inform encounters in the current campaign; you could get some really awesome dynamics and clever mechanics at play here and really layer the complexity and depth of the story - sorta mirroring Moria itself.

I think such a mega-setting and campaign presented in a deluxe boxed set would be a fitting end to a great line of books; the only issue being that we'd (hopefully) be waiting years for it.

Does that sound cool (well, the interweaved campaign bit at least, not the waiting!) to anyone else?

[farinal]

It DOES sounds very cool Rich but I personally don't like playing at a post-ROTK timeline. More I thought about this I think it might be more in line with the TOR line to have an Eregion sourcebook that involves the rules and guidelines for a passage through Moria as supplementary information and maybe it's for the best canon wise and theme wise to not put the Moria in the spotlight as a campaign but make it a very, very difficult part of a journey/quest.

[Earendil]

Rich, that does sound cool. But I don't want the TOR line to end, and I simultaneously want to have a Moria book ASAP!

Personally I'd be very happy with a scouting expedition prior to (or as part of) Balin's recolonisation attempt. That could be very cool and as long as the Balrog doesn't turn up, canon can be maintained.

I wouldn't necessarily like a campaign/scenario where you're part of Balin's colony, unless it's very early on and your characters aren't bound to the rest of the colony. Because we know what happens to them in canon, in far more detail than we do with Mirkwood, and unless you break canon that means your characters are going to fail and die no matter what.

[StuartJ]

Here's a suggestion...

A Moria boxed set (gotta have one) could bring to a close the TOR line. It would have all the usual great C7 art and writing; filled with the history of the place, maps, underground delving rules (just pay Glor for his work on this!) and all sorts of cool stuff but would come with a campaign set after the Return of the King with the goal being the reclamation of the great city; which is why it would need to be after all the other products had been published.
...
Does that sound cool (well, the interweaved campaign bit at least, not the waiting!) to anyone else?

If it makes any difference to C7's plans, I'd love this too - and would be happy e.g. to back a Kickstarter for a deluxe boxed set similarly to the recent Cthulhu one (so too for Glorelendil's mooted Shire campaign!).

I imagine though that the more likely outcome will be similar to Erebor, probably combining Moria with Lothlorien because of geographic proximity. Moria might be no more than a single page map with a handful of named locations - even though giving an impression of complexity and scale, like the one for Erebor. Still, that could still work well enough for something like Glorelendil's delving rules - and I'm sure I'd still buy it soon enough!

[Rich H]

Rich, that does sound cool. But I don't want the TOR line to end, and I simultaneously want to have a Moria book ASAP!

Agreed! I was having a little perverse fun with my comments/suggestion in that regard.

Personally I'd be very happy with a scouting expedition prior to (or as part of) Balin's recolonisation attempt. That could be very cool and as long as the Balrog doesn't turn up, canon can be maintained.

I wouldn't necessarily like a campaign/scenario where you're part of Balin's colony, unless it's very early on and your characters aren't bound to the rest of the colony. Because we know what happens to them in canon, in far more detail than we do with Mirkwood, and unless you break canon that means your characters are going to fail and die no matter what.

I don't have a problem with failure, or a doomed campaign, although I can see why others would. I find the journey and the detail of how it happens to be more intriguing than success or failure; it would be grim though, more so than Darkening of Mirkwood where at least your characters can survive and certain outcomes do feel like success. However, do remember that I suggested it as part of another campaign where actions in the historic one affected/informed the other; in that respect I think it's fine to have such a campaign only result in degrees of failure as it's being used as support for the other main campaign and lead to success, or greater success, in that one. Which would mean that the overall story would result in the PCs triumphing in the goal to reclaim Moria. I think that would create a pretty cool interwoven narrative which could work at a meta and gaming level as well as a story and plot one.

[Glorelendil]

When I started trying to write a moria campaign, my premise was that Dain (and others) are opposed to the effort, and Balin hires the heroes to scout things out. The LM & players would have to be willing to risk a change in canon, though, depending on the outcome.

[Earendil]

However, do remember that I suggested it as part of another campaign where actions in the historic one affected/informed the other; in that respect I think it's fine to have such a campaign only result in degrees of failure as it's being used as support for the other main campaign and lead to success, or greater success, in that one. Which would mean that the overall story would result in the PCs triumphing in the goal to reclaim Moria. I think that would create a pretty cool interwoven narrative which could work at a meta and gaming level as well as a story and plot one.

Sorry, Rich, I wasn't clear enough. I was actually referring to bluejay saying, "I am hoping that eventually there will be an adventure/campaign where you join Balin's quest to retake Moria." That's not something I would be keen on as such, but I think your interwoven 4th Age/flashback campaign is a great idea!

I don't have a problem with failure, or a doomed campaign, although I can see why others would. I find the journey and the detail of how it happens to be more intriguing than success or failure; it would be grim though, more so than Darkening of Mirkwood where at least your characters can survive and certain outcomes do feel like success.

Exactly. In DoM your characters can mitigate the bad stuff that happens, and even potentially save the Woodmen to an extent. I think it might be difficult to persuade players to play a campaign where failure and death are certain. A one-off scenario like that would be fine, but a campaign would be too grim IMO. Not bad, just not much fun to play through.

[Earendil]

When I started trying to write a moria campaign, my premise was that Dain (and others) are opposed to the effort, and Balin hires the heroes to scout things out. The LM & players would have to be willing to risk a change in canon, though, depending on the outcome.

I remember this being suggested long ago, possibly by you. Yes, i think it's what i would do. And if written carefully, it could stay within canon. The Balrog would prettty much have to be asleep or otherwise unavailable, for example! (TOR sometimes stretches canon a little, e.g. making Radagast a leader of men, but finds ways not to break it, like Radagast's people are killed/dispersed and he goes off the deep end a bit.)

[Glorelendil]

When I started trying to write a moria campaign, my premise was that Dain (and others) are opposed to the effort, and Balin hires the heroes to scout things out. The LM & players would have to be willing to risk a change in canon, though, depending on the outcome.

I remember this being suggested long ago, possibly by you. Yes, i think it's what i would do. And if written carefully, it could stay within canon. The Balrog would prettty much have to be asleep or otherwise unavailable, for example! (TOR sometimes stretches canon a little, e.g. making Radagast a leader of men, but finds ways not to break it, like Radagast's people are killed/dispersed and he goes off the deep end a bit.)

Maybe. The Balrog might work behind the scenes, or never be fully visible. Or Balin may just refuse to believe the heroes. Perhaps everybody things the heroes are mad. Or somehow they are discredited. (In my plot there's a NPC who is more than a bit mad himself; maybe he...for reasons of his own...tells a dramatically different story and people aren't sure who to believe.) Or maybe the heroes simply don't return.