Elephant in the room: Moria

[fjw70]

Ever since I've been thinking about Moria I've sort of assumed that the Balrog figures into it, but reading the last few posts that's taken a new turn for me:

Since everybody knows there's a Balrog in Moria, he (she? it?) might be most effective narratively by not even showing up. That is, if everybody is just waiting and waiting and waiting with their breath held to turn the next corner and face a Balrog, then the Balrog has done his job without even getting off the couch.

Not quite sure how to make that work in practice, but it's conceivable. You'd need another big villain, but that could simply be the Balrog's chief lieutenant (and his heavies).

I am very amused by the thought of the Balrog sitting on a couch Al Bundy style (I.e. Beer in one hand and the other in his pants while he watches TV).

[atgxtg]

Ever since I've been thinking about Moria I've sort of assumed that the Balrog figures into it, but reading the last few posts that's taken a new turn for me:

Since everybody knows there's a Balrog in Moria, he (she? it?) might be most effective narratively by not even showing up. That is, if everybody is just waiting and waiting and waiting with their breath held to turn the next corner and face a Balrog, then the Balrog has done his job without even getting off the couch.

Not quite sure how to make that work in practice, but it's conceivable. You'd need another big villain, but that could simply be the Balrog's chief lieutenant (and his heavies).

I think Falenthal is onto something with the Eye of Sauron rules. You could have something called a Danger or Threat Rating. It could work kinda like Shadow does. When the heroes do thing that could attract attention (making noise, or light, or dropping pebbles down a deep well), the Threat Rating goes up.

I think that no one living in Middle Earth actually knows that "Durin's Bane" it a Balrog (yeah, we all know, but nobody in Middle Earth has read the books), so an LM could make things interesting by creating some sort of (relatively) lesser baddie that the heroes might assume to have been Durin's Bane. And that could really shock the players. With Mria being so vast, there could be a lot of really nasty things in the shadows. I could see a small fire drake finding a way in and making himself a lair. Sleeping for years and years...until somebody comes blundering in with a torch.


Or, if the LM is really nasty, what if the Balrog that Gandal fought was the Lieutenant?

[Otaku-sempai]

As we wait for a Moria sourcebook, I thought I'd post Daniel Reeve's map of Moria.



Click here for an expandable version: http://www.imaginaryatlas.com/wp-conten ... /moria.jpg

[Terisonen]

It's fun and great to see, but nearly useless IMO. I'm not a great fan of mapping and trap in RPG. Tolkien never give an acute description of Moria. Moria must remain a great unknown pit with countless ways, bridges, chasms, staircases without any map More so a theater of the mind.

[Falenthal]

What's interesting of this map is the "main path" followed by the Fellowship that crosses Moria from one side of the Misty Mountains to the other.

And it's very beautiful.

[Otaku-sempai]

It's fun and great to see, but nearly useless IMO. I'm not a great fan of mapping and trap in RPG. Tolkien never give an acute description of Moria. Moria must remain a great unknown pit with countless ways, bridges, chasms, staircases without any map More so a theater of the mind.

Any gaming map of Moria is going to be mostly invented. I don't see how that makes one less than useful, at least in the short-term, for someone's game. I know that some folks have expressed an interest in running a game in the setting of Khazad-dûm during the period of Balin's colony.

[Glorelendil]

It's fun and great to see, but nearly useless IMO. I'm not a great fan of mapping and trap in RPG. Tolkien never give an acute description of Moria. Moria must remain a great unknown pit with countless ways, bridges, chasms, staircases without any map More so a theater of the mind.

Any gaming map of Moria is going to be mostly invented. I don't see how that makes one less than useful, at least in the short-term, for someone's game. I know that some folks have expressed an interest in running a game in the setting of Khazad-dûm during the period of Balin's colony.

Oh, but as much as I love looking at the maps myself (and absolutely adore the example above), I don't think having a "map" of Moria works with TOR. The dungeon-crawl needs to be abstracted. This was the reason I originally started tilting at the windmill of rules for Delving...to evoke the epic grandeur and terror of Moria, without mapping anything. I still believe it can be done.

All it takes is two deck of cards, polyhedral dice representing any three consecutive primes, a board shaped like a mobius band, and whatever pocket of N-dimensional space you have laying around, where N is 5 or greater. A live flounder would help, but isn't essential.

[Angelalex242]

I'd assume that the best way to deal with Moria is: You want to find mithril, mine some, and get out before you get killed. Doing this during Balin's occupation makes the most sense. However, the Balrog didn't wipe out Balin personally. Didn't need to. "An orc shot him from behind a stone...we slew the orc, but many more..."

I think the Balrog got off its rear end cause it sensed Gandalf up there and felt like throwing down.

[Otaku-sempai]

Oh, but as much as I love looking at the maps myself (and absolutely adore the example above), I don't think having a "map" of Moria works with TOR. The dungeon-crawl needs to be abstracted. This was the reason I originally started tilting at the windmill of rules for Delving...to evoke the epic grandeur and terror of Moria, without mapping anything. I still believe it can be done.

Sure, I'll grant you all of that. However, it can still be nice to have a general lay-out as a reference for the setting, just as it's good to have maps of Dale, Erebor, Lake-town, the Wood-elves' caverns, etc.

[Glorelendil]

Oh, but as much as I love looking at the maps myself (and absolutely adore the example above), I don't think having a "map" of Moria works with TOR. The dungeon-crawl needs to be abstracted. This was the reason I originally started tilting at the windmill of rules for Delving...to evoke the epic grandeur and terror of Moria, without mapping anything. I still believe it can be done.

Sure, I'll grant you all of that. However, it can still be nice to have a general lay-out as a reference for the setting, just as it's good to have maps of Dale, Erebor, Lake-town, the Wood-elves' caverns, etc.

Oh, agreed. Have a map that shows the various "regions" and how they interconnect, with approximate travel times between them. So in that sense it's more like a map of Wilderland or Eriador than Dale or Erebor.

(Which, by astonishing coincidence, is how every revision of my Delving rules have worked.)