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I was curious about the early adventure, when the Old Master of Esgaroth took/stole a sizeable part of the Smaug-treasure. We tried to play it out this weekend. I doesn't have the true Tolkien feel, but is rather a chance for players to play questionable heroes, with a little bit of "Evil Mastermind-theme".

I tried to write my own script/adventure/ideas on how this could have happened and let players write up new simplified characters that they could play on a "one-off-adventure", using less a mechanic-oriented rule set and more narrative-oriented one. (Fate Accelerated).
On a general level, it was a narrow success. The players had fun and hope to meet the antagonist who participated in the act,, when they play their old PC-characters. Nice way to let the players know more about the plot and how the story unfolds, because not only will they be able to tell rumour from truth about the theft of the Esgaroth, they will know everything about it as they where the once who did it, (although they did it as other characters in the world)...

Act I (When: 2944?)
Somehow they are contracted for a special job, regarding the safety of Esgaroth, through important channels. They are sworn into secrecy and meet a person - the Right Hand of the councilor. He/she leads them to a unfinished house in the residential district. Here, in the shadows of the poorly lit room, they meet a cloaked figure. His name is of no importance, but the task he has for them, is. This person, claiming to be close an agent of the Spymaster wants to stop a plot hatched by the spawn of Evil. He's wearing a ring that players with a good lore-roll, determines belongs councillors. Greater degrees of success reveal it's in fact an honorary ring given from the Master of Esgaroth himself. Perhaps the Heroes are dealing with the secretive Spymaster himself? Encourage that not all heroes can be tasked to do great things openly, that some deeds needs discretion but these tasks are no less worthy.

Plot
So, the Councilor tells them: In less than X nights, agents of the Shadow would try to sieze the treasury/funds that Esgaroth need to pay for construction of the new town. The PCs are unique individuals, not heroes per se, but able-bodied people who could get things done. The heroes will not be publicly praised if they succeed in their mission, but they will "not want for anything" when he has rewarded them. (This calls for a bit of genre-blindness, as this is obviously something a evil person would say.)
Foreshadowing: The Right Hand of the Councillor that contracts them should somehow be made important. A secretive Elf, wearing armour of finer than usual make(?), having a calm demeanor and a battle scar? (Basically create your own Henchman. What would you like - dexterious dual-wielding human,, what's your flavour?)

If the PCs question why they don't do something more openly, tell them that the official channels are being watched and if they act through these, the forces of Evil will know that their plan has failed,, and strike at a better moment. So to root out the evil, they have to invite this to happen. Thus, the heroes will need to intervene. The Cloaked Figure assures them that he will not site idle himself, but never the less, the heroes will need to come up and execute a great plan to stop the forces of evil.

Act II Preparations
Two days and nights of preparation. Options:
*Move the treasury? (trickery) Using diplomacy/cunning/stealh to replace treasure with shiny worthless waste (perhaps paying a visit to the merchants district and contract shady smiths)
*Set an ambush for the bandits/agents, whoever come to take the treasury. Or booby-trap the treasury-room?
*Track the agents from afar and strike as they return from a successful theft? (Spies on the roof tops, signaling with sound,, perhaps letting the City Watch know what's about to go down?)
*Hopefully the heroes will be creative and hatch a plan that could work. Let them really invest in the plan and stress that it is up to them to make this right. (with this in mind, the next acts should be concidered rail-roading the plot)

Act III - Showdown
Depending on the player choices,,, this will unfold differently.
*If they set up ambush,, the will be a showdown. A straw-evil crew tries to break in to the treasury and this opposition should be easy. This should be rag-tag redshirts/minions that surrender/drop after little difficulty.
*Attacking the thieves after their job is done. Similarly easy fight.
*If they coordinate with the City Watch somehow,, their plans will be foiled. All man-power will be needed as a big fire has erupted in the Merchants District. The long term will be negligible but for an hour or two, the watch will have their hands full. Meanwhile near the treasury......
*If they move the treasure to "secure" location, que: fire! Meanwhile, go to act IV.

Act IV - Rendez-vous after the theft
If the PCs failed to defend the real treasure and the thieves won the fight, the heroes will be branded villains, working with the Enemy and will have to flee the city. Go to epilgue.

If they successfully defended the treasure, they will be rewarded for their bravery but questioned and tried due to circumstances revealed in the epilogue.

If the PCs moved the real treasure to the Guilded Boat,, or similar secure location, covertly or openly, the real fight will be here. If they choose different approach,, let them roll some kind of Insight/Awarness-roll during the night, to give them opportunity to realize what's happening with the Guilded Boat and as a LM, I encourage you to let them be able to catch up with the boat.

The real treasure is in fact on the Guilded Boat and when everything seems safe and secure, a gang of real bandits will emerge from the deck + the Shadowy Figure with the ring that tasked them with this. He will unveil himself: Behold the Old Master of Esgaroth. He will say evil things like: "Without the heroes, he could never have done it" (+Evil laughter if you're in the mood). Continue: "Unfortunately, they have fulfilled their purpose and will need to be dealt with. Any last words?" Chance for a bit of banter with the enemy before the final fight begins.
He sends his goons on them, At least 2 per hero, maybe a few extra with bow and arrow. At an opportune moment, let the Henchman from Act I appear. Be creative with his/her henchman-perks. Snakelike-speed is a given, but what else? Is it the cunning elf-lights that distracts one or two of the PCs while the Henchman try to gang up on the weakest PC? If it could be made so, that the PCs have to coordinate their attacks to battle this one Henchman, that would be great. Design the Henchman with the PCs in mind. This should be the toughest fight.

Should they win, the Old Master will try to persuade the heroes to turn on each other, promising to share the riches to who-ever is left standing. Here you can talk with the PCs. How villainous are the heroes really? Do they want to bite on this bait?

Resolution from the boss-fight
If you really want the heroes to have a chance to win, let them decide what to do with the Old Master. Bring him to justice? Kill him on the spot? Join him? If they talk about bringing the Old Master to justice, the old Master should point out that it's an excellent idea, or use counter-psychology and try to persuade them from it.

Epilogue
And so the treasury of Esgaorth was stolen. By the Old Master? By the "heroes"? By both?
Did the heroes turn to evil? Then they could introduced as arch-villains for the real PCs to fight against.
If they failed and survived they could still be in this world, now you have characters in the world that the players can relate to.
If they died, well, such is ...rpg-life.


What do you guys think? What should I keep, what needs to be improved? What should be cut away?

The old Master had come to a bad end. Bard had given him much gold for the help of the Lake-People, but being of the kind that easily catches such disease he fell under the dragon-sickness, and took most of the gold and fled with it, and died of starvation in the Waste, deserted by his companions.
-The Hobbit, Chapter 19 "The Last Stage" page 286

If you wanted more of a Tolkien-esque feel for the adventure I would recommend Lore-masters look to Tolkien's Silmarillion, the Poetic Edda (from which Tolkien himself drew inspiration), or Melville's Moby-Dick. All of these tell the tales of tragic heroes who are destroyed by their own Pride, Greed, or desire for Vengeance. These themes are prevalent in Tolkien's work and The One Ring as well.

Rather than make the Master a complete villain, the idea would be to make him at least somewhat sympathetic, but clearly suffering from the last stages of dragon-sickness. The player characters would not necessarily need to be Treasure-seekers themselves. A Warden could easily be the Master's sworn protector, a Scholar could be his steward. etc., but they all should have some sort of loyalty or obligation to the old Master.

The adventure would focus heavily on the Shadow Weakness of each of the characters and present numerable opportunities for them to gain Shadow Points as the curse of the treasure takes hold and sows discord between the companions. I would personally recommend starting each character with a Permanent Shadow point to given the Lore-master some Degenerations to play with early on. (Perhaps the first bout of madness the characters suffered was agreeing to steal the treasure in the first place.)

The adventure wold start with the theft of the treasure and escape into Wild. During the flight the Lore-Master could build on the fears that NPCs in the group or even the other characters instead to steal the treasure for themselves, even as the old Master leads to party dealer into the Wastes. (Note passing can instill plenty of paranoia.) The culmination of the adventure would take place once the character reach the point where they can no longer escape with both the treasure of Smaug and their lives.

The players would then need to realize that they must abandon the old Master (and any obligations they have to him) and the treasure, or fall to Madness in the wilderness.

Anyhow this is just my take on the matter. Tragedy can be a challenge and may not be for all game group. If your players enjoy taking part in the story you craft for them, then who am I to argue.

I'd say the treasure isn't inherently evil...PCs could just split it up amongst themselves and spend it all on standing.

There should probably be enough with all of it to get them all to level 2 or even 3 standing in their cultures. Of course, should the gold be cursed in some way, disbursing it throughout their home realms could have a negative effect on the entire realm. Particularly if the Shadow Weaknesses of the realm get triggered...(take the 2 favored callings of the culture, say half of them have manifested shadow weakness, and make 1/4 of the population manifest one brand, another 1/4 the other brand...) Like, Elves are Scholars and Wardens, so Lure of Secrets and Lure of Power both start becoming widespread...

Or maybe the act of giving away that much legendary treasure actually purifies the gold...buying gifts for all sorts of people in one's own culture can't be considered greedy, and so the dragon sickness effect/curse is essentially nullified. It's hard to bring evil out of freely giving stuff away, after all.

Lol @ "the treasure isn't inherently evil....of course it should be cursed in some way"

And I think it is evil to take stolen treasure, especially treasure you help steel, and use it to raise your own standing: more DnD than Tolkien, and no standing should be gained for returning treasure you helped steel; even if you are giving it away.

Depends on if we know it's stealing or not.

The premise is, the evil dude said 'bad guys are plotting to take it, help me defend it.' 'Okay, now help me take it to a safer location.'

No part of that is stealing. We're working for legit authority, in theory.

yes but when you levee him you take the treasure back to lake town or leve it - not use it for your own gain, that is selfish... and, as mentioned before, D and D not Tolkien. Love of treasure is a flaw in his world; if you abandon him AND take off with the treasure you would be worse than the mayor: treacherous and filled with Dragon Sickness...

...justifying it as "my character doesn't realise it's bad" or "but it boosts my character" doesn't stop it being wrong.

Hmmm. You got a point. The correct action is haul the treasure back to lake town. Lake Town DOES still need it.

Láthspell wrote:

The old Master had come to a bad end. Bard had given him much gold for the help of the Lake-People, but being of the kind that easily catches such disease he fell under the dragon-sickness, and took most of the gold and fled with it, and died of starvation in the Waste, deserted by his companions.
-The Hobbit, Chapter 19 "The Last Stage" page 286

I wouldn't want to change that bit of the story. Thus, the treasure get's stolen. The old Master will steal the gold and flee, to ultimately die in the Waste. This is the adventure that deals with HOW that happened, or what happened before the dragon-sickness took his wits completely. My point is that it's really clever to steal the treasure. Did he act alone? Perhaps he needed a distraction or better yet - gullible heroes to do it for him.

Láthspell: Thanks for the hints for further reading on how to LM in ToR. I haven't read Moby Dick and will put it on my list.
On a side note I regard Tolkien as an inventor of the fantasy genre,, since then, lots of people have worked on his foundations and it's come a long way. No harm in using "tropes" that improve the feel of the story. Surely Tolkien would have drawn inspiration from his peers if he would have had some. But I understand that this not the only way to approach Middle Earth and the work of Tolkien.

Láthspell: Your idea for a theme is great! Theme of madness could be introduced gradually and as the story goes on, it becomes more evident that the old Master has lost his marbles. The loyal aides of the Master follow him in his quest to do the right thing, but things start to not-add-up. There is no-one to meet them at the rendez-vous, they move away from sources of water and hunting game, yet the Master pushes on. "Almost there!"
That could actually be a nice adventure to play, while letting the heroes start having dreams about the gold themselves..


The tricky question would be: which one would be more fun to play?

The madness/corrpuption idea is great, but having tried to do that in other games (not TOR) I would advise to thread carefully on this one. It is easy to go overboard and overwhelm the heroes with corruption really fast. This is something that most people I have played with dislike regardless of how cool it is for the setting, so you need to be careful. However, if you can pull it out it will be AMAZING and we want to read about it!

IIRC the Old Master of Laketown is covered in Tales from Wilderland (p147) so if you intend to use Tales you should be aware of that appearance.