Callings and beginning an adventure

[Otaku-sempai]

This I have to say I flat disagree with! His motivation is not being turn into a toad! He hates to leave the shire, and it's only love of Frodo that compels him, but I'm not sure that means he classes as a Warden.

Anyway, it's obviously very subjective. Fun to debate tho!

We also need to account for Sam's desire to see Elves, though he might have been just as happy in that regard if he did not have to leave home to do so.

[Majestic]

My take is that the One Ring itself is what causes its bearer to have the Lure of Power weakness, rather than trying to reverse engineer the particular characters' Callings based on what it caused people to do.

As far as gathering a group of diverse characters and having them swept up in adventure, I like what the adventure "Words of the Wise" suggests, which is to have a 'Gathering of the Five Armies' every five years; the various Free Peoples then send representatives (maybe the more adventurous from amongst them) to continue the camaraderie and bonds of fellowship between their cultures started at the Battle years earlier.

That's how I started up my campaign, and the PCs became friends from then on and continued offering help to the various groups they came across...

[Mim]

One possibility is to change things up from the usual getting everyone together to roll up characters, and instead run a one-on-one introductory adventure with each of your players. This takes time and effort but can be very rewarding. You can develop their family and backgrounds a bit, and then take them from their homes to meet the other companions, in a fashion that fits your style and their vision - a brief adventure geared toward their calling or culture, that sort of thing.

Another possibility is to emphasize a sanctuary as part of the focus of your chronicle. For example, you can tweak the rules a bit by having the heroes start out venturing toward the place, perhaps individually, and then meet and work together to develop the sanctuary. This connects them to the area and the people, which can open-up all types of vistas.

So, in one of my chronicles, The Shadow of the North, the heroes learn that each of them had a family member or friend -- a parent, guardian, servant, etc. -- who collectively formed a company that adventured together to help protect the North. They worked with the Rangers, Wandering Companies, and so forth, from a former Dúnedain watchpost but then mysteriously vanished, for which I intend to use Richard's excellent adventure, What Lies Beneath, from RotN. Should the companions survive and triumph, they can then develop the hold as described in the book, but in addition, seek clues as to the disappearance of their predecessors.

[Mim]

As far as gathering a group of diverse characters and having them swept up in adventure, I like what the adventure "Words of the Wise" suggests, which is to have a 'Gathering of the Five Armies' every five years; the various Free Peoples then send representatives (maybe the more adventurous from amongst them) to continue the camaraderie and bonds of fellowship between their cultures started at the Battle years earlier.

That's how I started up my campaign, and the PCs became friends from then on and continued offering help to the various groups they came across...

This.

[Glorelendil]

I think it's a fun exercise to figure out which Calling Frodo, Bilbo, Boromir etc. is, or (in AiME) to figure Aragorn's class. But really the fact that they don't map 1:1 is just fine with me. Tolkien invokes a number of different motivations...the lust for gold, a hunger for knowledge and old tales, the lure of the open road, the desire to protect that which we love... but he didn't (THANK GOD) assign one to each hero: "Ok, Frodo is the one with Wanderlust, Aragorn is the one who Protects...". The various heroes instead display these motivations in varying amounts at different times. As it should be.

The game is different. As it should be. The authors identify several of the most important themes and then, for the purposes of gameplay, ask us to pick the most important one for our heroes. It doesn't mean our Wanderer can't get a glint in his eye at the rumor of a hoard, or that the Slayer can't be fascinated with an artifact of the First Age.

As for Stormcrow's observation/concern (presented with admirable graciousness in this particular thread), I completely agree with the sentiment. I'm rather tired of the standard RPG trope, of which "Giant Rats in the Tavern Cellar" is perhaps the poster child. I love the idea that players get swept up in an adventure, rather than they go chasing it. But I see that falling to the LM in how he/she implements the game, and to the Players in how they respond to it, not something intrinsic to the mechanics.

Yes, the authors describe Calling as "why you go adventuring", but that doesn't have to be a blunt instrument. It doesn't have to be, "Ok, my Treasure-Hunter is going to head down the Green Dragon and see if there are any rumors of hoards waiting to be plundered..." The adventure can still be something that the hero falls into or is swept up in, and maybe even initially resists (c.f. Hero's Journey, Josef Campbell, Jung, etc.), but then the Calling gives the player a framework for narrating what tips the scales in favor of adventure. In some ways it's like another Trait, but one with some extra baggage.

LMing that sort of adventure takes more work, and it's harder, and I'm totally in favor of it. But it's something that...with this game...should be addressed in the adventures (whether published by C7 or home brewed), not in the rules.

That said, I love game design and would love see a game in which this idea is addressed in the rules.

[Stormcrow]

I'm rather tired of the standard RPG trope, of which "Giant Rats in the Tavern Cellar" is perhaps the poster child. I love the idea that players get swept up in an adventure, rather than they go chasing it. But I see that falling to the LM in how he/she implements the game, and to the Players in how they respond to it, not something intrinsic to the mechanics. LMing that sort of adventure takes more work, and it's harder, and I'm totally in favor of it. But it's something that...with this game...should be addressed in the adventures (whether published by C7 or home brewed), not in the rules.

I agree. But that's part of my issue: the adventures DON'T really support it. For example, every single one of the adventures in Tales From Wilderland could begin with the cliché, "You look like stalwart adventurers..." Tolkien's stories don't start with a search for an acquisition of professional adventurers; most start without such a search, and the prominent one that DOES start with a search doesn't actually GET a professional adventurer, but a hobbit posing as a burglar.

I think the mechanics of the game support Tolkien fairly well. But the authors make no attempt to guide players toward Tolkien-style adventures, and instead write them as bog-standard adventures dressed in Tolkien-style clothes. Matching characters to callings was not the point and was only meant to be an illustration that you can't just point to callings and wipe your hands of it. It IS the LM's job to provide appropriate motivations, and in Tolkien this is hard enough that I don't think even the authors know how to do it, hence the adventurers-for-hire nature of many adventures.

[Glorelendil]

Well, we agree then. (Which means it's time to stock up on canned goods and ammo...)

[cuthalion]

Yes, I think those are some good points Glorelendil. Just to clarify however, I was really trying to begin what I think is a pretty involved discussion, and don't mean to say that it all boils down to the handling of Callings.

I just want to point everyone who is opposing 'changes to mechanics' back to the original post:

My personal feeling is that it would be nice to try and use existing systems (of which I think there are plenty, and that they are very adequate), rather than going down the houseruling route. If needs be, we can always move this thread to that forum if I'm proved wrong.

We all know how the game and original adventures are set up--via the band of adventurers trope--and I think we can all agree that the books do indeed include such archetypes. It's fair to say that Aragorn at least, experiences typical errantries, more like most rpg/One Ring campaigns end up coming off, I think. There's an argument to be made that, outside of places like the shire, this is a more realistic/natural model.

On the other hand, it took the events of the War of the Ring to pull together the fellowship. There being people ready and willing to sign up for fellowships, no questions asked, all over the place, kind of takes away from the charm of that story.

More to the point, the Hobbit and LoTR do include/focus on different models of adventure and heroism, as the main story lines in fact, and I think some players would like ways to achieve the kinds of feelings, challenges and events that those stories model.

So . . . given existing mechanics (backgrounds, callings, kin/heirs, distinctive features, archetypes, patrons, inheritance . . . ), how might we come up with some guidelines for LMs to follow to come up with/modify adventures to evoke these feelings and themes? And don't forget that this kind of tinkering is, after all, highly encouraged in the RAW--all over the place, but see DoM where Hanrahan says in the intro to pick.drop events at will and tailor them to characters. As is the feeling of predestination (see magical treasures in Rivendell for example).

So how do you/we do this, effectively, satisfyingly, repeatably?

That's really the question we're after.

So when you say

LMing that sort of adventure takes more work, and it's harder, and I'm totally in favor of it. But it's something that...with this game...should be addressed in the adventures (whether published by C7 or home brewed), not in the rules.

I agree* **. But it isn't addressed right now in the published adventures--that's the point. And we don't have a model to follow for personal efforts.

So, for example, I'm beginning a campaign with 2 woodmen characters, using Words of the Wise. I like the beginning, but events after the hunt accelerate way too quickly for me (totally appropriate for the con it was used at)--it would be nice if I had a few formulas to riff off of to help me and my players in inventing some scenarios/challenges/relationships that would challenge MY players/characters. To me, Tolkien's characters don't face an option to go make a name for themselves, they are put in peril, they are making hard choices--choices that are big and dramatic, yes, but that are also unique to them (see discussion in thread so far).

Put another way, when Frodo and Sam are sent on their adventure it could only be them. And it has to be them. When characters in Words of the Wise are sent to the Elven king for help, it could essentially be any woodman in the village (worse, any visiting hobbit (!) or elf or dwarf too) that is sent.

How I involve my characters and make them feel invested in events (whether it's a journey or whatever else) surely has to involve looking at the characters themselves--looking at their traits, backgrounds, shadow weaknesses (callings) etc. This isn't about making those systems run the game. It's about using existing details that we have about characters to inform adventures--doesn't that seem reasonable?

Think I've gone on long enough. Though I do really want to get back to brainstorming some actual ideas.

*I think part of what's informing my view here is Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard, which does systematize various hooks that can propel characters into new scenarios. I'm definitely not saying we should import Circles and Nemeses and the like--but I think there are a good number of existing systems which I as an LM would like more prompts to remember to tie in when making choices about an adventure.

**As a separate point, I do think that (rules-based) the [idea of a Companion calling]/[criticism of the everyone has an equal weight, with a Calling and adventurer backstory etc.,] is valid. It's just hard to tell good stories without narrative focus, and I don't think the current rules/adventure hooks encourage focus (I'm not saying they don't allow it, just that they don't encourage it).

[Stormcrow]

Put another way, when Frodo and Sam are sent on their adventure it could only be them. And it has to be them. When characters in Words of the Wise are sent to the Elven king for help, it could essentially be any woodman in the village (worse, any visiting hobbit (!) or elf or dwarf too) that is sent.

I think you've pinned down the heart of the problem here. Adventures in Middle-earth should be deeply personal, but the rules don't really discuss how to make them personal, and many of the published adventures are genericized to fit any group of characters. I completely understand why you'd write adventures this way: you can't tailor an adventure to an audience you don't know.

I can't start this right now in this post (gotta go to work), but it might be instructive to look at each of Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth—including from the Silmarillion—and see how they connect the personal to the epic quest. Special care should be taken to identify the workings of providence or chance, "if chance you call it," for I believe that providence or chance plays a big role in sending people on adventures.

At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice. ‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’