Darkening of Mirkwood Assessment

[Elmoth]

OK, now this will sound totally uninformed to you all, bit not having the supplements, here it comes.

I am not a huge fan of the rules of TOR, nor is my troupe. To each one his own, but my troupe does not find the rules that appealing. OTOH we are huge LOTR nerds and have been playing around it for decades; it is our default gaming setting. I have the basic TOR book and find it inspiring. Now I am considering buying a second supplement for the ideas alone. As I see it I have 2 options: Darkening of Mirkwood or the previous Heart of the Wild

Heart of the Wild is a description of the diverse areas alone or does it contain story ideas?

Darkening is listed as a saga. Is it a collection of adventures or story seeds and a storyline iof what happens in the diverse regions at any given moment. A combo of both?

If you had to get ONLY ONE of them for inspiration and story seeds, which one would it be?

Thx
Xavi

[Yusei]

They really go together. Seeing as Darkenings often refers to Heart of the Wild, I suppose if you can only get one of them, you should pick HotW, but Darkenings contains more "seeds".

Have you considered Tales from Wilderlands?

[Elmoth]

Not really. A collection of adventures is not what we are after.

At what "level" does DoW refer to Heart of the Wild? Is it important or is it just a reference to a NPC or detailed location from time to time?

[Valarian]

Heart of the Wild (HotW) is a sourcebook for the Anduin valley region in Rhovanion. It covers from the Grey Mountains down to southern Mirkwood. Laketown is covered in a supplement sold with the GM screen. Dale and Erebor are yet to be covered (officially).

Darkening of Mirkwood (DoM) is a timeline from 2947 to 2977 TA. It gives events for each year (adventure seeds), a more detailed adventure outline (Adventuring Phase) and End of Year events (more possible adventure seeds). It doesn't detail the areas of Rhovanion (that's in Heart of the Wild). It repeats NPCs and adversaries from HotW in the appendixes, where they are used in the Fellowship phase adventures.

If I were to get only one, as a LotR fan rather than TOR, I'd get Heart of the Wild.

[Glorelendil]

I'm still trying to figure out how to reply "Get them all!" within the parameters of the question.

(I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday and told the manager they should move TOR from the RPG shelf to the Tolkien endcap, explaining that Tolkien fans will love it reading it even if they don't play RPGs (yet). She said that all merchandising decisions come down form corporate. :-/)

[Elmoth]

Heart of the Wild (HotW) is a sourcebook for the Anduin valley region in Rhovanion. It covers from the Grey Mountains down to southern Mirkwood. Laketown is covered in a supplement sold with the GM screen. Dale and Erebor are yet to be covered (officially).

Darkening of Mirkwood (DoM) is a timeline from 2947 to 2977 TA. It gives events for each year (adventure seeds), a more detailed adventure outline (Adventuring Phase) and End of Year events (more possible adventure seeds). It doesn't detail the areas of Rhovanion (that's in Heart of the Wild). It repeats NPCs and adversaries from HotW in the appendixes, where they are used in the Fellowship phase adventures.

If I were to get only one, as a LotR fan rather than TOR, I'd get Heart of the Wild.

Heh. From your description I am tending to draw the opposite conclusion: get DoW The storyline is cool and can be easily extrapolated as snippets of info, even if we are playing somewhere else, don't you think? The adventure seeds are likely to be useful somewhere else as well.

[Beleg]

Just want to chime in here and say I read the majority of the book last night after receiving my pdf and I'm amazed. Totally worth the wait. I love how well it captures just how.. well, futile the situation is for the free people. I also am particularly impressed with the Beorn adventure section: something I would never have thought of and yet makes perfect sense.

Keep up the great work guys

[Mim]

Beleg: I concur - The Darkening of Mirkwood is a beautiful book!

Elmoth: Since you're playing another system & have to choose only one, I'd recommend HofW because you can convert the characters & locations into your system. That said, however, you'll have a difficult time without DoM because of the plots presented therein. These chapters read like stories that will inspire you, & if there's anyway you can afford to do so, you may wish to consider purchasing both books.

[Mytholder]

Also, I felt that "Nine In The Hall" didn't have enough magic and creepiness regarding the Hall of Ghosts -- and what's Raegenhere's evil plot, anyway? Did they really just force him to randomly kill everyone who comes to his house instead of being a real threat? All of the other characters were great, but the Host himself was more than slightly disappointing for me...

I've got two answers - the prosaic and the rhetorical.

Rhetorical first - why does a Wight have to have an evil plot? The Barrow-Wights weren't secretly scheming to infiltrate Bree or anything. Some forms of evil just despise all that lives and laughs, and strikes when opportunity arises. The Host might "just" be a serial killer. The bodies in the thatch suggest that these aren't the first guests he's murdered over the winter.

Prosaic - depending on the actions of the players back in 2951, Ceawin might or might not be the Host, so the adventure of Nine in the Hall can't depend on Ceawin being present. The host therefore has to be left a little indeterminate, as he might or might not be Ceawin, and Ceawin carries a lot more baggage and continuity than the alternative candidate. I could have rejiggered things so it was always Ceawin, or never Ceawin, but that would have meant breaking some of my own informal rules when designing the storyline.

In other words, it's a fair point, but there are other factors at play that have to be considered.

[doctheweasel]

Also, I felt that "Nine In The Hall" didn't have enough magic and creepiness regarding the Hall of Ghosts -- and what's Raegenhere's evil plot, anyway? Did they really just force him to randomly kill everyone who comes to his house instead of being a real threat? All of the other characters were great, but the Host himself was more than slightly disappointing for me...

I've got two answers - the prosaic and the rhetorical.

Rhetorical first - why does a Wight have to have an evil plot? The Barrow-Wights weren't secretly scheming to infiltrate Bree or anything. Some forms of evil just despise all that lives and laughs, and strikes when opportunity arises. The Host might "just" be a serial killer. The bodies in the thatch suggest that these aren't the first guests he's murdered over the winter.

Prosaic - depending on the actions of the players back in 2951, Ceawin might or might not be the Host, so the adventure of Nine in the Hall can't depend on Ceawin being present. The host therefore has to be left a little indeterminate, as he might or might not be Ceawin, and Ceawin carries a lot more baggage and continuity than the alternative candidate. I could have rejiggered things so it was always Ceawin, or never Ceawin, but that would have meant breaking some of my own informal rules when designing the storyline.

In other words, it's a fair point, but there are other factors at play that have to be considered.

What is great about the manner in which you wrote the campaign, is that there is the mostly implicit (though sometimes explicit) idea that if something that ties in with the players' story works better than what is written, then use that instead. Almost nothing breaks if elements are changed, and it is often encouraged.

Bravo, sir.