IDEAS: Using Hobbit Tales with TOR

[Eluadin]

Under the Hobbit Tales Sneak Peak thread, we have a number of wonderfully creative and funny suggestions for using HT Cards with TOR alongside the suggestions in the HT Rules. The release being a few weeks behind us, maybe some of them have been play tested and others dreamed to life in the furnace of our imaginative worlds! The time seems right for a topic dedicated to ideas for using Hobbit Tales in a TOR Game.

Maybe we can extract them form the other chatter and begin collecting them here...? How about it my fine lads and lasses...?

Let me offer one I tried recently with mild to moderate success. (Nothing stunning but that rests mostly with the Loremaster's — me — lack of adequate preparation. Ah well, it's still worth mentioning I think!)

In my campaign I have a warden, slayer, wanderer and treasure-hunter. Lore and Riddle figure prominently in game play. The Shadow-lore trait comes up often, and I was looking for a creative way to offer insights gleaned from the Warden's Shadow-lore and the Treasure-hunter's riddling of local legends and hearth-fire tales. Enter HT...!

Before the game session I put together a story-line using five HT cards. Taken together they illuminated some important piece of the main Shadow thread woven into the fabric of the campaign. Also, the five cards provided some insight to the current adventure and player-heroes mission. When a Lore or Riddle task unearthed something about the events plaguing the area, and the Shadow activity in the region I disclosed one of the five cards.

It became a bit of visual/narrative information, a reward of sorts for a superior success or the right invocation of Shadow-lore. The player-heroes began to "see" something unfolding, and part of the adventure became the unknown tale lying hidden in the cards. Also, I had a number of cards that had nothing to do with the campaign. Sometimes I revealed one of these cards for a failed roll or the appearance of an Eye. These cards were meant to confound and confuse, throw the player-heroes of the scent.

The dramatic affect works really well.

Regards,
Scott

[Mim]

This is a great idea Scott. I just received my boxed set & was wondering the same thing. Your idea of presenting the cards, especially as rewards for a superior success, should provide a great link. I'm going to keep this in mind when the time comes to run this game with ToR & see how it goes.

[Eluadin]

This is a great idea Scott. I just received my boxed set & was wondering the same thing. Your idea of presenting the cards, especially as rewards for a superior success, should provide a great link. I'm going to keep this in mind when the time comes to run this game with ToR & see how it goes.

Thanks, another one might be embellishing on the idea of using HT during the Fellowship phase. In the Winter of 2948, my player-heroes disbanded and each spent Year's End amidst family and friends. The Hobbit lasses repaired to the Easterly Inn. Three of the player-heroes had Standing to upkeep, for the hobbits we opted to use HT in place of treasure.

The premise: They corresponded with family and friends in the Shire telling of their tales. Dwarven far-traders carried across the Misty Mountains letters, and trinkets gleaned from their adventures. Then, we played HT where the success of their HT, and the amount of Cheers tokens counted towards the Standing Upkeep of the year's end Fellowship phase. Instead of collecting Treasure and resolving Tasks, we used HT to resolve Standing Upkeep! (And a few other of the Undertakings, but that can be saved for another day...!)

[Mim]

Linking them with the traders crossing the Mountains sounds like a great idea. I may do something like this myself to tie it all in.

BTW, I love the Easterly Inn concept but hate to think of the Orcs or Viglundings destroying them (as per the final note in TfW). If any of your players get attached to Dindy, Dody, or the rest, have you considered how you'll get them past this? Just curious.

[jamesrbrown]

Our group used Hobbit Tales during our game on Friday night. We finished playing through Those Who Tarry No Longer and then began a Fellowship phase. Everyone headed east through Mirkwood to reach their destinations. I had them make 4 Fatigue tests apiece. There were six players, so, out of 24 rolls, three failed with an Eye. I had them pull 3 adventure cards (as per the rules suggested in Hobbit Tales) and had them create their own hazards based on the cards chosen. I made them tell the tale of what happened on their journey through Mirkwood. It worked out fine. They came up with some interesting situations, but passed all their tests.

The only snag we came up with was that two of the adventure cards showed the 'Wrong choices' consequence, which affects further Fatigue tests. Well, since I had the players roll all their Fatigue tests at once, we didn't pick cards until after all the rolls were made (like I thought we were supposed to). If I really wanted to apply the penalty, however, the player-heroes would have had to remember which roll triggered the hazard. If it wasn't the last one - they would have had to go back and re-roll everything and apply the penalty.

QUESTION: If the last Fatigue test on a journey triggers a hazard, and the adventure card shows the 'Wrong choices' consequence, what other kind of penalty can be applied instead of increasing the TN of future Fatigue tests?

[Yusei]

BTW, I love the Easterly Inn concept but hate to think of the Orcs or Viglundings destroying them (as per the final note in TfW). If any of your players get attached to Dindy, Dody, or the rest, have you considered how you'll get them past this? Just curious.

In my game, the adventurers crossed the forest once again, and found the inn destroyed, but no traces of the hobbits. Trying to find them, they tracked orcs, but they found nothing. Later, at Beorn's, they found Agatha Brandybuck. She was away when the inn was attacked, and didn't know what happened to her family. She became a player character for a short while, but when the player left, so did she (she wanted to track the gibbet king's army through Mirkwood, and left alone). Nobody knows what happened to her.

A few months later, again at Beorn's, the adventurers found Rodry and Dando (the two young hobbits), who somehow had reappeared, and they took them under their protection. They decided to bring them back to their family in the Shire, which led them to a long and adventurous journey to the west. (Of course, my purpose all along was to bring them to the Shire, but it took months to do it seamlessly).

We don't know yet what happened to the adults (except that one of them was still alive at the time of Bilbo's party), and I probably will bring them back again.

You can destroy the inn (and show the PCs that nobody is safe) and still use it and its owners in your adventures. Rescue the hobbits, help them rebuild or relocate, possibly associate with them (Holding!) or, if you want a darker tone, kill one of them and have him die in front of your group, wondering what happened to the children. Hobbits are tougher than they appear, and you can use it.

[Eluadin]

BTW, I love the Easterly Inn concept but hate to think of the Orcs or Viglundings destroying them (as per the final note in TfW). If any of your players get attached to Dindy, Dody, or the rest, have you considered how you'll get them past this? Just curious.

The Inn was opened as a Sanctuary, earlier in the campaign. Since that point in the Tale of Years, the Inn became the de facto home for the Hobbits. Instead of passing year's end Fellowship phases in the Shire or amidst the free Folk of the Vales. They tend to retire to the Eastely Inn.

Around late Fall 2947, a battle was fought near the North Ford where a Wærg-pack descended on the free cottars of the West Upper Vales. As it turns out, Nagrhaw led the pack! After the player-heroes along with the independent Northmen defended the threatened holding, word reached the Grey Pilgrim. In consultation with others, the Wise set a secret watch on the North Ford and the Easterly Inn. (The Inn was more Gandalf's concern than the ford, for in the shadowy recesses of his thoughts something about Hobbits...) Worried that the Wærg chief might be testing the crossings of the River, but more so the plight of this wee outpost of the Shire. It now stands protected — at least for a moment in time.

CLARIFICATION: Our campaign was underway before TfW's release. Because of that, the adventures in TfW, the ones I've chosen to use, have been integrated into my existing campaign arc. That necessitated adaptation of course. If memory serves me right I posted on this forum, quite some time past the structure of the campaign. With HotW's release, I did the same thing — reversed engineered its regional material into the campaign where it made sense. Now, I'm doing that with DoM. That is not so difficult though since my campaign structure was based on the one described in the Loremaster's Booke. Our campaign was on Obsidian Portal for a brief time under the title "Hope's Flickering Flame: The Legacies of the North."

[Mim]

Thank you for sharing. I was wondering how you'd handle this, & you integrated it well. Having Gandalf involved certainly should catch your player's attention!

Speaking of which, the Warg attack, as well as the Grey Pilgrim's concern about Hobbits, open up a couple of other plot avenues that sound intriguing. In addition to the seriousness of the return of the Shadow, you may even get some laughs with Gandalf's concern about Hobbits among those of your players who know the books well.