So what is everybody playing?

[Slant]

I'm glad that people are reading my campaign notes.  For a while there I wondered if people were either not reading my posts or just using them as a cure for insomnia.

Hope you all like.

[Nicadymus]

I have been enjoying them.  Keep letting us know how things are going.

[Entropy in Exile]

they are quite interesting slant. im most interested in seeing how well you keep the balance between sticking to Tolkien's vision, and managing to have fun. the two do not necessarily follow i think.

If you guys like this sort of thing, try reading Beyond the savage frontier. its a internet game, set in the forgotten realms. to read the "story", check the messages section. the DM puts a email up listing the story as it has progressed. just start at the start
The character called "Jarnak" is mine, BTW. i turn up around about session 38-42 (the game is one its 49th session so far).

[Slant]

Sixth Session:

The company is still in Dunland, heading for the Northern border into Eregion.  They come across a ruin of a Dunlanding village where grim looking men and women are chopping up their dead and trying to rebuild their community.  After observing them for an hour or so, the company decides the threat is minimal and approaches the ruin.  The Dunlandings are not surprised to see them.  The headman Sevrin tells them that their community was razed by nearly a hundred orcs led by a strange lynx-eyed warrior who claimed they were followers of the Red Maw, and who were specifically looking for a group of armed wanderers containing a black-skinned man, a hobbit, an elf woman and a foreign witch.  The company uneasily prepares for battle, but Sevrin tells them that any enemy of orc-kind is a friend to him and his people and welcomes them.  

The company helps the villagers rebuild as best they can, taking the time to rest and tend to their own injuries as well.  They ask about the dismemberment of the dead and are told that it is to ensure that they do not rise again to attack their kinsmen.  The Dunlendings seem pretty matter-of-fact about this, as it if has been happening for a while now.  Kogali and Milo teach several of the men how to play various card games and use the opportunity to cheat them out of what little hard coin they still have.  One of them eventually discovers the ruse and attempts the same tricks upon the corsair and hobbit.  Kogali discovers he is being cheated and flies into a rather sanctimonious rage.  Prince Tamar comes and pulls Kogali off the Dunlanding, throwing him to the ground.  It looks like Kogali is about to draw steel, but Ain-Ain casts a spell that renders him intoxicated without drink.  Sevrin suggests that perhaps they should leave before any further hostilities erupt.  Tamar agrees, wishing to part with the Dunlandings as friends.  Erinel gives a small elvish charm to a young Dunlending who had been clumsily trying to flirt with her.  the group departs once more.

Hours later, the group makes camp.  In the far distance they see smoke billowing from the direction they had left.  Tark and Auric want to go back to the village, but Tamar stops them.  Ain-Ain casts a spell to spy upon the village and grimly reports the sight of many orcs slaughtering the remaining villagers as the community is put to the torch.  They all realize that they are the ones the orcs were searching for.

As they prepare to break camp before the orcs can trail them, the skies break and a violent storm erupts.  They are pinned down in the darknes by the storm, they realize how alone and far from all civilization they actually are.  Without warning, they are attacked by strange shrieking predators, vaguely human-like, but more akin to great bats, that swoop down upon them in the storm.  They battle them at a disadvantage in the pelting rain.  When Tamar goes down, Tark stands over him with swords drawn.  The creatures hesitate, seemingly genuinely confused as to why Tark is confronting them. Tark advances and they fly off, disappearing into the darkness.  The group just stands there, sopping wet, wondering "what the hell?"

We stopped the session somewhat short and got ready for the Superbowl.

[Slant]

Seventh Session: Information Gathering

The others question Tark as to why the bat-things fled from him and he reports that he honestly doesn't know.  Ain-Ain knows a spell that will reveal if the soldier is under any sort of magical effect and uses it at Prince Tamar's command.  She sees something shrouding Tark that nearly makes her fall over, but keeps mum, instead saying that she saw nothing unusual.

They travel into the western part of what was once the great Elf kingdom of Eregion.  Erinel feels pangs of grief as she sees this once great land that is now only inhospitable wilderness and wasteland.  She tells the others that one day she will return here and remake Eregion as a home for the remaining elves all across Middle Earth.  As they progress they are attacked by living dead wolves, gaunt and wicked and crawling with decay, who nearly kill Milo and Kogali.  The beasts have to be literally hacked to tiny bits before they cease their attacks.  Erinel finds healing herbs in the forests and Ain-Ain brews a poultice that heals the two wounded.  The company decides to travel by the the Greenway Road to Bree.  There they hope to get a good idea of what the situation is concerning the walking dead across the Eriador area, as well as being a place to finally get a decent sleep and food in their bellies after all these weeks scrounging and living like beasts.  On the way they come across a mass grave by the side of the road.  Milo reports with a heavy heart that the names on the crude markers are written in Hobbitish.

When they get to the main gates of Bree, the captain of the guard refuses them entrance.  His men seem anxious and ill at ease.  one of them barks out that they have been warned about the coming of the Black Prince and the trail of Death he has been leaving in his wake.  Unable to talk their way through, they depart.  Later that night, milo sneaks them in through a secret entrance known only to Hobbit-kind (meaning the larger humans have to crawl through on their hands and knees into the town).

Auric, Tark and Milo get a suite at the Prancing Pony for the night and Ain-Ain sneaks the rest of them in under a veil of magic.  Auric and kogali mingle in the large common room at the Pony and try to find out the situation.  They find out that people are dying throughout the North from an unnamed plague that is always preceeded by several weeks by a slow and gradual shifting of the nature of the people to argue and fight amongst themselves.  Bree has, so far, remained untouched and is very wary of any strangers (particularly those of a sorcerous bent). Kogali, gambling with a drunken hillman, finds that a scant few days before their arrival a warrior with strange yellow eyes followed by a handful of white-robed pilgrams had come to Bree to warn them about the Black Prince of Harad, whom he has spoken of as the "Harbinger of Death."

While they are ferreting out info, Ain-Ain, exhausted from working so much magic in such a short time, goes to sleep.  She wakes up shrieking in terror, babbling about "a great and immense Death, as black as midnight and as old as the mountains."  She cannot be calmed and it is only with a few pints of hard ale that she is wearied enough to return to slumber.  

Milo, having gone off on his own to hunt for information in the sleazier booze pits of Bree, returns to the party with information about a tracker named Jonaz who not only has traveled the length of Eriador, but also has been known to have some information on battleing the walking dead.  Milo tells them that Jonaz spends his winters in Fornost, a well-fortified town surrounding a mighty fortress where the King rules from when he is in the Northern lands.  

The company readies to go to Fornost, but Ain-Ain refuses to go, still terrified of what she had seen.  She tells Tamar that she will take the risk of going by herself across Dunland and Rohan back to Gondor and reporting to the king (which is a good excuse, since Heather will be out of town for 3 weeks) what they have so far discovered.

End of session.

[Fellfrosch]

The magical Decipher bird sent me another shipment today, and since you're such a big fan I thought I'd let you know what's new:

1. The Maps of Middle Earth. These are some pretty amazing maps, much larger and more detailed than the standard little Middle Earth map we're used to seeing, and the paper is heavy and paarchment-esque. The accompanying pamphlet, however, is more or less a reprint of the one that came in the adventure game. It's informative, but one more directly aligned with the maps themselves would have been a lot more useful--something where you could look up all the little sites on the maps and find a brief description. If you rely on the appendices to the novels, though, this shouldn't be a problem. In general, I give this box set a thumbs up.

2. The Two Towers Adventure Game. This looks like it's both better and worse than the FotR adventure game, which as you may remember I hated. It's a stupid, boring dungeon crawl (with or without a dungeon) that provides zero opportunities for actual role-playing; they even give the characters scripts to follow so they know what they're supposed to say. Way dumb.

3. LotR Narrator's Shield. Not as nice as the Star Trek Narrator's Shield (which also came today), but very useful; since the organization of the book itself made it hard to find the info you needed, this shield could come in very handy. It also comes with some glossy color character sheets, which I suppose would be useful for making copies, but look very difficult to write on, as well as a black and white rules "reminder," or something weird like that. I haven't really gone through it yet.

[Slant]

Thanks Fell

I've actually seen all those products.  The Two Towers game I will be skipping on, as the only real draw would be the expanded character sheets for Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas.  I'm very tempted to get the map box, but thirty bucks for a box of maps is a bit much.  I have a friend who workks for a major bookstore chain and he can get it in the store and give me his discount which will bring it to about 18 bucks, whch is a distinct possibility.

The shield, though, me wants.  Do you know if it includes an adventure?  I'll probably be hitting ye olde gaming shoppe on Friday, so I will take a closer look at it and possibly pick it up.

Any word on when the Fellowship of the Ring handbook is coming out?  It should have been out months ago.

[Fellfrosch]

Yes, once I got home and gave it a better read, I realized that the game shield does include an adventure in the little B/W book. Since that's what was mainly missing from the base book (IMO), I'm glad to see them giving us some material to work with.

As for the maps, 18 bucks might be worth it but $30 is definitely too much. It's ridiculous that they even charge that much.

[Slant]

Session 8: Revelations

On the way to Fornost, the company meets up with outriders wearing the King's crest who are hunting the walking dead.They don't know about Jonaz, but they accompany the characters back to Fornost for their own safety. When Auric tells them that the group has already had several successful battles against the walking dead, the captain of the outriders asks "walking dead trolls?"  Auric shuts up.

Arriving in Fornost, they are given an audience with Eldor, the King's steward.  Eldor tells them over dinner that he has sent several riders to Gondor with news of the plague and conflicts that have been washing over the Northlands, but he believes that none of them have survived the road to Gondor.

Throughout dinner, Tark feels more and more uneasy.  For several days he has been unable to sleep or eat, and his mood has been growing steadily more melencholy since Isengard.  After the meal, Auric tries to cheer him up but is unable.  Kogali says he is going to go look for a few women and invites him to come along.  Tark asks Kogali what about his paramour Ain-Ain.  Kogali shrugs and says "don't ask, don't tell."  Tark refuses his invitation.

Tamar and Kogali find themselves in Strangerside, two small but very crowded streets beyond the shadow of the fortress that serves as a haven for all of the vagabonds, travelers and shady individuals making their way through the region.  At a tavern called The Hanged Man, ruffians begin taunting the pair, calling Kogali "pirate scum."  Kogali gets up and decks the largest of his tormentors, laying him out cold.  He berates Tamar for not having the courage to fight.  Tamar gets up and goes over to the man Kogali knocked down and helps him up, giving him a handful of coins.  The man is immensely grateful and tells Tamar that if he ever needs anything, to let him know.  Tamar later tells Kogali that he noticed the man's filthy clothes and muddy skin and knew him to be a man struggling to survive and feed his family who had insulted them only out of frustration over his own lot.  Kogali shrugs and Tamar pulls him close.  He tells Kogali that appearances are decieving:  he is no noble-born prince but a child born into abject poverty who was sold by his destitute parents to a Harad spymaster.  The spymaster had groomed him to have the appearance of royalty and when news of Aragorn's desire to form a company of members of all the lands had reached them, they had the spymaster send Taran rather than risk one of their own noble-borns.

Tark attempts to buy a horse, but the horses all shy away from him in horror.  He finally realizes what he has secretly known all along and what Ain-Ain saw when she enspelled him:  ever since his fight with the olag-hai in Isengard, he has been one of the walking dead.  He listens for the sound of his own heartbeat, but there is none.  He ceases to draw air, and finds he no longer needs to.  He retreats to the shadows of Strangerside to come to terms with his new existence.

Milo gathers up Tamar, Kogali and Auric at the Hanged Man, telling them that he has been successful in his hunt to find Jonaz.  The hunter is at a shanty called The Red Throat and has heard of them.  Milo tells them that Jonaz is eager to tell them what he knows if he finds them worthy enough.  Unable to find Erinel (she is in Eldor's library) or Tark, they go to the Red Throat (a particularly seedy establishment bearing the sign of a slashed throat) and Milo ushers them into a back room.  The room is dark and shadowy, the only light coming from a small candle on the table top where a huge man is hunched over eating.  He looks up briefly and introduces himself as Jonaz, a huntsman who hunts the two-legged.  Tamar senses something REALLY wrong.  Forms emerge from the shadows, living and dead, all bearing the mark of the Red Maw.  Jonaz looks up and throws his hood back.  He is tall and strong, swarthy and scarred.  his teeth have been filed to points and his eyes are yellow and bright, slitted like a cats.  Kogali turns to cover the door they came in through, but Milo, standing behind him, had locked it.  Milo has kis knives drawn and he slams them into Kogali, dropping the corsair.  His treachery revealed, Milo steps back as Jonaz draws his wickedly curved blades.  The lone candle is snuffed out as the remaining members of the company prepare for their most desperate battle yet
end of session

[Fellfrosch]

You're evil.

[Slant]

A lot happened in this session that I was really not expecting.  For starters, Sean finally realized that his character had been transformed into a walking dead man from as far back as Isengard.  I had been dropping very tiny hints during each session (which was about a month and a half in real time) but he didn't seem to be catching on.  Once he started having aversive reactions from animals he caught on pretty quick.  I was very surprised though that he was actually able to pinpoint when his death had occured.  Oh, and while Tark may be having trouble coming to terms with his new status, Sean thinks it is cool as hell that he gets to play a dead man who can't be killed through normal means.

I was a bit more curious when Tamar's player revealed that he was actually a sham.  I genuinely had not known that.  Going back to the LoTR rulesbook it was pointed out to me that the noble "Class" doesn't have to be of literal noble blood, but merely that he is regarded as being of high rank by others, which fit the character. I had no problem with it.

The big question mark was Milo's betrayal.  He had been a spy from the very first, working for the half-orc bounty hunter Jonaz to herd the company into a specific direction where Jonaz and his acolytes could easily ambush them.  Ever since he was introduced, he'd been training birds.  Every evening he'd send a bird off to Jonaz with information about where the company was and where they would be heading next.  Milo's motive was (a) money and (b) the assurance that the Shire would not be touched by the rage plague and eventual Curse of Living Death.  When they came across the mass hobbit grave it should have given Milo's player the very strong suspicion that Jonaz and his Dark Master had reneged on their dubious word and were spreading their evil to the Shire anyway.  I was expecting for Milo to turn on Jonaz and spill the beans to his other party members.  Silly, silly me.  Now the question will be "What will happen if Milo isn't killed in the nexf session's fight?"  It will end up causing more potential headaches than I can imagine.  At the same time, I'm surely not going to allow a player character to die off simply because it will cause me trouble to let him live.

And then there is the matter of how Tark and Erinel are going to figure in to nex week's session when, in character, they have no idea of what is going on at the Red Throat (and by the way, I thought that the name of the place, "The Red Throat" would immediately bring them to the mind of "The Red Maw" and be a huge red flag.  Guess not)....

All in all, I remain as constantly surprised as my players, and I like that.

[Slant]

My wife and I went to Key West for the Valentine's Day weekend; no gaming this week.

[Slant]

Session 9

Auric, Tamar and Kogali, with kogali already wounded by the traitorous attack from Milo, get down and dirty with Jonaz and the Red Maw acolytes.  The fight is fast and furious.  Unable to see in the dark, Auric and Tamar each bull their way to an opposite side of the room and just keep flailing away with their blades.  This actually was pretty darn effective.  Theu put out maybe six or seven acolytes before Jonaz just lifted up the oak table and threw it it Tamar, not only taking him out, but breaking a couple of acolytes in half in the process.  Auric just kept stabbing away and was eventually dogpiled.  Kogali spent the whole time trying to get his hands on Milo to pay him back and eventually managed to slightly wound him, but Milo stayed on the full defensive throughout the fight.  Eventually all three were knocked out and captured.  When the lights came back on, only Jonaz, Milo and two acolytes were left.  Milo tells Jonaz that he will find the other two company members and bring them to him.

Erinel, still in Eldor's library, finds a text detailing the life of a great elf military leader named Kalouran who supposedly disappeared somewhere in Forlindan beyond the Blue Mountains with his entire army.  Since the death of Haldir during the War of the Ring, Kalouran would be the sole remaining true elf warlord, if he still lives.

Milo finds Erinel and Tark and tells them that the Red Maw ambushed the rest of the group.  Seeing Milo's wounded disheveled shape, they believe him.  They follow Milo to where Jonaz has left the bloodied bodies of their friends tied up in a room.  They go in to release them and Jonaz leaps down from the rafters like Batman as the remaining acolytes barge in through a door in the floor.  Milo kidney punches Erinel with a brass urn and she falls over coughing up blood.  The acolytes struggle to tie up Tark.  

Jonaz wants to kill them all, but Milo convinces him that the group includes representatives of each of the most powerful nations and they would be valuable to the Harbinger as either sources of information or bargaining chips and so should be taken to Angmar.  Jonaz accuses Milo of trying to keep his friends alive so they can ambush him and the acolytes and make their escape.  He insists Milo prove his loyalty.  Milo draws his blade and skewers Tark through the heart.  The pain and shock make him drop.  No heartbeat is found.

Under cover of darkness, Jonaz' caravan leaves the fortress town.  The company is tied up securely.  Milo taunts them, Kogali in particular, roughing him up quite a bit.

Back in Fornost, Tark comes to in a back alley, stripped of his Gondorian finery and weapons by thieves.  He steals some tattered clothes and a decent blade and sets out on foot towards Angmar.

As the caravan makes it's way through the desolate no-man's land, forms come from out of the mist.  Hooded men wearing the insignia of the Red Maw.  Within hours the caravan has attracted several hundred silent followers that surround and accompany them towards Angmar.

If this were a series of books, this is where I would say "End of Book 1."

[Fellfrosch]

Whoever's playing Milo seems like he's setting himself up for a fall. Is planning to redeem Milo somehow so that he can rejoin the group, or does he want to be a bad guy for the rest of the campaign?

Speaking of which, how are you dealing with the "good guy" machanic enforced in the rulebook; the one saying that any character who falls to the shadow is immediately lost and becomes an NPC. I've heard strong arguments that such a rule should be ignored, and equally strong ones that it should be heartily enforced.

[Slant]

The fellow playing Milo is a very bright, very cerebral guy who really doesn't go for the usual "blood & thuggery" sort of characters.  At this point I am still assuming that he is using Jonaz and is still one of the "good guys," albeit one with a rather extreme agenda.  He had told me outside of the game that "this seemed to be the quickest and most direct way to get everybody to Angmar."  Plus, with all the clues that I've thrown in about Tark's true nature, I'm sure that James picked up on it long before Tark's player did (as I've said, he's quite sharp, more so than me, anyway) and so knew in character that stabbing him would not put him out of the game.  

As for the shadow rule in the game, well....  I really don't like to restrict a character's behavior in any way unless the character becomes disruptive to the entire game.  When dealing with LotR you are dealing with a specific mindset where the heroes are truly heroic, even though they might seem somewhat scary (as was Strider when first encountered), belligerant (Gimli) or single-minded to the point of going against good common sense (Boromir).  If a character in LotR ever did something unequivocally Eeeeeevil (such as killing small children or stealing from sacred graves or whatnot) I would have to really consider either relegating the character to NPC status or, more likely, have the player use his character as a nemesis against the party, which might lead to a very satisfying bad guy whom the characters would especially enjoy going up against.

We are all experienced gamers in this group, and very good friends.  We don't take it personally when one PC kills another and there have never been any "grudge" characters in our games.  If a character wants to go rogue and join the opposition, the other players still consider him part of the game, even if he is no longer part of the party.  I hope I answered your question ok.

                   

There's one in every crowd.