Ahhh…that satisfies. Full table, perfect attendance, an early start and a really nice session of The One Ring with good friends.
This was the first session where I needed to be really flexible about where they might go and what they might do. We added a new player with a dwarf character, the sole survivor of the Werewolf of Mirkwood’s attack on his trading caravan. Despite many scary tales and lots of “are you shitting me with this” from NPCs, they’ve decided to go on a werewolf hunt. In the heart of Mirkwood. Oh you sweet innocent children.
Got to play through the folk-moot of the Woodmen in 2948 at Rhosgobel, the second year of Darkening of Mirkwood. Lots of interesting threads there, and it’s kind of a must-attend event (which I hate, but The Great Pendragon Campaign had them as well so what are you gonna do?). They got to finally meet the bad apples from Tyrant’s Hill as well as the various major NPCs in and around Woodmen Hall. Negotiated to begin the eventual reopening of the Old Forest Road, which they’ll scout out while en route to the werewolf. Things played out nicely there. We’ll have lots of leads to pursue.
Oh lord. So this werewolf hunt, right? I mean it’s not like hunting Smaug or anything but it’s not gonna be easy. And their main lead is the common knowledge that it lives in the caves under the Mountains of Mirkwood. Riiiight in the center of the forest.
This was their first attempt at sketching out a travel plan, and with no player knowledge of where the good and bad parts of the forest are, they’ve definitely chosen very nearly the worst instant-death course. Calculating the journey wasn’t terrible. Good reason for everyone to take a 5 minute break.
Hilariously, just 3 days into the forest they rolled a Hazard, which affected everyone, and was a combat encounter. Oh lord. Literally the worst possible outcome. They got to meet another NPC! A leader of a band of outlaws running away from an orc horde. Unfortunately they also got to meet the orc horde. Good fight, very exciting — I’m sold on how The One Ring handles combat. Lots of interesting choices, good sense of drama. Super-tank dwarf in his 5d of armor, oh yeah, that dude got weary fast. I wonder if he’s gonna rethink the armor situation after this? No idea.
They ended up barely defeating the orcs, and hobbling back to the outlaw camp to stop, rest, and restart their crazy journey. There are like 40 days of travel left ahead of them and they’re all gonna end up shadowed out and crazy.
A couple observations:
* I’ve made a mistake by easing up the requirement to earn advancement points. At first I thought it wouldn’t be bad to let players earn their APs in any order they wanted, i.e. if they were able to shoehorn a trait into a successful roll, well sure, no problem, go ahead and fill in the second AP spot. It’s pretty clear to me now that it screws up other bits of math! Specifically, it makes locking in all three AP spots in a skill group pretty easy, which means players fall back on just using their Traits to bang out ordinary successes for things (like their Travel rolls during a journey). That in turn means fewer Hope points get spent to nudge needed rolls. I think the harder AP earning scheme needs to be there to entice folks to just roll the fucking dice already and not rely on their Traits so much.
* Felt super iffy trying to structure the Encounter(s) at the folk-moot. Couldn’t tell when one encounter stopped and if another started. Tracking successes seemed pointless. Tolerance was completely irrelevant. In fact the whole “roll until you run out the Tolerance” system seems…not well thought out. Maybe there were some lucky rolls, but my players just kind of shrugged and stopped rolling once they hit seven earned successes (the most that “matter” in an encounter) and no failures. I think the whole thing cost a Hope.
Well, it was pretty fun and the sandbox has plenty of sand in it now. Pretty stoked to see how many years into Darkening we can make it.
The folkmoot is an interesting one. The one encounter that really matters is Mogdred. That worked as my PCs both pitied and hated him. There was also a link I teased out with “Don’t leave the path”. The hermit’s axe belonged to Mogdred, back before he was called Mogdred. One of the PCs now has it, and Mogdred greeted her with, ” That’s my axe!”
Sandplots for the win! My PCs are now taken with the Dwarf Road, and one dwarf has claimed to role of Roadwarden and restored a fort as a Holding.
This makes me want to read LOTR for the first time since high school.
Sounds like you had a great time, Paul. Glad you liked the combat. I think it’s fantastic! Feels empowering to the players, who control positioning, and feels somewhat trad with the Endurance damage, but then you have the Piercing blows, Wounds and armor protection rolls to add in that touch of unpredictability.
I also like how the Enemy’s special abilities trigger off the Eye results. The combat is almost automated, at times.
Great post!
Totally with you regarding combat.
That sounds like an awesome night of play!
How did the Woodmen vote at the Folkmoot? When we got to that point the PCs were still too new to the Woodsmen so I handed out little character sheets for each of the chiefs and had them play those instead. Worked pretty well!
Andrew Kenrick Ceawin and the Black Tarn folks got upvoted, Mogdred got downvoted. I totally abstracted the moot and just outlined the proposals, allowing the heroes to intercede if they felt like the prevailing opinions were incorrect. Worked fine, even realizing that Mogdred would be a problem no matter what.
This all sounds like RAW. Do your character ever fail? Why? Mine never do, like, ever.
Do npcs push back? How?
Okay but how mechanically do your npcs push back? I get no sense at all that that’s something that happens.
Paul Beakley my guys upvoted the same, but decided to send the company to accompany Mogdred back to Tyrant’s Hill and see what’s what with him, then revote next year. The company are less than happy as they’ve had a run in with him previously.
Andrew Kenrick that’s a great twist! I wish my folks had had a chance to interact with his henchwoman, but they missed out that year. I think they’d have had stronger opinions.
One of the players made an Insight test to see if Mogdred could be trusted. My answer was, “Oh yeah, absolutely, he definitely wants wives for his warriors.” Gritted teeth all around.
Ara Kooser I was following you, no worries!
My curation is kind of crap anyway, so whatevs.
Yeah.
My read of Encounters, and now I’m doubting myself like crazy because it seems wrong, is that it’s the PCs deciding what and how to roll, sorta-kinda “roleplaying” but not really, but it’s always against a TN of 14, racking up successes before they hit their Tolerance.
Now I’m thinking you have to have the NPCs pushing back via opposed tests, rather than just being talked at by the heroes. Then my questions are 1) is losing in an opposed test counted against Tolerance (I’d say so) and 2) how do you work out compromises and not-quite-perfect victories?
Currently in our game, Encounters have devolved to pure math exercises because they don’t have to be anything else. They never fail at their rolls (spending Hope as necessary but only rarely), and it’s entirely an exercise in seeing just how many rolls it’ll take to get to 7 successes, or even that many if they care.