The One Ring: Rohirrim

I'm getting ready to run a campaign using The One Ring by Cubicle 7, and my wife insisted on being able to play one of the Rohirrim. I got some good leads and resources from Cubicle 7's forum and used fan-created material as a starting point - but it wasn't quite right. Here is my take, 90% done.

Men of Rohan

"They are proud and willful, but they are true-hearted, generous in thought and deed; bold but not cruel; wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs, after the manner of the children of Men before the Dark Years. ''

—Aragorn, The Two Towers

History

The Rohirrim are descended from the Éothéod, a race of Men who lived in the vales of the Great River Anduin, but that removed to Calenardhon, which was granted them in perpetuity by the Ruling Steward of Gondor, Cirion in reward for the assistance that they offered Gondor at a time of great need. As a result, they were lifelong allies of Gondor bound by the Oath of Eorl. At that time Calenardhon was renamed Rohan (Horse-land) after their many horses. By the Rohirrim themselves Rohan is usually called The Mark.

They are ruled by a line of kings descended from Eorl the Young, who had first brought them to Rohan, and in time of war every able man rode to meet the Muster of Rohan.

Description

The people of the Mark, men and women, tend to be tall and fair, and usually wear their hair long and braided. They often have beautiful singing voices, and know many songs, which is how they pass on lore and history from generation to generation. They are the culture that has the closest bond with their horses. They are accustomed to fighting the Dunlendings in the west and fending off goblin-raids from the north and east when they come seeking to steal horses and slaves.

The Rohirrim share a close ancestry with the Bardings of Dale and a more distant ancestry with the people of Wilderland.

Standard of Living

The people of Rohan do not live extravagant lives - their horses and wide lands constitute the majority of their wealth outside of Edoras. They are a Martial people, eschewing outward wealth but always well-equipped for war.

Languages

The people of Rohan speak Westron as well as their own tongue commonly called Rohirric, distantly related to that spoken by the people of the Vales of Anduin to the north.

Rohirrim Adventurers

Suggested Callings

People of Rohan living in Rhovanion are far from home, and this makes the most sense for a Slayer who has taken on a quest of some kind, to hunt a legendary beast or avenge a long-forgotten wrong, or a Wanderer, who is simply struck by a desire to see distant sights in Middle-Earth, and followed the Anduin north from his homeland.

Unusual Calling

It is highly unusual for one of the Rohirrim to live the life of the Scholar. Most Rohirrim are much more interested in glory than in lore.

What Their Chieftain Says…

Bardings

Bard’s people have returned to their homeland, we have heard, though we know little of how things fare with them. Some trade has come south down the Great River, and we have returned in kind. Time will tell whether the line of Girion will return to its former glory.

Beornings

We know nothing about these strange folk apart from rumors - that they take the shapes of bears. Our oldest songs speak of such things, but they have not come to the Mark.

Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain

We know of Dwarves, but seem little of them. We have our own smiths and stonemasons, and the only creatures living in the mountains to the north are Orcs and Goblins. We know them to be doughty warriors, but what we know is from ancient songs and stories.

Elves of Mirkwood

We do not trust Elves nor their sorcery. Some of our own have come under the shadow of the Lady of the Wood, or so she is called, and have been enchanted. They never return, or they return changed. Elves are best left alone, and they seem to prefer it that way for their part.

Hobbits of the Shire

We know stories of the holbytlan, the hole-dwellers, from before the time of Eorl the Young. We once lived near them, or so we believe, but we have not seen any of them for many generations, and most now believe them to be a fairy-story told to children during long winter nights.

Woodmen of Wilderland

It is said that Eorl the Young and the first Eorlingas came from the people who are now called Woodmen. Perhaps they stayed, preferring the woods to the open fields. Sometimes a group of them comes south, seeking to explore, and now and then riders go north to learn of our history for themselves, but while we share some distant relation to them Woodmen, we share little else.

Cultural Blessing

Rider of the Mark: When mounted, all weapon skills and movement skills are considered favored.

Starting Skill Scores

Awe 2

Athletics 2

Awareness 1

Explore 1

Song 2

Craft 0

Inspire 1

Travel 3

Insight 2

Healing 1

Courtesy 0

Battle 2

Persuade 0

Stealth 0

Search 0

Hunting 2

Riddle 1

Lore 0

Weapon Skills

Bow 2, Axe 1, Dagger 1

Spear 2, Sword 1, Dagger 1

Specialties

Choose two Traits from: Beast-Lore, Fire-making, Herb-lore, Horse-riding, Leechcraft, Riddermark-lore, Story-telling

Backgrounds (aimed at why they would be in the North)

1 - Shieldmaiden

While the men are called upon to defend the Mark, it is the women who are often called upon to defend the homestead, and there are no reinforcements coming to the rescue when reavers and raiders come. Some women eschew a family entirely, devoting themselves to martial training, and they will often fight alongside the men as well as in defense of their homes. You are one such, and you had to prove yourself more skilled and more fierce than most men - but you will see that your name is remembered. You do not fear death, but rather to be bound by any will but your own. You have left your homeland to make a name for yourself in the wider world.

Basic Attributes

Body 6, Heart 6, Wits 2

Favored Skill

Battle

Distinctive Features

(choose two traits from the following)

Bold, Determined, Fair, Fierce, Forthright, Proud, Secretive, Wilful

2 - Fell Deeds Awake - Ride to Ruin

You were not there when they came to your village in the Eastfold, raiders from the shadowy East. You were not there when they slaughtered families, including yours - when they burned farms and fields and took only the horses with them. You were suddenly awakened to a wider world around you, and to a looming Shadow that seems to be growing despite the courage of your people. You have sworn to hunt that Shadow - the least your village deserves is revenge.

Basic Attributes

Body 5, Heart 6, Wits 3

Favored Skill

Hunting

Distinctive Features

(choose two traits from the following)

Determined, Elusive, Grim, Hardened, Patient, Vengeful, Wrathful

3 - Emissary of Edoras

You were chosen by King Fengel to ride with a small group North and re-establish relations with King Bard and, if possible, King Dain of the lonely mountain. You are not so sure that Elves are to be trusted, but any information about them might be helpful to your King. You are to remain in the North. Each spring a rider will leave the north for Edoras, and each fall he will return to exchange news. Do what you can to learn of these distant relatives, and represent your own people to them well.

Basic Attributes

Body 3, Heart 5, Wits 6

Favored Skill

Awe

Distinctive Features

(choose two traits from the following)

Bold, Curious, Fair, Fair-spoken, Generous, Lordly, Proud, Tall

4 - Exile

You had a rival, or outright enemy, and the conflict between you escalated over the course of your adolescence until it finally came to blows. You fought, a duel like your ancestors used to fight, but it turned bloodier than you intended. It was meant to be to first blood, but the first wound you inflicted was fatal. Your foe was of higher standing than you, and had many friends. Your family, disgraced, had to pay the weregild, bankrupting them, and you were exiled. There was not enough evidence of malice to have you executed by the Marshall, but you doubt you can ever come home. You heard that some of the peoples in the North share ancestry with your people, and so you have made the long and arduous journey there to try and make a new life.

Basic Attributes

Body 7, Heart 3, Wits 4

Favored Skill

Explore

Distinctive Feature

(choose two traits from the following)

Elusive, Grim, Hardened, Merciful, Reckless, Suspicious, Wrathful

Rohirrim Names

Male Names:

Female Names:

Adventuring Age: 16-30

Endurance and Hope

Endurance 22 + Heart

Hope 8 + Heart

Cultural Virtues

Wise but unlearned

One of the Rohirrim with this Virtue can roll Song in place of Lore. If she also has Lore, then she can roll an extra advantage die.

Horse-speech

Your understanding of horses is such that you can speak to them simple phrases, and understand their responses.

True-hearted

When rolling Insight to discern whether someone is being honest, roll the Feat die twice and take the best result. When using Courtesy to speak the simple truth, do the same.

Proud and willful

When rolling a Valour check to resist fear, roll the Feat die twice and take the better result.

Cultural Rewards

White-plume Helm

When making an Awe or Inspire roll wearing the helm, roll the Feat die twice and take the best result.

Bow of the Mark (easier to use from horseback)

This is a recurve bow designed to be used from horseback, and imposes no penalty for being used thusly.

Named Blade

You have inherited a well-known blade, one that has been named and will be remembered. The edge rating for this sword is one better than normal.

Horn of the Mark

If the Horn of the Mark is blown during the opening volley of a skirmish or battle, all foes nearby lose 1 Hate.

Horse of the Mark (you are not assumed to start with a warhorse - they are very valuable, especially in the North)

Grave-Mound Spear

The spears that ring a burial mound of one of the Kings of Rohan are left to rust and moulder, but this one did not. It carries the blessing of one of the kings of old. Whenever you inflict a wound with this spear, your foe also loses one Hate (or Hope).

Fighting from Horseback

When attacking from horseback, all weapon skills are considered to be favored. In addition, when the hero would take a wound, the wound can instead be taken by the horse. Horses have two wounds, so if wounded twice, a horse is near death.

During the opening volley between two groups in a skirmish, a mounted character can charge to a Forward stance and make an attack with a bonus advantage die.

It is assumed that a warhorse is trained to lash out with bites and hooves during battle, but that these will not deal significant damage - they just provide the rider with an advantage over foes on foot.

A mounted fighter who is unobstructed (not in the middle of a melee or a battle line) can move from a forward to a rearward stance with one move.

Back to Some Game Design

My obsession with Tolkien is well documented. There has been a recent lull in editing activity on my other projects, and one of the things that happens at such a time is I dust off an older project and put some more work into it. In this case, that project is Servants of the Secret Fire, my Middle-Earth RPG. It is a cool game, and I hit a point where I had enough new tweaks and ideas that I wanted to put down another draft. So far, so good - about 5,000 words have rolled out in the past few days, partly by way of iPhone while watching a friend play Red Dead Redemption, so clearly my mind is in this space.

I was recently invited to write for my friend Pete Figtree's blog, and he gave me a blank slate, so of course I wrote about Tolkien. I have also been reading about Tolkien and listening to the Aldasaga podcast, which is about Tolkien and Norse myth. I think these things build up to a critical mass, and one of the main ways I discharge this extra intellectual payload is through gaming. Since I haven't yet found a group to play The One Ring with, this is what happens.

It's also a hell of a lot easier than dealing with a new city, new job, toddler, moving and bills.

The One Ring is hands-down the best Middle-Earth RPG out there right now. I love running it and would likely love playing in a game as well. I can still do better. Now I just have to prove it by actually doing better. If I finish SotSF, I will be of course be giving it away. If anyone reading this has any interest in reading or paytesting it, please contact me and let me know. It probably won't be ready for beta playtesting for a while (I haven't even had an alpha playtest yet, honestly), but obviously that'll need to happen.

Maybe other people have fewer of these, but this is one of those projects that I work on simply because I enjoy thinking about it and working on it. I don't make it a priority over actual work - Never Pray Again and writing for my new job come first, no question, as do the couple of editing gigs that I have. But there is still time when I can squeeze in even more writing and thinking, and this is it. My fantasy heartbreaker.

I don't know whether it is better or worse that I realize that and still work on it.

My First Time Running The One Ring

Last night I got to run my first session of The One Ring for the group I usually play Savage Worlds with.  None of them had played before, but one of the players had bought a PDF of the Adventurer's book (the game includes an Adventurer's book and a Loremaster's book) and had made a character for himself and his son.

There were only three players, so I added a Loremaster character to give them a solid 4 in their party.  They started out in Dale, and I sort of let them organically check out what interested them, and one of the characters gravitated toward a Hobbit I had created before-hand (I came with 6 pre-generated characters, though only one was used) and he ultimately became their fourth.

The party consisted of a Dwarven Treasure-hunter, an Elven Scholar, and a Woodman Warden.  Their fourth, Wiseman Took, was a young Hobbit Wanderer.

I basically ran the introductory adventure in the back of the Loremaster's book - The Marsh Bell, which centers around tracking down and then rescuing Balin and Ori (yes, that Balin and that Ori) who were waylaid on their way to invite the King of the Eagles to send a delegation to Dale on the five-year anniversary of the Battle of Five Armies.  I don't normally use published adventures, but I have a sick baby and as a result much less time to plan than I usually have.

The opening bit was all just improvised with the player-characters exploring Dale and making a few basic dice-rolls.  The Dwarf Treasure-hunter ended up checking out the Toy-Market with Wiseman Took.  The Elf Scholar visited the Ravensgate District seeking a library, curious about what passes for history and lore among mortals.  He met a well-to-do retired guardsman who had spent his reward for standing with Bard to fight Smaug on a big new house and on recovering scrolls and books from the ruins of Dale.  The Woodsman Warden got pulled into an archery competition with some of the King's Guards, and won.  As a result, many of the guards who made money betting on him to win took him out for a bender.

After a scene in the court of King Bard when the PCs all meet each other, they went right into The Marsh Bell adventure, pretty much as written.  We got about halfway through, and should complete it next session.

Reference

Since this is my first time running The One Ring, and I never really understand a system until I run it a few times no matter how much I read it, during the course of the session I was doing a lot of referring back to the books.  I tried not to let it bog down the game too much, and for the most part things kept moving.  There were a couple water breaks while I searched for one rule or another.

I'd love if the index in the back of each book was rewritten.  It's kind of like the Yellow Pages back in the old days - nothing is under the heading I'd think it was under.

That being said, I don't think the session was bogged down, and considering I only did about 5 hours of preparation for a 3 hour game, including creating 6 characters for it, it was a lot smoother than most games would be.  Trying to run D&D or GURPS, Burning Wheel or Dresden Files for the first time under those conditions would be a nightmare.  With The One Ring, it was very possible.

System

I personally like the system a lot.  I like the simple dice mechanic, the easy cues for when good or bad things should happen (there is an Eye of Sauron and a G-rune for Gandalf on the Feat die, a d12 that is used for every roll).  It's easy and intuitive to see when you have a great or extraordinary success, especially with the custom dice that come with the game, but the custom dice themselves are still very simple.  I'm a big fan of the 3rd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or the tactical board game Descent, but the custom dice with new symbols can present a bit of a learning-curve.

The only thing that threw the players off is when some of the cues for good things came up but they still failed the roll.  This wasn't a big deal, but was a bit of a mixed message.  Otherwise, they seemed to perform pretty well for new characters - a squad of four Orcs were dispatched without a ton of trouble, but still had a couple of them scared.  They still felt relatively heroic when doing things they were very good at (the Scholar using Lore, the Warden using Hunting, and so on).

My main wish is that they had extra sets of the custom dice - they aren't necessary, but they're cool and quicker to use, but the one that comes with your boxed set is all you can get for now.

Overall

I am a huge Tolkien fan, and I like this game a lot.  I can see a ton of research and care that went into the game text, the trait choices, the words used to describe things and so on.  The books are replete with quotes and references to passages from the books, and I love it.

There are aspects of the game we haven't gotten to yet - Corruption for example, and advancement, but from reading them I think they will continue to be interesting and fun.  I especially want to see how Corruption works - I can absolutely see how that system in particular was inspired by characters like the Master of Lake-Town, Thorin Oakenshield once Smaug is dead, Denethor and even Smeagol/Gollum.  Love it.

Next Time

I'm going to give the characters some Shadow and see what happens.  They're all afraid to spend their Hope, partly for that reason, so I doubt we'll see any significant incident, but I'm curious what the impact will be of making a few Shadow tests.

I'm also psyched about the Fellowship Phase, maybe for a third session.  It's something that the players have never encountered before (not having played Pendragon or Mouse Guard, or other games with this kind of "down-time" mechanic spelled out) and I'm curious if they'll be able to use it or if they'll just kind of wait for me to throw out the next challenge or situation.

More on The One Ring - Designer Interviews

I'm playing GenCon catch-up, and am hunting down what information is coming out about the things that I'm interested in, like Burning Wheel Gold and The One Ring.  On rpggeek.com, I saw that someone had linked a bunch of designer interviews which can be found on YouTube.  Here is the link to the list.

Here's what I'm watching right now, a discussion of the tighter focus for The One Ring than in past games.  You won't be able to play a Rider of Rohan or a Knight of Gondor right off the bat, and I think it may be a good thing, design-wise.  It's definitely a good move, supplement-wise.  Assuming the game takes off, it'll probably be a bit like Dark Heresy leading to Rogue Trader - new settings and options released as semi-new games in themselves.

It's Up - The One Ring is available for purchase as a PDF

The One Ring is up for purchase as a PDF.  Partly because of my broke-ness, I'm waiting for some reviews before I drop the money on it.  If it seems awesome, I will also want a hard copy.

The One Ring Update

Cubicle 7 continues to release information about their upcoming game The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild.

Here's a link to what a friend just point out: some information on the mechanics of the game and a preview of the character sheet.

From what they've posted so far, it seems like they've taken some cues from other 'standard' fantasy rpgs with their roots in wargaming (you know the ones), a bit of the group mechanics found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (a game I find very impressive), and some conditions mojo from games like Mouse Guard.  I'm pretty sure the d12 is just a gimmick, which is fine with me - I'm not anti-gimmick.  If there was a custom nine-sided die for an LotR game, that would obviously be better, but you can't have everything.

So far, it looks like a game I would run.  At this glance, it might be the best LotR game to date, at least by my standards.  Definitely worth checking out, and almost certainly something I'll end up buying.  Whether it means I drop my Servants of the Secret Fire project remains to be seen.

Origins 2011

Last night I got back from Origins - this year, unfortunately, I was only able to be there for a single day.  I chose Saturday for obvious reasons - if you're just going to be there for one day, that's the one.  I didn't get a chance to do any actual gaming - I only really had the time to go through the exhibitor hall, talk to some people I needed to talk to (more on that later), go to the art room and a couple other things.  Still, I feel like I did a lot, and had a good time.  The convention seemed more subdued than last year, and it was also about 10 degrees cooler (though still warm).

At the very first booth we visited, my wife found something that I just had to buy: the original, out of print boxed set for the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game by Iron Crown Enterprises, circa 1991.  Here's a pic of the find:

I only had a chance to glance through the box, which is in decent condition for something 20 years old.  Inside are all of the books, character sheets, and un-punched cardboard cutouts of the characters and enemies that come up in the included adventure "Dawn Comes Early".  It is a rules-lite version of the Middle-Earth Roleplaying (MERP) system, but using d6s instead of percentile dice.

My wife promised she would play a one-shot with me, which is awesome.  That'll have to happen.

The rest of the dealer room felt very busy, but not packed or claustrophobic.  The room was dominated by a huge Mayfair Games area, including a dozen or so round tables, all of which were filled with players the whole time I was there. As usual, there was no Wizards of the Coast Presence, nor a White Wolf presence to speak of, and if Indie Press Revolution was there this  year, I did not see them, nor HERO Games, which is too bad.

Once again, business brought me to the Jolly Roger Games table.  I finally got to meet the artist for Parsec in person, which was cool, and the three of us got a chance to sit down and iron out the last details of what needs to happen before Parsec goes up on Kickstarter.  Overall, I'm very happy, and whatever happens with Kickstarter, I feel like I'm doing all I can.  I got to go through the contract I'll have with JRG, and speaking without a lot of experience, it seemed like a great contract to me, so that's a good thing as well.

It was cool to see the cover art out on the JRG table - one small step closer to A Real Thing.

I'll be posting about other things I saw at and around Origins this year, but one thing that somehow I hadn't heard about before is Cubicle 7's new LotR game, The One Ring.  (Is it the Chosen One at last, or do I need to keep designing Servants of the Secret Fire?)  I've looked around for more information on the game itself, and there isn't that much, from Cubicle 7 or otherwise.  Here is a site where they are promoting the game by posting characters who will be in it.

From what I've read, a few people are comparing The One Ring to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition - a big boxed set that contains all the things you need to run the game, like dice, character sheets, the rulebooks and that kind of stuff.  I personally am both excited and unhappy - excited because I think WFR is an awesome game design, but unhappy because I hope that The One Ring won't have a price point anywhere near $100 (there's a reason I really like WFR but don't own it - I can't afford to).

The model for the game is clearly it's own supplement treadmill, which is also unfortunate.  The first game will focus on Wilderland, Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain in the wake of the destruction of Smaug.  Future releases will expand that focus to other parts of Middle-Earth.  One review that I found stated that the game's storyline assumes that the heroes of the Lord of the Rings do not exist, and explores the storyline in their absence (or, at the least, they are not brought together, etc.).  I think that idea is awesome, and is a game I would love to play, I just hope it isn't too expensive - and that it's, you know, a good game.

In August, almost certainly with a GenCon release, we'll find out.

That's enough for now - next time, some more from Origins, as well as other Columbus stuff.

Game Design Snapshot: Servants of the Secret Fire

Servants of the Secret Fire is my attempt to do something no one has done before (that I've seen) - design a Middle Earth RPG.

Don't get me wrong, there have been many attempts, including the many books published by Iron Crown Enterprises, Decipher and even Luke Crane (Burning Wheel is much more than an attempt to model Middle-Earth, but it has a hefty dose of Tolkien at it's core).  I think the best one I've seen might be Realm Guard, a hack of Mouse Guard, because it is a focused game that doesn't try to model everything in the setting.  There was also a person writing Song of Arda, a free game online that I liked when it was available but it's been gone for about four years now.  There are many attempts out there if you look for them, including one more I just found.  The overwhelming majority are one more crappy D&D ripoff with the serial numbers filed off.  Here and there one can find a sub-system that actually models something Tolkienian.

People tend to think of Middle Earth as being the source of D&D, but this is not the case.  The only ones who kick in doors to take peoples' stuff in Middle-Earth are the Orcs.  Middle-Earth's setting, assumptions, magic system and so on are entirely different from the 'standard' D&D settings, and the core D&D system has never modeled Middle-Earth, or was it intended to.  As a result of this, every single one of these D&D ripoff games fail entirely.

My thinking on this topic has actually been elevated by the Tolkien Professor.  He has posted many hours of his class lectures on the works of Tolkien - including The Silmarillion, Mythopoeia, Leaf by Niggle and so on. Prof. Corey Olsen does a great job of pointing out what makes Tolkien stand out as one of the best writers of the last century (a claim I'll happily defend).  He is willing to delve into Tolkien's theology and philosophy, and while I don't think he needlessly lionizes the man, he does treat the material thoughtfully.

It's a live question, frankly, of whether it is even possible to model Middle-Earth with a game of any kind.  Is it possible to create a game with rules founded in the mythological structures of the Elder Edda, the Kalevala and Catholicism?  Are fictional and mythological narratives too far removed from what actually happens at a gaming table?

I'm trying.  I have a rough playtest document at the moment, almost ready to run with a group.  This attempt is semi-simulationist, which I'm sure will make all the indie-types roll their eyes, but everyone knows the Forge was founded to complain about simulationism (said with a smirk).

Late addition:

In listening to The Tolkien Professor talk about the Ainulindale and the fall of Melkor discussion that followed, I like the idea of having attributes that change, becoming more limited, when a character becomes corrupted.  Melkor's splendor becomes contempt and arrogance; his understanding becomes subtlety.  I like that, in falling, a character is also constricted and constrained.  Both Gollum and Sam are strong for such small people, but what do they use their strength for?  What can they use their strength for?  Gandalf and Saruman have granted powers, but Saruman becomes obsessed and single-minded whereas Gandalf remains versatile and generous.

I just edited the playtest document to work that into the rules.  It felt good.

The Tolkien Professor and My Tolkien Game

Sill working on Servants of the Secret Fire, my slow-burn Middle-Earth tabletop rpg project - more lately than usual because I have recently discovered The Tolkien Professor. The Tolkien Professor is Doctor Corey Olsen of Washington College in Maryland. He is a scholar of medieval literature who teaches courses on, among other things, all of Tolkien's works. He also posts his class lectures to his website and via iTunes, as well as supplemental lectures on Tolkien and his sub-creation Middle-Earth.

Unless you are lobotomized, this stuff is fascinating, and I am assuming that anyone besides Google reading this blog is likely at least a little bit interested in Tolkien and his works. I can easily recommend any of the supplemental lectures Dr. Olsen has posted as a starting-point, since his class lectures aren't as interesting if you aren't reading the books as you follow along, or don't have them fresh in your memory.

Now back to thinking about what to do with a Middle-Earth rpg with no licence, original artwork, budget or collaborators.

Servants of the Secret Fire - Middle Earth RPG

I've taken on a challenge that's been on my mind for years and years now - I want to design a Middle-Earth RPG that actually has something to do with Middle-Earth.

There have been a few attempts in the past - the two big ones that come to mind which have taken on that liscence are MERP and the attempt made by Decipher. Of course, thousands of fantasy RPGs owe a huge amount to Middle-Earth and some, like Burning Wheel, have in some ways tried to do Middle-Earth with the serial numbers filed off, so to speak. Frankly, none of them have satisfied me. Some, like MERP, use another system and tack on Middle-Earthy stuff. ICE actually had very well-researched supplements for MERP with lots of interesting extrapolations about the setting, but the core system was still Rolemaster, which isn't particularly Middle-Earthy.

Decipher's own attempt was the Coda system, which is fucking D20 with the die-type changed to protect the innocent. Their big innovation? Use 2d6 instead of a D20 and change...almost nothing else. I frankly had to buy the base book, and I think I was bamboozled into getting one more when the company ended the RPG line because it was cheap and I'm a sucker for Middle-Earth stuff. The book was actually well put-together. In changing the names of Feats from D20, they gave them names that referenced the films and the books. The book was relatively well written, and they gave the magic system a better stab than MERP for sure. But it was freaking D20 for crap's sake.

Burning Wheel has a lot of cool stuff about it, but what you end up with is sort of Middle-Earth through a distinctly Luke Crane lens. It definitely has a lot of interesting aspects, and picks up on a lot of the color and setting material in subtle ways. Burning Wheel is a great system, and probably the best attempt yet. Still, while it is a good game, it is definitely its own creature. You get something interesting and fun, but it isn't Middle-Earth.

The Song of Arda, which is now defunct, was an attempt to have a Pendragon-esque Middle-Earth RPG. It was never finished, and the site has long since been taken down. I was following its progress with a lot of hope, but...well, I definitely know about games not being finished. Song of Arda would have been freely available online, which would also have been nice.

This brings me to Servants of the Secret Fire, which is the working title I have for my own system for a Middle-Earth RPG. I plan on finishing the playtest document, playtesting it, and then getting together a complete game document that I'll then distribute for free to whoever wants it. I just...I want a good Middle-Earth game to be out there.

Anne Lamott said once in an interview I believe - "Write the book you would want to come upon." Others have said similar things - design the game you want to play. So that's what I'm doing right now.

It's pretty likely it'll come to nothing, but I'll get to play it, and my players will get to enjoy it, and I can give this idea a rest. I've feld like I should write this game since I first picked up a copy of MERP many years ago and ran it and had that feeling of missing the mark but not knowing why or how. I now feel like I know a lot more about the how and the why, so we'll see where this goes.

Hobbit Interview

Here's a transcript of an interview with Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro about the upcoming Hobbit movies. Its a long read but worth it to get an idea of what they're thinking.

I'm still not sure what this second film is going to contain - at the very least, it looks like it will fill in the information about what Gandalf is up to behind the scenes during the main action of the Hobbit (i.e., Dol Guldur, etc.) which is cool - but I'm not sure how you make a whole movie out of it.

I talked about this before, but that was with the assumption that they would be splitting the Hobbit movie into two parts, and from the interview it sort of looks like they're just filling in blacks left between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings - and, I dunno, narratively, a lot of those are blank for a reason...

We'll see. I'm excited regardless.

How to Divide a Hobbit?

I don't have the wisdom of Solomon, but I want to consider something briefly. It is now confirmed many times over that The Hobbit is going to be filmed and released by New Line Cinema. Peter Jackson will be writing and producing for the film, along with Phillipa Boyens once more, and Guillermo Del Toro will be taking the reins as director. Sir Ian McKellan and Andy Serkis will be reprising their roles as Gandalf and Gollum respectively.

Word has it that The Hobbit will be two films, which I find surprising. I think that the Hobbit will be easier to turn into a film than The Lord of the Rings was, and it is a good deal shorter and simpler as a story. It is very direct, the main characters don't split up into three or four different groups, and there are fewer names and characters to keep track of. So the choice to make it two films is odd to me.

I wonder how they will split it up?

If it was me, if I had to divide the move into two parts, I would end the first movie at the point when Bilbo is alone in Mirkwood, separated from the Dwarves, when he confronts one of the giant spiders trying to wind him up to carry him off and eat him. He kills the spider, there alone in the dark, and it is at that moment that he turns a corner as a character. Tolkien identifies the same moment in his letters when he talks about Bilbo as a character. This moment of courage, all alone, is for me the dramatic turning point of the story.

Bilbo has previously shown him self to be far more useful and clever than he was when he nearly got all of the Dwarves eaten by Trolls much earlier in the story, but it is at this moment that he becomes heroic. So the first film would be about Bilbo's transformation into a hero, his ennoblement, to use a term that Tolkien loved to use, and the second film would be about Bilbo-the-hero saving the Dwarves from giant spiders, from the prison of the Elvenking, and ultimately, from themselves just before the Battle of Five Armies.

I wonder where they will split the story up, however. Given that Peter Jackson is involved, bless his heart, but there's no knowing which scenes will be elongated while he and Del Toro enjoy themselves lavishing us with brute-force drama and gorgeous eye-candy. It remains to be seen.

Where would you divide the story of The Hobbit, if it was up to you?