ROTN Comments and Qs thread

Without stopping any of the "in-game" comments and questions, I think it might be useful to have this as a parallel thread to whatever the current Chapter is. I am going to label this post #1 so it is easier to make any later comments about it!

Chapter 1 # 1. My views/interpretation of degrees of Success with skills rolls, and Travel rolls as LM for the group. (Even though some of you have met this before, I hope I don't bore you with this next bit)

So we have just rolled five of the Travel rolls that the Company need to do for this part of the journey. Three of the PC s have rolled Great Successes on their Travel rolls. Although it is not mandatory, often an additional level of Success like this can be donated towards other players making their own attempt at the same common TEST, and with Travel I usually do the same. It means that all three of the other PCs can be covered for this journey.

A basic Success at Travel of course gives the PC the first Advancement point in the Movement group (unless they have already picked it up). A Great Success - or better- will win the second Advancement point (a.k.a. "pip") in the Movement group; the third Advancement point can be a bit more fiddly to award/claim. Using RAW, a Success is needed ALONG WITH the player narrating some use of one of their Traits/Specialisms/Distinctive Features - frankly I have always found this too limiting, so I always assume that any Extraordinary Success will win the third "pip" as well as a "Success & narration". Most recently, I am also prepared to accept a roll of a Gandalf (12) on the Feat die as being equivalent to the narration as well.

There has been one case of an Eye was rolled, and, Succeed or Fail, this triggers a HAZARD episode.
Somewhere along the Journey, or at the end, there will be an extra event. Using RAW, such an event is set up and applied to one of the four ROLES of the company, Hunter, Scout, Guide or Lookout. Since there are six of us I will roll a 1d6 to determine (randomly) who faces the event at first, unless people would prefer to stick with RAW, in which case we need to agree and assign each of these four Roles among us - with the one restriction that only one PC at a time can be the Guide.(As it happens, I rolled a 1 already in the main thread and that is lazycats's Ahmo!)

Chapter 1 # 2.

Great post valentbr. Some first person narration. Jot falling short of the TN for Travel can be ignored as Ahmo rolled a Great Success and I will let that stand instead. (Larsi can have Oderic's Great Success. )

And I will narrate the Hazard after Aeglief has her Travel roll.

Edit: although this was a failure, the Great Successes of some of others can be employed to get around it. In this case Cora also scored a GS. (Not that we have to assign them!)

Chapter 1 # 3. A reminder to log your own successes with the rolls using Common Skills. Jot has just passed an Awareness task, so he qualifies for the first point (pip) in the Perception group if he has not picked it up already.

Chapter 1 # 4. The Bog Soldiers. Each PC will be attacked by a pair of these soldiers.

Fortunately Ahmo and Jot have some knowledge of these creatures. They will be able to communicate a few facts.

Clearly they are Undead, and, in this case (Unnatural Vitality ability) when reduced to zero Endurance they continue to operate by spending 1 Hate point per Round. Effectively they get a few extra Rounds of attacking before they realise they are dead.
Intimidate Foe is ineffective.
They would have Fear of Fire... but there is no Fire here in the bogs!
Sunlight etc has no impact.

Bog soldiers are known to attempt to Seize their foes, in order to drag them into the mud and drown them. If a PC is engaged by one soldier, then any other bog soldier will attempt to Seize the PC from the side or rear. So if a PC takes knockback, then the gap in the shield wall will permit this. Standing shoulder to shoulder in the ring stops these attempts. If a PC is defeated, they must be dragged back inside the ring (one PC loses their attack roll to do this), and the circle tightened - else the bog soldiers will push through and attempt Seize from behind. The fallen comrade will be automatically Seized if left in the open. With a group of size 6, only two fallen comrades can be so protected - same restrictions as Rearward Stance in Combat.


When a PC is seized, only an Athletics roll (TN =10 + Attribute, 3, = 13) will permit the PC to break free. The PC can continue to fight - but counts as hindered, their Attack roll is altered by raising the difficulty of the Attack TN by 4, while their Defence is reduced by 4.
If a PC is Seized another Bog Soldier can pile on with a fresh Seize attack, increasing the Athletics roll needed by + 3 (Attribute) to TN 16.
If the Athletics roll fails with an Eye, the PC counts as drowning in the mud (lose 1d6 Endurance per turn, can only roll Athletics, Parry is reduced to 6 )

Endurance of a Bog Soldier = 12, Parry = 2, weapon skill = 2. The weapons all have similar characteristics Damage 4 , Edge 10, Injury 14 being rusted and in poor condition.

Chapter 1 # 5

Example of Bog Soldier paired attack.

Round 1.
Oderic had Initiative and rolled his attack first, but it is a poor total.

Oderic (Open Stance) has just missed with his own attack. The Fighting Bog Warrior strikes back and hits Oderic, causing 5 endurance loss. Taking the opportunity, the second Bog warrior rolls a Seize attempt. Oderic has a Body Attribute of 3, so this is added to a Base level of 10 to produce the TN of 10 + 3 = 13 for the Seize attempt. The second Bog warrior rolls well, achieving 14 with 1d12 + 2d6 (it uses its Movement rating of 2 as a skill level)
Oderic is Seized at the end of the round, with 4 endurance loss from the first warriors sword attack as well.

Round 2 Oderic elects to roll Athletics against TN 10 + Attribute for the Bog Soldier. The Attribute is also 3 so Oderic must roll 13 or better to break free.
With a skill of 3 in Athletics he tries this instead of hitting at his foes. (He rolls badly again, and scores a mere 7 total, even 1 Hope will not extract him from the clutches of these foes. )
The FIRST Bog warrior now rolls to strike Oderic with a bonus of 4 to his weapon attack. Oderic was in Open stance, and has a Parry of 5, normally a TN of 14, but now the TN is only 10. In the first bit of good fortune, the First Bog Soldier misses by rolling a Gandalf (0) , a 3 and a 1 ! However, the Second Bog Soldier now attacks with its Claws. This one rolls 1d12 + 2d6 and the total is 11. So the second Bog Warrior rakes the back of Oderic as they grapple together - producing another 3 Endurance loss (the Attribute level of the Bog warrior).

Chapter 1 # 6

Nearing the end of the first Round of combat. We need Ahmo to attack the warrior A; and Aeglief to roll an Armour test TN 14 against a possible Wounding.

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This has been quite eventful. The dice were pretty good in the end.
Oderic just missed being hit; Cora was very lucky not to get Seized when the second warrior rolled a Gandalf (12) which counts as 0 for the enemy.
So far only Cora and Aeglief have lost 4 endurance.

Four of the Bog warriors have not spent any Hate yet (they have three points each): which means that they can each fight three more rounds AFTER they lose all their Endurance.
Aeglief's Foe lost all its endurance in her first Strike; so the Bog warrior needed to spend 1 Hate to make its attack this round, so it will have a maximum of two more Rounds left in it before keeling over.

Any questions?

I was worried I calculated my parry wrong but, I guess not.

I have a slightly different interpretation on elves since I have done so much writing involving them.- This is largely informed by beliefs outlined in Evans-Wentz's monograph (https://worldspirituality.org/fairy-faith-html/) JRRT was certainly aware of and informed by British and Germanic fairy lore. His son was concerned with making elves more specifically British medieval Catholic. Which is their authorial prerogative. I am more interested in exploring other concepts. So Ahmo smokes hashish - as a mood modulator.I'd think elves would be interested in exploring the sensorae.

Ah. I think I see how you are viewing this situation. It's a small enough point not to disturb the general narrative of this game, but there are further issues that then get drawn in.

There are issues that mark a clear variation of Tolkien's creation, and there are issues that simply are a variation of the interpretation of Tolkien's creation by different people discussing (or gaming) the idea of Middle-earth.

In the TOR2e Starter Set the author (James Spahn I think) added in a curiosity called a "Velocipede" to the Mathom house (hobbit museum). Most people took that (probably correctly) as referring to being a sort of early wooden bicycle of the Victorian era. i.e. that Hobbits had primitive bicycles. The majority of opinions expressed about this were negative, and wished to exclude this contraption.
This of course is a clear variation of Tolkien, and the entire debate accepted that this was an extreme step of whimsey, and went beyond the fringes of Tolkiens own examples of technology. (1)
Something that is an interpretation of Tolkien's own words is the Flying Steed of the Witch King of Angmar. At no point did the professor say: this was a dinosaur/pterodactyl. But it is almost always illustrated as one. I have always considered it to be similar looking to the standard Pteranodon like image given us by fossil scientists. (2)


[Incidentally, I have always considered that ONLY the WKA had anything like this flying creature: the other Nazgul simply had "flying steeds" - and these would be smaller beasts, incapable of fighting in battle. Normally I think of them as powerful Condor like birds, carrion feeders for sure. After all a wraith probably doesn't weigh too much. ]

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So, our game.
For me the idea that Elves are smokers is a stage (1) change; and not a stage (2) change. It's not Tolkien, who clearly mentions which people smoke - mortals, and which are not mentioned- the elves.

But I see how, for you, its a stage (2) change, because its about whether these elves are Tolkiens actual Eldar, or whether we are going outside of Middle-earth to include any, some, or all uses of the concept of fairy folk: with possible links to narcotic use by shamans experimenting with alleged fortune telling and predictive capabilities.

Now I am NOT the King of this game; it has its own rules (TOR1e) for us to align with. And we alter or amend them for our own enjoyment as we go along, and as we agree about them. I enjoy flexibility, and I respect interpretation and innovation in this game: so I try to endorse house rules, and would not discourage debate - such as this.

From my own POV - purely as one player among all of us here - the attraction of both Middle-earth and the TOR game is that it is a LIMITED Fantasy game that relies on its foundation in Tolkiens works. It draws a border to exclude many other Fantasy tropes and beasts that might be expected in other creations such as Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, Conan, HG Wells, Grimms Fairy Tales, Disney...
By restricting the palette to Tolkien, it removes a lot of the chaos and inconsistency of these other Fantasy worlds, because Tolkien removed them first. It also insulates us from many of the features of our own non-fantasy world. Explicit sexual activity, gore, pornography, over-detailed violence or cruelty, racism and sexism are not subjects that the PCs debate *. These details are implicit to the activities in the game - they have to be to some extent - but they are not scrutinised nor endorsed.

A better Player and LM than me once typed his expectations for the game he was running. Included in that preamble was one message that endorses any Tolkien game I want to join or or run. I can't quote him - it was on Tavern Keeper when I read it, but its like this

"The style and commentary of the game should be such that it could be comfortably played if pre-teenage children were in the same room, who would hear and see what was going on, and who might even be included or consulted for their opinion. "

In the light of that sentiment I think I would be fine to accept the interpretation that some Elves take "supplements" that permit their bodies and minds to explore more widely (non-destructively) IF the material used was NOT a named real world narcotic (i.e. cannabis or hashish), but rather more like the name for the imagined Miruvor or Lembas of Tolkiens world.

*because there are plenty of other places to do this.

Lots of people think Tolkien must have been reading Lovecraft because there's a tentacle monster in LotR. When really, Tolkien and Lovecraft were both fans of and heavily infleunced by Lord Dunsany. So it isn't a surprise they both arrived at one common point.

Ahmo and Oronnil are married. Aamu is their daughter. They had a son who died in the siege of Barad Dur and another who remained in Aman when the Noldor went into exile.

I think for historicity and the like Rue and Aeglief may know each other one being a wanderer from Mirkwood and the other being a Mirkwood Sheild maiden. With Rue being far more vengeance seeking while Aeglief is more of a warden and protector.

Meanwhile Faelivrin, the high elf, doesn't know the other two at all.

Speaking of Wraith-beasts- No Pterasaur there ever was could bear a person riding them- they were way too lightly built. My son the dinosaur expert so informs me.
After I read Silmarillion, I guessed dragons were perversions of eagles and nothing to do with Archisauridea (which includes the two chickens living in our backyard)

Chapter 2 # 1Witnessing the HORROR and AWE of the Dark Leader's Rally.

1. Although we are in the middle of doing a preliminary Fear (Valour) check at TN 16, this is purely for the experience of seeing the forces of Mount Gram assemble with some sort of malicious intent. Passing this check is enough to gain an Experience Point XP. Failing means the PC is Daunted. Failing with an Eye has already been described as forcing the PC to cower at the bottom of the gully.

2. Very soon afterwards the Leader of Mount Gram is going to put in a personal appearance: this will be a subsequent, and more challenging Valour check at TN 18 to avoid being Daunted. Passing this check will also gain an XP. Failure will mean a PC cannot spend Hope (or Courage) to assist any further rolls as this scene plays out. Failure with an Eye, will mean, like before, the PC is Daunted, AND they slip down the gully to hide out of sight and hearing of what is going on down on the parade ground.

3. Any PC still observing the Rally will then undergo a Corruption (Wisdom) check. This is to represent the shocking effect of the Leader of Mount Gram, who will be using the Black Speech to address its army.
The TN is 18. If the PC passes, they still get 1 Temporary Shadow Point; but also 2XP is gained. Passing with a Gandalf avoids the Shadow point.
Failure means 1 XP and 3 Shadow Points are gained.
Failure with an Eye means these 3 Shadow points can only be removed while at Imladris (or Lothlorien) in the prescence of Elrond (or Galadriel) using the normal Song/Craft mechanism during a Fellowship Phase. Of course, there are no XP to pick up.


Note: A PC can elect to hide in the gully instead of taking any test: this is an automatic 2 Temporary Shadow point gain for each Test avoided. Once they choose to hide in the gully they cannot go back up until the Rally is concluded.

Larsi crushing the valor checks with extraordinary successes and the wisdom check with a Great success.

Chapter 2 # 2


Lazycat just wroteI certainly intend to play this one out as you guys see the way forward. Naturally, I am NOT sticking to the script as written in the ROTN Sourcebook, just as rrw360 and valentbr didn't when they were leading the game along.

For one thing, having what could be the climax of our Eriador campaign focussed into this area is way off the published material, which was based east of the Shire IIRC in the original adventure arc

For another, the major villain is not the Barrow Wight King: so we are well off the beaten track already!

I quite like the evolution of this story that the Company may split - probably into two uneven parts: although narratively it can be a real problem to keep the timelines compatible and the interest in both branches equitable. I do feel that there is a real risk that one branch will be more entertaining than the other, or its narrative become more important. If it becomes unbalanced in that way, it can be almost unfair for some players

ppChapter 2 # 3

I did do this sort of thing in Tavern Keeper, with Mr Orange's Darkening of Wilderland campaign. In that game I inherited FOUR separate threads, but at least there were close to a dozen PC and active NPC to work with.
(1) running each thread was easy enough; but it came to a point where I had to railroad them all in order to force the PCs back together again. That took a lot longer than I thought because each thread had rapidly diverged away from the others with the creativity of the Players involved. (2) the most difficult thread was one with a single PC in it, following his own quest. Even now I don't like the narrative to get that PC combined in. And his quest is poorly resolved. Since some of you were in that game, it was Chapter 11A 11B 11C and 11D.

To Ahmo getting word to Elrond is a military duty and about nothing else would matter. Nothing says she (and Cora) couldn't get to the (possibly) friendly village shortly after. Which is a lesser narrative hassle- just need to figure out how long it would take

Chap 3 # 1

So for Aeglief and any other less exprienced PC the number of available Courage points is reset to full.

If you had spare unused Courage points, one of them could be traded for 2 Advancement points, while another unused advancement point can be traded for 1 Experience point.

I think Ahmo burnt up her courage watching the villain's exposition