Capturing the "feel" of Tolkien.

[CreamCloud0]

So, I'm running the adventure this Sunday. The group is a mix of halflings and half-elves, which is convenient for the tone.

My big challenge at the moment is that if I am not having the first adventure feature goblins or orcs (I'd like to make them not be the bad guys, having been forced into the former Dark Lord's army, rather than being willingly evil peoples in this campaign), I'm actually finding it hard to find low level threats that fit the world, other than skeletons and, I guess, giant rats.

My current plan is that everyone is attending a big halfling wedding, and the scent of all the great food lures a giant boar. It gets chased off, but ends up carrying off one or more kids in its mouth and the heroes have to chase it back to its lair, which turns out to be an old tomb (complete with skeletons).

i guess alot of the threats that the fellowship and the dwarven party face apart from orcs and goblins are natural wild animals, so wolves and spiders maybe some birds of prey or snakes? you could probably find a few low level plantlike enemies given that living flora have precidence in middle earth with the ents, i don't know if you could modify and reflavour some low level fey creatures that have more indirect effects with illusion and enchantment?

 

[aco175]

Nobody seems to mention how similar Middle Earth feels like the 4e Nentir Vale with the old kingdom of Nerath being in days of old and the same feel of 'points of light' in the darkness. Maybe take some from that to add to the ME game.

 

[Reynard]

Nobody seems to mention how similar Middle Earth feels like the 4e Nentir Vale with the old kingdom of Nerath being in days of old and the same feel of 'points of light' in the darkness. Maybe take some from that to add to the ME game.

That's been fantasy since at least the pulp era, and probably long before. The Golden Age has always been gone, and the Corrupt Now has always lived in the shadows of its ruins.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

i guess alot of the threats that the fellowship and the dwarven party face apart from orcs and goblins are natural wild animals, so wolves and spiders maybe some birds of prey or snakes? you could probably find a few low level plantlike enemies given that living flora have precidence in middle earth with the ents, i don't know if you could modify and reflavour some low level fey creatures that have more indirect effects with illusion and enchantment?

Yeah, I put blights -- which I was glad to see made the jump to the Monster Manual in 5E -- on my list of monsters for the setting for that reason. They feel sufficiently English folkloric without being something we've seen a million times before.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Go run a session in a national park?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, the first session went well enough that I now have to plan a second adventure. The first one started at a halfling party (a wedding, not a birthday party, but close enough).

I'm thinking this one might need a trek across a largely uninhabited land and one or more large humanoids who want to eat the player characters. And maybe a swamp full of ghostly apparitions. Levels 2-4.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Well, the first session went well enough that I now have to plan a second adventure. The first one started at a halfling party (a wedding, not a birthday party, but close enough).

I'm thinking this one might need a trek across a largely uninhabited land and one or more large humanoids who want to eat the player characters. And maybe a swamp full of ghostly apparitions. Levels 2-4.

you mentioned in a previous post your party was made up of halflings and halfelves, i'm curious what their classes were if you don't mind me asking?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

you mentioned in a previous post your party was made up of halflings and halfelves, i'm curious what their classes were if you don't mind me asking?

Level four halfling druid (played by a veteran player whose DM moved away), half-elf ranger and halfling rogue. We may pick up a fourth player this time around.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, the first session went well enough that I now have to plan a second adventure. The first one started at a halfling party (a wedding, not a birthday party, but close enough).

I'm thinking this one might need a trek across a largely uninhabited land and one or more large humanoids who want to eat the player characters. And maybe a swamp full of ghostly apparitions. Levels 2-4.

Larry Niven wrote a short story called “Night on Mispec Moor”. Essentially, the main character finds himself on an old battlefield where the dead returned to life. Sort of his take on “Night of the Living Dead”.

Years ago, I helped someone design an adventure based on that story, in which the catalyst for the dead (skeletons & zombies) rising was getting a little blood on a magical battle standard for a group devoted to Orcus. The blood magic would only last for 1d4 days, and animated the dead in a certain radius around the standard. Because it was an AoE effect, the number of animated dead depended was varied, depending on the number and condition of fallen soldiers nearby.

To survive the encounter, the party could:
1) fight their way through the undead for
that time,
2) abandon the standard and leave its AoE,
3) clean the standard, or
4) learn how to actually USE the standard to control the undead.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

A recent battlefield; I don't think the zombifying agent in the story would work on a corpse that wasn't very fresh.