D&D 5E (2014) Tell me about your Adventures in Middle-Earth experiences, please

[CapnZapp]

Much appreciated.

You do not come across as a shill.

 

[Lancelot]

A question for those that use the rules and campaign: do you think the Wilderland Adventures and/or Mirkwood campaign could be converted to regular FR? If so, would you rather set it in:
A) Silver Marches, with Silverymoon as Laketown substitute or,
B) The Dalelands with Arabel-as-Laketown?

I have a table with mostly new players who are not big fans of Tolkien-esque fantasy and this thread made me think that they would probably love those adventures, but I'm not sure if they would like playing in Middle-Earth (maybe, I dont know for sure, they dont care for magic most of the time)

Yikes. It'd be tough, I think.

Here are just a few of the challenges when converting to FR:

1) 90% of the campaign and the modules are set outside Laketown; e.g. once the party leaves Laketown at the start of their adventures, they might not be back for 4 years and 6 PC levels. During that time, they're living in small settlements and farmsteads. The important thing isn't finding a substitute for Laketown; it's finding an area that substitutes for Mirkwood. I'm guessing you're thinking Cormanthor or the High Forest? Whichever you choose, it needs to be considered a deadly location that nobody goes into by choice. You'd need a Dol Guldur substitute: maybe Hellgate Keep, or Myth Drannor (assuming still fallen). You'd also need some orc-infested mountains, which shouldn't be too hard. If your FR campaign has a demon-infested Myth Drannor, I'd go Dalelands. If not, then it'd probably need to be High Forest (i.e. Hellgate)... but a much more deadly and corruptive High Forest than I'm used to.

2) The campaign assumes that Laketown/Dale/Erebor/Elvenking are the major bastions of light, and they're all in close proximity. The journeys in the modules and campaigns assume that there are no other major settlements larger than small rustic towns for 400 miles or more. Once you cross Mirkwood to the west side, you could spend years away from a prosperous city. Wilderland really is the edge of civilization, which makes it a bit tricky to set it somewhere in the north. There are civilized nations everywhere, and you never really feel like you're skirting the unknown. In AiME, nobody is going to be visiting Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate to reprovision. It might be interesting to set it in Chult, and replace goblins with batiri. Chult feels a lot more borderlands. And the jungles have tons of giant spiders, which is also rather convenient... although there aren't very many giant snakes or yuan-ti in AiME.

3) The gods play no part in AiME. There are no temples, no priests, no divine intervention, no religious politics. There are only five wizards, and only three of them (Gandalf, Radagast, and pre-corruption Saruman) might ever be encountered. That messes with a lot of FR expectations and flavour. Depending on the era, I guess you could convert the Istari to Khelben Arunsen, Elminster and... hmm... Alustriel? Elminster would probably fill the role of Radagast, curiously, because the campaign assumes he's local, living in a village, and watching over the nearby forest. The other two are from "far away", and very rarely encountered.

4) Perhaps the biggest challenge is that a lot of the modules and campaign events are explictly tied to certain Tolkien-esque creatures and thematic expectations. Even if you convert them to FR, it's still going to seem like Tolkien-esque fantasy. If your players are fairly sophisticated, they may be a bit curious why there are so many encounters with orcs/trolls/spiders/etc... and not many drow. But it goes deeper than that: the modules and the campaign touch on themes like the inevitable triumph of the shadow, the waning of the elves, the fracturing of civilizations. I guess the elvish thing is fine if your FR campaign is doing the retreat to Evermeet, but the darkening of the land is a tougher sell. FR is pretty resilient; it gets blown up on the regular, and never really seems much the worse for wear. Also, there are always potent counter-balancing forces of Good (Harpers, wizards, Purple Dragon knights, etc). The AiME campaign doesn't have this. The forces of Good in AiME are outgunned, even the toughest goodly NPC (e.g. Beorn) is no match for a half-dozen trolls, and things are going to get ugly.

The key thing is that AiME is low magic... and also, to some extent, low fantasy. Your average settlement is 98% human (except for, specifically, Erebor and the Halls of the Elvenking). There are virtually no spells or magic items. An adventure might see you fighting nothing other than human bandits and wolves. There are no global empires, and no major metropolises (metropoli?). Yes, there are orcs and giant spiders and trolls... but a truly supernatural creature like a vampire or a werewolf might be the *only one of it's kind* in the entire setting.

Still, if you're going to give it a go, start with Wilderland Adventures. It's a neat little adventure path, running through to 7th-or-so level. The modules are mostly self-contained, and they show design elements that are not common in D&D (e.g. encounters that have to be resolved without combat, creatures that cannot be killed by mundane methods, outcomes that are determined by how the players treat people or help them overcome despair). I found them very interesting.

 

[Yaarel]

The description by @Lancelot made me think of the ‘pillars’ of D&D. There are four, really five, pillars of the game.

• Audience/Social
• Journey/Exploration
• Adventure/Situation (?) Emergency (?) Exigency (?) (combat or noncombat)
• Fellowship/Downtime

Fellowship/Downtime is an important pillar. It is where the setting and how the character fits into it come to life. Backgrounds, bonds of families, friends, organizations, and places, the challenges of politics, research, lair-building, the pursuit of goals and ambitions, happen most during downtime.

A fifth pillar of the game is character building, at creation and while leveling. DM worldbuilding probably belongs to this character building pillar, as well.

• Character building

Perhaps ‘the 4+1 pillars’.



What seems to make AIME distinctive in feel is, the four pillars detail descriptions of the characters and places for all of these pillars, and presents formal challenges to overcome for each, often resolving without combat.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The description by @Lancelot made me think of the ‘pillars’ of D&D. There are four, really five, pillars of the game.

• Audience/Social
• Journey/Exploration
• Adventure/Situation (?) Emergency (?) Exigency (?) (combat or noncombat)
• Fellowship/Downtime

Fellowship/Downtime is an important pillar. It is where the setting and how the character fits into it come to life. Backgrounds, bonds of families, friends, organizations, and places, the challenges of politics, research, lair-building, the pursuit of goals and ambitions, happen most during downtime.

A fifth pillar of the game is character building, at creation and while leveling. DM worldbuilding probably belongs to this character building pillar, as well.

• Character building

Perhaps ‘the 4+1 pillars’.



What seems to make AIME distinctive in feel is, the four pillars detail descriptions of the characters and places for all of these pillars, and presents formal challenges to overcome for each, often resolving without combat.

The thing I love the most in AiME, to continue on your idea, is the concept of Phases. We see so much angst on the assumption of 5-6 encounters/day in normal D&D that when you go with the idea of Adventure phase instead of day, its make more sense and flows more naturally.

 

[JPL]

My secret dream is to get a bunch of players together for a AiME one-shot, hand out the setting-appropriate pregen characters, play a little LOTR soundtrack with a Christopher Lee monologue to set the mood, and then five minutes into the adventure . . . modrons, and lots of them.

 

[Azgulor]

Wow. Thanks to everyone for the feedback, especially the detailed responses/analysis. Very intriguing stuff and definitely worth a further look. Thanks!

 

[Gadget]

Finding this thread really useful!

I've been reading through PDFs of the two core AiME books, and I really like what they've done. I'm tempted to buy the physical books because the art and design are so good - they'd be lovely books to hold and use. I actually had the slipcase edition at one point, but sold it (still shrink-wrapped!) for much-needed money at the time.

I've been running 5E for a year and a half now, and would like to get the PCs to 20th level before wrapping up. After that, my main idea right now for what to run after that is AiME, but of course I want to make things difficult for myself and set it around the death of Isildur. It's just that I started watching the FOTR movie and during that opening sequence thought "now wait a minute, what if...".

I know I'd have to whip new cultures with the existing ones as models, likewise with virtues, etc. But I've run Hobbit/LOTR-era games before and don't want to go there again. The Last Alliance era is removed enough to really be it's own thing, but still has that familiarity from the movies. And it would still be "D&D" mechanically, so I'm not likely to lose any players - they're a good bunch, but I know that something too different will probably lose me some players.

I imagine the PCs being part of Isildur's retinue or what have you - or after the battle and the death of their own lords they join up with Isildur's forces. I would probably start the game a couple-few years before the big battle. They prove themselves there and wind up being a useful team for him. They'd have to deal with Isildur's increasing obsession with the ring. They are with him at the Gladden Fields when Isildur is slain.

I want to play with some what-ifs: how much of Sauron does Isildur cut off? Does Isildur die on his way back to Arnor?

Sorry for the late reply, I just looked at these questions. Of course, you are not beholden to follow the established lore, but Isuldur's last battle is described in Unfinished Tales, and he was indeed traveling back to Anor after settling things in the South. There were no survivors, except for Isildur's esquire, who was sent away early in the battle, iirc. As for how much of Sauron Isildur cuts off, just the finger with the Ring. Unlike the movie portrayal, It seems that Isildur, Elendil, Gil-galad, Elrond, & Cirdan engaged in a Battle Royal with Sauron, in which Gil-galad & Elendil perished and Isuldur struck Sauron his death blow. The impression I always got is that Isildur cut the Ring off the defeated Sauron with his foot on his enemy's neck.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Sorry for the late reply, I just looked at these questions. Of course, you are not beholden to follow the established lore, but Isuldur's last battle is described in Unfinished Tales, and he was indeed traveling back to Anor after settling things in the South. There were no survivors, except for Isildur's esquire, who was sent away early in the battle, iirc. As for how much of Sauron Isildur cuts off, just the finger with the Ring. Unlike the movie portrayal, It seems that Isildur, Elendil, Gil-galad, Elrond, & Cirdan engaged in a Battle Royal with Sauron, in which Gil-galad & Elendil perished and Isuldur struck Sauron his death blow. The impression I always got is that Isildur cut the Ring off the defeated Sauron with his foot on his enemy's neck.

I know Cirdan, Elrond, and Isildur were present against the battle with Sauron, but I thought only Gil-Galad and Elendil went toe to toe with him. They won but died in the struggle.

I don't know if Isildur had his boot on the enemy's neck. On his wrist seems more practical for cutting of a ring

 

[ART!]

Sorry for the late reply, I just looked at these questions. Of course, you are not beholden to follow the established lore, but Isuldur's last battle is described in Unfinished Tales, and he was indeed traveling back to Anor after settling things in the South. There were no survivors, except for Isildur's esquire, who was sent away early in the battle, iirc. As for how much of Sauron Isildur cuts off, just the finger with the Ring. Unlike the movie portrayal, It seems that Isildur, Elendil, Gil-galad, Elrond, & Cirdan engaged in a Battle Royal with Sauron, in which Gil-galad & Elendil perished and Isuldur struck Sauron his death blow. The impression I always got is that Isildur cut the Ring off the defeated Sauron with his foot on his enemy's neck.

Thanks for that. I'm in the early stages of thinking about the setting/era and what I can and want to change or allow the PCs - sorry, PHs! - to change. I have Unfinished Tales, so I might crack that open tonight.

One of the things I want to explore is Isildur's mental/moral state as those 2-3 years progress, giving the PHs increasingly unusual orders, missions, etc.

The Gladden Fields could go a number of ways:

1. PHs die, Isildur dies, things unfold as written
2. PHs mostly survive, but break from Isildur, and must figure out how to stop his descent into shadow
3. PHs mostly survive, remain in Isildur's service, but must deal with his descent.
4. Isildur dies, PHs live, and they have the ring.

Just spitballing. I should maybe start a new thread.

 

[Majinine]

Just started reading AiME and for the most part like what I've seen. However, I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts regarding character balance. For example the Dunedain culture from first glance simply seems more powerful with four Ability score increases and two Skill proficiencies.