Adventures in Middle-earth 5e

The bodies lying on the ground, the groove around you, the long evening shades… – this whole situation suddenly seemed familiar to you. For a few heartbeats, you’re standing motionless, your thoughts whirling in an elusive feeling of danger. Something is… Caw! Caw! – the rook’s cry above reminds you of your dream. You turn to the way you’ve come, feeling icy sweat at the recollection of that scene. Soon, in just an instant, from around the creek’s turn, a hooded rider will burst out. In the falling silence, you subconsciously wait to hear the sound of hooves.
I had learned the hard lesson on mingling physical dangers to the characters with puzzles and hints for the players. For the start of our next RPG session, I wrote one of my best notes ever. The above is the first excerpt.

An eerie fog rises around as a little hamlet somewhere in the Noman-lands holds breath, preparing to defend against bandit raiders. From the mist, only one person emerges, speaking riddles. The tension is high, and everyone wonders what to make out of this. Or I supposed they would because the players seem not interested in the puzzles at all. What should GM do when the players ignore the plot hook?

Three strangers arrived that afternoon at the hamlet of Limesplice. Shortly after, the whole settlement was waiting in tension for the bandit raiders to assault… Read More »How to link the player-character story to the main plot? – Shadows in the Fog

Even at the world’s lowest backwater, there’s an inn, a bar or other gathering place of some sort. And in it, you will almost certainly find rumours, mysterious strangers and, most importantly, the main plot. It sounds irritatingly obvious or overused, isn’t it? Well, maybe. But I also disagree about using cliché themes in RPG.

Crafting an introduction to the first session of an RPG campaign is a powerful way of setting the tone for the adventures to come. In my opening post of the series, I described a handful of ways to bring up the unique feeling of Middle-earth in my Brown Lands campaign. Those concerned mostly the general layout of the plot. This time, I’d like to focus on how to perform it at the RPG table. So, let’s set off right into the campaign!

The Brown Lands were barren and empty, a realm that no lord nor lady thought of claiming as their own. No living soul dwelt among its formless moors, windswept hills and ominous gullies. Or so it was in the time of great events that were passed to us in The Red Book of West March. But these unwelcoming, unclaimed lands were once home to the hardy folk who enjoyed staying outside the affairs of the broader world. It is the story of their vanishing – yet another among Middle-earth’s tales of decline and passing.