A home for retired familiars would be super awkward. Because it would be forgotten 90% of the time, effectively ceasing to exist until someone needed to interact with one of the familiars residing at the home. Its residents would be ignored, and live the remainder of their lives in a twisted limbo somewhere between being alive and nonexistence.
So… pretty much like every other retirement home.
Published by the British RPG studio, Cubicle 7, the first book in the Adventures in Middle Earth product line is the Player’s Guide. Cubicle 7 current publishes of the One Ring roleplaying game also set in Middle Earth as well as the licensed Doctor Who RPG, both using a house system. Adventures in Middle Earth is different in that it used the OGL and 5th Edition ruleset developed for Dungeons & Dragons. It’s 5e Middle Earth.
The Player’s Guide is a 224-page product, currently available as a PDF but soon to be available as a physical book. It’s full colour book that features eleven cultures (read: races), six classes, thirteen backgrounds, and sixty Virtues (read: feats), and is presented as the sole book required for characters. While a 5e Player’s Handbook is required to play the game and for the rules, the only options you’re expected to take are in the AiME Player’s Guide; it doesn’t expect you to mix-and-match classes or backgrounds or feats from other sources.
The book focuses on “the Wilderland”, the region around the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood forest, which lies north of Rohan and south of Angmar. It’s the region all of The Hobbit takes place, and both the opening and ending of Lord of the Rings. The book assumes campaigns are set in the period 5 years after the death of Smaug (the end of The Hobbit) and 55 years before the start of Lord of the Rings, give or take (as campaigns are assumed to sprawl over several years). This is a familiar era, where there’s still a looming threat, but allows the PCs to be the hero of their story.
There is excellent art throughout the book, with drawn illustrations instead of the movie stills of past products. The art has a very classical/ traditional feel: it reminds me of assorted Tolkien/ Art of Middle Earth calendars. It’s lovely in a way that is unlike typical Dungeons & Dragons books, focusing as much on the landscape, terrain, and buildings as people in armour. Most of the art in the book is in colour, but a few are black-and-white illustrations, but this typically seems stylistic and not a limitation of budget. It’s a beautiful book. Personally, I’m rather glad I have the PDF, as I can screenshot a few choice images for use as reference pictures for my home game.
Cubicle 7 knows their Tolkien. Having written their own RPG set in Middle Earth, they’ve had plenty of time to do research and hunt down quotes and passages, and this shows. This book is filled with lore from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. (But not The Silmarillion, which has never been licensed; the book is limited to content found in the Appendix at the end of Return of the King.) The authors know the material, and know it well enough to easily summarize and relate it to the reader. The book is informative without reading like an encyclopedia.
Going hand-in-hand with the above, the 5th Edition ruleset has been reworked to match the assumptions of Middle Earth. For example, weapons and armour were altered to match the world. It’s small but important, as plate armour wasn’t mentioned in the books, with mail and chain referenced instead. Similarly, there’s no spellcasting per se. The book makes no attempt at a wizard class or offensive magic user. Some small magic is added via virtues/feats, but this is small and not particularly flashy. This is the big revision to the rules, but potentially useful for anyone wanting a magic-lite game system, even those for other worlds such as a Song of Ice and Fire.
While the Player’s Guide uses the term “men” for “humans”, it at least acknowledges the sexism of this and admits doing so as that’s the term used in Tolkien’s works. Every time I see “men” in place of “people” or “humans”, part of me winces slightly, but I can respect trying to stay true to the source material rather than rewriting an author. (I’m also aware “men” actually does mean “people” and we’ve just gotten lazy and omitted the prefix “were” for male humans, but that doesn’t change the modern connotations.)
The book adds a few new rule subsystems: Shadow, Fellowship phase, and the Journey. Shadow deals with corruption: being drawn into the darkness, succumbing to inner frailty, or being worn down by continual exposure to horror and tragedy. This might be useful for lots campaigns. The Fellowship phase aspect could be very useful, serving as a variant on the downtime days rules. It’s a tempting addition. The Journey subsystem is also interesting, easily slotting into other campaigns. It doesn’t replace random encounters or events during an exploratory expedition, but adds some random chance for the tone of how the journey starts and ends, as well as the number of encounters. Rather than periodically rolling for random encounters every so often, a roll at the start of the journey determines how many encounters occur.
At $20, the PDF is a little steep, especially for a game that expects you to have a number of other products (i.e. all the other 5e material), and likely at least one other Adventures in Middle Earth book aimed at gamemasters (the forthcoming Loremaster’s Guide). The price moves it out of the realm of impulse purchases, instead it’s a book only purchased if you’re certain it will see use.
The Player’s Guide doesn’t mention “5th edition” D&D. At all. Or even “the 5th Edition of the world’s oldest RPG” and that the book requires the use of the 5e Player’s Handbook or ruleset. This might be on the back cover, which was not included in the PDF I purchased. Given this book doesn’t include the full rules for play, this might easily confuse a casual gamer purchasing this product in a store. It’s not a big problem as the D&D Basic Rules are a free PDF, but this isn’t communicated in any way.
I wonder if this product was written prior to the release of the SRD in January of this year. It seems likely some work was done prior, as it was released less than a year after. This product having been planned earlier might explain while so much content is rewritten (all the classes and subclasses, all the feats, etc). And maybe even why elements like feats became virtues, and the terms for personality traits in backgrounds all needlessly changed. Especially as this design change unfortunately makes the backgrounds more difficult to use in other worlds or campaigns, limiting the use of the book.
Virtues are so-so. Most don’t quite feel as good or comprehensive as 5e feats, and thus aren’t great replacements for ability score boosts. A few also assume the use of the various subsystems, making them harder to use in a generic setting. I can’t fai
While I like the idea of the corruption system, which also serves as a replacement for alignment, it’s a pretty harsh system. It quickly renders you less effective in combat before you start gaining more flavourful flaws, which feels slightly backwards. And recovering from corruption can only happen during a Fellowship Phase, or between adventurers. This could be a long time.
The Fellowship Phase is interesting, but does its own thing separate from downtime days. The authors chose to convert their own system into 5e rather than adapting or expanding the existing rules. Building onto the downtime days system would have made the system feel more apart of 5th Edition, and also allow DMs to bring in other uses of downtime days from other sources.
Similar to the above, the information given to Journeys feels slightly anemic. It’s a few tables, making it easy to exhaust the options or get the same option repeatedly. Rolling for the start of journeys is also curiously designed, being a d12 + Survival + ½ Wisdom. Which feels clumsy when it could have been a Wisdom (Survival) check, with an expanded table.
Included in the subsystems is a chapter on Audiences, which is effectively an expanded section on diplomacy/ persuasion. It has a lengthy chart on the various reputations and interactions between races, establishing how dwarves feel about elves, and elves feel about hobbits, along with DCs to interact with people based on these opinions. It’s a little codified for my tastes. Hard DCs for Diplomacy checks are a 3e-ism I was glad the game moved away from: fixed DCs tend to benefit Min Maxers more than the narrative and just result in book flipping.
The game seems to assume variant rules, especially with healing, but this is unclear. The product feels incomplete. I imagine the Loremaster’s Guide will help with this, and some of that rules content might be included there, along with monsters and advice on creating a campaign, but that’s some time away. It feel like I’m trying to judge an unfinished product.
Balance is an issue throughout the book. It doesn’t feel like the authors really had a solid idea of how 5th Edition runs or how to design content for that rule system just yet. 5e is fairly loose in terms of balance compared to 4e, 13th Age, or other balance-orientated systems, but is pretty steady compared to almost any other RPG, where character power level (especially in combat) can vary wildly. This book feels like it was designed like the latter type of RPG, with the option of designing characters that are ineffective in battle. If planning on running a campaign that is combat-lite, this shouldn’t be an issue. If you plan on running a more typical D&D game in Middle Earth, then this will be an issue.
For example, the warden is a spell-less bard without remotely enough class features to replace lost spellcasting. It’s pretty much just the bard without spells, *slightly* better weapon choices, and the ability to hear rumours. The scholar, which ostensibly replaces the wizard and cleric, is pretty anemic. Meanwhile, the warrior looks comparable to the fighter, if not tougher. Which, amusingly, seems to make the game match the movies, as people are really encouraged to be martial types who attack with a single big weapon. For anyone hoping to use this book as a method of getting low magic classes for a campaign setting, this is a bit of a disappointment.
The Dúnedain culture/ race is just outright better than all the other human races: it has better stats (four pluses rather than three) and an extra skill. This sorta matches the books but doesn’t seem suited to a game. You don’t want to penalize players for picking a different race.
There’s no open content in the book. Coming off the incredibly open Pathfinder and the surprisingly open 5th Edition, the fact this entire book is labeled as “closed content” is a surprise. It’s also unfortunate, as it means no one can expand on the few options provided in the book, making new scholar subclasses or Journey tables. (Or for people looking to expand/revise on the low magic options in the book.)
Each class has a weakness associated with it, associated with a particular Shadow corruption. It’s a neat way of divvying up weaknesses without having that be a separate step or random. I enjoy the idea that a character’s strengths also determine their weaknesses. It’s a very Shadows of Esteren idea.
Starting wealth is tied to race, which provides different class packages. While it shifts the balance of some races, it’s is a neat idea and reinforces each race’s place in the world. I enjoy that not every character starts with the exact same amount of gold. (I wonder if backgrounds might have been a better way of making wealth variable…)
The equipment section includes both fireworks and assorted herbs that have mechanical effects. Being able to offer names for herbs used in salves is a fun idea, and this section will be stolen for use at my table.
The book introduces new mechanics tied to inspiration, where you can spend the inspiration for this other bonus rather than just advantage. It’s an idea I rather like (and used once myself in my Ravenloft document). I think a few of these are a little strong, as advantage is equivalent to a +5 to a roll against an average DC, but as inspiration is dependant on the DM, it’s easy to control usage of the ability and correct imbalance.
Cubicle 7 is affiliated with the Bits & Mortar program, which allows participating stores to collect e-mails when they sell a hard copy, contacting Cubicle 7 who then sends out free PDFs. You support local game stores and get the digital product. For free! Very slick. (A semi-local store is even involved in the program, which I will have to remember this in the future.)
When I heard about this book I was excited. Partly because there’s two types of Middle Earth fans now: people who like the books and people who like the movies. There’s room for two stylistically different Middle Earth RPGs: one that focuses on the journey and wonder and magic, and one that’s more action orientated. In much the same way The Hobbit is a more traditional fairy tale and Lord of the Rings is straight high fantasy. There’s room for the stand alone literary One Ring RPG and the 5e OGL monster killing RPG. But I’m not sure this product really works to fill that second niche.
This is the big flaw in the Adventures in Middle Earth Player’s Guide. It adapts 5th Edition to work with Middle Earth but doesn’t really work to the strengths or design goals of the system or accommodate any existing material. Too often it tries to remake the wheel rather than work with existing frameworks. Which also makes the book a less desirable purchase for fans looking for more 5th Edition content, or hoping to use the book as a sourcebook for homebrew low magic games. I was personally hoping to find some neat optional rules, such as an expanded downtime system, interesting dwarfcraft weapons and armour rules, new backgrounds, and corruption rules that might be potentially useful for my homegame. But I’m not sure how much content here is useful.
For fans of Middle Earth looking for an RPG experience, the One Ring game is still the better choice. For people who want a Middle Earth RPG who dislike the One Ring, I’m not certain this product is different enough. This book is best suited for people looking for a Tolkien experience but unwilling to learn a new ruleset (possibly for a mini-campaign or as part of a break in a regular D&D campaign).If you’re not looking to adventure in Middle Earth using a variant of the 5e rules, than this product probably isn’t for you.
At the end of each session I asking two things: what’s your plan and when’s the next session?
The first question is theoretically more important: what are the characters going to do next? Are they stealthily approaching the ancient ruins or charging straight in? Are they heading east or west? Are they resting for the night or trying to get a few more hours closer towards home. This allows me to plan the next session.
The second question is pretty self-explanatory and simple. I like to coordinate dates while everyone is still at the table, scheduling in minutes rather than slowly playing tag via email over a couple days.
Ironically, this past game, I had more issues with the latter. The group settled on one day, but a forgotten obligation resulted in one player only free in the evening while another was only free at the morning. As a result, my standard two-weeks of planning for a session has been compacted to one week. Crud.
Wrangling five busy adults is easily the worst part of gaming.
Having met a dryad in a semi-random encounter, my players felt indebted after being fed and offered their assistance. She told them of a creature she could sense but had never seen, a creature whose presence offended her, irritating her like an itch just out of reach.
Of course, this was all B.S.: I hadn’t expected them to offer help to the dryad, and didn’t know off the top of my head what type of creature I wanted them to face. Not defining the threat left me room to design around the vague clues, choosing any monster I wanted later rather than locking myself into an aberration or undead. However, being vague likely made it a little more apparent I was pulling the hook from the ol’ bag of holding. (Not that I would admit it at the table.) It could have easily been a Heisenberg’s Uncertain Dungeon: until an quest is completed and a location is explored, it both exists and doesn’t exist. Players don’t know if their Dungeon Master is fabricating a threat from scratch or employing a pre-planned generic dungeon. If not entered, another location becomes that dungeon, and the planned encounters shift locations.
Looking back, I probably should have hinted more at the nature of the threat in some way. “Not of this world” or “does not live in the traditional sense” would have not only been more evocative, but limited my options from “everything in D&D lower than CR 4” to monsters that matched the description, while also making it seem like it was all planned.
I’d like to introduce a moral dilemma. That’s my plan for the next session. The campaign setting is one of extremes, with life surviving in the twilight between an unsetting sun and an endless night. It’s a world of greys trapped between absolutes. Things shouldn’t be easy, and survival requires hard choices and compromise.
Whatever the dryad is sending the adventures after, it shouldn’t be an evil monster. It, like the dryad, should be neutral and potentially helpful.
It might be interesting to go fungi, which are almost a reflections of plants, and thus might irk the dryad. Perhaps a small myconid colony, living underground off a dwindling aquifer that can’t support both the mushroom men and the dryad’s oak. The older roots of the oak could stretch through roof of the cavern, covered in mould and fungi. The myconids might be able to suck up and release moisture from assorted pools, providing the party with transportable water if they return and kill the dryad. Or the party can kill the myconids and get more goodberry-acorns that will expire after a single day. But just leaving will doom both, as the slow flow of water is not enough to sustain both the moisture seeking fungi and the large magical oak.
Being more accustomed to the pacing of 3e/4e, I’m used to equating each major encounter with an hour. 5e is a little faster, so a small encounter can breeze past much quicker. However, with some role-playing, party debates, descriptive moments, and the like, I expect the myconid encounter to last about that length. Meaning I need more encounters for a full session.
In my previous BorderLands campaign (for 4th Edition) I liked to treat each session like a module. I was just off a lengthy stint of running Living Greyhawk and my home games were sporadic at best. I was used to self-contained stories that had a beginning and end. That group formed spontaneously, so I expected it to collapse at any time, and didn’t want the story to have a cliffhanger. If I were planning a session for that campaign, I’d expand the sidequest. Prior to the myconids there could be a larger dungeon – a wide maze-like cavern with old ruins and the like – but this runs the risk of confusing my players, tricking them into assuming some other creature is the dryad’s enemy. Instead, there should be encounters before or after the cave, such as a desert predator or natural hazard like a sandstorm or dry quicksand. These pad out the adventure and make the side quest better occupy the full duration of the session.
However, for this group and campaign, I want a less modular and more ongoing narrative, so each session is just part of a single sprawling narrative that isn’t broken into distinct adventures but instead a single adventure told over multiple sessions. In narrative terms, I want a serialized drama and not an episodic one.
Starting with a couple quick non-combat encounters might still be nice to get the party back in the mindset of their characters, so they’re in their game headspace prior to introducing the moral dilemma. Starting in media res gains me nothing this session, and costs me potential immersion. These can be exploratory and related to reaching the myconids, such as slippery slopes or tight tunnels that create rising tension and establish the atmosphere. This should all happen relatively quickly, and after to the moral conflict the party should quickly resume their journey. The rest of the session can be filled with smaller events and incidental encounters as the party progresses towards their goal.
Incidental encounters are semi-random but of minor importance, more for flavour than providing a chance at character death. It’s good to have several of these ready, as you never know when the players might need a sudden change of tone. When the session begins to lag a random encounter can snap the table back into the game, or something to refocus people after a washroom break. Most of these should be noncombatant encounters, as few small sightseeing stops or places of mystery make a long journey more dynamic than just having time pass. I want to emphasise the journey and make it appear more daunting beyond saying “you travel for six long days, fighting thirst the entire time”, but without the grind of constant random combat encounters. There needs to be moments like in Lord of the Rings where hobbits passing the stone bodies of Bilbo’s trolls or the decapitated statue of the king whose head is covered in flowers. This is a little like a travel montage, which conveys the passage of time and a long distance, but instead of a dozen small shots over the course of a minute, it’s a half-dozen small roleplaying moments over the course of an hour.
Rule One of narrative storytelling is “show, not tell”. Which is fine for books and movies. But Rule One for DM storytelling is “involve, not show”. In D&D and RPGs, showing amounts to telling, as both involving a DM spouting exposition. If you want the players to feel the length of the journey, they need to be reacting and active. Something like a steep slope of loose sand that threatens to topple the wagon or a spoiled freshwater oasis are scenes that play out quickly but offer an opportunity to make decisions and roll some dice. Failure is unlikely, but can have consequences. Also good are moments where you can get the characters interacting, and letting the players carry the scene. Asking leading question or prompting actions can lead to some fun interplay.
It’s an advantage knowing the direction the group is going, since I have a rough map of the region. I know the desert gives way to arid savanna before becoming rocky hills, but with little or no human civilization. The group needs water so I can plan an encounter around an oasis or two, perhaps a ruined village with a well. As it’s former coastline, perhaps there is an old lighthouse or fisherman’s hut, now long since abandoned.
One of the player characters suffered a gnoll attack in their backstory, and another has ties to a city often besieged by gnolls. This pairs nicely with the introductory gnoll caravan slaughter. An early theme of the campaign is almost “predation of gnolls”. Perhaps the gnolls are a growing threat, and might have a new leader or dominant pack making them more dangerous. A potential incidental encounter might be discovering the remains of a caravan, with the survivors and bodies of the dead hauled away. The party might even spot a large band of gnolls in the distance, heading away from the caravan, but so large as to encourage hiding (or setting a trap). This establishes the idea gnolls might be a real problem later, so when they reach civilization, they might either have to ready for a new gnoll onslaught, be hired to return to the desert and investigate, or be dispatched to gain allies. Or not. That’s a card I can tuck in my hand to play depending on where the game goes.
To potentially fill the majority of the session, I need quite a few incidental encounters planned. Preferably more than will be used, so I can dangle the description in front of the players. Following a short description of a few hours of travel I can mention of the ruined tower atop a hill, its features worn away by constant sand storms, mentioned and left hanging so the players can say “let’s check out the tower” or “we keep going”, skipping the encounter. Or, when I think an actual montage moment is necessary I can present two options and let the players pick one: “ahead of you is a rough patch of hills, the rolling slopes offering myriad hiding places of humanoid creatures. The hills are easily circumvented by moving to the east, but doing so passes you by a ruined tower atop a hill, its features worn away by constant sand storms.” This allows some choice in what they want to engage.
Well, oops.
I started with the party spotting a gnoll warband a couple hundred feet in the distance, traveling west after a raid in what was meant to be a dash of flavour. A reminder the wastes are dangerous. Despite being outnumbered and knowing how deadly gnolls can be, my players just opted to attack. After years of Adventure Paths, I think they’re still operating under the assumption encounters will be balanced…
I think I’m slowly curing them of that misconception.
They succeeded in the battle by firing arrows while slowly backing away (along with a very lucky roll from my wife’s grippli rogue). Even then, the gnolls closed the gap and managed to drop 3/4 of the party before the final PC standing killed the gnoll pack lord. I’d decided earlier that the gnolls were interested in taking prisoners (and established this with two struggling sacks over their shoulders), so there were no deaths. However, seeing the captives is what prompted the players to attack. Had I not done declared they were taking prisoners, two characters would have bled out, and the other had good odds of dying.
Hopefully the encounter will be a learning experience: combat can be deadly. But I probably shouldn’t have made the prisoners obvious, which almost forced their hand… Rookie mistake.
This dramatically and instantly changed the flow of the session. With 3/4 of the party near dead, they retreated back to the dryad’s oak with two rescued NPCs and rested overnight.
The NPCs were quickly named from some random names I keep handy. I printed a three bookmarks covered with random names, used for marking pages in the Monster Manual, designed explicitly for this purpose. I just copy the names into my notes and scratch them off the bookmark.
The moral dilemma started well. The lack of an easy “right” answer chaffed my players who opted for inaction rather than going all murderhobo. Divided and uncertain, they left both parties alive, promising to find a way of diverting water someday and saving both. Another future plot hook… Or, more likely, both groups die. But it did cause some debate across the table, which was the intent. No easy solution.
At the end of the session, the party made it two-thirds of the way to their destination. They’re leaving the desert region behind and entering the mountains. Fun changes, but it means the four or five desert-themed incidental encounters I didn’t have time for are unneeded and harder to use. Oh well… The changing tone keeps me on my tones, and the ideas will still work if they group ever returns to the desert. But now I need to prepare for other types of adventure. By the end of the next session I hope to have them reach the city and end the first arc of the campaign. Then the real fun will begin.