The Dying Flames of Erendel

Campaign: Adventures in Middle-Earth

Characters:

• Heva the Small, Woodman Slayer -- a harrowed woman haunted by visions of the growing Shadow
• Odo Hayfoot, Shire Hobbit Treasure Hunter -- a reluctant adventurer with a greed for gold
• Thuradiel, Mirkwood Elf Wanderer -- a world-weary traveler who tires of life in Middle-earth
• Nar Goldhorn, Dwarf Warden -- a seeker after a lost ancestral harp
• Lillian, Bree-lander Scholar -- a student of the healing arts who feels the pull of the road

Objectives: Light the flames of Lost Erendel and return safely to Duryn.

Events:

• Despite the season, the company finds themselves lost in a sudden snowstorm as they return to Duryn from Beruthiel's keep. Unable to navigate properly, they seek shelter in a castle that now lies in blackened ruin. 
• Although the castle appears long abandoned, a small fire still smolders in the main hall and the feasting board is laden with freshly-cooked meats and breads. No one of the company eats or drinks of the fare. The castle is eerily silent.
• The castle is explored by torchlight. The shadows seem to move of their own accord, on the periphery of the company's vision. They fear that Beruthiel has followed them to this place to seek revenge, but the shadows coalesce into the forms of ancient lords, revealing themselves to be the shades of Men forgotten by time. Each is clad in armor, their faces obscured by grim-visaged helms.
• The company has an audience with the lordly specters, who inform them with thunderous that in a past age they were tasked with keeping a fire alight deep within the castle's dungeons. But the lords grew obsessed with their flame, and became cruel to their servants and stewards--who rose up to slay them with poison and treachery. Only by relighting the flame can the past be put to right with the current age.
• The company searches for the entrance to the castle's dungeons, but they are assailed by the wraiths of the long-dead servants, clad now in ethereal funereal regalia. The touch of the wraiths burns like the coldest frost, and their mere presence makes despair grasp at the hearts of the company. The company presses on though their fellowship is pushed to breaking; their weapons useless against the wraiths, they flee deeper into the castle's depths.
• It is unearthly cold in the crypts below the castle, and ghostly remnants chant the names of the company as they search for the extinguished flame.
• After a melee with wights, whose skin is as parchment and whose breath is as dust, the company discovers the cold hearth of Erendel. It resists their attempts to light it again, until they all put their hands to the task and light it together. The flames burning once more, the wraiths and wights are banished from the castle--indeed, banished to the past to which they belong.
• Outside, the unseasonable winter storm subsides. The company rediscovers the path to Duryn, and returns to wait out the coming frigid months before venturing forth once more.

The Witch Queen of the Black Numenoreans

Campaign: Adventures in Middle-Earth

Characters:

• Heva the Small, Woodman Slayer -- a harrowed woman haunted by visions of the growing Shadow
• Odo Hayfoot, Shire Hobbit Treasure Hunter -- a reluctant adventurer with a greed for gold
• Thuradiel, Mirkwood Elf Wanderer -- a world-weary traveler who tires of life in Middle-earth
• Nar Goldhorn, Dwarf Warden -- a seeker after a lost ancestral harp
• Lillian, Bree-lander Scholar -- a student of the healing arts who feels the pull of the road

Objectives: Seek Beruthiel in her dark fortress.

Events:

• The company is bolstered by the addition of two adventurers who have felt the cold hand of the Shadow upon the land and are moved to act against its reach. Nar Goldhorn, a Dwarf who wishes to locate his family's famed harp, and Lillian, an overfed scholar who dreams of adventure, join in fellowship with Odo, Thuradiel, and Heva.
• Travel northward results in no incidents of note. The fortress now occupied by the mysterious Beruthiel had long fallen into disrepair, but even so it seems cursed with a forlorn and moribund atmosphere beyond the rot and ruin brought by time and neglect.
• A lone watchtower lurks at the perimeter of the fortress's broken wall. Sensing that something watches them from the watchtower, a portion of the company decides to stay in view of the tower as a distraction while Thuradiel, Odo, and Lillian sneak inside.
• Inside the tower, Thuradiel, Odo, and Lillian surprise a small contingent of Orcs acting as sentries. Thuradiel and Odo engage the Orcs in combat while Lillian throws errant bits of broken masonry to distract the Goblins. Luckily, the Orcs were unable to light their warning beacon before being felled in the melee.
• Surprisingly, there are no sentries posted at the gate of the fortress. The gate is open, which feels like an uneasy welcome.
• Inside, the fortress teems with cats. They flow like a living carpet across the filthy flagstones of the keep. All the cats are black. As the company enters the fortress, the cats swarm them as a roiling mass of fur and fangs. The company manages to fight their way to the stairs; the feline tide recedes. 
• The keep is explored. Several statues in the style of the craftsmanship of Gondor are discovered, but each statue has been defaced in some way.
• In a long and ancient hallway the company is rushed by a number of Orcs and their allied panthers. The fight is vicious, but sudden and short. Despite his small size, Odo delivers the finishing blow to the majority of the black panthers. Nar vows to write a bardic tale telling of the day a Hobbit stood as a champion against the great cats.
• After further exploration, the company finds themselves in the presence of Beruthiel, a woman enshrined in dark robes whose face is veiled by shadowy cloth. The floor swarms with mewling black cats, but a white cat sits upon her lap. She is enthroned, and flanked by slavering Goblins. Addressing the company, she congratulates them on their bravery for seeking Queen Beruthiel of the Ages Past--Beruthiel the Returned, Witch of the Black Numenoreans, she who is the Claw of the Shadow!
• The Orcs surge forth and are met with blade and arrow. Beruthiel rises from her dark throne and commands the shadows cast by the torchlight in the room to mercilessly slash at the company. 
• Lillian attempts to put out the torches and thus rob Beruthiel of her shadows, but eventually realizes that this would leave the company in utter darkness against their foes. Heva is knocked to the ground by an Orc; despite her battle rage, she remains unconscious. The day, however, is carried. Thuradiel sends an arrow through the Witch Queen, who shatters into a thousand shards of potent darkness.
• And yet...the keep proves empty of the Orcish horde the company expected to find. Where is Beruthiel's warband? Is it already on the march somewhere in Middle-earth?

The Shadow Falls on Duryn

Campaign: Adventures in Middle-Earth

Characters:

• Heva the Small, Woodman Slayer -- a harrowed woman haunted by visions of the growing Shadow
• Odo Hayfoot, Shire Hobbit Treasure Hunter -- a reluctant adventurer with a greed for gold
• Thuradiel, Mirkwood Elf Wanderer -- a world-weary traveler who tires of life in Middle-earth

Objectives: To discover who or what is behind the Orc-host that is currently terrorizing the land.

Events:

• Duryn is not as the characters left it prior to their journey to Falastur. Although the people of Duryn had previously expressed desires to aid and shelter their neighbors from Falastur, the refugees are greeted with thinly-veiled hostility. Strangely, the town seems to now be home to a proliferation of black cats who roam the streets.
• The characters spoke to a number of prominent citizens in Duryn (Astrid, the baker; Ragnarr, the archer; Ormund the Grey-beard) but each gives a different and conflicting reason for the change of heart toward the people of Falastur. Astrid believes that the Falasturians engineered the downfall of their town for nefarious ends; Ragnarr believes that outsiders simply cannot be trusted; Ormund fears the drain on Duryn's resources that taking in the refugees will cause.
• Walking the streets for reasons he kept to himself, Odo overhears guttural voices coming from inside a granary that indicate that someone named Beruthiel wishes to sow discord among the Men of Middle-earth. Odo rouses his companions, who rush back to the granary--discovering Orcs (accompanied by their great black cats) busy poisoning the stores of flour. The fray is joined valiantly, and the Orcs are put to the sword. 
• Examining the ragtag armor worn by the Orcs reveals markings that seem to indicate that pieces of it were pillaged from a long-abandoned keep to the north. It is resolved that the party will seek that desolate fort to delve deeper into the mystery of the Orcish horde and their master Beruthiel.

The Poisoning of Falastur

Campaign: Adventures in Middle-Earth

Characters:

• Heva the Small, Woodman Slayer -- a harrowed woman haunted by visions of the growing Shadow
• Odo Hayfoot, Shire Hobbit Treasure Hunter -- a reluctant adventurer with a greed for gold
• Thuradiel, Mirkwood Elf Wanderer -- a world-weary traveler who tires of life in Middle-earth

Objectives: Escort the beleaguered people of Falastur to safety in Duryn.

Events: 

• On the way to Falastur the party is ambushed by Orcs, who are dispatched with some difficulty.
• Also discovered: a ransacked warden's tower; the wardens lay slain inside, but are given hasty burials as time seems to be of the essence. It's clear that the wardens were killed by brutish blades, but some also bear the marks of beastly fangs. A dark army is on the march.
• Arrival in Falastur unveils that the town has been repeatedly raided by a horde of Orcs riding gigantic black cats. The people of Falastur are not just terrorized; they have become distrustful of each other and quick to anger--the Shadow is upon them!
• An audience with the town's elders reveals that the Orcs seem to be searching for something or someone. It is also discovered that the town's granaries have been pillaged and the town's well has been defiled with poison. Words of debased Black Speech have been left to on both to mark their desecration.
• Before an orderly exit from Falastur can be organized, the horde attacks again in numbers scarcely believable. The party holds off the horde as best they can as a train of wagons is put into motion so that the folk may seek shelter in Duryn. The cat-riders harry the train, but ultimately are dissuaded from giving pursuit.
• Falastur is set aflame behind them as they flee, but its people are safely escorted to the walls of Duryn. An unforeseen Shadow lengthens across the land--whose impure strength guides this horde of Orcs and dire panthers to march upon Middle-earth?

Sauron, The Great Old One

 

I've never really looked at the Elder Sign from H. P. Lovecraft's mythos very closely before...

...oh crap, Sauron was a Great Old One all along.

No wonder it took him so long to reappear on Middle-earth after Isildur vanquished him–the stars weren’t right.

Adventures in Middle-earth Player's Guide Review (1)

The Adventures in Middle-earth Player's Guide is the vanguard book in Cubicle 7's new line that aims to bring Tolkien's beloved fantasy world to the rules of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Let's take a look at how it attempts to marry the world of Middle-earth to the current rule set of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game, as well as how well it succeeds at that task.

First things first: I would be remiss if I didn't note that the interior art is leagues better than the cover of the book. I'm not sure why they went with "Gandalf as arsonist fleeing the scene of the crime" as the face for this line of products, but rest assured that the interior illustrations--which I gather are from Cubicle 7's other Tolkien rpg, The One Ring--are lovely and give an excellent taste of the atmosphere you would expect from a game set in the world of the Lord of the Rings novels.

Second things second: the book begins with a nice introduction to and overview of the recent history, peoples, and places of the Wilderland in Middle-earth. If you've got your heart set on playing in some other corner of the setting, you aren't going to find much support for that. If you're totally new to Middle-earth, you shouldn't be lost after reading this section, but I imagine it wouldn't hurt to supplement the information presented here with a bit of Tolkien's fiction.

Essentially, Adventures in Middle-earth bends D&D to Tolkien's fantasy epic to in two ways: 

• it changes up most of the facets of character creation to produce characters tailor-made for Tolkien-esque adventures
• it adds new rules subsystems to tilt the game in favor of the fantasy conventions Tolkien relied upon in his fictive work

In this part of the review, I'm going to focus on the former. How does this book guide you toward making characters who live and breathe in the same world as Bilbo, Aragorn, and Legolas?

Instead of choosing from D&D's standard list of race options, a character created with these rules will instead choose a Culture:

• The Cultures function similarly to 5e's races, granting Ability Score bonuses, Skills, Languages, special abilities, etc. Indeed, the cultures of the Dwarves and Elves look very similar to their counterparts in the D&D Player's Handbook. 
• However, one notable difference is that the Cultures in this book differentiate between the various cultures of Men you can choose from. Where D&D makes "human" a generic category, in AiME each human culture is designed to feel different in play. For example, Men of the Lake are naturally charismatic and are proficient in Persuasion since they belong to a culture that values trade. 
• Each Mannish culture also begins play with a Cultural Virtue, which is essentially a feat that further emphasizes how each region has its own distinct flavor. (More on Cultural Virtues below.)

Adventures in Middle-earth completely eschews the standard D&D Classes and offers its own options in their place.

• Characters in AiME can be Scholars (healers and loremasters), Slayers (barbaric warriors), Treasure Hunters (thieves), Wanderers (rangers), Wardens (magic-less bards), or Warriors. 
• What is immediately evident is that AiME has no interest in D&D's usual level of magic-saturation; with no D&D-style spellcasters available, the game definitely falls more into line with Tolkien's fiction--magic is a rare and mystical thing beyond the reach of even most adventurers. 
• The classes in AiME are definitely not balanced against those in the D&D Player's Handbook; 5th edition D&D characters all tend to be basically competent in combat, but here there is a greater disparity between classes designed to excel in combat and those that are designed to excel at other parts of the game. 
• Some of the fighting options in AiME might even be better than their counterparts in the PHB; for example, one Slayer option gives you access to rage while in heavy armour!
• Folks who have been hoping for a magic-free ranger take note: with a bit of tweaking, the Wanderer class might make for a solid framework to add that kind of character archetype back into D&D.
• Many of the classes presented here also make more use of the Inspiration mechanic than in default D&D, using it to power some of their special abilities. It appears that the assumption is that Inspiration will be a more free-flowing commodity than D&D generally allows for.

Virtues replace D&D's Feats

• Virtues come in two types: Open (any character who meets their requirements can take them) and Cultural (only characters of a matching Culture has access to them).
• The way Cultural Virtues are used in AiME is very interesting: they essentially take variants of common feats and make them exclusive to certain types of characters. This isolation of certain bonuses and abilities to specific cultures really does an excellent job enforcing niche protection and making the game conform to Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth. 
• For example, If you want to play a great archer, you're going to want to be an Elf of Mirkwood, Man of the Lake, or Bardling. And yet, the variety of the Cultural Virtues between those three Cultures will also give a different feel to a character; stacked up against each other, archers from those three Cultures are not going to feel the same.
• The closest you're going to get to magic in AiME is in the rune-based Cultural Virtues of the Dwarves or the Cultural Virtues of the Elves.

Other changes:

• AiME uses its own Backgrounds. These function almost identically to 5e D&D's Backgrounds, though they use Distinctive Qualities, Specialties, Hopes, and Despairs in place of D&D's Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws.
• Where D&D's Backgrounds are very general and encompassing to fit generic fantasy worlds, AiME's are geared toward replicating the kind of backstories present in Tolkien's fiction.
• There are a handful of new Skills to handle situations that are more likely to crop up in Middle-earth than in, say, the Forgotten Realms. (More on this when we talk about the new systems that AiME adds to the game.)
• AiME has its own equipment lists, giving new weapons and new armor. Since Middle-earth doesn't feature plate mail, the new heavy chain and great shield help shore up the armor classes of martial characters to keep them within the expected parameters of 5e's bounded accuracy mechanic.

Overall, the net effect of AiME's modifications to the way modern D&D generates characters will certainly produce characters thematically-consistent with Tolkienian adventure. This is an objective the game sets itself that is clearly achieved.

However, not everything in AiME is an unqualified success; in particular, there are a few places that seemed to have been written by someone who wasn't as familiar with the 5e rule set as they should have been:

• For example, the Scholar class has the option of taking proficiency in the "healing kit" (presumably they mean the healer's kit in the PHB, as there are no separate rules for a healing kit to be found in AiME). The problem is that the healer's kit doesn't require a roll to use--anyone using one does so automatically, which means that proficiency in the kit doesn't actually do anything. NOTE: this was fixed in an update to the pdf.
• Similarly, one of the Wanderer's special abilities regarding the exhaustion mechanic cites an example that doesn't match up with the actual rules for exhaustion. (Maybe we're getting new exhaustion mechanics in the Loremaster book?)
• And why do the stats for servants in the game note that they are lawful neutral when alignment doesn't appear to be used anywhere else in the book? (The table of contents says that alignment is replaced wholesale by the Corruption mechanic.)  NOTE: this was fixed in an update to the pdf.

None of these issues is game-breaking, but since these are just the items I found on a casual read-through I'm left wondering what other gaffs lurk in the text. NOTE: Cubicle 7 has made a great attempt to fix typos and mechanical gaffs, which is commendable.

All in all, though, finishing the section about AiME's alterations to baseline 5e D&D made me want to make a character and explore Middle-earth. So far so good; next time, we tackle the new mechanics that the Adventures in Middle-earth Player's Guide offers. Ere the sun rises!