New LotR campaign - advice appreciated

[TimF]

Hi all

I've been lurking on these forums for a few years now, and decided I should probably get around to posting. I've been playing (mostly with other systems, but I've recently managed to get my group using GURPS) for years too but, to my shame, have never GMd. My group decided it was high time I ran a campaign, so I thought I'd better start with what I know best. I'm a bit of a Tolkien fan, so a GURPS LotR campaign seemed a good way to go. I've been searching through the forums, finding the wealth of useful posts about GURPS LotR (particularly huge thanks to everyone involved in making the racial templates!) and, after a bit of thinking, I've come up with a plan for a campaign. I'd really appreciate any general feedback, as well as some ideas for a few particular queries.

I'm setting it about ten years before the start of the main events of the films/book. I want my PCs to be involved in events that led up to the War of the Ring, and I'll hopefully plot my campaign so they end up explaining why certain things in the published story turned out the way they did. I won't go out of my way to deviate from the course of the established "future", but if the PCs do something that changes the way events will pan out, so be it! I've solved the endless problem of modelling LotR magic, at least for now, by simply not allowing any characters to have any magical power. I've also gone for no elves - I want elves to be special, and for the first meeting with an elf to be a major event. I want a fairly classic epic fantasy feel of the PCs starting out as basically capable but unremarkable, but fairly rapidly escalating to proper hero level. I'm thinking of either 125 or 150 points, with about 50 points of disadvantages.

My basic plot is for the players to come to the attention of Saruman. He's secretly searching high and low for allies, and particularly for anything that will allow him to make rings of power. The campaign starts in Bree, where one of Saruman's agents tries to use the PCs to help him in one search, but they end up foiling him. After failing to have them assassinated, Saruman recognises the potential power of the PCs, so decides to recruit them instead. Over the course of several chapters of the campaign, he sends them to do missions for him in Erebor and Mirkwood, Moria, and Minas Tirith. Each time his orders are filtered through several intermediaries, and reach the PCs only as a request from an unnamed member of the White Council. Each time, the mission appears to serve the general good, but has some side agenda that will aid Saruman. After several chapters (if the campaign lasts that long) they will realise Saruman is a traitor, and head to Isengard to confront him, at about the same time that Gandalf has been taken captive. They'll stop Saruman from making his own ring (a major Ring of Power that would rival the One Ring, not the presumably lesser ring that he's wearing when Gandalf meets him in Fellowship of the Ring), and will distract him long enough that he doesn't notice an eagle swooping in to rescue Gandalf. Finally, they'll uncover reference in his writings to an ancient evil lurking in long-forgotten Angmar, which will have been presaged over the course of the campaign, and the last chapter will see them heading North to stop it.

I've plotted the individual chapters out in more depth (particularly the first) but I'm aware this post is turning out rather long. If anyone is interested/willing to help, let me know and I'll post up the details of my first chapter.

In the meantime, I'd really appreciate any general thoughts on the above, as well as any help with a few particular issues:

One of my PCs is a hobbit, with almost no combat ability, and one is a dwarven warrior (I've decided that Middle-Earth arms and armour are largely TL2, with dwarven and Numenorean craft managing bits of TL3). Having statted several LotR monsters, most of them would either kill the hobbit in one shot, or could barely scratch the dwarf. Wolves, for example, seem to be mostly incapable of hurting the dwarf, while conversely a cave troll would turn the hobbit into jelly. Any advice on how I can deal with this, aside from rather artificially including a range of enemies in any combat, and pairing them off against the appropriate PC? Combat won't be the only focus of my campaign, but there will be a fair amount.

More generally, I'd love any suggestions for interesting combat scenarios - either generic ideas or LotR specific. One of the things I love about GURPS is the potential for really interesting combats, requiring far more tactical thinking than most RPGs I've played, so I want to include plenty of situations demonstrating this. Things like "spear armed enemies defending barricades up a slope", but I'm sure people can come up with some far more interesting possibilities than I can...

Next problem, healing. Fast healing magic is obviously out, but I want a relatively cinematic feel, and certainly don't want to require the players to take a week or two out every time someone suffers a major wound. Aside from the CPs as Flesh Wounds rule, any other ideas? My vague thought is to have some moderately detailed system of fairly potent healing herbs which will speed up recovery enough to maintain the flow of an adventure, but without trivialising injury. Having the characters search for herbs in the wilderness also has quite a Tolkien feeling to me. Has anyone used herbs in this way, or know of any good resources? I've looked at the old MERP herb list. While they're certainly detailed, they lack the vaguely "English" feeling that I think they should have. Athelas, Mallorn, Niphredil and Elanor aside, Tolkien mostly referred to real-world plants, so I'd like to follow that.

Finally, travelling. Travelling through great landscapes is such a big part of Tolkien's writing, and the overall feel of Middle-Earth. if I was playing in a LotR campaign, I'd like nothing better to have a GM describing in excruciating detail the terrain we travel through, roleplaying endless minor details along the way, but I know that't not really to most people's tastes. Any thoughts about how I can get a bit of that feel, with the journey being evocative and having some impact, beyond just a brief "You travel for two weeks - the scenery gradually changes as you draw near the mountains - you arrive at your destination"?

Apologies for the overly long and slightly rambling post! Let me know if I should break this up and repost the questions in several threads.

[Figleaf23]

One possible quibble with your timeline: Saruman didn't go bad until Sauron turned him through the Palantir.

[whswhs]

No specific advice just now, but if you'd like the campaign logs for my Middle-Earth campaign (an alternate history where Sauron captured Frodo, regained the One Ring, and conquered all his major foes), drop me an e-mail at macavity@mindspring.com. You might get ideas from it.

Bill Stoddard

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by TimF

One of my PCs is a hobbit, with almost no combat ability, and one is a dwarven warrior (I've decided that Middle-Earth arms and armour are largely TL2, with dwarven and Numenorean craft managing bits of TL3). Having statted several LotR monsters, most of them would either kill the hobbit in one shot, or could barely scratch the dwarf. Wolves, for example, seem to be mostly incapable of hurting the dwarf, while conversely a cave troll would turn the hobbit into jelly. Any advice on how I can deal with this, aside from rather artificially including a range of enemies in any combat, and pairing them off against the appropriate PC? Combat won't be the only focus of my campaign, but there will be a fair amount.

If combat is going to be frequent, then you need to ask that hobbit PC: what are you going to do during the very likely combat scenarios that will be coming up? Be very up front. Say, there will very likely be frequent combat situations, as the character is right now, they will probably die if they try getting into that combat. So, how are you going to ensure this character is going to live through danger?

The player will probably redesign the PC a bit, or be fully prepared to run and hide during combats.

[Brett]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

One possible quibble with your timeline: Saruman didn't go bad until Sauron turned him through the Palantir.

He didn't start acting in concert with Sauron until he started using the Palantír, which was about 3000. But he was already playing wily-beguiled with the White Council over Ring lore as early as 2851, and he seized Orthanc and temporal power in 2953. Bilbo's farewell feast at the start of The Lord of the Rings is not until 3001, and the real action of LotR starts in September 3018. So at the OP's intended start date of ~3008 Saruman has already been pursuing a hidden and selfish agenda for over 150 years, and building military strength for fifty-five years.

[Tema69]

If I had a non-combat PC in a "fair amout of combat" campaign, I'd make sure he had something to do during combat. Preferably something related to the fight at hand. Preparing bandages would be me first idea.
Otherwise, make him a weak ranged combatant (slings?), so that he can actually do some damage, or distract, or feel that he's helping.
I remember playing a halfling in a Warhammer Fantasy RPG some years ago. He'd make food, prepare healing stuff, and assist with his crossbow when he could (well, until the GM cut his arm off). But I did end up breast-plating him up and going Merry-Pippin-style on the bad guys with some miniature sword. Until I retired the characters and rolled up a holy Knight (...after which the campaign turned cloak & dagger).
Back to the point, I've had similar issues with my current PCs. One of them suited up in full power armour, while another one was unarmoured and carried only a sidearm. Ablative armour resulted in a rapidly damaged Power Armour, while the other PC quickly donned a looted kevlar vest.


Anyway, your campaign seems interesting, and I think you should post your details on the various chapters.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Brett

He didn't start acting in concert with Sauron until he started using the Palantír, which was about 3000. But he was already playing wily-beguiled with the White Council over Ring lore as early as 2851, and he seized Orthanc and temporal power in 2953. Bilbo's farewell feast at the start of The Lord of the Rings is not until 3001, and the real action of LotR starts in September 3018. So at the OP's intended start date of ~3008 Saruman has already been pursuing a hidden and selfish agenda for over 150 years, and building military strength for fifty-five years.

Okey dokey then.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by TimF

In the meantime, I'd really appreciate any general thoughts on the above,

The planned adventures sound good. I'd throw in a caper or two around the Gladden Fields, as well - we know Saruman was searching there quite heavily for the Ring, and Sauron was as well, so there's some ready-made encounters with Orcs, evil Men, etc, plus misunderstandings with the non-evil locals (Woodmen, elves of Mirkwood and Lorien). Also, a note in Unfinished Tales actually mentions that Saruman's search of the Gladden Fields did actually turn up the remains of Isildur, including the original Star of the North, which serves as a nice quest reward.

I might recommend boosting the point values a bit. 150 is really the "bare minimum heroic" level in GURPS 4e. All of the characters in LoTR are really higher than that. For characters who are supposed to be non-heroic, encourage them to put a lot of the points into plot advantages like Luck and Serendipity. That's basically why I think the hobbits in the books are point-balanced with characters like Aragorn or Legolas - they've dumped most of their points into plot advantages that protect them when they should be dead.

Originally Posted by TimF

One of my PCs is a hobbit, with almost no combat ability, and one is a dwarven warrior (I've decided that Middle-Earth arms and armour are largely TL2, with dwarven and Numenorean craft managing bits of TL3). Having statted several LotR monsters, most of them would either kill the hobbit in one shot, or could barely scratch the dwarf.

As others have mentioned, make it clear to the hobbit player that there will be fighting, and having no combat ability is a recipie for boredom or a dead character. I'd suggest reminding the player that even non-combantant hobbits seem to be very accurate with thrown weapons - it's a racial trait of hobbits, essentially, as well as stealth. You can get pretty far in GURPS by sneaking about and beaning unaware enemies with a well-placed rock to the head.

Originally Posted by TimF

More generally, I'd love any suggestions for interesting combat scenarios - either generic ideas or LotR specific.

Well, one tip I've found useful in the past is to remember that GURPS has a long list of potential penalties for combat, and that those penalties can make things more interesting. Go through the list of penalties in Campaigns (p. 547), and think of ways to apply them. An interesting exercise can be to try to draw up a map where the penalty to combat rolls is the same, or within 1 or 2 points of a standard number, over the whole map, but the reason for the penalty changes in different areas. So if you set your magic number to -6, for example, you could create a fight in a cave. There's a light source in the center, providing some illumination. At the farthest edges of the cave, the floor is clear, but dark - the -6 is all darkness penalties. Towards the center of the cave, the penalty shrinks, but there's been a cave in or something, leaving rubble scattered about, so the penalty for bad footing increases as the darkness penalty lowers. Then, in the center, there's a vent releasing a foul vapor - characters too near it start coughing, giving them -3, and the light penalty soaks up the last bit.
With this trick, you can keep the math a bit easier, since you know the penalties are always in the same range without special tricks, but there's still a lot of tactical choices for the players: a dwarf character with Low-Light Vision might want to stay on the outer edge of the room, where the light penalty doesn't hurt as much, while the elf character, with Perfect Balance and Terrain Adaptation prefers the middle ground, because he can ignore the unstable footing.

Originally Posted by TimF

Next problem, healing. Fast healing magic is obviously out, but I want a relatively cinematic feel, and certainly don't want to require the players to take a week or two out every time someone suffers a major wound.

The best suggestion I've seen for this is to let groups who are supposed to be better healers (elves in particular) have a higher effective TL when it comes to healing. Higher TL healers will heal more with their First Aid rolls, and allow a healer to help more people more often, leading to much quicker healing. If there are no PC healers in the group, you don't even have to worry about exact rules for this. If there are PC healers, I'd say that each TL worth of advancement over the campaign base is worth about 1 point. So if you want to treat elves at TL 8 healers, and the default elf TL is 3, it would cost 5 points for a PC to be able to heal like a TL 8 doctor.

Originally Posted by TimF

Finally, travelling. Travelling through great landscapes is such a big part of Tolkien's writing, and the overall feel of Middle-Earth. Any thoughts about how I can get a bit of that feel, with the journey being evocative and having some impact, beyond just a brief "You travel for two weeks - the scenery gradually changes as you draw near the mountains - you arrive at your destination"?

You don't have to describe every blade of grass and tree the characters see, but anything you do describe should be fairly well-realized. Don't use huge adjectives (this isn't Lovecraft!), but try to use at least one adjective for each of the land, the sky, and the vegetation. And to add to the sense of travel, describe it when the characters move from one region to another. So, for example, say the characters are travelling north from Edoras in Rohan to Lorien, in spring. You could describe it along these lines: "As you journey north, the tall grass of the rolling plains of the West Emnet stretches to the horizon. The sky is clear above. You travel for two days, until you cross the Entwash and enter the Wold. The air is clear, and the rolling hills are covered with short turf, still grey from winter but with the first green shoots beginning to poke through. After another three days, you cross the Limlight, and march through the land south of Lorien, a flat area with many thickets, growing denser as you walk north. Finally, you reach the Silverlode, the border of Lorien. Beyond its clear water, the land is covered in the gold, the ground with the fallen leaves, and the trees above with the golden blossoms of spring."

[Anaraxes]

Time to add some lines to the XKCD chart.

[aesir23]

If built on the same number of points, and those points are enough to build a LoTR Dwarven Warrior, than that Hobbit must be pretty hyper competant compared to the Frodo and gang.

In the books you were looking at 75 point Hobbits with the rest of the Fellowship closer to 400 IMHO.

As others have said, all you need to for this Hobbit to survive a fight and be useful is a high dodge, the Throwing skill (or Sling), and a healthy sense of self-preservation. Staying to the outskirts throwing rocks seems very in character. You just need a player who'll make good tactical decisions and will avoid the toe-to-toe situations that would result in jellification.