25-ish years after the event I'm not sure how or why I chose to collect orcs and goblins as my preferred Warhammer army, but I do kmow that when Ravening Hordes was released they were the only army that really interested me. I'm guessing that even as a fairly conformist teenager the "good guys" were a bit humdrum and, while chaos at that stage had a firm place in the Warhammer setting it didn't have the level of prominence it does now, orcs were probably the default bad guy.
Even today while I appreciate the undead army on an asthetic level the only other army amongst the "bad guys" that appeals would be skaven. No longer being a teenager though I could see myself fielding dwarf, norse or Empire armies quite happily these days.
Other than the aesthetics there are probably two criteria for selecting any wargaming army - perceived power (or convesely lack of balance) and monetary cost. As a cash-strapped teenager the latter did start to weigh on my mind after a few years of wargaming, and I wondered whether wood elf or chaos armies would be nicely effective and much cheaper to field. By that point though I had invested financially and emotionally in the orcs and goblins so that it was a bit of a moot point.
I'm in a similar position today, in that I still have most of an orcs and goblins army (albeit that most of my old goblins I gave away, and a good chunk of the orcs are new eBay aquisitions), but would quite like to field a dwarven army instead (or as well). The financial investment in either completing the orcs and goblins, or building a dwarf army, isn't trivial, but much more significant these days as someone with a family and a job is the time investment in painting and preparing them for the table.
I'm still mostly happy with the choice I made all those years ago, but I do hope as well to be able to field a smallish dwarf army, plus the skaven side from Vengence of the Lichemaster, one day. If what I've seen of the hobby recently though is anything to go by I will then find excuses to build up yet another army...
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Friday, 30 August 2013
The saga of Grumdin the Proud (Bring Out Your Lead Realm of Chaos warband)
Chaos attributes: Teleport, Overgrown body part (head, x2)
Grumdin was once a proud commander of war parties for the dwarven hold of Karak Hirn. His career came to an end during an expedition against a raiding party out of the Black Mountains when, at a council of war, he killed the arrogant and distainful leader of a contingent of allied Knights Panther. Sent home in disgrace he then inflicted a severe beating on the elder placed in judgement over him, and was exiled forever from his hold.
Wandering the Empire, growing increasingly embittered by his fall from grace, he fell pray to the whispers of Khorne, the Blood God. Beastmen and other creatures who were drawn to him were forged into a travisty of his former command and, swearing vengence, he fell upon the outlying outposts of his former home. After initial success his warband were met by an organised dwarven force and were slaughtered. Grumdin escaped, using his new-found ability to teleport, but saw the defeat as the sign of his god's disfavour. Hearing rumours of a gathering of the followers of the hated Slaneesh in the Chaos Wastes he gathered together the few survivors of his defeat and headed north in search of death or redemption.
Grumdin was once a proud commander of war parties for the dwarven hold of Karak Hirn. His career came to an end during an expedition against a raiding party out of the Black Mountains when, at a council of war, he killed the arrogant and distainful leader of a contingent of allied Knights Panther. Sent home in disgrace he then inflicted a severe beating on the elder placed in judgement over him, and was exiled forever from his hold.
Wandering the Empire, growing increasingly embittered by his fall from grace, he fell pray to the whispers of Khorne, the Blood God. Beastmen and other creatures who were drawn to him were forged into a travisty of his former command and, swearing vengence, he fell upon the outlying outposts of his former home. After initial success his warband were met by an organised dwarven force and were slaughtered. Grumdin escaped, using his new-found ability to teleport, but saw the defeat as the sign of his god's disfavour. Hearing rumours of a gathering of the followers of the hated Slaneesh in the Chaos Wastes he gathered together the few survivors of his defeat and headed north in search of death or redemption.
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Reading list - 2013 (part one)
Being the books I'd read up to the end of June, but my blog publishing habit is lax to say the least...
The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie
More of Joe in his distinctive style - great stuff. I especially like the way that Beck's story turns out, and Craw's was rosier than you might expect (but not too much so!). A few quibbles here and there - the involvement of Ishri just peters out, and while we get it that Bayez isn't very nice - certainly not your Gandalf / Belgarath archetype - he's becoming a bit of a deus ex mechina.
I also wonder in the back of my mind how the book would read if you read it before the First Law or Best Served Cold, and hence whether the characters of Dow, the Bloody Nine or Shivers would really come across sufficiently in a stand-alone novel. On the other hand I suppose Joe has earned the right to build on what's gone before.
Not his best, but still damn good.
Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb
An interesting couple of novels. Part of the way through Royal Assassin (the second in the Farseer Trilogy) you get the feeling that you're reading a standard "young man's journey of discovery and growth" type fantasy. Then at the end you remember that you're reading Robin Hobb and if (like me) you've read her works out of order and already know the Liveship Traders you remember that she likes to tear her characters down about as low as they can get before building them up again.
A certain amount of re-building is done in the final book of the trilogy, but not excessively so. I'd have liked things to have turned out better for Fitz after taking us on this journey, but then that's why it's best I leave the writing to professionals.
Sailing to Sarantium - Guy Gavriel Kay
I'm concious that most if not all of the fantasy I read is medieval north-eastern Europe in derivation, with occasional nods to the renaissance. I was hoping this book - set in and around Sarantium (a parallel Byzantium), with a parallel Rome squabbled over by part-civilised barbarians - would extend me further east and further back in time, and it did just that. It has lots to recommend it - a good read for a start, and furthermore it really invokes the feeling of wildness and uncertainty appropriate to the time. The one certainty is that the mythic is real, in fact it surprised me how firmly the book is placed into the fantasy genre, when 90% of it could be read as alternative history. It's no worse for that though.
One quibble I had with the writing was the explicit foreshadowing ("He never did, as events unfolded...") which I find irritating for reasons I can't quite explain. Another, much more personal, gripe is that the main protagonist has had a rather miserable time of it prior to the start of the narrative, which I found rather depressing, especially following on from my previous reading of Robin Hobb!
The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
I've owned this book for years, but never managed to get far in to it. This time I finished it, but mainly due to stubbornness rather than enjoyment. I know it's a classic, but it just doesn't absorb me - there are some good stories in there, especially Liane the Wayfarer, but between the language and characters it's not a compelling read. The prose seems more that of someone who's showing off than someone with a story to tell, and the characters are somehow a bit flat.
On a more positive note Vance has created a wonderfully evocative world, both the setting and the treatment of magic (powerful enough to build a game upon). So, while I'm glad I've read it, it's not really a book I could recommend.
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
My wife told me to read this book so she could discuss it with me, which tells you most of what you need to know about it. Without wanting to give the plot away I can say about three things - a great plot with some fantastic twists, a really impressive piece of writing in the way she shapes your view of the characters throughout the book, and the second half stretches credibility almost to breaking point.
The really scary thought it leaves you with though - what if the second half really did happen to you? What would you do...?
Finding Nouf - Zoe Ferraris
An OK whodunit set in an exotic location (Saudi Arabia) and with interesting central characters. The author is an America who was married to a Saudi, so has first hand experience of the country, but somehow her portrayal of the country comes across as fascinating but unbelievable. It's likely to just be me over-analysing things and actually her portrayal is accurate. It does leave me wondering though what a Saudi novelist's take on the same story would be.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
The introduction to this trilogy is very good, leaving you wanting to read the rest. Unfortunately it's largely downhill from there - the second novel does manage to invoke some sympathy with and outrage for the heroes' plight but comes across very much as a sequel in the Hollywood style. It really does feel as though Collins had to try to reproduce the magic of the first but didn't quite know how. The "Games" portion of the book does get going nicely, but it does take a while to build up to it.
Mockingjay does go some way to rescuing the trilogy, the "Games" portion of this one really does stretch credibility to breaking point, but the ending (which is very much more grown up than I for one expected) does forgive any flaws the book might have.
Where the Bodies are Buried - Chris Brookmyre
Some reviews of this book seem to be disappointed by Brookmyre's departure from his earlier comic / farcial thriller style, but I thought the newer "straight" crime novel (still very much in his distinctive voice) was at least as good as his earlier work.
The book has some very enjoyable twists (which more astute readers than me will probably see coming a mile off) and a nice ending which seems to set us up for more to come - I certainly hope so.
The Seventh Trumpet - Peter Tremayne
As I've mentioned elsewhere I'd like one day to run a Celtic-influenced campaign, so picked this book up in the hope that it would give a useful view into that culture. It did give me a couple of good insights applicable to any renaissance or earlier setting* but overall I was unimpressed with it as a novel. Graham Crawford's review over at Good Reads is far better written (and somewhat more biting) than mine will be but suffice to say there are several things that really grated with the author's style. Most notable of these are that he's far too busy trying to educate the reader (or perhaps going about it in too heavy handed a way), so we have described in great detail inconsequential items of a character's clothing, along with its correct name and so on; and the lack of unique or credible character voices (e.g. a farmer, a monk and a chieftain's sister all speak in the same rather stilted way).
* 1) Building bridges is quite an undertaking, so ferries are more important than our modern viewpoint assumes and 2) horses are not obviously a companion animal in the way a dog is, but still provide the benefits of their own senses of smell, etc, if their rider cares to pay attention.
Zaragoz - Brian Craig
I'd picked this up second hand somewhere years ago (25p!) but not read it until Orlygg and Warlord Paul of Oldhammer notoriety gave it good reviews recently. And deservedly so it turns out. A good book but not a great one, though I wonder how much it suffers as well as benefits from the grim dark that it manages to invoke so well. Good story, great gaming material, wouldn't want to actually live there!
It amused me to notice that Orfeo the protagonist is a bit of a Mary Sue - apparently this is quite OK in a novel (for example, he's far less extreme than Hiro from Snow Crash), but when we as gamers emulate this in the PCs which we create for ourselves that somehow makes us bad people...
The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie
More of Joe in his distinctive style - great stuff. I especially like the way that Beck's story turns out, and Craw's was rosier than you might expect (but not too much so!). A few quibbles here and there - the involvement of Ishri just peters out, and while we get it that Bayez isn't very nice - certainly not your Gandalf / Belgarath archetype - he's becoming a bit of a deus ex mechina.
I also wonder in the back of my mind how the book would read if you read it before the First Law or Best Served Cold, and hence whether the characters of Dow, the Bloody Nine or Shivers would really come across sufficiently in a stand-alone novel. On the other hand I suppose Joe has earned the right to build on what's gone before.
Not his best, but still damn good.
Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb
An interesting couple of novels. Part of the way through Royal Assassin (the second in the Farseer Trilogy) you get the feeling that you're reading a standard "young man's journey of discovery and growth" type fantasy. Then at the end you remember that you're reading Robin Hobb and if (like me) you've read her works out of order and already know the Liveship Traders you remember that she likes to tear her characters down about as low as they can get before building them up again.
A certain amount of re-building is done in the final book of the trilogy, but not excessively so. I'd have liked things to have turned out better for Fitz after taking us on this journey, but then that's why it's best I leave the writing to professionals.
Sailing to Sarantium - Guy Gavriel Kay
I'm concious that most if not all of the fantasy I read is medieval north-eastern Europe in derivation, with occasional nods to the renaissance. I was hoping this book - set in and around Sarantium (a parallel Byzantium), with a parallel Rome squabbled over by part-civilised barbarians - would extend me further east and further back in time, and it did just that. It has lots to recommend it - a good read for a start, and furthermore it really invokes the feeling of wildness and uncertainty appropriate to the time. The one certainty is that the mythic is real, in fact it surprised me how firmly the book is placed into the fantasy genre, when 90% of it could be read as alternative history. It's no worse for that though.
One quibble I had with the writing was the explicit foreshadowing ("He never did, as events unfolded...") which I find irritating for reasons I can't quite explain. Another, much more personal, gripe is that the main protagonist has had a rather miserable time of it prior to the start of the narrative, which I found rather depressing, especially following on from my previous reading of Robin Hobb!
The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
I've owned this book for years, but never managed to get far in to it. This time I finished it, but mainly due to stubbornness rather than enjoyment. I know it's a classic, but it just doesn't absorb me - there are some good stories in there, especially Liane the Wayfarer, but between the language and characters it's not a compelling read. The prose seems more that of someone who's showing off than someone with a story to tell, and the characters are somehow a bit flat.
On a more positive note Vance has created a wonderfully evocative world, both the setting and the treatment of magic (powerful enough to build a game upon). So, while I'm glad I've read it, it's not really a book I could recommend.
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
My wife told me to read this book so she could discuss it with me, which tells you most of what you need to know about it. Without wanting to give the plot away I can say about three things - a great plot with some fantastic twists, a really impressive piece of writing in the way she shapes your view of the characters throughout the book, and the second half stretches credibility almost to breaking point.
The really scary thought it leaves you with though - what if the second half really did happen to you? What would you do...?
Finding Nouf - Zoe Ferraris
An OK whodunit set in an exotic location (Saudi Arabia) and with interesting central characters. The author is an America who was married to a Saudi, so has first hand experience of the country, but somehow her portrayal of the country comes across as fascinating but unbelievable. It's likely to just be me over-analysing things and actually her portrayal is accurate. It does leave me wondering though what a Saudi novelist's take on the same story would be.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
The introduction to this trilogy is very good, leaving you wanting to read the rest. Unfortunately it's largely downhill from there - the second novel does manage to invoke some sympathy with and outrage for the heroes' plight but comes across very much as a sequel in the Hollywood style. It really does feel as though Collins had to try to reproduce the magic of the first but didn't quite know how. The "Games" portion of the book does get going nicely, but it does take a while to build up to it.
Mockingjay does go some way to rescuing the trilogy, the "Games" portion of this one really does stretch credibility to breaking point, but the ending (which is very much more grown up than I for one expected) does forgive any flaws the book might have.
Where the Bodies are Buried - Chris Brookmyre
Some reviews of this book seem to be disappointed by Brookmyre's departure from his earlier comic / farcial thriller style, but I thought the newer "straight" crime novel (still very much in his distinctive voice) was at least as good as his earlier work.
The book has some very enjoyable twists (which more astute readers than me will probably see coming a mile off) and a nice ending which seems to set us up for more to come - I certainly hope so.
The Seventh Trumpet - Peter Tremayne
As I've mentioned elsewhere I'd like one day to run a Celtic-influenced campaign, so picked this book up in the hope that it would give a useful view into that culture. It did give me a couple of good insights applicable to any renaissance or earlier setting* but overall I was unimpressed with it as a novel. Graham Crawford's review over at Good Reads is far better written (and somewhat more biting) than mine will be but suffice to say there are several things that really grated with the author's style. Most notable of these are that he's far too busy trying to educate the reader (or perhaps going about it in too heavy handed a way), so we have described in great detail inconsequential items of a character's clothing, along with its correct name and so on; and the lack of unique or credible character voices (e.g. a farmer, a monk and a chieftain's sister all speak in the same rather stilted way).
* 1) Building bridges is quite an undertaking, so ferries are more important than our modern viewpoint assumes and 2) horses are not obviously a companion animal in the way a dog is, but still provide the benefits of their own senses of smell, etc, if their rider cares to pay attention.
Zaragoz - Brian Craig
I'd picked this up second hand somewhere years ago (25p!) but not read it until Orlygg and Warlord Paul of Oldhammer notoriety gave it good reviews recently. And deservedly so it turns out. A good book but not a great one, though I wonder how much it suffers as well as benefits from the grim dark that it manages to invoke so well. Good story, great gaming material, wouldn't want to actually live there!
It amused me to notice that Orfeo the protagonist is a bit of a Mary Sue - apparently this is quite OK in a novel (for example, he's far less extreme than Hiro from Snow Crash), but when we as gamers emulate this in the PCs which we create for ourselves that somehow makes us bad people...
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Anti-heroes for wargames
I imagine a lot of roleplayers have done "playing as the monsters" at some point, even without taking into account things like World of Darkness, factional MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, or of course fantasy wargames.
In a traditional fantasy setting such as the Old World, dark elves or goblinoids would seem the obvious choice for monster PCs, but the former have a distinct ring of Mary Sue to them, whereas orcs and goblins are too fractious and (dare I say it) unsophisticated to give much depth to the roleplaying or longevity to the campaign.
Chaos cults are another obvious choice within the Old World, and to some degree would suit a WoD "society with society" type campaign, but I'm not sure that offers anything particularly new.
What would interest me would be a "killing things and taking their stuff" campaign playing as Skaven, or un-reconstructed WoW Forsaken, where characteristics and motivation are sufficiently human while morality and quest objectives are diametrically opposed to the norms of the game. I wonder, having played such a campaign, how players would then approach a traditional D&D scenario once they're back in the shoes of the "good guys".
In a traditional fantasy setting such as the Old World, dark elves or goblinoids would seem the obvious choice for monster PCs, but the former have a distinct ring of Mary Sue to them, whereas orcs and goblins are too fractious and (dare I say it) unsophisticated to give much depth to the roleplaying or longevity to the campaign.
Chaos cults are another obvious choice within the Old World, and to some degree would suit a WoD "society with society" type campaign, but I'm not sure that offers anything particularly new.
What would interest me would be a "killing things and taking their stuff" campaign playing as Skaven, or un-reconstructed WoW Forsaken, where characteristics and motivation are sufficiently human while morality and quest objectives are diametrically opposed to the norms of the game. I wonder, having played such a campaign, how players would then approach a traditional D&D scenario once they're back in the shoes of the "good guys".
Saturday, 15 June 2013
Back in the painting chair
I've just started painting my first miniatures in over 20 years for the Oldhammer painting challenge. It will hopefully become a regular event, encouraging people with unpainted lead and not enough time to actually get painting.
Life was simpler back in the day - White Dwarf taught me pretty much everything I knew about figure painting, and apart from deciding between white or black undercoat there was only really one way of painting. Not so any more - there's whole topics on places like the Lead Adventure Forum on techniques I'd never even heard of, from edge lining to non-metalic metals, opinions as to which brand of paints are best, and so forth. Plus there's all the photos to show me that the results I achieved back in the day, while decent enough, were average at best.
With all this extra information it will be interesting to see if the results I achieve with my first batch - my very small Khorne warband plus the goblins from my Undivided warband - are any better than I used to, and how my technique evolves with time.
Life was simpler back in the day - White Dwarf taught me pretty much everything I knew about figure painting, and apart from deciding between white or black undercoat there was only really one way of painting. Not so any more - there's whole topics on places like the Lead Adventure Forum on techniques I'd never even heard of, from edge lining to non-metalic metals, opinions as to which brand of paints are best, and so forth. Plus there's all the photos to show me that the results I achieved back in the day, while decent enough, were average at best.
With all this extra information it will be interesting to see if the results I achieve with my first batch - my very small Khorne warband plus the goblins from my Undivided warband - are any better than I used to, and how my technique evolves with time.
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Bring Out Your Lead warband
I seem to have been bitten by the bug in a big way. I'm not sure if I'll be able to attend Bring Out Your Lead, but if I do then a warband seems to be the way forward.
I thought I'd roll up a couple from Orlygg's guidance, one based around a level 15 hero and one on a level 10. I'm pretty sure the whole thing will be a fairly brutal affair, I'm curious whether a bigger warband or a tougher leader are a better bet. Although being Oldhammer it's probably more down to how the dice land...
Chaos Undivided Champion
In my young day Chaos wasn't all this Khorne vs Slaanesh stuff. It was big lads with ridiculous armour and crazy stats, laying waste to all before them. So I reckon an Undivided warband is a good plan, and I'll see which side is short-handed on the day.
Human level 10 hero (picked)Random reward (I assume)
Chaos weapon
Attributes to be picked (need to work out which are positive and negative, and take one of each)
Retinue: 2, 48, 54
2d6 beastmen: 2, 2
1d6 chaos goblins: 6
2d6 humans: 2, 4
Champion of Khorne
But in the spirit of the occasion, it seems like I should pick a side as well. Slaanesh never really appealed to me, so Blood God it is.
Dwarf level 15 hero (picked - I always hankered after these minatures back in the day, I used this as an excuse to head to eBay last weekend)
Chaos armour
Chaos weapon
Attributes to be picked
Retinue: 41, 10
2d6 beastmen: 1, 1 (ouch)
1 chaos warrior: 5 = Marauder
Once the chaos dwarf arrives later this week I just need to check out what I do for the humans. I have probably around 20 in my collection, but most of them aren't warband material. I'll probably have a couple of my mercenaries make an appearance though.
I thought I'd roll up a couple from Orlygg's guidance, one based around a level 15 hero and one on a level 10. I'm pretty sure the whole thing will be a fairly brutal affair, I'm curious whether a bigger warband or a tougher leader are a better bet. Although being Oldhammer it's probably more down to how the dice land...
Chaos Undivided Champion
In my young day Chaos wasn't all this Khorne vs Slaanesh stuff. It was big lads with ridiculous armour and crazy stats, laying waste to all before them. So I reckon an Undivided warband is a good plan, and I'll see which side is short-handed on the day.
Human level 10 hero (picked)Random reward (I assume)
Chaos weapon
Attributes to be picked (need to work out which are positive and negative, and take one of each)
Retinue: 2, 48, 54
2d6 beastmen: 2, 2
1d6 chaos goblins: 6
2d6 humans: 2, 4
Champion of Khorne
But in the spirit of the occasion, it seems like I should pick a side as well. Slaanesh never really appealed to me, so Blood God it is.
Dwarf level 15 hero (picked - I always hankered after these minatures back in the day, I used this as an excuse to head to eBay last weekend)
Chaos armour
Chaos weapon
Attributes to be picked
Retinue: 41, 10
2d6 beastmen: 1, 1 (ouch)
1 chaos warrior: 5 = Marauder
Once the chaos dwarf arrives later this week I just need to check out what I do for the humans. I have probably around 20 in my collection, but most of them aren't warband material. I'll probably have a couple of my mercenaries make an appearance though.
Monday, 13 May 2013
Middle Earth campaign - when and where and why
Probably the most far-reaching decision to be made when starting a campaign in Middle Earth is the date. You want the familiar aspects of the setting without having the characters playing second fiddle to the Ring quest.
I.C.E. addressed this by setting their modules mainly in early part of the Third Age, most often around 1640. At this point the Shire barely exists, so your chances of bumping into (or bumping off) Frodo and Samwise are limited.
Cubicle 7 seem to have gone for the aftermath of the Battle of the Five Armies - upheaval, and familiar names in the background, but still 70+ years clear of the Ring quest.
I thought I'd go back to first principles and see what starting date would suit my purposes best. My guidelines are these -
1409: Invasion of Arnor
1432 - 1448: Kin-strife (but see (2) above)
1636: Fall of Cardolan
1974: End of the North-kingdom
2510: Rohirrim settle in Calenardhon
2770: Erebor destroyed by Smaug
2941: Battle of the Five Armies
Of these, the fall of Cardolan strikes me as the most interesting, hopefully not because of the deep roots I.C.E. placed in my gaming conscience. The North-kingdom is still in existance, but on the wane, so you have interesting bits of Middle Earth's history that are still current (e.g. Fornost and the Seeing Stones) while retaining that sense of the Elves and Dunedain being in decline. You have an obvious source of conflict (and adventure) between Arthedain and Angmar and more of the sort of support structure that adventurers expect in terms of safe areas and friendly forces than is the case after 1974. Speaking of which post-1974 is probably my second favourite in terms of settings, with a bit of a post-apocalyptic struggle for the remaining settlements not destroyed by the fall of the North-kingdom. I'm not sure though that it's the sort of campaign I'm particularly good at running.
* Why Eriador?
This is clearly a key question, as this preference knocks out over half of my short list. Without meaning any disrespect to the professor, the Lord of the Rings strikes me as a deeply parochial tale. In fact, I even have a feeling that this was the intent. The Shire is "home" and everything that Frodo and company do is in defense of home, rather than being about adventurers setting off with whatever (often selfish) motivation that drives your typical RPG character. Hence the view of Gondor (or Rhovanion) should be much the same as that which a British package holiday tourist had of France or Spain a generation ago - somewhere you visit, before going home again. So it's not really appropriate to have the campaign set outside of Eriador, or more precisely for the characters to originate there.
I.C.E. addressed this by setting their modules mainly in early part of the Third Age, most often around 1640. At this point the Shire barely exists, so your chances of bumping into (or bumping off) Frodo and Samwise are limited.
Cubicle 7 seem to have gone for the aftermath of the Battle of the Five Armies - upheaval, and familiar names in the background, but still 70+ years clear of the Ring quest.
I thought I'd go back to first principles and see what starting date would suit my purposes best. My guidelines are these -
- Some time in the Third Age. Second Age (and earlier) is very different - more high fantasy than gritty
- Set principally in Eriador*
- During or after a significant event, so that Middle Earth's history is very present rather than just a backdrop. Also, as Noisms explained, times of societal change are good settings.
1409: Invasion of Arnor
1432 - 1448: Kin-strife (but see (2) above)
1636: Fall of Cardolan
1974: End of the North-kingdom
2510: Rohirrim settle in Calenardhon
2770: Erebor destroyed by Smaug
2941: Battle of the Five Armies
Of these, the fall of Cardolan strikes me as the most interesting, hopefully not because of the deep roots I.C.E. placed in my gaming conscience. The North-kingdom is still in existance, but on the wane, so you have interesting bits of Middle Earth's history that are still current (e.g. Fornost and the Seeing Stones) while retaining that sense of the Elves and Dunedain being in decline. You have an obvious source of conflict (and adventure) between Arthedain and Angmar and more of the sort of support structure that adventurers expect in terms of safe areas and friendly forces than is the case after 1974. Speaking of which post-1974 is probably my second favourite in terms of settings, with a bit of a post-apocalyptic struggle for the remaining settlements not destroyed by the fall of the North-kingdom. I'm not sure though that it's the sort of campaign I'm particularly good at running.
* Why Eriador?
This is clearly a key question, as this preference knocks out over half of my short list. Without meaning any disrespect to the professor, the Lord of the Rings strikes me as a deeply parochial tale. In fact, I even have a feeling that this was the intent. The Shire is "home" and everything that Frodo and company do is in defense of home, rather than being about adventurers setting off with whatever (often selfish) motivation that drives your typical RPG character. Hence the view of Gondor (or Rhovanion) should be much the same as that which a British package holiday tourist had of France or Spain a generation ago - somewhere you visit, before going home again. So it's not really appropriate to have the campaign set outside of Eriador, or more precisely for the characters to originate there.
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