Greetings, 3WD-verse! DM Chris here. As I begin my preparation for our upcoming Lord of the Rings Roleplaying campaign, I thought it would be a cool exercise to talk about what I’m doing to get it ready. When you are operating from a sourcebook versus a published adventure, there can be the additional stress of coming up with the overall story and structure of the campaign. Over the years I’ve used, or seen used, several easy and useful techniques for coalescing the vapor of fantasy experience into a useful form.
The most important thing, before we get into it, is that you need to find something unique in the sourcebook. Something that pulls at your synapses. Middle-Earth does that for me. As we always say, you don’t need to use everything in a sourcebook or published adventure if you don’t find it necessary. But there should be something about the setting or the lore that makes you want to adventure there. We’re players first, so lean into that when choosing so that your excitement and interest about the material comes through during actual gameplay.
1. Make It Your World
Once you’ve decided on the all important sourcebook or homebrewed location, then comes the task of determining what type of campaign you’ll be running. Obviously that involves deciding whether it’ll be a long, sustained adventure or a group of mini-adventures, but more importantly it’s the time when you decide how your world looks, feels, and behaves. These are the things you’ll need to impart to the players to help them create their characters.
If you’re operating from a sourcebook, then you have the foundation there. That being said, maybe the house you want to build looks a little different than the one presented in the sourcebook. With Middle-Earth in my Lord of the Rings Roleplaying campaign, I want to evoke the spirit of the world, but I also want it to be my own take.
First, I left the looks alone. As a well established property, players will have preconceived notions of places and people. But if you’re not working in a known universe, give it a tweak. Maybe in your version of the world, there are two suns instead of one? Just that little change can spawn additional ideas about alternate religions and the world’s climate.
When I say “feels”, I’m talking about how the characters feel living in the world. If we consider regular everyday existence as the balance point, then what feels different in your world that would drive these people to adventure forth. For my campaign, I’m introducing a new religious cult that is spreading across Eriador. Along with the slow rise of the shadow from Mordor, the cult provides the general unease and discontent that makes the setting feel out-of-balance and in some need of saving.
Finally, deciding how your world behaves is paramount. As DM Thorin said often, “We teach our players how our world works.” Much like feels, if we consider D&D’s core rules to be the balance point, what is different in your world? What new mechanics or restrictions are there? The sourcebook may contain some, but you can always bring along other ones if you want. Just remember that you’ll need to explain them to the players, and that you’ll need to understand them fully to be effective.
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying sourcebook provides several new mechanics, but it is what they excluded that I want to cover here. There are no spellcasting classes. In Middle-Earth, wizards and magic in general are rare. That is something that you need to communicate to your players ahead of time. While I think that they did a great job with the new classes they created, some players may not want to adventure in a low magic world. Best to find out now, rather than later.
2. Where Are We Going?
We’ve got the beginnings of a living, breathing world here. Now we need to figure out the big question. What is the plot? This doesn’t need to be overly complicated, usually a sentence or two will suffice. You can add the details later, but what we’re looking for here is the backbone of the adventure. Published adventures make it easier by providing a built-in plot, but what do you do when there isn’t a plot provided? I like to go back to my books, TV, movies and video games.
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying takes place between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so the overall arc of the game is the slow rise of the shadow in Mordor. But I want to leave it in a way so that the Lord of the Rings can take place without changes, so that can only be a backdrop.
I was back and forth on several plot ideas, but it was when I was watching the excellent anime series Onimusha on Netflix that I finally had it. Not the samurai and demons part, but the story beneath. A long journey with some stops along the way. I’m being very broad about it because I don’t want to spoil my upcoming adventure, but it fits the Middle-Earth setting well and I think it gives my players a good reason for leaving their homes to risk life and limb. Let your favorite books, shows, movies and games speak to you, and take a pinch here and a pinch there.
3. The Character Creation Guide
This step isn’t about the stats, although there may be additional races and classes in your chosen sourcebook. The character creation guide is an invaluable tool in helping players create their characters in your world. This can be a couple of paragraphs about the people who live in this new world you’re bringing them into. Although you’ve selected a setting you find compelling and tweaked it into your own, your players don’t know much about it. While their characters should be ignorant of the plot you’ve devised, they should know enough about the world to have lived in it for the 18 or so years leading up to this adventure.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, there are a bunch of new races and classes, or in their vernacular Heroic Cultures and Callings. I needed a way to get that information out to my players in an organized and easy to use format. So I created a folder on Google Docs and started to fill it with the necessary files. When it gets to be time for the campaign, I’ll share it out with my players and they’ll have a resource that they can always return to as their characters evolve and grow. I stole the meat and potatoes of this idea from DM Tony’s excellent character creation guide for Journey to Ragnarok that he shared in much the same way. I still return to it as that campaign moves forward.
Final Thoughts
There are a few of the steps I’ve learned over the years to help with the stress of turning sourcebooks into campaigns. There can be a lot of anxiety and worry when you need to create the story, but there doesn’t need to be. Players will make a left turn on you, no matter how much you’ve prepared. Use these steps, and any others you’ve learned, to make the setting, plot, and their character creation as simple and tidy as you can. The magic of the table will take those tidy bits and turn them into a memorable campaign.
Got a Question?
3 Wise DMs mission is to help DMs with problems that you can’t find answers to in the rulebooks. If you’ve got a question or a problem, visit the website and enter it in the “What’s Your Problem” field. Or reach out to us at 3wisedms@gmail.com.
YouTube!
3 Wise DMs is scaling up into the 21st Century! We’ve begun loading our new episodes, starting with our “Back in Black” return episode onto our shiny, brand-new YouTube channel. We’d love if you’d all head over and Subscribe and “Hit the Bell Icon” to get all the latest from 3WD as we venture into new multimedia territory.
Be sure to LIKE and FOLLOW us on Facebook and Instagram as well and please, feel free to share with your friends or anyone else who rolls funny looking dice!
Need Dice?
If you’re in the market for dice (and who isn’t?) visit our affiliate link at FanRoll Dice and enter code 3WISEDMS10 to get 10% off your entire order!