Welcome to the first episode of our The One Ring series, everyone! This series we have Stef Midlock and James Pierson from the Athrabeth Podcast joining us to discuss and create characters for The One Ring 2nd Edition, the official Lord of the Rings RPG by Free League Publishing! This episode we learn what the game is all about, a bit about Tolkien lore, and we start creating our characters!
Welcome to the first episode of our The One Ring series, everyone! This series we have Stef Midlock and James Pierson from the Athrabeth Podcast joining us to discuss and create characters for The One Ring 2nd Edition, the official Lord of the Rings RPG by Free League Publishing! This episode we learn what the game is all about, a bit about Tolkien lore, and we start creating our characters!
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Ryan Boelter 0:01
Welcome to the first episode of Series 50. For everyone, you're in for a great series this month, we are covering the official RPG for the Lord of the Rings universe, the one reign by freely publishing with some of the fallout from the death rebirth podcast. That's right, the new Rings of Power Series started this month. And we think a lot of folks might want to give this game a try after being inspired by that show. So stay tuned.
Amelia Antrim 0:31
I'm really excited for this. First of all, I will say it out loud on this show, Stephen James, I love you. You're wonderful people. I'm so glad that I know you and so glad that you're in my life. And also, this is a fun game. So it's so good. Yeah, and I'm excited for the show. So before we get into our show, though, please join us after our episode for our call to action, where we'll be talking about our thoughts on this game and the series as well as the final days of the academy con 2022 Kickstarter. So please enjoy the show everyone and we will catch you after the episode.
Ryan Boelter 1:45
Welcome to Character Creation Cast a show where we discuss and create characters, the best part of role playing games with guests using their favorite systems. I am one of your hosts Ryan, and this episode, my co host Amelia and I are thrilled to welcome Steph midblock and James Pearson from the death rebirth podcast to discuss the one rain, a game that lets you play in the world of The Lord of the Ravens.
Amelia Antrim 2:11
Welcome to Character Creation Cast. I'm really excited that you're both here. This is fun. I haven't gotten to talk to you guys in a long time. It's gonna be good.
Ryan Boelter 2:18
Absolutely.
Stef Midlock 2:20
Hey, thank you. We're so excited to yeah,
James Pierson 2:22
thanks for having us.
Amelia Antrim 2:23
stuff. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself where people can find you online? What you're up to?
Unknown Speaker 2:28
Sure. Yeah,
Stef Midlock 2:30
so my name is Steph midblock and I along with my co host, Jude vase. We run the Astra best podcast simply called Ather, Beth. And it is a podcast that explores the lesser trod paths of Tolkien's JRR Tolkien's legendarium and the legendary amount like the the the entirety of his works all around the world of Middle Earth and arta. So we try to go into like some of the weirder texts, the essays, the books that are not the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Stef Midlock 3:07
Yeah, so that comes out monthly. You can find that on the web@podcast.aftermath.com. You can also find us on, you know, whatever podcast thing you'd like to use Spotify, whatever. And we are on Twitter and Instagram at Athabasca underscore cast. I can be found at the North for on Instagram, if you're interested in that. And my co host Jude can be found at Air medic, dude. And about Etherboot podcasts would not run without our amazing editor, who's also here today.
James Pierson 3:39
Yeah, that's me. Hi, I'm James. Yeah, so I did the I edit the afterbirth podcast. And I think probably more appropriate for this show. I also have GMs the One Ring for Steph and Jude for a couple of bonus episodes that they did. We did some spooky Halloween Hobbit episodes called Halloween. And so I IgM using this game system we're gonna discuss today I also run a home game for Steph Jude and a couple of our friends using the One Ring System, which we do every other every other week.
Unknown Speaker 4:16
Thank you so much. Very cool.
James Pierson 4:18
Oh, and I guess this is probably maybe I don't know if this is you know, interesting or anything but I'm also Stephanie's husband priority behind editing the podcast and jamming the game
Amelia Antrim 4:34
and also in your spare time.
Stef Midlock 4:38
Over after that. Nothing amazing.
Ryan Boelter 4:46
Well, let's go ahead and get into this. And we will start by discussing what this game
Unknown Speaker 4:51
is all about. What's in a game?
Ryan Boelter 4:54
All right. So what is the core concept of the One Ring
Stef Midlock 5:00
Well, yeah, I could I could jump in, I can jump in. So it's a tabletop role playing game based on the extended legendarium of JRR Tolkien but kind of focusing on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The goal is sort of, for the players to feel what it's like to go adventuring in Middle Earth, this sort of I think that the book says a wild and perilous land, which is, I think, so evocative and cool.
James Pierson 5:29
Yeah, and one cool thing that this game does, it stated right in the the introductory chapter to this book is The suggests suggest that the play that the players think about the types of people who would have lived in this kind of ancient to like Dark Ages world, the world of Lord of the Rings, and create characters that perhaps have a more limited view of the world, rather than something like d&d, where you're an adventurer, and you're out there going dungeon delving and stuff like that, here, they specifically say you should consider making characters who maybe haven't ever been more than a few miles from their hometown, or, you know, know that there are other lands out there, but have never even thought about them until they get there similar to like Sam, or, you know, similar to Sam, in Lord of the Rings. I think that that's a really cool, cool suggestion, because that is like a big part of what makes the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So interesting is the distance the sense of discovery that the characters have, especially that the hobbit characters have when they leave their bubble of safety. And venture out in this wild world.
Ryan Boelter 6:32
That's interested in has a very beyond the wall sort of feel to it, which is nice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And
Amelia Antrim 6:39
I liked it. There's, there's a suggestion right in the book to do that, too. Because I think people, especially people who have played lots of role playing games before, like, that is not sort of your base instinct, when you pick up a game is to like, play somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. You know, I think we're all used to kind of being like, Oh, I know what I'm doing here. And I'm competent, and it's great. It'll all be fine.
Unknown Speaker 7:04
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 7:05
One of the questions we always ask that, it doesn't really apply as well here, but we'll ask anyway. Is what sort of setting do you play in, in particular, I'm kind of interested in, because Tolkien's legendarium has so much lore, like there's so much there. I want to know, maybe James, especially as a GM, how do you run a game in that, like, how are you able to kind of like, make it your own when there's already so much there?
James Pierson 7:33
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, Steph, of course, is the resident lore expert. But I think from a GM standpoint, you can kind of use as much or as little of the setting as you want, like with the core rulebook, they give you a really great image of what the world looks like. So basically, the game as written in the core rulebook is set, you know, roughly 20 years after the Hobbit. And so it's still about 3035 years before the start of Lord of the Rings. So you're in this really interesting period, in between the two sort of main, like story points for the world. And it's set in the region of area door, which is basically where the Shire is, it was where the kingdom of r&r, like if you hear, you know, from Lord of the Rings, Aragorn becomes the king of Gondor, and Arnor aren't or is this northern kingdom that was incredibly, incredibly rich and incredibly prosperous, but then has fallen, you know, over 1000 years ago, and is now largely empty, and, you know, largely ruined and empty. And with the core rulebook as GM, they give you a good amount of detail about the region of area door in the people who were there and stuff like that. But of course, there is a huge wealth of extra setting details, if you go out to back to the original source material or even to like the Tolkien Gateway wiki, which has just, you know, encyclopedic amount of, of information about the area. So you can really use as much or as little of the setting as you are interested in because the, you know, as written up, you can already run a great game. One of the things that I think is really interesting about this setting too, is because it's so desolate, even if you don't go really deep into the Tolkien lore, you could pretty much run a game that's very similar in feel to something like, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, where you're in a beautiful, but ruin to kind of desolate land. Or you could go super deep into, you know, into the history and stuff like that. Hmm. I think that so yeah, I mean, really, I think from a GM standpoint, you can get as you can use as much or as little as you want. And so it's not something that you need to feel like you need to be an expert in because yeah, everything you need is right there in the book. Very cool.
Stef Midlock 9:44
Yeah, it's interesting to so many hats. I think everybody it's I would challenge you to find someone that doesn't have some kind of preconceived frame of reference for this stuff, right? Because we all talk Tolkien is not only like, you know, the movies or so pervasive but like, it's the base of so much fantasy. Yeah, that we have today. It's the basic d&d, right? So there's, there's gonna be a lot of familiar things here, even if you're not, you know, especially if it if you're not a Tolkien person.
Amelia Antrim 10:13
Yeah, I feel like sometimes, like, if you're not into that, like you almost have more fun because you're like more chill about it. Sometimes you're like, I don't care about that. I'll just do what I want, you know? And then there's other times where you're like, actually, you couldn't do that, though. Because, like, now just settle down.
Ryan Boelter 10:33
Can you just like, throw a village, wherever you want, and, you know, not care that it goes against the actual lore, because oh, by the way, that spot you chose for that village, that's actually this thing. And Lord,
Amelia Antrim 10:51
Tolkien is not going to show up at your house and tell you how to play. He might, but I don't think Tolkien Well,
Stef Midlock 11:00
you know, and you know, we play yeah. So we play with Jude who is, as I said, the co host of afterbirth with me, and, you know, the biggest Tolkien scholar I know. And like, he doesn't really carry there. I mean, I think like, once you're in the world, and you're sort of in your own company and doing your own thing. I don't know, I think you can, I think you can fill in where maybe things are missing. Yeah, for the main texts, right.
James Pierson 11:24
And even in the the GM section of the book, they explicitly call out like, Yes, this is a desolate region, it's mostly depopulated. But like there are there can always be villages just off the beaten track, because you know, people have to live places. You know, not everything is recorded in the lore, like Tolkien is really big on sort of framing devices. So you have to remember, and I know I'm stealing a little bit of stuff, Thunder here, because she loves this aspect of it. But you have to remember that the hobbit in The Lord of the Rings are stories written by people in the world. So they would not have written about things that were outside of the scope of their view. So there could have been right over that hill. But Bilbo or Frodo never went over there.
Ryan Boelter 12:01
Oh, that's interesting. I never thought about that. Before. It's even like hinted at in, in the movies. Oh, hey, this. This is actually a story written from this hobbits perspective. And so therefore, you've got a narrator that doesn't have omniscience, which is a really kind of an interesting way to approach those books and the lore of this whole world that
Unknown Speaker 12:26
was created. That's really cool.
Stef Midlock 12:30
Yeah, it makes you step back and go like, Oh, is this a totally reliable narrator? Who knows? Right? Yeah, to fill in a lot of stuff, which I think is really freeing, because in ways where the fan sometimes the superfans, like won't Yeah, you know, those gatekeeper types? Yeah, I would say put that aside and just enjoy it for what it is, especially its world ready to be popped, especially written
Ryan Boelter 12:50
from the perspective of somebody that's been, like at least a little corrupted by the wandering.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
Oh, absolutely. Fascinating. It's pretty dope, right?
Amelia Antrim 13:01
So we generally feel like that's good advice for any RPG just just like, let it go. Do what you want. Do
Unknown Speaker 13:11
you have fun? Yeah,
Stef Midlock 13:13
absolutely. And I don't remember if James talked about this already. But I did want to mention just when we're talking about setting, the time period that was chosen by the writers of this is very deliberate. It's it's an important time period, because they make a big deal in the book that the shadow, like capital S shadow is sort of returning to the world. This is the twilight of the Third Age. We're about like, where they sort of date this. I mean, it's not an exact day, you can use whatever you want there. But there's we're sort of in this 80 year time period, we're about 50 years from when Frodo and company leave the Shire. We're doing right. So things are getting spooky and spooky and and the stakes are getting higher all the time. And I think that's, I liked that they chose that specifically, because I didn't know leaves a lot of room for creepy stuff. But not you don't have to stick to the cannon.
Amelia Antrim 14:11
Right. But you're not tripping over it. The more well known parts of the story there. Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 14:15
Yeah. Well,
Ryan Boelter 14:17
what sort of tools then do we need to play this game? I saw there was something about some special dice.
Stef Midlock 14:23
Yeah, James, do you want to tell them about those special better?
James Pierson 14:26
Yeah, okay. So this game, mainly so they have special dice. But if you don't buy the set of special dice, you can just use regular dice. Basically, you have two types you have what they call feet die, which are are a feet feet dice, which are D twelves. But the 11 and the 12 are replaced with special symbols. The 11 is replaced with the Eye of Sauron and the 12 is replaced with the rune that Gandalf uses for his name. Yeah, and then you so you have feet dice which are D twelves. And you have success. dice, which are D sixes. And again, that you can use regular D sixes, the ones that you buy from the set that they make are slightly different, like the six has a little elven symbol on it to denote that you can use it for like great successes and stuff like that. But basically, you know, you need to D twelves. And probably six or so D sixes. Okay.
Stef Midlock 15:20
Yeah, but you don't but again, like, yeah, you can use regular dice. It's totally fine. Because, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, I'm not a millionaire. I don't want to buy everything. But I mean, they are cute dice. They're really nice. So yeah, so throw them a thermal buy if you like them. There's also the core rulebook, of course, which is beautiful. And I think like so well
Amelia Antrim 15:40
designed, or just one any I think for interior art. I don't remember it was silver or gold. But
James Pierson 15:48
yeah, yeah. We put it up
Amelia Antrim 15:51
for it. And I think it one
Stef Midlock 15:53
that is so cool. It feels like you're opening a tome that could be found in like an archive of ministereth. In a way. It's like it's got, it's just the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. It has some absolutely fantastic maps. If you're a map geek, they took a lot of time. And I know, the writer, the head writer, and the Map Maker spent a long time researching all these things, especially in the Shire. And really making maps that like to level of detail that maybe we haven't seen before. Which is really, really cool.
Amelia Antrim 16:32
Yeah, the art style is very, like somatically appropriate to it's not like they just were like, here's some d&d art, and we'll throw it in the book. And like, it's like, it looks like it belongs in a token book.
Unknown Speaker 16:46
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 16:47
There was a lot of care that went into very evocative.
James Pierson 16:49
Yeah. Yeah,
Stef Midlock 16:51
it also starts I love that it starts with the prologue. And it ends with the appendix, which I guess kind of makes sense. But that also shadows tokens on on books as well, which I think is sort of sweet. Just a nice little touch. And here's the thing like, Well, I think, you know, we'll, we'll see it again in the character sheet, so we can talk about it again, then. But the writer, the head writer, is this guy named Francesco net patello, who is a big Tolkien fan. And he, if you read the, the history, the extra material in the book, you sort of he went out of his way to choose wording to choose phrases to choose, you know, sort of vocab words that Tolkien would have loved. So you feel like it really does sort of put you in that mindset of like, and I was a blob of blue would have gladly, like it's not it's not inaccessible, it's just really fun to read all that stuff, like it's written very beautifully, and in a manner that I think Tolkien would have would have approved of, so it's all part of that like world building moment, it starts like at the very first thing, you open the book, and you're presented with a letter from Gandalf and it in this scribbly handwriting, and it's like, super, I think that's super dope. But
Amelia Antrim 18:03
there are a lot of like, tie in properties that don't do as like, loving of a job as this one does.
James Pierson 18:10
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You feet you when reading this book, you get the same feeling you get when you read the Lord of the Rings of The Hobbit, which is kind of crazy for the RPG rulebook. Yeah,
Ryan Boelter 18:20
yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's huge, too. It's not a small book,
Stef Midlock 18:24
it's big, which can be a little scary, maybe for new gamers. So I would also suggest that if you're newer to gaming, or you maybe you don't want to get into the whole Giganto thing, there's a really nice starter box you can purchase that has like a shortened version of the rules. It has a really nice, like, Compendium all about the Shire. And then it has like five adventures in it. And then these pre made characters, which are really cool. And they're sort of not characters that we see a ton of in Tolkien's writings, but they are there. So it's like photos, parents who could play or Pippins dad or mom. Yeah, it's really dope. So and that's until you get like the dice, and you get some nice cards and some great maps. And so I think that Starbucks, I really want to say is well done. It's beautiful. And it's a great way to kind of just get your feet
Unknown Speaker 19:13
wet. Absolutely.
Amelia Antrim 19:16
What kind of stories and themes? Do you think that this game does best? Because I know like, certain games have certain styles and you are meant to do certain things. Some are combat some art, you know, exploration. So like, what kind of things do you think that this game does? Well? Yeah,
Stef Midlock 19:36
I think Sure I can. Oh, go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 19:38
Yeah, you go. Well,
Stef Midlock 19:40
I mean, I think I think when we were James and I were kind of thinking about this we I mean, what came to mind is this game is all about adventure. That's really what it is. It's deliberately structured to kind of emulate the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You you've got a company, right you and your your fellow here. players are accompany with a patron that's sending you out on quests, large or small, right? The way that the adventure is structured, the the emphasis is on going there to the quest, but also coming back again, which is of course, that's part of that's part of Tolkien's whole thing there. And back again, it really is about a whole journey, the small moments on the road as well as like the big thematic, you know, fights and moments that we know.
James Pierson 20:32
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that like, you know, it's, you know, that structure could be very similar. Like you could run, you could do that in a d&d game. Like, that's essentially what you know, d&d, in certain circumstances is trying trying to do, but here, it's mechanically supported to play the game in that way. And like, have periods, you know, have you know, adventuring periods, and then have periods where you're, you're in your safe haven where you're resting and, you know, doing that kind of thing. Like it's enforced by the rules to have that sort of style of of gameplay, which is very cool.
Ryan Boelter 21:02
Oh, that's nice. It's a good thing to have that home base. In a lot of games, especially, like fantasy games. I think one of the shortcomings of d&d is, you don't have a home base. Love unless you make it in yourself, right?
Amelia Antrim 21:19
Yeah, like they're supposed to have downtime. But like, there's no mechanics for like what you're supposed to do. And I get really frustrated when people are like, let me tell you about my d&d game and all of the stuff that we did. And I was like, all of that stuff you did is not part of the game. That's just a thing you made up. Yeah, like that.
Ryan Boelter 21:36
But it's interesting, because a great point, indeed, downtime is oh, we're in a foreign city, let's go and shop and go to the taverns. And that's in the books. Right. Exactly. But it's not like, oh, well, we went out in this grand adventure. And now we're coming back home. And now we can, you know, have our local friends hang out, have a feast, you know, and talk about in our tails with the the various characters here and
Amelia Antrim 22:07
no, it's I didn't adventure onto the next adventure. Exactly. Yeah,
Ryan Boelter 22:10
that's a that can get exhausting. Right. So it's refreshing that a game has that built in like this? Yeah,
Stef Midlock 22:19
absolutely. And there are there is, there are sort of undertakings you can do during that downtime, that invite players to reflect on what they just did. One of my favorite things is, for certain character types, you can write a song, and different songs like whether it's a lay, or walking song, or whatever, that'll give you bonuses later on. And so we in our own game, have actually had a few songs written or poems written. And we have really had a fun time with it. And and then they're just like, this beautiful little thing that reminds us of the first adventure we were on or whatever it is, how sweet and nice and introspective, is that. Talking.
Ryan Boelter 23:02
Yeah, so we talked about this a bit characters go on adventures that come back, they relax. What, what do you? What can do characters do then specifically? Like, could we as a group say, hey, you know, I heard about this one random thing. Maybe we should nip it in the bud right
Amelia Antrim 23:21
away? Probably.
James Pierson 23:27
Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's the that's sort of the the, the primary question when you play a licensed role playing games that like exist in a world that has established canon, like, how, like, you just need to establish right up front with your, with your, your table? How comfortable do we feel? Like how much do we want to adhere to the canon? And how comfortable do we feel making this an alternate universe where we go off the rails? Like, you know, if you, I think that there is, there's absolutely a case to be made for either either sort of game style, and it really depends on on the preference for people at the table. You know, I think in like, for instance, in the home game that we're doing, I've tried, I mean, not slavish ly, but I've tried very hard to anchor it in appointed in canon. Because, for me, personally, as a GM, and I know, for some of our players like that intersectionality between what we're doing in the game and real, like established canon is interesting. And I think that that's one of the big benefits you get from like a licensed RPG, when your players run into somebody from the world who's like an established character. It's kind of like, it can be overdone, but it's also kind of a thrill to like, walk into a room and see, you know, Gandalf sitting at a table you know, but I think that there's also a case to be made for like, well, we want to be the big heroes in this world. Let's go take out this are on guy so I mean, really, it's up to it's up to your table.
Ryan Boelter 24:55
Just go after sorry I'm on before he can screw things up and
Amelia Antrim 25:01
I mean, I've played like close kinds of games, where you, you know, sort of rewrite the lore entirely so that your group is the one that saves the day. Or, you know, you play like in Star Wars and you like, make up your own planets. And you know, it has nothing to do with anything. It's just somatically, like the same tones, and it has nothing to do with anything that happens in canon. And both of those can be really fun. As long as your group is on board with
Unknown Speaker 25:28
that. Yeah, exactly. Agreed. But I
Ryan Boelter 25:31
remember playing a bit of The Lord of the Rings Online, the MMO that takes place and like getting snippets of actual lore on the adventure you're going on. And then it's like, oh, that's cool that I'm interacting with this thing that tangentially, you know, down the line, and the story means this. And now you've got this like, feeling of like, hey, now we're part of the background of that story. Like, like, what was it? Like the Star Wars stuff that's coming out nowadays, like, Oh, you're on. You're the main characters were off doing x. And we're the side characters in the cantina on the other side of the planet, and we think we're the main characters.
Amelia Antrim 26:25
I always think I'm the main character.
James Pierson 26:27
Right. Yeah, I mean, you kind of get into that, you know, it could potentially be a problem, but you kind of get into that pre cool mindset, where, you know, you can like fringed using the Star Wars is a good example. It's like, okay, well, we can do sort of, we could have this game be Rogue One, where we go and steal the plans and hand them off to the main characters, or the boffins who steal the Deathstar plans? That's also an interesting way to do it.
Unknown Speaker 26:51
Absolutely.
Stef Midlock 26:52
Yeah. And I do like, you know, with talking gave us so many cool locations that that our main characters from like the lotteries, or Bilbo or whatever, they just stop in really quickly and then move on. And but this game lets you like, go back, like, I don't know, the like, Weathertop right, where, where Frodo gets stabbed with the Nazgul blade, like you guys could go camp there. And there's something really neat about that, too, though, like 50 years in the future a little good is gonna get mega stabbed here. There, there's something like I was here. There's like a thing like my character was here. Yeah. Even though they're not remembered in the main text. I know, they were here. There's a song that exists somewhere
Amelia Antrim 27:36
that we carved our initials in that tree. It's fine. Yep. Exactly. Yep. Was up Frodo
Unknown Speaker 27:47
don't get stabbed, man. I mean,
Amelia Antrim 27:54
we've talked a little bit about it. But I'm interested to know kind of, from your perspective, what do you think makes this game unique, both from other sort of, like media, property, Titans, and then also from other adventuring games?
James Pierson 28:10
I think, you know, obviously, obviously, the first, like, probably the biggest thing that makes this unique is this is the actual officially licensed JRR Tolkien RPG, like the you know, the owners of the media license, this is the one that they've denoted, is the actual official, you know, RPG, which, you know, obviously, you can go and you can make a token game. Like, there's so many resources out there, you could go and run a game in Middle Earth using d&d or you know, Dungeon World, any system you want. Like, this is the one that has the, you know, has the official blessing, you know, of of the property.
Unknown Speaker 28:48
For better or worse. Yeah.
Stef Midlock 28:50
Yeah. So, you know, we've talked about this a lot. But you can, as you say, like you, you can go as close as you want to the source material. And there's a lot of stuff in these books that you can fall back on to help you with that if you want to. I think I think this is kind of neat that you can open up, you know, if you have read, if you like talking you like the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings, like you can open up this core book. And if you really get into it, like you can learn some really cool stuff about the world. There's like timelines in there, man. And there's like, there's some like, it's this is a very well researched book that that supports the canon. But again, as James has said, you know, you don't have to stick to it, but it's there if you want. So like, you can get a little bit of a Tolkien lesson from this, which I think is pretty dope. Like, that's neat. If you want it and at the same time, totally ignore it if you don't want to. I mean, I don't I don't want to friggin learn. Come on.
Amelia Antrim 29:44
I'm trying to have fun here and want to read
James Pierson 29:48
I guess. I guess that's where this being the official game comes in handy. Like, you know, you could unofficially go out there and find all of the resources you want to run an amazing token game in any system, but you have to do all that right? research yourself, you've got to go and read the source material, you got to go to Tolkien Gateway and read all the wiki articles and stuff like that here you go to the gym or the about the world chapter and it's bullet pointed, broken down. Here's what you'll find in this part here, the monsters you'll deal with, like, it's this is the this is the easy way to run a Tolkien Yeah. Yeah.
Stef Midlock 30:18
Which is great, because that's so much more inviting. As we've said, you know, Tolkien, in the past has been so gatekeeper free, not him himself. But the fans, right over the years, it's been so sucky for some folks to kind of enjoy it. And that sucks. We're not doing that anymore. This is for everybody. And so this book is really a great resource. And I think, you know, for the source material if you want it.
Amelia Antrim 30:42
Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly, especially like it's, I mean, it's a big book, but like, I think it still makes it more approachable than you know, like, trying to do all of that research yourself and like, dig through and find what you're looking for. And like, there's so much out there, like, there's so much to know. And so it is kind of nice to just like have a book be like, okay, but here's all you need. Yeah, like we've picked out the important parts for you.
Ryan Boelter 31:10
There's people that have their doctorate in talking, right stuff. And like, there's so much out there that you can have a doctorate in.
Amelia Antrim 31:22
You can write your own dissertation if you want.
James Pierson 31:25
Or if your stuff and dude you could do 50 episodes about.
Amelia Antrim 31:29
Yeah, right. I still think that you both need to come here and go to Marquette and like, look at the archives and everything. Like
Stef Midlock 31:41
I would literally die though. Okay, I'm gonna work on that. I'm a vampire I've been invited in, I'm coming.
Ryan Boelter 31:55
Well, speaking of history, the history of this game was kind of interesting when I looked into it. Apparently, the first this is the second edition of the game. The first edition was released in 2011 by cubicle seven, and then they had plans of doing a second edition, but never did. And then in 2019, they lost the rights because they've never followed up on it. And then freely publishing, which made this game the second edition acquired the rights in 2020 and then kick started it March 2021 successfully and and here we are, with this gorgeous
Amelia Antrim 32:39
holding up this audio medium so that everyone could see
Ryan Boelter 32:46
it's interesting because like that, like the book itself is like it feels different than other RPG books like cover itself even has a different texture and yeah, it's it really interest pages are not glossy. Yeah, it's it feels like an old book that you would find in like, like an ancient library or something right? But like Goodness gracious, it's just gorgeous through and through a free like did a really great job was
Stef Midlock 33:13
also there's like a fan I'm holding up kind of in front of my green screen. But there's a fancy version two that's made to look like the web, the Red Book of Westmark Oh, it's like leather, red and gold. But just has a different color. So I'm like okay, they went hard on this
Amelia Antrim 33:31
stupid freely only sent me the regular version.
Ryan Boelter 33:35
It's interesting, because I didn't really hear about it. When it first kick started and it was kickstarted in for like in four minutes it funded dang thing we're minutes later. Dun dun like not doesn't surprise me at all. My goodness. Yes, it was a really interesting history of how this game came to be. And it sounds like free league did a really fantastic job with it.
Amelia Antrim 34:04
Yeah, I kept hearing like from people that it was like really, really good. And then it like because it wasn't any submission. It showed up at my door and I was like, oh sweet it but like, I mean, it's just beautiful. It's just beautiful.
Stef Midlock 34:18
Yeah, and something that's kind of interesting. So the writer is the same for both the first edition and the second edition, Francesco Nepata interest and what's neat about the first edition the first edition is set in a different area of Middle Earth right so what we said earlier on that this second edition is set in area Dora, which is on one side of the Misty Mountains right between the misty mountains and the sea. The old version is set on in Romanian, which is if you go over to the east, over the Misty Mountains in your in Mirkwood. Right where the hobbit takes place. You're where the Lonely Mountain is. It's a different geo geographical area. And it's also set about 20 years in the past from This current story and so and this was very intentional, so that players who had beloved characters from the first game from the first edition can keep playing their characters in the second edition. It doesn't. It doesn't like negate the first edition at all. The first edition is merely the past of the second edition. And what's really cool about this is they put out so much supplemental material for the first edition, including new lands, new people, you can be my favorite group in the Middle Earth. If you know me from aftermath is Rohan because I like horses, there's a whole there's like two row handbooks that they put out. So what's really nice is if you want to brew up as a second edition character, you can use first edition stuff and kind of squish it into the second edition, and it works really, really well. And I like that the first edition is still a valid thing that you can play if you if you want to. It just makes the world even bigger, which I think is kind of Delos. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 35:58
that's really nice when they don't cancel each other out. And you can still, you know, because I know people always get mad about new additions to it. It's like nobody's coming to your house and taking your old stuff. It's fine. But people always get like really weird and wigged out and like, nobody's gonna show up and like, take your books. They're yours forever. Yeah. Yeah. But it's nice that at least it's it's a little more compatible, because sometimes they're really not. Assuming they like restart timelines or, you know, whatever.
Ryan Boelter 36:23
Oh, yeah, we're the we're the mechanics fairly different, in first edition, then are fairly similar. I think they're pretty
Stef Midlock 36:29
similar. They're just sort of everything's kind of updated.
James Pierson 36:32
Yeah, that's right, they still use the sort of the same, you know, like D 12, plus d six dice system. I think that there were some some rules that were a little crunchy here. One of the things that Francesco said specifically was that this was an opportunity for them to take, you know, 10 years of feedback on version one, and streamlined version two, using that feedback. I think also, interestingly, orthogonal to, you know, to the this, the One Ring, RPG, cubicle seven also released adventures in Middle Earth, which was the one ring like it, which was the Lord of the Rings setting, but using the D 20. System. And from what I've heard, freely is going to be releasing the same thing using D 24. For Lord of the Rings soon, like, I think it's in the pipeline to come out next year. Oh, cool. Very nice. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 37:23
Cool. So keep your eyes on that. All right.
Amelia Antrim 37:26
So one last thing before we get into our actual character creation, which is terms and concepts, are there things that are going to come up as we do character creation that people need to know
Unknown Speaker 37:37
to be able to follow along?
Stef Midlock 37:40
Yeah, there there are, we wanted to we didn't mention this earlier. But I did just kind of want to call out even before, just for from the wider game, because it's so important to the structure of this game, that this game has two alternating phases, we kind of touched on it, but I just want to call out their names. So there's the adventuring phase, and the fellowship phase, and they go one after another forever and ever as far as long as you want to play. The adventuring phase is your traditional adventure that you all go into. We all know, it's you. I mean, the book suggests it's like two to three sessions. But of course, you can do whatever you want, then you have a fellowship phase that comes after the adventuring phase. And that is that downtime, right? Where you sort of narrate what you do when you come back from your adventure and you rest and you do certain stuff, and it kind of wraps up the adventure. The adventuring phases, then when you're on the adventure, there are like combat engagements. There's Council engagements, which are like social engagements. If you're like L phi var, I know Amelia, you do. It's like trying to get stuff via social interactions, which is neat. And then there's the something called the journey, which is like anytime you travel from one location to another on the map, you go through this journey phase. And this this sort of allows you to generate things that happened to your characters along the road. And there's different roles that the characters get, so that everybody in your party sort of has a task, whether it's the scout, figuring out where you're going, or the hunter finding your food, and then you roll to see like what weird like, What weird thing you come across or like, does it go well or badly and that really helps flesh out because as we know, like, it's not just about the destination, it's about the journey.
Amelia Antrim 39:24
99% about the journey, right? There's a lot of walking happening in those books.
Stef Midlock 39:32
Yeah, oh, so much.
James Pierson 39:37
Yeah, well, I was just gonna say the journey phases, like my absolute favorite part of of the game, like, you know, the the fact that they have sort of like this mechanically supported, like, you know, that it's mechanically supported that you're, you know, going to experience this journey, because like you said, that is so much of what Tolkien's stories are about going, you know, it's not, you know, it's going to the place and the things that happen along the way. And because the mechanics of the journey phase rely basically on just a lot of roles to determine what's going on, like what's going on, you get a lot of unexpected stuff happening during these during these phases, you know, and that is super, super fun and super interesting. Mm hmm.
Stef Midlock 40:18
As far as like other basic terms to know, you're going to see on your character sheet, you have attributes of strength, heart and wits, which are sort of your physical profile, your emotional profile and your mental profile of your character.
Unknown Speaker 40:35
There are, I
Stef Midlock 40:36
would say it would, it's nice to kind of talk or to kind of keep in mind something called Hope, which it's your reserves of sea or spiritual vigor, right. It's a way it's things you can draw on when you're in danger. There's also a big part of this is your shadow, which are basically like the bat the the negative things that happen as the shadow. So we talked about the shadow with the capital S, the shadow is like this, like bat, you know, the evil that's creeping back into the world. And so it's not just like just the ring itself, right. But it's all the things that are coming back. That will that will kind of negatively affect your character, whether it's greed, or you know, what I mean is like those kind of highbrow thing. Yeah, I love the shadow stuff. We haven't actually done a ton with it. So our characters are pretty shiny, but hope and shadow is really cool.
Unknown Speaker 41:27
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 41:30
I like that. Interesting. Well, it sounds like we might have enough to start creating characters do we? Do we want to do we want to make some people make some Yeah, let's make some people.
Unknown Speaker 41:43
Let's make some people. Alright, so what's the first one is step one?
Ryan Boelter 41:47
Yeah. How do we how do we people? How many people
James Pierson 41:51
so. So the first step to make people is to pick your heroic culture. The heroic cultures, like the starting cultures in this game, basically represent the free peoples most likely to be found in area door. If I recall correctly, there are well so there are several who wrote cultures, there are how many are there?
Stef Midlock 42:15
There's four, but then within the four, there's a subclass. So there's like you can play as you can play as dwarves. You can play as elves. You could play as men, which you know, the capital and men meaning humans come on. And you can play as hobbits. My point, which is kind of dope Come on, everybody wants to play a hobbit. And then within like the men category, there's like different men.
Ryan Boelter 42:42
Groups, what barding partings? Men of Bri and rangers of the north I see listed right?
James Pierson 42:47
That's right. Yeah, I think so actually going through sort of the heroic cultures that they that they have. So the boardings are men humans from the north, they hail from what's called will their land, which is the area around the Lonely Mountain. If you remember from The Hobbit, at the end of The Hobbit, Bard, the Bowman kill smug, and he becomes king of Dale. The people from Dale are the people from that area become the bargains the people have borrowed.
Unknown Speaker 43:22
They are
James Pierson 43:24
their hearty folk, they're merchants. They aren't they don't live in area door. So if you're playing a bargain, you're most likely somebody who has traveled across the mountains for some purpose either, you know, to bring goods from the Lonely Mountain or from Dale, or you know, you're exploring something like that, but you're not from area door. So that's something to consider what if you were to pick a bartering? The next culture are the Dwarves of Durance folk. So these are essentially the dwarves that we see in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. They hail from the hill from a number of different areas that could be from under the Lonely Mountain where, you know, that's the where Thorin and his company went. And then after Thorin died, the Lonely Mountain is ruled by three. Dane contain iron foot, right? Yeah, I think that sounds right, doesn't matter, whatever. Could also be so cares. The dwarfs could also be from underneath the Blue Mountains, or even the mountains in Linden, there are sort of a number of areas like basically anywhere where there are mountains, you can kind of put dwarves there. Sure, and the dwarves you know, obviously like from what we see in The Hobbit and what we see in The Lord of the Rings, they're you know, they're short. They're Hardy you know, the doors Yeah. The next culture are the Elves of Linden so Linden if you look at the map of area, Dora Linden is the is like the area most to the west like when the elves leave Middle Earth they go to the Grey Havens the Grey Havens is one of three, like elf cities in London. At the very end of the Lord of the Rings movie, you know, they go they get on the boat that that harbor where they're at, that's the Grey Havens. So that's in London, the Elves of Linden are distinct key like they're basically a distinct group of elves separate from the Elves of Reuben dealt and the Elves of Mirkwood and Lothlorien. And they're you know, ruled quote unquote by cured in the ship right and cured in is a is like a high elf who's basically his mission is to like build the ships that take the elves back across the sea to the west. And, you know, one of the like, more touching things is that he's one of the last elves that remains in Middle Earth, and he leaves on the last ship when all of the other elves have gone. So, as an elf of Linden, you know, you're you are tied into that culture that is facilitating the elves leaving Middle Earth, which is a little bit different than if you were to play an alpha Rivendale or an alpha of Lothlorien. And so that's an interesting aspect of the Elves. Elves, of course, in this setting are the traditional Tolkien elves, they're immortal. And, you know, even even when they die, they don't leave the world they returned to you know, the they were to they stay in the world and they returned to the west essentially, the next culture are the hobbits of the Shire. Obviously, this is you know, Bilbo, Frodo Pippin marry all Sam all of the all the hobbits that we see in the movies and the books hail from the Shire. The Shire is a beautiful, like a beautiful, verdant land in the middle of area, Dora. And the hobbits are, you know, typically thought of as like a very sort of, you know, insular folk who are more concerned with eating and having a good time in their own land than the things that are happening in the outside world. Of course, you know, because of this, if you play a hobbit of the Shire, you should consider, you know, why you would have left your comfortable Shire. If this is a game that ventures outside of the Shire, you could definitely do a game where you just all play hobbits and run around in the Shire, like helping farmer maggot, you know, people who are stealing his crops. But if you're going to venture out into the wider world, you need to think that like, it was a bit of a scandal, that Bilbo left with the dwarves in The Hobbit, and he had a reputation when he came back, you know, and they always said, he had a little bit of that of took blood in him, which is what made him sort of weird, and he, you know, that was why he left the Shire. But so if you make a hobbit character, and it's a game where you're going to leave the Shire, you should think about like, why you would have left your comfortable home? Did you? You know, are you drawn to adventure? Do you get pulled into adventure against your will, and you're trying to get home like these are some interesting things with a hobbit character.
James Pierson 47:55
The next culture is the men of Brea. So Bri is the is the town that is closest to the Shire, that it's a it's a manage town close closest to the Shire. If you remember in Lord of the Rings, when Frodo, Sam Pippin and Mary leave at the beginning of their journey there, their first destination is Bree, where they're trying to meet up with Gandalf and then and go from there. It's right on the border of the Shire, through the old forest. And it's a town that's a little bit. I mean, there's not really a cosmopolitan town in an area door. But if you look at it, it's sort of at the intersection. If you look at on the map, it's at the intersection of a road that runs north south and a road that runs east west. So Bri sees hobbits from the Shire, it's used dwarves traveling down from the mountains. And it's occasionally even sees elves although I don't think elves really stay in the city that much. But it's it's a town of men that is exposed to the wider world. So the men of Bri are a little bit more they understand the world a little bit more than perhaps some some men from other areas. And then the last culture are the ranges of the north. So these are the these are the Dunedain Aragon, Aragorn in, in The Lord of the Rings is a ranger of the North. And basically, these are the descendants of the people of the kingdom of r&r, who now wander the wilds and oppose the shadow as the shadow is growing in Ecuador. Oh, interesting. So the first that's
Stef Midlock 49:33
a good rundown
James Pierson 49:35
things. So obviously, the first step is to pick a heroic culture. And this will set a number of things. It'll give you some stuff, like it'll give you basically some attribute blocks. They'll give you some skill blocks, some different like cultural, you know, cultural things, but basically, it's the first building block of your character.
Ryan Boelter 49:53
Okay, so, as the first step selecting our culture Does anyone have ideas what they want to do? Because I got mine figured out. Oh, what's your?
Stef Midlock 50:06
Yeah what do you guys
Ryan Boelter 50:07
I was gonna be an elf of Linden
Stef Midlock 50:11
so perfect yes you have to. Nice he and Amelia What do you think you want to do? I don't know yet
Unknown Speaker 50:21
he they're also good yeah oh they're great.
Stef Midlock 50:25
I feel like stuffs gonna be a hobbit I will choose last because I don't mind I can play all the things I love all the things yeah in our homebrew game we had someone who wanted to play a human from God door and so we sort of like went back to first edition and found a condor person and kind of right because they're from the other side of the Misty Mountains so they're not in this edition. We also have I my characters from row hands so of course again you know, I always play unicorn and l five or you know, boy,
Amelia Antrim 51:00
I do I specifically remember your furry underwear and my game that I ran. Because apparently that's what unicorns were.
Stef Midlock 51:10
They did. You gotta keep warm. It's good, Patti.
Amelia Antrim 51:15
I think I am gonna go with men have free. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 51:20
nice. Okay, that seems fun. Hey,
Stef Midlock 51:22
that does seem fun. Then I'm going to build a habit of the Shire. Okay. And I will make it work because we've got all right. Nice, nice.
Ryan Boelter 51:29
Good fellowship going on.
James Pierson 51:35
Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna write Hobbit of the Shire. So now that we've, we've picked our cultures, you can then also recall, record your cultural blessing. So if you go in the book to the culture, like each section for the culture, right underneath characteristics, there's a cultural blessing. And this is something that is like a special a specialty that you get from being part of that culture.
Stef Midlock 51:57
Okay, so for mine, it's called Hobbit sense. I've learned my place in the world and I have a resk robust capacity for insight that apparently people mistake for a lack of courage, okay, so whenever. So for wisdom roles, oh, my wisdom roles are favored, and I gain one die on all shadow test made to resist the effects of greed.
Unknown Speaker 52:27
Hmm, nice. Yeah, I like it.
Ryan Boelter 52:31
I really like these. The cultural blessing of the Elves of Linden, is by virtue of their birthright elves are capable of reaching levels of fineness unattainable by mortals. And the mechanically that means if you are not capital M miserable. You can spend one point of hope to achieve a magical success and a skill roll.
James Pierson 52:54
That is super cool.
Unknown Speaker 52:56
Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 52:57
Like a capital M miserable.
Ryan Boelter 53:02
Yeah, my characters miserable here, but they don't have the miserable condition. Yes. Oh.
Stef Midlock 53:12
That's it, that magic thing is something to talk about, too. With talking like, you know, in d&d, you get this high magic like spell slinging around vicious mockery and whatnot. But then, you know, in Tolkien's world, it's sort of more natural, like low magic, just like natural stuff. It's not spells. It's it's more like, you know, a tuning with the with nature or whatever it is. Right. Does that seem right? It's kind of right, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 53:41
Like the the wizards that you see in the actual source material, aren't they? Like, literally deities? Or something like that? Yes.
Stef Midlock 53:50
Yeah, they are. Yep. They're like, ain't they're like almost like Angel, like helper angels for like the demigods of the world.
Ryan Boelter 53:57
So they've got these like, extra, like powers that, you know, mere mortals or, or mere elf. Immortals. don't exactly have access to which is really fascinating.
Unknown Speaker 54:12
Totally. Yep. I love that.
James Pierson 54:14
So once you've picked so now that we've gotten our culture and, and cultural blessing recorded, the next step is to pick your attributes. Each culture has a set of like has a set of attributes that you can choose from, this should be a little table, you can either pick a set or you can roll the success die and get whatever set you roll. But basically, you have three main attributes which are strength, which is physical strength, heart, which is like emotional capacity and wits, which is intelligence, you know, intelligence or like mental capacity.
Amelia Antrim 54:49
Okay, so there's like six sets here, so we could either pick or we can randomly roll, right? Ryan? is randomly rolling.
Ryan Boelter 54:58
We get to roll stuff. You Yeah, I might have to roast I might have to roll stuff I,
Amelia Antrim 55:03
we always do if it's a choice. Yeah, it's
Ryan Boelter 55:05
it's kind of our unwritten rule for ourselves. Feel free to do what you would like, for your own characters. But I love I love rolling things. So how do I roll for my stuff?
James Pierson 55:19
So if you look at the table in your culture, the first column is roll and then it's 123456. So you just roll one D six, and whatever number comes up, you pick you then get the strength heart and wits from that corresponding row.
Ryan Boelter 55:33
Oh, fascinating. So like, so my string goes 545456 So I Oh, that's weird. Okay, I like it. But we'll see what happens.
Stef Midlock 55:47
I'll do that too. Wait, what do I roll this?
Amelia Antrim 55:49
Roll? This secure, follow dice. But I have some elvish dice in here. And I can't find the DC here's one
Ryan Boelter 56:04
I can't find my my dice rolling surface. So I'm going to have to I found it.
Amelia Antrim 56:10
Roll a table like a loser. Like
Ryan Boelter 56:13
even cast heathen.
Amelia Antrim 56:17
My my rolling trays out in the other room. All right.
Stef Midlock 56:21
And we put this in writing, right, James? Yeah, this
Unknown Speaker 56:23
goes in writing. So I rolled the four.
Stef Midlock 56:25
So I've got 464 for strength six heart for when we roll for
Ryan Boelter 56:30
each, right?
James Pierson 56:32
No, you roll and then just take the set of Oh,
Ryan Boelter 56:36
yeah. Oh, fun. As I wrote a five. And that gave me 5455 strength for heart five wits. Oh, that's the least which I could get.
Stef Midlock 56:52
You're gonna play but I've got
Ryan Boelter 56:53
the most harm that I can get. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The second highest strength? Oh, that's really okay, I get it. So it goes across like my five year old the one it would have been five to seven. And the six is six to six. So it's like, that's really cool.
Unknown Speaker 57:09
I have 3470 not very strong. But I'm smart.
Stef Midlock 57:16
Yeah, smart cookie,
Amelia Antrim 57:18
I got an Amelia character right there.
James Pierson 57:22
I got seven strength, three heart and four widths. So just a big strong dummy. Very good. I like that. Alright, so if we've all got our attributes set, so the next thing that you do is you calculate your strength heart and which target numbers. So basically, whenever you roll for a skill or a combat proficiency in this game, the way that you do that roll is your roll one feet die, which is the D 12. Plus a number of D sixes or success die equal to your rating in that skill or combat proficiency. And what you want to get with your role is equal to or better than your target number for that corresponding attribute. So of course, you calculate your target number by taking your attribute by taking 20 and subtracting your attribute from it. So for instance, for me for to calculate my strength target number, I take 20 and i minus seven, my attribute my strength attribute, and I get 13. So my 13 my strength target number is 13. And when I roll, I want the sum of my dice roll to be equal to or greater than 13.
Ryan Boelter 58:33
Oh, so we put the Oh, I see we use the little radio dials for actual attribute. And we put the target number in little boxes.
Unknown Speaker 58:45
Exactly. Haha,
Stef Midlock 58:47
we minus the Rating from 20. James Yeah,
James Pierson 58:51
20 minus your rating. One of the things they say in the book is that 20 minus your rating is what you should use for a longer campaign. If you want to do a one shot or like a really short story, it would be 18 minus your, your rating because then you're like you're a little bit more likely to succeed. This is based on having some time to grow your character. Okay, that's cool. And then once you've calculated your target numbers, the next thing to do would be get your derived stats of endurance hope and parry. Those are calculated so endurance is basically your like endurance is your stamina, it also counts as your hit points. Hope it is your supply of like spiritual resolve, they also act as luck points. You know, essentially you can spend them like luck points, and then Perry is how hard it is to hit you. And that basically applies a difficulty to enemies attacks against you. Let me find the formulas for that. Oh, if you look in your culture, right below the table of your attributes, there should be a derived stat section, and it should be your rating plus some number. So for instance, for me as a dwarf My endurance is my strength plus 22. So just you know, so you can use the table from your culture for this.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:06
That's interesting. And each culture is different. That's cool. So I'm sporting a 25 endurance, 12 hope and 17
Unknown Speaker 1:00:15
parry. Whoa, nice.
Amelia Antrim 1:00:17
I'm at 2314 and 17. Nice.
Stef Midlock 1:00:22
I'm at 22 endurance 16 Hope and 16 Perry.
James Pierson 1:00:28
I was calculating the based on my target number, not on my reading. So that's why I was like, Oh man, 35 endurance is
Unknown Speaker 1:00:35
amazing.
James Pierson 1:00:39
I have 29 endurance, 11 hope and 14 parry.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:43
So much about Nice. Alright, so
James Pierson 1:00:45
now that we've done that, the next section is skills. So if you continue down the page in your culture, basically, each culture gets sort of a basic set of skills. Like you'll see there's a table that just basically tells you how many points you have in each skill based on your culture. So you just fill those in exactly what's on the table for your culture. And then choose one skill among the two that are underlined and market is favored, and essentially favored skills a lot like when you have something that is favored, you roll two feet die and you pick the better it's like having advantage 20
Ryan Boelter 1:01:25
Okay, interesting. And so I have to choose between sawn and lore for my two favorite
Stef Midlock 1:01:33
gyms. What is song? Can you tell us what that yeah, that actually does song is
James Pierson 1:01:37
literally your ability to sing or craft songs. I think it comes in handy. Like, you know, you can use song and culture or like in council meetings, like when you have a council scene, which is like basically like a social engagement. You can use songs to, like tell the story that you've you've been through and get some bonus points. I think that also might be able to be used to like bolster your, your team stuff like that.
Stef Midlock 1:02:06
Nice. Okay, that's that's how I like that. Tolkien Tolkien's writings are peppered with songs, which I will admit to all of you here, as I have done on alphabet, that as an early reader of Tolkien's work, I would often skip the songs because they go on for freaking pages pages. And you know what, that's that's fair. Totally skip them if you don't like them. But as a later reader, I found that they are beautiful and full of emotion and really well done. And so, yeah, I liked that song. It's like an actual
James Pierson 1:02:38
Well, if I can say to like, I'm a big audiobook fan. And one of the things that I think is, like a huge advantage of the audiobooks is the performance of the songs by the narrators. I think there are two like there are two big major audiobook versions of The Lord of the Rings out there and one of them is by Andy Serkis. And the other one I forget. I think Rob Inglis is the narrator, Rob Inglis basically sings all of the songs and they are incredible. And Andy Serkis, of course is an amazing performer. He doesn't sing them quite as much. I think he actually does sing them. I don't think his are as good. But in both cases, they like you don't skip the songs because they're actually being performed to you. It's amazing. It's really cool. Yeah,
Stef Midlock 1:03:18
changes from a lot. Nice. Well, so I'm, I'm one of the things of my, my cultural hero or whatever it is, is stealth because I'm very small. I'm a small boy Sol as the hobbit so and that's one of the ones I can choose. I would choose between courtesy and stealth and I'm going to choose stealth as my favorite stat because I want to I won't be able to get in place.
Ryan Boelter 1:03:41
Trixie habits is exactly
Amelia Antrim 1:03:46
my is between insight and riddle.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:48
Oh.
Stef Midlock 1:03:51
What's riddle? What is riddle? Do James riddle is
James Pierson 1:03:53
literally your ability to solve, like to solve riddles? No, boy. I mean, we
Ryan Boelter 1:03:59
know resuming intuition. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:04:01
So here's the thing, can my character solve riddles? Or do I have to solve for it? There's a dice roll that way you don't have to do it yourself. We're gonna go ahead and riddle
Ryan Boelter 1:04:15
skills puzzle in our game, we're gonna just roll on riddle.
James Pierson 1:04:25
I mean, we know two from The Hobbit riddles are a big deal. You know, another big pocket thing.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:30
Like Reynolds actually, they're fun.
Ryan Boelter 1:04:32
Once in my pocket.
James Pierson 1:04:37
Yeah, for a dwarf, I got to choose between craft which makes a lot of sense and travel. I actually pick travel because travel is really interesting. That's essentially you use that skill during the journey phase to like to basically like plot the course that you're doing and see how far you can get before things happen. Which is really cool.
Ryan Boelter 1:04:55
So I'm gonna go with song, then because every group needs a person that can seem well.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:04
And you always pick some kind of performer something whenever that's a choice. Always. Yeah,
Stef Midlock 1:05:11
heck yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:05:12
Gotta gotta keep up. morale. All right, absolutely. All right. So
James Pierson 1:05:17
after putting your skills in the next thing is to add your combat proficiencies. And basically, this is your like combat skill that you would use these like this is gives you the number of success that you roll when making an attack and attack with that particular weapon. There should be right underneath the skills, there should be another table showing the proficiencies that you you should get. Like, for instance, for a dwarf, I can choose axes or swords. And I get two points in that. And then one combat proficiency of any type that I'd like to choose.
Ryan Boelter 1:05:45
Nice. I see on the character sheet its axes, bows, spears and swords. Are the those the only ones that we
Unknown Speaker 1:05:53
can choose from?
James Pierson 1:05:55
Essentially, yes, there there are rules for making attacks with like unarmed combat, or, like daggers and stuff like that. Essentially, in the case where you're making an attack with something that you don't have listed on this list here. You take a small penalty, but you can just make the basically like roll one die less than your maximum combat proficiency. Okay,
Amelia Antrim 1:06:19
okay, so you can always still try? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:22
okay. Very cool.
Amelia Antrim 1:06:24
Do I want axes or spears?
Unknown Speaker 1:06:26
Both? Well, it says or no.
Amelia Antrim 1:06:30
I mean, technically I could I could choose the other one at one.
Ryan Boelter 1:06:33
Yeah, I've got I've got to choose between bows and spears. And I just chose bow because I'm an elf.
Amelia Antrim 1:06:40
And that makes sense. Like Don't be ridiculous.
Stef Midlock 1:06:44
I know. That's perfect. Apparently, hobbits could be choose bows or swords, which is dope. So I'm gonna choose sword because I love the idea of like a tiny little hobbit sword so
Amelia Antrim 1:06:56
I think I'm gonna go with the spears. And I will I will put the other one. I'll put axes at one. I'll put spiritual too
Ryan Boelter 1:07:03
nice. I went with bows at two and swords at one
James Pierson 1:07:06
night. Oh, perfect. Classic. Yeah, and of course is a dwarf I had to pick axes as my as my max. Right. Yeah. And then and then I put one in Spears because the idea of a dwarf with like a tiny door for the huge spear is just so funny to me. So yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:07:23
Big fan of that.
Ryan Boelter 1:07:24
Does that include throwing beers as well?
Amelia Antrim 1:07:27
I don't know. I assume spears. So I assume it's anything you want
Ryan Boelter 1:07:37
to hear how to make range and close combat attacks with a shorter spear or a spear or to fight in close combat using a great spirit.
Amelia Antrim 1:07:45
Here's a question can you do like baton twirling style stuff?
Ryan Boelter 1:07:50
Was a proficiency I met
Stef Midlock 1:07:54
elven Color Guard
Amelia Antrim 1:07:57
look only if the GM is gonna stop you and if they're gonna stop you it's not a gym. I want to play with
Amelia Antrim 1:08:06
my one ring game doesn't have baton twirling. I'm not showing up. Yeah,
Stef Midlock 1:08:11
I love that on the throw pillow.
Amelia Antrim 1:08:15
As token intended,
James Pierson 1:08:16
yes. Alright, so after chiefs
Ryan Boelter 1:08:23
and bows do not in this game give us close capability for combat, which is a lie because Legolas has been stabbing people with his arrows
Amelia Antrim 1:08:37
proficiency with a bow knot with arrows
Stef Midlock 1:08:42
you can't clock people you know poking. poking a Broken Bow.
James Pierson 1:08:47
That's a you got a broken Bob. Right
Unknown Speaker 1:08:53
call to watch.
Amelia Antrim 1:08:57
Yeah, like that. I'm really excited that we got to cover this game. I I fell in love with it when I was reading it for the NES. So it's been on my shelf because free League was like here have a copy. And I was like, I don't mind if I do. And I'm very excited. Very, very excited that we got to cover it with with Stephen James, who are just fantastic people and they keep saying it like, honestly, they're some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. And I know that like Jude and Steph are doing very great. Very very exciting things over on aftermath so so anybody who wants to know more about this world and if you enjoy the Rings of Power show when you want a little more lore. Yeah, please check out their podcast too.
Ryan Boelter 1:09:44
Yeah, seriously like that afterbirth podcast is like I there's a reasons why people have doctorates in hulking lore because there's so much there's so much there and they They do such a good job of diving into that. And it's funny because like when they first started that show, Steph was like, I don't know much about Lord of the Rings. Like, let me tell you, I know I know your stuffs on the show like, I'm I know all about these places and all these places and all these things and all this history. I don't like the job stuff.
Amelia Antrim 1:10:21
Yes, have the confidence stuff we believe in, you know, this
Ryan Boelter 1:10:25
is such a good show. And I highly recommend checking it out. It falls
Amelia Antrim 1:10:29
again, it's another one of those shows that falls into my favorite category of podcast, which is friends talking about stuff. And like Judy, and Steph had been friends for a long time, since high school, I think. And so you can you can hear that too, that they just enjoy hanging out and having fun and then talking about like really nerdy stuff. And so I really strongly recommend that show. They do a lot of great stuff over there. But it was really it was so much fun to have Stephen James on our show, too, because I've missed them now that we haven't been going to conventions and stuff the last few years. I have missed my friend. I
Ryan Boelter 1:11:06
know it's so good to see them. It is it is we could probably gush for hours on how good Stephen James are. We let's do it. Call to Action is five hours long.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:23
This is now just Stephen Stephen James gushing podcast. Yep, that's not even Alliterative. I don't even care.
Ryan Boelter 1:11:29
No, it doesn't have to be. They don't even need alliteration.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:33
So great.
Ryan Boelter 1:11:36
Before we end this episode for today, we do have some calls to action. First up, one of the things that's looking pretty good for us is going to account kindness here. We got finger snaps going on and in the crowd. There is a new booster shot that's coming out. Hopefully this week, that's going to make me personally feel a lot more comfortable. Being out in public with people. The con is like maybe 500 People tops, it's probably going to be closer to three or 400 people. It's been in the past. So like it should be relatively small. And if if you want you can come chances are we'll be there. We both have tickets. I still need a hotel room. At least. I haven't set that up, but I guess I should
Amelia Antrim 1:12:31
i i should think about that. I haven't really thought much about it. Because I've obviously been like doing other stuff. Yeah, I would smaller things going on, right. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to going this year. I really need my friend.
Ryan Boelter 1:12:48
I know. But yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. On that front. There is only a couple more days left in the academy on Kickstarter as of the release of this episode. So if you want to attend a fairly small convention in the middle of Ohio in November, now is a good chance to hop aboard.
Amelia Antrim 1:13:08
It's super low key. Like I tried to stress this every year for people. Like if you are one of those people that's looked at Gen Con in the past and been like Uno catholicon might be a con for you. Yeah, it's it's very low key. It's very chill. It's held in one room.
Ryan Boelter 1:13:27
A couple of auxilary room. Okay,
Amelia Antrim 1:13:29
there are a couple of side rooms where they sometimes has panels. Yeah, but the majority of the convention is in one main room, much like a like, like a wedding would be like it's you know, it's not big. It's not loud. It's not, you know, so if you're the kind of person like me that suffers from sensory overload really easily, like I strongly recommend. Yeah, kind of calm.
Ryan Boelter 1:13:53
Yeah, there's definitely some good safe spaces to depend on sequester yourself off to if things get a little overwhelming. So
Amelia Antrim 1:14:00
definitely, and there's yeah, there's everybody there is just like, super not everybody's there to like, be chill and have a good time. Yeah. Unlike, you know, it's just not the overwhelming intensity that a lot of conventions are so
Ryan Boelter 1:14:13
yeah, and I have it on good authority that there might be a karaoke room there this year.
Amelia Antrim 1:14:18
Well, I did I did hear rumors. I don't do karaoke. But you know, that's alright. Other people do.
Ryan Boelter 1:14:27
I do so Okay, and I'm very good at it.
Amelia Antrim 1:14:31
I, I don't because my medication messes with my vocal cords. There you go. And my voice cracks really bad. And so aside from a cada con, we don't really have any other non standard announcements despite the fact that Ryan and I have not talked much in the last couple of weeks. No. We we still have our Patreon so if you like what we do on the show here, there are a few ways that you can support us As the first being with that Patreon, if you have a little money to spare, we are currently about a third of the way to our goal, which would be to fully cover the costs of making the show. So that is the software we use for editing our hosting services for our website, all that kind of kind of stuff. Yeah. Any other subscription things that we need. So you can head over to patreon.com/character creation cast to sign up for one of the tiers. And we have, we have some good stuff that we've got a lot of stuff in our bonus archive, Ryan puts all of our episodes in there students who start editing them. So if you are one of those people that does not like to wait for episodes, have we got a deal for you? Yeah. But we also have some bonus other stuff in there too. Which we've we've been pretty good about.
Ryan Boelter 1:15:53
It's been pretty decent. Yeah. And the, the the early release episodes are released without the cold open without the call to action. So you get just just the pure episode, if you if you are a fan of just the episode, and maybe you skip over this portion of the show. These are a great
Amelia Antrim 1:16:15
way to know that. But yeah,
Ryan Boelter 1:16:17
I mean, I know the option is there. Even if in the future, you want to get into some of the backlog of some of the later series. Without this portion. If you're wanting to re listen to things, that's going to be all up in the patreon to
Amelia Antrim 1:16:33
definitely and we are hoping to get more bonus stuff in there eventually to as I start to feel better. Absolutely. Yeah. We do want to thank those of you who have already backed us, though, you're helping to keep the show running and make it possible for us to do even more cool things. Now that we have, we have some dollars to do those things. So thank you to our first patron Lieutenant for your continued
Ryan Boelter 1:17:02
support. Eric Bond's thank you as well.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:05
David aka to grant a Soros. Thank you.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:09
Matt Newton. Thank you,
Amelia Antrim 1:17:12
Darrell holiday the second thank you for your support.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:15
Shittim Cabal, thank you, as well,
Amelia Antrim 1:17:18
to the shyest barbarian. Thank you so much for all of your support.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:23
Benjamin Sweeney. Thank you
Amelia Antrim 1:17:26
lurking McGinnis, thank you so much,
Ryan Boelter 1:17:29
Rob Fletcher. Thank you so much. And Kevin Brown,
Amelia Antrim 1:17:33
thank you so much.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:35
And thank you to all of our future patrons, we wouldn't be able to make the show as easily without your assistance, and we truly appreciate your generosity.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:44
If you would like to support us in another way. We are still out of reviews. So we would love more reviews. If you're on Android, you can easily leave a review on podcast addict. If you're on iOS, you can easily leave a review on Apple podcasts. If you're on Windows, your best bet is probably pod chaser because that's a nice web based one. But also, if you really wanted to download Apple podcasts on your Windows device, you can certainly do that. You'll just have to update it every 30 minutes. We do read all of our five star reviews on the show. And we've been sharing them every week on social media, social media as part of our five star Friday. So you get them share to places now.
Ryan Boelter 1:18:27
Absolutely. And that's all that we have for this week. We will be back next week to finish up these good good characters.
Amelia Antrim 1:18:36
I love them there.
Ryan Boelter 1:18:37
So until then, stay safe everyone. Take care of yourselves, drink some water. Maybe breathe in a slow variety so you can get that nice relaxing feeling going on. Get that good, good air. Absolutely. And making those amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 1:18:56
Thank you for joining us for part one of this character creation series. We'll be back in part two picking up right where we left off.
Ryan Boelter 1:19:19
Character Creation Cast is a production of the oneshot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot character creation cast.com until the website to get more information on our hosts this show and even our press kit. Character Creation Cast can also be found on twitter at creation cast or ON OUR DISCORD SERVER at discord dot character creation cast.com I one of your hosts Ryan boelter and I can be found on twitter at Lord Neptune or online at Lord neptune.com Our other hosts Amelia Antrim can be found on twitter at ginger recommend. Music for this episode is used with a creative calm As license or with permission from the podcast they returned either from further information can be found within the shownotes. Our main theme music is hero remixed by Steve combs and is used with a Creative Commons license. This podcast is owned by us under Creative Commons. This episode was edited by Ryan boelter. Further information for the game systems using today's guests can also be found in the show notes. If you'd like to support our show, find us on Patreon. Get access to bonus episode, extra outtakes and much more at patreon.com/character creation cast. Thanks for joining us. And remember, we find the best part of any role playing game is character creation. So go out there and create some amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 1:21:05
Now we got to read some show blurbs show blurbs show show show blurbs.
Ryan Boelter 1:21:13
Character creation creation cast is hosted by the one chat Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one chat podcast.com where you will find other great shows like all my fantasy children.
Amelia Antrim 1:21:26
Each week, Aaron Caetano says and Jeff Stormer take a listener submitted prompts and using some of their favorite tabletop RPGs create an original fantasy character along the way they share laughs stories, verbal hooks and populate a shared universe one story at a time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai