ONE RING 2e || The Waking of Angmar E01 (Adventures in Lollygagging) 

Thank you! You are so very kind to say these things. We really appreciate the positive feedback, and the time you've invested in watching our playthroughs. :) I'm glad our rules explanations are helping out. If you see anything amiss, let us know and we'll work to correct it!

Awesome! It's a fantastic game. Are you planning to run from any of the supplements or the starter box Shire adventures?

@@AdventuresinLollygaggingI have a one shot I’ve been prepping for a few months, intended for 5e. I’m going to adjust that adventure to these rules. Disappearances among hobbits tending the high hay in Buckland, leading the company into the Old Forest to investigate. I already had maps made and everything just about set, but it’s nice the materials in the starter and core cover that area too.

Thank you! I've been very excited to dig into this. I was actually going through some screenshots of Combe from LOTRO just to get the creative juices flowing, haha!

Happy to do so! Hope to get into the Journey rules in the next session or two. Thanks for watching!

I would LOVE to do a Moria story at some point--maybe even with our friend dwarf, Floi. I think there was a Moria supplement coming as a Kickstarter stretch goal too. Glad you felt bad for the warden! Definitely wanted to make him a sympathetic character. :)

Thanks for checking us out! I think One Ring is pretty faithful to Tolkien's works, world, and themes. I really enjoy the system. I'm so glad Free League put the second edition out there.

Thanks, Aaron! Been stoked to get back to it all week.

Yes, indeed! Been looking forward to running this for a while now. :)

We had a blast playing it!

Thank you! We really appreciate you checking us out.

We really appreciate you checking us out, Xavier. Thank you so much!

Hehe, thank you! :)

It was so nice for it to finally happen, worth the wait I'd say!

Yeah! Great to get it off the ground. I'm still surprised how much I liked those Council rules.

@@AdventuresinLollygagging Me too! My favorite Eryniel moment so far: making a new canine friend.

Let's not be too hasty. Acquaintances maybe...

Yeah, we all love TOR 2e. You're right on all accounts, imo: Feels true to Middle Earth/Tolkien, an the system isn't too difficult to sort out. Thanks so much for taking a look at our stuff!

Strider Mode is great for solo play as well

I wish we could get Derek to play with us, but his schedule limits him to just one game. Finley would be a wonderfully snooty elf!

@@AdventuresinLollygagging one game a week, oh, that sucks. Know i'm trying to catch up on One Year now, thought it was a good thought. For how well he did Finley.

@@Matt05A Yeah, Derek's an awesome guy to play games with too! But we're thankful we have him in at least one game with us. :)

We're glad you found us too!!! :)

Bonus points granted, haha! Thanks for checking out our stuff, and for the kind word. It's much appreciated! We're having a great deal of fun with TOR 2e. Such an enjoyable system and world. :)

Thank you! Very glad our stuff helps out. Are you looking to run anything from the Ruins of the Lost Realm supplement that just released PDFs, or are you making up your own adventures?

Reading through the ruins right now. ;) This is going to be an awesome supplement. I’ve got a bunch of AiME adventures I may transport over for the first couple just to get a baseline and then go more on my own. Amazing work by everyone by the way. Just got about half way through episode 2

@@Wurgy42 Nice! I've dug through some AiME and MERP here and there for inspiration, and I've been all over Tolkien Gateway. I was fortunate to find some used copies of One Ring 1e too. I mulled running one of them as a campaign, but it was more fun to make our own. Thanks for watching, and for the support! Let us know more about what you cook up for your game. I'm always excited to hear what folks are doing in Middle Earth.

Haha, the rough period of hair growth! It's so weird looking at older videos, and this One Ring stuff isn't even that old.

Thank you so much! One Ring is such a fun game. I hope you get a chance to play it with some folks. I think I saw someone in Garblag's Discord (in the looking-for-group channel) recruiting folks for a One Ring game recently. Maybe check that out? All the Garblag folks are great people! And they put on such good shows and games.

Hello! Thank you for checking out our stuff. Most of this campaign is my own creation, but here and there I've weaved in a couple details from the Ruins of the Lost Realm supplement.

Thank you for checking us out! I try to make sure we cover certain rules and systems explanations, especially if it's the first time we use them. Hope that helps! Some day I might run Darkening of Mirkwood using 2e.

Ya, for sure. Definitely encourage creative use of skills and some interesting angles into RP.

Awesome! Hope our stumbles and play help you and your group. It's a great game, and glad to hear folks gearing up to play it. If you ever have any questions, or catch a mistake, let us know!

That's module called 'Turn Marker' I have installed. Very useful for tracking combat. There are some nice customization options too. Thank you for the kind words! It's much appreciated. :)

As I understand it, yes! You can have any number of Councils, Journeys, and Combats per Adventuring Phase. Once you and your players think the Adventuring Phase has reached a good stopping point, you kick over to the Fellowship Phase.

@@AdventuresinLollygagging awesome thank you so much!

Thank you! This has been our own original campaign. We build upon a couple hooks from the core rulebook and just my own digging through Tolkien's works and the Tolkien Gateway wiki.

One Ring is awesome! We love playing it.

It's definitely something I'd be willing to do, but I'm not sure when/how just yet. My campaign notes are very much a living document right now, and I'm constantly adding/revising/cutting based on player choices and behind-the-scenes actions of villains. When I get to a spot in the story that feels like an "end" of sorts, I'll probably go back through and see if I can make sense of it for other people.

Thank you! We use FoundryVTT for character sheets and some dice rolling. There's a good, unofficial module for One Ring 2e on Foundry. Highly recommended! Eventually, we start rolling more physical dice later on in the campaign, but that's just cause we missed physical dice. We're still using the Foundry module for character sheets, handouts, journey logs, etc. It's really good!

Good luck with your game!

@@AdventuresinLollygagging thank you, I'm sure it will be great fun!

@@grantboardman7880 how did it go? I'll be running my first soon

It went really well!

@@grantboardman7880 would you mind sharing anything that went well or problems to look for?

Are you talking about the boxes labeled 'Rating' beneath Strength, Heart, and Wits? If so, Rating there should refer to the Attribute number your Culture provides you at character creation. Each Culture has a table with an array of stats for Strength, Heart, and Wits, and when you create a character, you either roll randomly for one of these arrays, or you choose the one you prefer. For example, on p. 32 in the Core Rulebook, you can see an 'Attributes' table for Bardings. At character creation, you take one of those arrays and put the numbers for each Attribute into their respective 'Rating' box on the character sheet. Then, to find your Target Number (TN) for each Attribute, you subtract its Rating from 20 and enter that new number into the bigger TN box. Hope that helps!

Yes! I've dusted off my old Transistor.fm account, and I'm looking to start releasing our content in podcast form. Hopefully, I'll get it situated over the next few weeks while I have some time off work for the holidays. Thanks for watching and for the encouragement. Much appreciated.

@@AdventuresinLollygagging Do it! I'll be a faithful listener! Good job!

@@simonlegercomtois519 Thank you! Just have a few more things to situate with some of our old feeds and we should get it all ready.

Haha! Little-known supplement we're using...

@@AdventuresinLollygagging Then Balin, Dwalin and Stalin knocked on mr Baggins's door.

Right on, thank you! We'll try to apply that moving forward.

I too can verify this - a fell called Black Combe is pronounced "black coom" Comes from the old english "cumb" and refers to a valley that doesn't have a watercourse running through it

Thank you for checking out our stuff! Most of the campaign is our own creation, but I do weave in some official adventuring sites and landmarks from the Ruins of the Lost Realm book. What are your plans for your own game?

@@AdventuresinLollygagging initially play the starter box set to get people accustomed to the rules and playing on Foundry. Then I have the Lost Realm book and want the new adventure book coming out. I intend to also use these as resources to build my own homebrew campaign. I have all the old material for the one ring so have a wealth of material to plunder. I am also going to back the Moria campaign freeleague are putting on kickstarter too as that will be great.

We're using a virtual tabletop called FoundryVTT. It gives us a digital space allowing for battle/scene maps, character sheets with some automation, and dice rolling. With FoundryVTT, there are 'modules' and 'systems', and fortunately there's someone actively working on One Ring 2e as a system. That's what we're using! If you want to read more about FoundryVTT, take a look here: foundryvtt.com/

@@AdventuresinLollygagging thx you ! And do you think the new free league nexus going to be the some thing ?

@@wapiti89 The Demiplane stuff looks pretty cool, yeah! I think they're doing something similar for Pathfinder. I'll be curious to see how it compares to FoundryVTT and what functionality it offers. I'm sure I'll mess around with it once it's released.

We use Foundry as our virtual tabletop. There's an unofficial One Ring 2e system that has very good character sheets and such. The maps I get from a variety of Patreon mapmakers I support. In this particular episode, I used maps from www.patreon.com/tomeofsalvaterra but I also regularly use maps from www.patreon.com/dicegrimorium and www.patreon.com/tomcartos Hope that helps!

@@AdventuresinLollygagging thank you so much for the information. I recently have been trying to get into tabletop and it's seems easier to get online group started as I'm having difficulty finding a group to play face to face with. Also You guys are awesome definitely look forward to following this adventure.

@@travischaffin5407 Happy to help! If you have any questions about Foundry, if you decide to use it, don't hesitate to reach out. All of our games are online these days, and there have been more and more resources created every day that seem to support online play. It's a great time to get involved with online ttrpgs. And thanks for checking us out! Really appreciate you looking at our stuff. :)

Thanks for checking out our stuff! I'm glad you found it useful. I enjoy the One Ring system, and I love the setting/world. Hope you have fun with it too!

We flesh character backstories out as the game progresses and the players get a feel for their characters, their personalities, etc. We don't like to do too much with pre-planned character backstories and prefer to let the players figure out who they are/were as they go. Without spoiling anything, Ashley comes up with some fun bits for why she's been following Floi around, but its reasoning that emerges as we play the game, improv, and react. Just our preference of play, is all. As for the reason they're together right now, One Ring 2e, by default, assumes that the players have been traveling and adventuring together before the campaign begins. Our initial frame was mentioned somewhat early, but I forget now exactly how much detail I provided. The basic premise is that they are all connected to their patron, Balin--each of the adventurers young and curious and looking to prove themselves. The campaign starts with the players doing Balin a favor by looking into the livestock deaths of Balin's friend, Rosa Goodburrow. Things spiral outward from there. Anyway, thanks for taking a look at our stuff and offering your thoughts. It's much appreciated! :)

​@@AdventuresinLollygagging Thanks for your extensive answer. I just ordered my copy of the core book 2nd ed a few days ago but apparently it will take a while until it's available here in Europe. The game seems to catch the atmosphere in Tolkien's books very well, since apparently there are sections on singing and smoking and the idea of corruption is very interesting and rings very true to the general feel in the books (which I think have an inherent sadness in them, including The Hobbit). I just started to listen to episode 2 of your adventure and the relationships between the characters are being a bit more fleshed out here. But perhaps it would be even truer to the feel in Tolkien's stories if you worked out the relationships and also family matters a bit more before you start, perhaps a little bit like in the Smallville RPG, although not necessarily to such an extreme since that game is so heavily relationship based in catching the feel in the magnificent TV show.

@@ericadler9680 We've tried that before--more extensive backstories and such, and it's honestly not something that's ever worked too well for us. We do broad strokes in our heads, and then let our actual play flesh out the more specific details if and when we feel they are relevant. Undoubtedly, there have been missed opportunities thus far, but such are the perils of a live-play stream compared to a book. I do think the Fellowship Phase offers more opportunities for character exploration, for groups that want to dig deeply into familial connectivity, heirs, etc. The Yule Fellowship Phase, especially, offers some promising undertakings. With where we're currently at in our play, we're coming up on our first Yule season in the next few sessions. I'm looking forward to exploring that more deeply.

@@AdventuresinLollygagging Sounds cool and I'm definitely going to continue listening to your adventures, thank you for uploading these sessions so that people can hear them and thank you again for your answers. I'm looking forward to reading the core rulebook, I'm sure it's a great read. I played MERP back in the late 80s but The One Ring seems to be much more true to Tolkien's own vision of his world for sure, although I was absolutely sold on Angus McBride's wonderful illustrations for MERP...

@@ericadler9680 We really appreciate your feedback! Definitely helps us grow our game as we explore more of TOR 2e. I hope you enjoy your read of the rulebook. It really is quite lovely, and hopefully Free League are able to continue producing content, letting the system grow, and letting us explore different corners of Middle-Earth. I never had the good fortune to play MERP, but I have been able to read through some materials for further inspiration. McBride's illustrations are fabulous! Different from Martin Grip's here with TOR 2e, but I quite enjoy both approaches. If you have any other feedback or thoughts on future sessions, I hope to hear from you again!

Awesome! Thanks for hopping in. :)

I'm not sure how useful my notes would be right now to anyone. It's very much a living and personalized document, constantly changing/evolving around these four specific characters. Doing a revision of them once we get near some kind of conclusion and releasing them to folks could be an interesting project we tackle down the road.

Thank you! We appreciate both the kind words and the criticism, for sure. I do think the volume gets better as we made some changes, but I can't pinpoint a particular episode where it does so off the top of my head. Hopefully we iron out those balance issues enough for you to enjoy the series. Most of the steps we take are small tweaks, but we're currently working out a bigger recording change to hopefully improve. The livestream nature limits us a bit, but we're always looking to learn and improve!

@@AdventuresinLollygagging don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE series!

That was such a hilarious description!

Cool.

Similar! If memory serves, the Bree-hobbit takes the same attribute array as a hobbit, but picks from Bree cultural virtues rather than hobbit virtues. So it's basically a blend of the two.

It's our own campaign. Not a premade.

Yeah, that sounds just like a mistake on our part.

@@AdventuresinLollygagging no worries. Im just a learning LM here to get a grip of this whole Rpg gameplay cause i never played any or seen any but I'd like to introduce it to my family. Still not sure how to write a story for the players but i will keep watching. Like the content

Right on! Have you looked at the Ruins of the Lost Realm or the Tales of the Lost Lands supplements Free League put out for this game? There are quite a few adventure sites, stories, and scenarios in them that might help you get started with what to run. @@ukselta04

@@AdventuresinLollygagging i have the starter set and the core book. Seen them but dont have them. I know the lone lands book will come out soon. The actual trouble i have is about how to write a story for the adventure, and how to adapt it for the scenario of throwing failures on important roles or idk. Im such a newbie at this that i can't even explain my questions. What are adventure hooks for example. But basically i have trouble with writing the skeleton of a story and then adapting to the players decisions. Dont know how rpgs work in this part. I read the book multiple times, i know the rules now, i created characters for my own use with pictures, created pictures to set the mood for multiple locations. Watched a few streams here to see the game and council and journey in action but i still have problems with the story creating part

Haha! I'll get that dwarf one day...

Oh wow! I just looked this up and the rules language notes that Distinctive Features are used specifically for Skills. I'm assuming, then, that they can be used on Combat Task skill rolls or other combat skill rolls, but not on attacks (since they use proficiencies). Do you know if there's a passage that states they can't be used in combat at all?

That's just a thing we do during our livestream. It's not specific to One Ring. The audience can donate bits either to help the players or help the GM.

Haha!

I guess? Remember that we're not professional voice actors like some other streams.

Thanks for the feedback.

I've not played 1e to be able to make a proper comparison, only read some 1e adventures and such. I've thought about running the Darkening of Mirkwood and adapting it for 2e. Thanks for checking us out!

@@AdventuresinLollygagging Is this campaign ran off of an actual adventure is it all homebrewed?

@@James-bn6lj It doesn't come from a published adventure. It's our own.