The One Ring has been on my radar for years, but I never really bothered to learn any part of the system until recently. This is because I'm a hack and a fraud, and learning new stuff scares me. I also greatly overestimated how important it was to have a physical copy of the game's proprietary symbol-and-tengwar dice in front of you.
Turns out both clauses were (mostly) untrue, so let's dive in shall we?
The Game Itself
TOR is a d12 + xd6 roll-over system in which you perform tasks by trying to beat a target number (usually 14, can go higher or lower) by rolling the Feat die. That's the d12 with Sauron and Gandalf runes for 11 and 12 respectively. To this you add a number of Success dice (d6 with a thinly outlined 1-3, bolded 4 and 5, and a 6 accompanied by the Tengwar letter Lambë, which means "tongue" for some reason) equal to your number of ranks in the skill being used. It's pretty simple, and beneath all the fancy presentation, generic sets of dice are perfectly usable.
TOR is set in the Third Age of jurt's Middle-Earth, although the exact time and place differs between editions. The 1st edition released by Cubicle 7 approximately five hundred years ago back in 2011 is set in Rhovanion in between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship. The 2nd edition published by Fria Ligans AKA Free League Publishing in 2020 is set back west in Eriador in the Third Age 2965, a year that had nothing canonical going for it other than the birth of Samwise's older brother Hamson.
The editions differ in a few ways that are mostly minor, meaning that the majority of the content published for one edition can be used for the other with a little bit of fiddling. Which is perfect for me, because as soon as I started to explore the game in earnest I wanted to use the setting and supplements for 1E combined with the mechanics and options of 2E.
Mixing & Matching
I settled on 2E because it had solo rules called Strider Mode written for it a few years ago, and I've been slowly pushing myself to explore that avenue of gaming for a while. But the character I wanted to make would have to be located in Rhovanion, so I took the liberty of ransacking several 1E books to build up the lore and backstory.
The 1E sourcebook The Heart of the Wild details much of Mirkwood and the Vales of Anduin and their inhabitants, including a people of mixed Northmen and Easterling heritage called the Erringmen. Though descended from the Balchoth who once warred with Gondor at the Dark Lord's behest, they've largely given up their past ways and live in peace with their Woodmen neighbors as they meander back and forth through the Vales, herding oxen and generally living as pastoral nomads.
The Erringmen, as inventions of TOR, are less yikes than the depictions of other Easterlings from jurt's canon, although they aren't without one or two problematic implications in this book that I'd be remiss not to touch on. For example, an Erringman NPC named Valderic (they seem to favor the same Gothic-inspired names as the Northmen) is "strong" in his Easterling heritage, being squat, wide, and of sallow complexion.
Being coded with east Eurasian features wouldn't be a problem by itself, except he's also the one named Erringman singled out as reverting to the forbidden old ways; hanging trophy skulls from his war-chariot, dabbling in witchcraft, and even visiting the abandoned ruins of Dol Guldur more than once. Wickedness reasserting itself from deep in someone's family tree is a trope that exists in the Legendarium, but combining that with Valderic's physical traits makes it feel like the kind of negative racial essentialism that TOR generally avoids. (The game embraces "positive" essentialism pretty heavily meanwhile, what with heroic cultures and how closely a character hews to their virtues being one of the primary expressions of character growth and advancement in the game.)
That all said, I love the Erringmen. They are much more than one shady character writeup. They're shown as resourceful and tough, at home in their new home regardless of the grumbling of their Woodmen neighbors. They provide a fun opportunity to interact with a type of culture you hardly ever see fleshed out in the source material. They raise so many roleplaying and worldbuilding possibilities for Rhovanion and beyond. And, they're the subjects of an illustration in the book that I just find endlessly charming:
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| Wanderers by merlkir, for like the dozenth time on this blog, but actually used for its intended subject this time around. |
Of course I can't have all the nice things I want, so the Erringmen are purely an NPC culture with no opportunity provided to play as them in the book. Which is fine by me, because that just provides me with the opportunity to get creative.
Jumping ahead to 2E and the digital exclusive Peoples of Wilderland, we get updates to most of the player cultures from the 1st edition who were moved away from when the 2nd moved its focus west to Eriador. Included are the Woodmen of Wilderland, who have lived next to and within Mirkwood for ages despite all the dark and vile things emerging from the forest nowadays. They're slightly insular and unfriendly people as a result, but constant foes of the Shadow.
Perhaps they'd hate to know that their cultural characteristics and virtues are easily bent toward building a character of Erringman ancestry: they're good with axes and bows which both cultures love, they have a virtue to gain a loyal hunting dog, they're doughty warriors skilled at skirmish tactics, and they have ranks in Explore, Hunting, and other things the Erringmen likely also rely upon as they travel the Anduin.
Shortly before having this idea I had been reading a list of leaders of the Hunnic empire on Wikipedia. You know, like a normal person does. And I was struck by how many of them have Latinized or Germanicized names by which they're known in most European sources, while their original Hunnic names are little-attested or only guessed at via linguistic reconstruction. This too, I folded into my little homebrew here alongside the nomads and standoffish neighbors.
I didn't use it at all below because by the time I found it I'd already gotten going, but if you're the type who enjoys lifepath generators, they released one of those in this same line of e-books.
The Character Concept, Finally
Soon I hatched the idea of a Woodman and an Erringwoman who met for what was supposed to be a solitary and surreptitious fling one night when her clan encamped outside his village beneath the eaves of Mirkwood so their peoples could trade and share news. It didn't work out that way however, so when the woman's clan rolled back into the clearing before the forest a year later, the Woodman was very surprised to find his brief flame holding their son.
Thus was born Balambyr, as his mother named him, or Balamer as his father's people chose to render it.
Until he weaned he stayed with his mother, but as soon as he could bear to be away, his two families divided his time between them according to the migratory pattern of the Erringmen. He wintered in his father's cabin (for he was forced out of his family's lodge by the scandal of his unmarried dalliance with an outsider), and summered in his mother's wain, which could be anywhere from the western bank of the Celduin to the near side of Rhûn, depending.
It wasn't easy growing up split between two worlds like this. Though his father's family insisted he acknowledge and care for his son (which he probably would have done regardless), no love was lost between them and Balamer the Bastard, as he was sometimes called by Woodmen when they thought him out of earshot. His mother's kin were more accepting but far more demanding, expecting him to pull his weight every migration and thinking him soft for the the six months he spent "just sitting around" each year.
But he survived, even if he did not thrive. From his father he learned forestry and woodworking, and from his mother herding and pathfinding. Both peoples favored the long-hafted axe and the bow, so Balambyr received training in both year-round. They were also the occasion for the few, fond moments where both his parents were together with him in the spring and autumn.
His thirteenth birthday saw him gifted the runt of a litter, much like himself, whom he named Tomyr- or Tom, depending on where they happened to be at the moment. They bonded quickly, and before long were seen everywhere together. And together they stayed safe, as darkness began to billow once again out of the depths of Mirkwood like a cloud.
It didn't come as a surprise when, at the portentous age of sixteen years, a certain glint entered Balambyr's eyes. The reluctant acceptance of his mother's people was gradually won through year after year of hard nomadizing, but he was still desperate to prove himself to the Woodmen at large, or else prove to himself that he was better than all their misgivings. So with a heavy heart and his mother's begrudging blessings, Balambyr's father took him deep into a part of the forest he had never ventured before.
There, in a little village named Rhos, he was introduced to an odd old bearded fellow in a brown robe who often patronized the exploits of the young and daring folk of Wilderland.
Basic Stats
Strider Mode mostly changes how the flow of gameplay works in order to make things less insurmountable for a single character, but it also modifies the character creation process somewhat.
The first step is unchanged: choose your character's Heroic Culture and a set of attributes to use. Since I'm using the Woodmen of Wilderland as a base for Balambyr I picked them and went with the safe, boring choice of 4 Strength (might, dexterity, physical presence), 5 Heart (emotional intelligence, empathy, passion), and 5 Wits (cleverness, attention, ingenuity).
Because I picked Woodmen, Balambyr also gets their Cultural Blessing, a passive ability every member of that culture gets as a baseline. For Woodmen, it's Wood-Goer, the ability to add +2 to Parry rating while fighting in forested environments. It's more circumstantial than I would like, but not bad for someone likely to skulk around Mirkwood for a few adventures.
More juicy than that is my choice of 1 Favoured skill. Favoured skills basically give you advantage, letting you keep the better of 2 Feat dice rolls. Woodmen favor Hunting and Healing, so I went with Healing. Losing a monster's tracks is bad, but failing to staunch a bleeding wound is just death.
Next I subtract my attribute scores from 20 to get the Target Number for each. This is the default difficulty I have beat for most rolls in the game. 16, 15, and 15 aren't the easiest numbers to beat, but there will be ways around that in the future.
From the attribute scores I also derive Endurance, Hope, and Parry; basically hit points, a pool of points to spend to overcome one's limits, and the number enemies need to beat to hit the PC in combat.
Spending Experience
The next step is the first real opportunity for characterization and player choice, because I get to spend 15 (10 in the non-solo base game) experience points from previous adventures on skill and combat proficiency ranks. I left the default axe and bow ranks from Woodmen alone, and spent my points on skills to improve the skills not boosted by Woodmen background, especially putting 3 ranks in Travel to make those long, solitary journeys a little less dangerous.
I ended up with at least 1 rank in everything, because the prospect of solo play amplifies my fear that if I don't bring at least a little bit of everything to the table I will be punished for it; it's like jack of all trades, but the universe is probing me for weaknesses. But Balambyr is still decidedly an outdoorsy type with good starting ranks in Awareness, Hunting, Explore, etc.
Distinctive Features
Balambyr's Distinctive Features come next. Distinctive Features are major aspects of a character's personality or bearing, used to aid roleplaying and inform how they might go about a given situation. They can also be used mechanically, by making a roll Inspired if one of a character's Features is particularly useful for a skill check.
Inspired rolls gain +2d6 instead of +1d6 for every point of Hope you choose to spend, which can be huge if you're in a pinch.
Of course, Strider Mode players get the Strider feature by default, which makes all of your skill rolls Inspired by virtue of their lonesome self-reliance and grit, so the 2 features I chose to give Balambyr came down to roleplaying entirely. He is both True-Hearted for his sometimes inconvenient sincerity, and Wary because a childhood spent without a meaningful sense of belonging in every-shifting circumstances has given him anxious hypervigilance superpowers.
Calling
After that comes Calling, which you could compare to character background packages in other games. These are your Captains, Champions, Scholars, and Treasure Hunters, among other professions that lend themselves well to creating adventurers.
I dithered about on this for a while because I couldn't decide between Messenger and Warden. I honestly might have preferred going with the 1E Wanderer calling instead because it's thematically more appropriate to Balambyr's background of travel. Obviously nomadism ≠ itineracy or romanticized ideas of vagrancy in real life, but in a fantasy game I take what I can get.
Ultimately I fell on the side of Messenger because it inherited most of the Wanderer's mechanics, even if they've been reoriented around an implicitly interpersonal role, acting as ambassador and uniter of far-flung communities. Also because the more I think about it, Wardens and the Rangers they're modeled on just feel a little too much like vigilante border patrol agents and nooo thank you.
Messenger gives me another choice of Favoured skills, which ended up being Courtesy and Travel. I don't see Balambyr actually being all that magnetic in terms of personality, he's just very attentively polite and patient with strangers.
Balambyr also gets a new feature from Messenger: Folk-Lore. His travels have furnished him with knowledge of a scattered assortment of local customs, beliefs, languages, and other things that help him get along wherever he finds himself. This feels very appropriate for Balambyr's time with the Erringmen. Who knows how many other communities besides his father's they pass by each year on their long arc from east to west?
One's Calling also comes with a downside, however. Each has a unique Shadow Path, the shape and texture of a character's corruption which plays out in the event that the Shadow overtakes them and twists their ideals or amplifies unhealthy and harmful traits.
For Balambyr this would be Wandering-Madness: a self-destructive wanderlust that leaves one bereft of home and belonging as they lose the ability to put down roots and form the connections necessary to want to defend the good things of the world. Travel stops being a joy or even a means, and becomes a ruinous coping mechanism. Always moving, never resting, chained to a road that goes ever on and on.
So basically he gets Avoidant Personality Disorder with a side of Dromomania if I fail too many saving throws.
I swear, I was trying to be lighthearted when I started this one.
Gear
Our poor Bastard isn't going to face the winding road all alone and illequipped, at least.
Starting adventurers get a selection of war gear and trinkets to choose from, including 1 weapon in each proficiency they have a rating in, as well as your choice of armor, limited by your character's starting social class.
Naturally Balambyr takes a short bow and a long-hafted axe with him. I also picked up a leather corslet for him, because it's the heaviest "light" armor available, it's the fanciest his social class can afford, and I just really like saying the word "corslet". It's one of those armor words you don't read all that often nowadays, mostly displaced by close-enough terms like hauberk or cuirass. I think the last time I saw it was during one of my brief stints trying to read the original Conan short stories?
Anyway, mercifully for Balambyr's back and his bookkeeping, all mundane items of travel are presumed to be accounted for in TOR, so no need to keep track of nor weigh individual sets of clothing, packs, rations, etc.
The last thing to note is my choice of Useful Item. Useful Items add +1d to noncombat checks with their designated skill as determined upon item acquisition, like a hunting knife for +1d Hunting, or a soothing balm for +1d Healing. There's no real limit to what you pick so long as it's a thing that can be possessed and potentially lost.
Balambyr has a lot of options to choose from for useful items if I draw upon his background. It could be the whittling knife his father gave him, or the thumb ring he received when he started practicing archery. It could be a really nice pair of boots he was gifted before going off to meet his mysterious patron. But since I don't see any prohibitions against useful items being living things, I decided to make it Tomyr. She's not an accomplished hunting hound just yet (I can add that utility to her later on in Balamyr's adventuring career), but her nose has helped keep her two-legged companion on the right trail more than once, so I figure she's worth +1d Travel.
Adventurers technically also start with mounts, but only if they're from backgrounds of Common or higher standard of living, so no pony for our Frugal woodboy.
Finally, each adventurer gets a starting Reward and Virtue from a modest pool of each. Rewards and virtues are your main forms of character advancement in the game, representing gifts granted to you by your friends and allies among the Free Peoples and your own personal growth and ability, respectively.
I had no idea what reward to pick so I went with making my corslet of Cunning Make, which reduced the armor's Load rating by 2 to make for lighter travel. I also bent to the urge to generalize once again and picked Prowess as my virtue, reducing Balambyr's Strength Target Number by 1 to give him flat 15s across the board.
The Sheet
And that's a wrap. Unless I made any grave errors, my sheet is complete. Or it will be once I put everything in a nice form-fillable PDF. Fortunately I happened upon this dang pretty one when I started this post way too many months ago. Its small space for rewards and virtues leaves something to be desired for any but the greenest of adventurers, but the style goes a long way toward making up for it.
The Future
One flaw in pretty much all of my New System, New Face posts up to this point that I've noticed has been that they just peter out after the sheet's done and I don't close it with anything especially noteworthy other than a recap of my feelings toward the system. I think my writing all this shows I'm into TOR, so I figured I'll keep the focus on Balambyr and imagine a bit of a future for him instead.
There's no shortage of danger around Mirkwood for Radagast to send him to deal with or keep tabs on, so I suspect that will occupy him for the first year or two of his career. In that time, with luck, he may strengthen his relationship with the woodmen in general, and his father in particular. But if they fail to fully appreciate him, so be it; he'll learn his worth. From there he may begin to travel farther afield as the situation calls for it, perhaps running into fellow adventurers along the way, perhaps not.
Balambyr's second virtue will be the Hound of Mirkwood cultural virtue for woodmen, so that he and Tomyr can properly adventure together at last. I'll just have a very hard time allowing myself to use the option where Tomyr can take a wound instead of him.
(Don't worry, The Dog Doesn't Die! The rules stipulate that you can bring them back next session with a successful Heal, or after the next Adventuring Phase otherwise.)
Ultimately, the shadowy eaves of Mirkwood will prove to have been shelter for Balambyr rather than a prison. For when he has proven himself capable and steadfast of heart, Radagast will charge him with a mission he would grant to no other, for no one else in his employ has ever seen the places he once visited yearly. The old man would very much like to hear news from a pair of friends he has not spoken to in a very long time.
The next time Balambyr joins his mother's caravan into the east (a journey already fraught with danger as Darkness expands its reach), he must keep an eye out for a pair of equally strange fellows in blue...
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| The Blue Wizards by TurnerMohan |
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