Middle Earth in Paladin/Middle Earth in Donjon

[GreatWolf]

Hi, all.  I was recently given copies of Paladin and Donjon for Christmas.  (A clarification for Clinton's sake:  someone bought me copies.)  Well done on both, Clinton, and I'm looking forward to playing them.

In fact....

I'm working to get a few people into roleplaying, and they are all Tolkien fans to a greater or lesser extent.  Therefore, I have been considering running a fantasy game for them, either set in Middle Earth or at least capturing the essence of Middle Earth.  I am looking at other games as well (including the new LotR RPG from Decipher), but I am also wanting to run Donjon or Paladin.  So I thought that I'd solicit ideas from the group.

To wit, the question.  If you were going to run a Lord of the Rings game using Donjon, how would you do it?  Would the hack'n'slash dungeon crawling emphasis clash with the more "serious" concepts of Middle Earth?  Has anyone tried running Donjon with the mood dial turned to Gritty?  Any other ideas that I'm missing?

What about Paladin?  Could this be fit into Middle Earth?  An idea that I had (partially stolen from elsewhere) is that the White Council is more than the Istari, and that the "Paladins" could be lesser wizards on the Council.  What sort of Code would they have?  Is there a better way to implement this?

Anyone have any ideas?

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Seth,

I'm glad I finally found time to get to this question. Here's my answers.

For Donjon, you could run a LotR game pretty easy. I'd make sure that the characters focus both on their race/class and their role in life. Aragorn, for example, would have Abilities that reflect his skill as a ranger, and his kingship. Frodo would have Abilities that reflect his hobbit-ness and his role as bearer of the Ring.

For Paladin, things are a lot more messy. Personally, I can only think of one way to run this - as the Fellowship. Since the Fellowship are all bound together by personal duty, they could constitute an Order. The one change is that each player would have to define his character's supernatural abilities - the way his Animus manifests.

For the Code, it might look something like this:

Minor Laws:
Do not act on personal wants and desires, only needs.
Never harm an innocent.
Never use the tools of Sauron or Saruman, no matter what the gain.

Major Laws:
Never use the power of the One Ring, no matter what the gain.
Never let evil (Orcs, Uruk-Hai, Balrogs, etc) live, no matter the cost.

Unbreakable Law:
Never obstruct the destruction of the One Ring.

Given that, each character could have his own powers:
Aragorn: commune with nature, inspire Men and Elves, whip ass.
Legolas: whip ass with arrows, commune with nature.
Gimli: know stone, whip ass with axe.
Frodo: overpower evil with sheer will, be supernaturally stealthy.

[Valamir]

I hate to detract from the idea of Donjon or Paladin LotR, but a thought I had was to use Pinnacles forthcoming Savage Worlds...which is basically just a cleaned up, spiffy version of their Great Rail Wars game for Deadlands.  Its basically an RPG whose combat system was borrowed from a wickedly fast and amazing deep miniatures war game.  Its quite easy to have 30-40 characters on a side in a huge battle run through in next to no time.  I'd been thinking a game like that would be great to capture epic battles like Moria or Helm's Deep if one was playing a combat heavy LotR game that is.

[Andrew Martin]

Legolas: whip ass with arrows, commune with nature.

After watching the movie, I just have to add: "Lightfooted" to the list. :)

[Tony Irwin]

For Paladin, things are a lot more messy. Personally, I can only think of one way to run this - as the Fellowship. Since the Fellowship are all bound together by personal duty, they could constitute an Order. The one change is that each player would have to define his character's supernatural abilities - the way his Animus manifests.

oooh - that's really interesting! I like the idea of the Fellowship being the order. Also it gives credit to the idea of "fellowship" being something a little bit magical/mystical as opposed to just a group of people working together. I like the way (in the movie) Elrond raises his hands and and kind of "blesses" them before sending them out, and ominous dialogue like "The Fellowship has been broken!", or "So then, the Fellowship has failed!", makes it feel that there's a genuine spiritual pact underlying their group.

Anyway... last Thursday I ran a world/order/character creation session for Paladin for two friends, and this Thursday we're starting the adventure proper. I've got lots of questions to ask, and lots of nice things to say about how great this game seems so far. My friends, both VtM fans, were really taken aback (open-mouthed in fact) at how the system supports and generates roleplaying, instead of just not disrupting the roleplaying which is all they've asked from systems so far. Should I post my questions in this forum or in actual play?

Tony

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Tony,

Thanks for the good words about Paladin. I feel it could use a pretty rigorous re-write, but agree that the core mechanic works well. Feel free to post your questions either here or in Actual Play