Day 19th: Caelnistria Dawnstrider, The One Ring 

And another day completed! This time, I went with another system I've owned for some time but never went too far reading it, it's The One Ring by Free League Publishing! The Hobbit is one of the first novel I've read and Lord of the Ring is my first serious big novel, so this game was certainly in my interest! I say that, but I've never played MERPs or even the Lord of the Ring Online MMO, though TOR does seems like it does better at doing Tolkien than those other adaptation. This is a dice pool system, which I don't really like in general, but it's adding together all the dice you roll to meet a target number and it doesn't seems like the dice pool go crazy high, so that's a positive. It seems like the game wants you to use a set of their own bespoke dice set, but they do provide straightforward explanation of how to convert regular dice. The main thing it that their d6 have a little mark on the six that lets you know a success with those 6 is a little better than usual and then the d12 is actually a d10 with two extra symbol, the Eye of Sauron which replace the 11 and the Gandalf Rune that replace the 12. The eye of Sauron always count for a 0 when you add up the result, while the Gandalf rune means you auto succeed. That's pretty decent, the Eye of Sauron in itself isn't too punishing and the auto-success on crit seems like a feelgood mechanic!

Art by Minchan on ych.commish.com 

 Reading a bit more of the book, it seems even more specific than just having Middle-Earth as the setting, it's specifically around just after The Hobbit and during the lead up to The Lord of the Rings. Sauron is still laying low, but his creatures are stirring and trouble is rearing up in the margins of the world! We are tasked with forming a Fellowship that will travel Middle-Earth for a Patron and oppose that rising darkness. Pretty evocative! Character creation is fairly fast and mostly ask you to pick from a few options at several steps, only really getting to spend points directly to buy extra skills and weapon proficiency toward the ends! We have to first pick the Culture our character comes from from the Bardings, the Dwarves of Durin, the Elves of Lindon, the Hobbits of the Shire, the Men of Bree or the Rangers of the North, all of which gives us several array to pick from for our stats, a specific ability and often a weakness, our derived stats, our skill list, our proficiency and our starting gear. There's also a list of distinctive feature, of which we must pick two, and we must pick a specific skill from a restrained list to be Favored with, meaning that we roll 2d12 and pick the more favorable result of the two. I know there's been several extra books published since, but I don't know if any of them adds more culture to pick from!

Art by Alexatyan on ych.commish.com

As is probably obvious from the name of the character and the pictures above, I've decided to make an elf! I did buy a small pdf of Character Lifepath, so instead of picking an array, I rolled in that, giving my that Caelnistria is a Maker of Ship under Cirdan of the Gray Havens and that it's a desire to explore Middle-Earth that lead her to traveling, giving her the Favoured skill of Song instead of Lore, the other option. I write down my skill total and other statistic, I note that Elves are Frugal and decide that my weapon proficiency are Bows and Swords, with more point in Bows. The second choice is your Calling, which is your class but not really, as it just gives two favored skills, another distinctive feature and our most likely fate if we fall to Shadow. I pick Champion, someone who thinks the best way to fight the Adversary is by literal fighting. I only take a Favored skill of Athletic, as the Lifepath PDF also had a Major Events table and I got that Caelnistria is a party girl, giving the Company +1 Fellowship in exchange of taking one less Favored Skill. I'm not sure how that's a Major Events, but ok, sure. For her gear, we get one weapon per proficiency, one choice of armor, shield or helmet and a few items depending on our Culture Standard of Living, there's no big table as it's fairly free-form, just invent an item that make sense to the character and could be used to make a skill roll favored. I take a bow, a short sword, a dagger, a leather shirt and I take one of the example useful item, essentially a compass to aid my Travel rolls.

Art by DanteDX

Once done, I have 10 points to distribute in skills and proficiency, raising by Bow from 2 to 3 and then taking Travel at 2 and Explore at 1, the remaining point after I got better in Archery too low to really pump up one of the starting skills. After writing everything down, all that's left is picking up a reward and a virtue, basically the leveling up benefit in this game. Looking at my option, I declare that her bow is magical or otherwise special, dealing +1 damage to stamina with it and the she's nimble, raising her Parry by +1, that's essentially her AC, the target number her enemy have to reach to hit her, And that's pretty much it! You also have to create your company usually, choosing a Patron that back the group, which include Cirdan, Bilbo, Gandalf or Tom Bombadil and his hot wife, among a few other options. I've decided to skip that step for now, though I did note that +1 fellowship she gives! There is actually a module to play the game solo mode, but I haven't read it yet so I'm not sure what it replaces it with. Anyway, I lost out one Favored Skills for that +1 Fellowship, so she probably doesn't want to play solo on Strider Mode!

 

And that's pretty much it for her, her backstory is fairly simple, she always enjoyed the company of Men and Hobbits, more than is common for elves, so rather than stay in the Gray Havens building ships and leaving for the West, she instead packed up her bow and left to explore Middle-Earth, getting embroiled in the affairs of the greater world. Looking at her final sheet, I do see that she needs to roll 17+ for her Heart skill, meaning she can't succeed without rolling the Gandalf rune or otherwise modifying the roll on anything depending on it except Travel. Ooops! Elves really fucked up during the First Age, leading all their choice of Array having really low starting Heart! At least, that's how I choose to interpret it.