Sep 18, 2017

Rogue Trader: Star-Lord alternate career rank

Obviously this is a parody, we have no rights to anything, you know.


Required Career: Any.
Alternate Rank: Rank 2 or Higher (10,000 xp)
Other Requirements: Charm, Fel 30+
Traits: Characters selecting this Alternate Rank receive the Ravager Implants trait.

Star-Lord Advances Prerequisites in italics

Awareness +10 200xp Awareness
Barter 200xp
Blather 200xp
Carouse 100xp
Charm +10 200xp
Charm +20 300xp Charm +10
Deceive +10 200xp Deceive
Evaluate 200xp
Forbidden Lore (Archeotech) 200xp
Performer (Dancer) 100xp
Pilot (Personal) 200xp
Pilot (Personal) +10 200xp Pilot (Personal)
Pilot (Personal) +20 200xp Pilot (Personal) +10
Search 200xp
Security 200xp
Silent Move 200xp
Sleight of Hand 200xp
Tech-use 200xp
Trade: Archeologist 200xp

Gunslinger 500xp Two-Weapon Wielder (Ballistic)
Hard Target 300xp Performer (Dancer)
Hotshot Pilot 500xp Pilot (Personal)
Peer (Underworld) 200xp
Pistol Weapon Training (Universal) 300xp
Two-Weapon Wielder (Ballistic) 300xp BS 35, Agility 35

Void Accustomed 200xp Pilot (Personal)
"I'm Distracting You" 500xp Charm +20, Performer (Dancer)

**

Ravager Implants

The character is equipped with arcane archeotech implants that allow them to function in the yawning void. When the implants are deployed (counts as a Free Action), the character is immune to the effects of vacuum, cold and radiation as if they had the Machine trait, and can freely move in zero-g and vacuum environments using the Pilot (Personal) skill.

Void Accustomed

As the Void Born starting trait (core rulebook, p. 19): immune to space travel sickness, zero- or low-gravity environments not considered difficult terrain.

"I'm distracting you"

Once per combat or similar conflict situation (GM'd discretion), at the beginning of a round, the character may make an opposed Challenging +0 Charm or Performer (Dancer) test versus the highest enemy Willpower score as a Reaction. If the character succeeds, they win Initiative that round and all enemies act last. In addition, all enemies suffer a -10 to their actions that round, increased by -10 for each degree of success. If the character fails the test, count their Initiative as zero for that round. At the GM's discretion, enemies with the Machine trait may be immune to this Talent.

Sep 11, 2017

War of the Ring: Warriors of Middle-earth review

While War of the Ring is a fantastically good game, its expansions can also be fantastically hard to get hold of. Their rarity means that when I was lucky enough to see a copy of Warriors of Middle-earth at our friendly local game store, I pretty much bought it immediately. Warriors adds six factions to the game, effectively taking event cards from the base game, like ents, and expanding them into full factions with figures on the board, which the players can activate and mobilize for the war. It also adds a couple of new event cards to replace the ones that got removed; most notably, the Free Peoples get The Western Way, which opens up a whole new route for the Fellowship.

If the expansion works, it should add some very welcome depth to the game; if not, it'll make an attractively simple game overly fiddly and complicated. The only way to find out is to try it!


John Howe: Corsairs, no year given

**

Last time, we tried a three-player game where I played as Saruman, but the hobbit terrorists managed to destroy the Ring. This time, I represented the Free Peoples against two players sharing Shadow duties. The game itself was another narrowly run thing; the Shadow reached 11 victory points when Lórien fell, with the Fellowship two steps away from the Cracks of Doom. So at least the expansion hasn't seemed to change the balance of the game dramatically!


Crucially, we did get to deploy several factions: the Eagles helped out the Free Peoples by chasing the Nazgûl and contributing to the defense of the Woodland Realm, while the Dunlendings stormed Helm's Deep, the Corsairs landed at Dol Amroth and a spider ate Faramir at Pelargir.


Above, background: Eagles chase the Nazgûl away from the Fellowship; foreground: the Uruk-hai and their Dunlending allies take Helm's Deep.

The way factions work is that each of them has an activation condition: the Eagles and spiders, for example, can be brought into play with a Muster die as soon as the Fellowship is no longer in Rivendell. As soon as at least one faction is in play, that side rolls a Faction die with its Action dice, which lets you play or draw Faction cards, or recruit more figures or new factions. Faction cards are a new kind of Event card that you draw and hold in hand separately from the other Event cards. These offer some ways to get factions into battle, but the most important way is Call to Battle cards, which you can add to your hand and play as combat cards to involve factions.

This all feels a bit fiddly at first, but once you work it out, it begins to proceed quite smoothly. The Faction card deck is probably, for our money, the least succesful part of the expansion: especially as the lone Free Peoples player, you keep drawing cards that affect factions that aren't in play at all yet, and even when they do, the effects aren't usually that powerful, so they start getting overlooked in favor of the much more impactful Character and Strategy cards. Some abilities are also contingent on managing to draw the right Faction card: if you want your army in Umbar to make an amphibious descent somewhere, you're basically stuck until you manage to find a copy of Ships of Great Draught in the Faction deck. So this isn't a great mechanic. Sadly, this tends to make factions a bit of an afterthought in actual play, with the Faction die almost invariably the last one to be used in a turn.

Having said that, though, even if factions very much play second fiddle to each player's main forces, it certainly doesn't mean they don't add anything to the game. Of the Shadow factions, the Dunlendings were particularly succesful: they can be recruited to join Saruman's armies and used as cannon fodder in the assault on Rohan, which is pretty much spot on thematically and worked well in the game. The Corsairs were held back by the lack of an appropriate Faction card, but as soon as it showed up, they made a dramatic descent on Dol Amroth and captured it. The spiders mostly served as auxiliaries to the armies of Sauron, but their ability to specifically attack leaders and Companions is actually surprisingly nasty!

On the Free Peoples side, the only faction that saw play this time were the Eagles, but they were excellent. They helped whittle down the army besieging the Woodland Realm, chased away some Nazgûl and bought a little more time for Lórien by negating the Witch-king's leadership in a crucial battle. Their home base at Eagles' Eyrie lets them help out from Erebor to Lórien. It'd be a strange set of circumstances if the Free Peoples player didn't find it worth their time to use a Muster result to get the Eagles in play.

**

If I have one complaint to make about the base game, it comes down to the action dice. One aspect of War of the Ring that we quite enjoy is that at the beginning of the game, the event cards you draw serve to direct the game in a way that you can never fully anticipate. As an extreme example, if as the Free Peoples player you were to draw The Western Way and Fear, Fire, Foes as your first cards, you'd be highly tempted to have the Fellowship head west! Even though the starting setup is always the same, the event cards, and to a lesser extent the action dice, create a random element that strongly enhances gameplay.

At the end of the game, though, the inherent randomness of the action dice can really hamstring the Free Peoples. In our first game with the Warriors expansion, for instance, I arguably lost the game due to a string of Hunt tiles with the Reveal icon on the Mordor track, combined with dismal rolls of nearly all Muster and Event. I was using an Elven-ring per turn just to be able to move the Fellowship even once, while the Muster and Event results were damn near useless at that point in the game. I've similarly had an attempt at a Free Peoples military victory founder on a lack of Army or Character results, leaving my armies sitting on their hands outside crucial Shadow strongholds. To add insult to irony, there's a late-game character who can change Muster dice into Army dice: the Mouth of Sauron. The Free Peoples could really use some kind of parallel ability.

**

To sum up, though: we liked Warriors of Middle-earth, and we'll be using it in our future games of War of the Ring. While the factions can sometimes feel like a bit of an afterthought, on the whole they're a positive addition to the game and they don't overencumber it.

Now if I could just find a copy of Lords of Middle-earth somewhere...

Sep 4, 2017

Let's Read Tolkien 36: The Bridge of Khazad-dûm

The Company of the Ring stood silent beside the tomb of Balin.

After a moment of silence for Balin, the Fellowship start trying to figure out what happened to him. By both doors of his burial chamber are a pile of bones, weapons and other detritus of battle, and next to a plundered chest lies the remains of a book. Gandalf, together with Frodo and Gimli, starts figuring out the book, which turns out to be an account of Balin's Khazad-dûm reclamation project. Balin set up his throne in the Chamber of Records, which is where Gimli reckons the Fellowship is now. In the fifth year of the colony, Ori begins keeping record, and relates Balin's death, shot by an orc. From then on, the chronicle is a tale of defeats at the hands of the orcs and drums in the deep, ending in a dramatic scrawl: "they are coming".

Right on cue as they finish reading, a massive drumbeat booms through the room and horns sound in the hall: the orcs are coming. The Fellowship makes a stand in the Chamber of Records: Frodo stabs a troll in the foot with Sting, Sam gets a cut in his forehead but kills the orc, and the rest of the company accounts for a dozen more. As the survivors of the first wave retreat, the Fellowship make a break for the other door. As they do so, an orc-chief bursts in and stabs Frodo with a spear. Aragorn kills the orc and grabs Frodo, and the Fellowship runs for it.

Boromir shuts the door, but it can't be locked or jammed. As Gandalf stays behind to seal the door, Frodo shocks everyone by protesting that he's all right and can walk. Led by Aragorn, the Company makes their way down a long staircase. Soon, a flash of light and a sound of collapsing stone heralds the return of Gandalf, who resumes the lead.

They keep going for an hour, with no sound of pursuit except distant, muffled drum-beats. As they pause for rest, Gandalf explains that he had tried to put a shutting-spell on the door, but something came into the chamber and cast a counterspell that nearly killed him. Gandalf then spoke "a word of Command", and the strain blew up the door and collapsed the chamber. Frodo's health is queried and he again insists he's fine.

As the Fellowship gets going again, they soon spot red light in the distance. They come to another broad hall: to the left is the Bridge and beyond it the East-gate, to the right a deep crack in the floor with fire and smoke coming out of it. The fire is between the Fellowship and their pursuers, so they run for it. Soon they're at the Bridge: it's a desperately narrow stone bridge over a massively deep chasm, without rails or anything to stop an unwary walker from falling to their death. It's explained in the text as "an ancient defence of the Dwarves". The Company hasten to cross in single file.

As they're beginning to make their way across, the orcs catch up with the Fellowship. Two trolls throw down stone slabs across the fiery crack, but what terrifies Gimli and Legolas is the dark, man-shaped creature shrouded in shadow that leaps the fissure and bursts into flame: a Balrog, Durin's Bane; the evil the dwarves awakened and that nearly destroyed Gandalf with a spell. The Fellowship flees across the Bridge, where Gandalf confronts the Balrog. They exchange blows with their swords, and Gandalf strikes the bridge with his staff. The staff breaks, the bridge collapses, and the falling Balrog yanks the wizars down with it. To the sound of mournful drum-beats, Aragorn leads a weeping Company of the Ring charging out of Moria - without Gandalf.

**

This is a fairly short, action-packed chapter, with a very dramatic finish. The tragedy of Balin is revealed, along with the broader tragedy of Moria, the Fellowship meets a memorable monster, and Gandalf is lost.

I can hardly write about this chapter without tackling the great debate: does the Balrog have wings or not? The answer is easy: yes. Here are the pertinent bits of text:

His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.

The most natural reading here is that the "wings" aren't really wings, but some kind of semicorporeal shadow, which the Balrog is described as being surrounded by. However, two paragraphs later:

The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly onto the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

Here the case is reversed: reading this whopper of a sentence, it takes extraordinary effort to not come away with the impression that the Balrog has wings - whatever it is that they actually are! The argument has been made that the first instance of "wings" is a simile - it describes a shadow like wings - and the second instance takes up that simile as a metaphor. In this reading, we are to assume that it is the shadow of the Balrog that stretches from wall to wall.

To me, this is a strange reading. Tolkien doesn't use similes directly as metaphors like this anywhere else, and it's a strange linguistic device anyway, especially in a text that, archaisms apart, doesn't really use very complicated metaphor structures. Consider the following invented passage:

Miss Donahue entered the study, carrying a golf club on her shoulder as if it were a rifle. She sat down, and looked over the papers on the desk. She then carefully laid the rifle down on top of them.

Are you really willing to accept that the object Miss Donahue laid down on the desk is the golf club she walked in with? Or would you not rather suspect that either the author has become terribly confused, or that what was initially described as a golf club was, in fact, a rifle all along? I find the idea that the kind of simile-metaphor transition where what she laid down was, in fact, a golf club, is a perfectly normal and straightforward thing to be preposterous.

The way I understand the passage is that the Balrog's appearance is malleable. There are several examples in the Lord of the Rings of characters who seem to change appearance, to the extent that it almost qualifies as a Tolkien trope. The first instance is in the opening chapter, where Bilbo threatens Gandalf:

Gandalf's eyes flashed. "It will be my turn to get angry soon," he said. "If you do that again, I shall. Then you will see Gandalf the Grey uncloaked." He took a step towards the hobbit, and he seemed to grow tall and menacing; his shadow filled the little room.

At the Prancing Pony, Aragorn "stood up, and seemed suddenly to grow taller". The Nazgûl and their horses are terrified by Glorfindel "revealed in his wrath". In the previous chapter, as Gandalf defended the Company from wolves:

In the wavering firelight Gandalf seemed suddenly to grow: he rose up, a great menacing shape like the monument of some ancient king of stone set upon a hill.

During the encounter at the bridge, the Balrog's appearance similarly changes several times. At first, it is a shadowy form, which then bursts into flames. Its shadow grows, then its fire "seemed to die, but the darkness grew". It then draws itself up, and its wings are spread. The way I read this is that the Balrog is surrounded by some kind of shadow which it can to some extent control, or which changes shape by some other logic. This shadow includes two distinct appendages which stretch out behind it, and which Tolkien calls wings. Therefore, the Balrog has wings. What they are is never specified.

Whether the Balrog can fly or not never really comes up, because it doesn't seem to have occasion to. When Gandalf destroys the bridge, the Balrog's main interest seems to be to fight Gandalf, so it falls and drags Gandalf down with it. For that matter, we also don't know if it can speak, or indeed a whole lot else at all. We know that it's a shadowy and fiery big bad guy left over from Morgoth's ancient wars, and it really wants to fight Gandalf. Especially since it's presented in a dwarven context, the Balrog strongly recalls the fire-giants of Norse myth.

It's tough to figure out just how big the Balrog actually is. It's first described as "of man-shape maybe, yet greater", and after all, it managed to fit into the Chamber of Mazarbul. However, when it draws itself "up to a great height" and spreads its wings, it seems to dwarf Gandalf. I'm not sure if, say, Gandalf actually ever grew or shrunk in size, or if it was an illusion. Similarly, maybe the Balrog is the same size all along, and the apparent changes are more to do with how scary it is. But in my opinion, the text clearly describes the Balrog as having some kind of shadow-wings.

**

In the previous chapter, the Watcher in the Water grabbed Frodo, and in this one, an orc-chief stabs him. In both cases, it's at least suggested that they might have been deliberately going after the Ring-bearer. By contrast, the Balrog completely ignores Frodo, and seems fixated on fighting Gandalf. Likely it either wasn't aware of the Ring or didn't care about it. It's interesting to consider what might have happened if the Fellowship had fallen in Moria and the Ring had ended up with the Balrog. This isn't explained in the Lord of the Rings, but the Balrogs belonged to the Maiar: the same order of beings as Gandalf and Sauron. Both Sauron and Durin's Bane were ancient followers of Morgoth. Would the Balrog have returned the Ring to Sauron? Or would it have claimed it for its own, to further whatever designs it had nurtured over the millenia in the deeps of Moria? I think the latter. At least it's make for a much more interesting story.

**

Next time: elves, trees and poetry.