About Our Campaign Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

At the time of me posting this I still have not started work on our adventure for my first Middle-earth campaign but I am planning to begin work on the Mirkwood Campaign very soon. Sure, this is a campaign that really needs an expert Loremaster to run "not a brand new Loremaster like myself" but regardless, I am going to give it a go and see what happens. I am brand new to "Adventures in Middle-earth" as a Loremaster and this version of Dungeons & Dragons is a lot different than the standard 5th edition version . . . which is good because I'll never use WotC's material again.

I'm sure a lot of you hard core novel readers will flame me for what I am about to say but . . . this campaign will be based off of the 6 movies, not the novels. Sadly myself or my players have not read the books (I actually just started reading them) but have watched all of the movies so this is what I will base this campaign and all future Middle-earth adventures off of. For our situation, this makes the most sense, so while I am in story telling mode my players will be able to envision what is going on as they reflect on what things looked like in the movies.

I have done a lot of reading online and watched multiple videos on Middle-earth Lore, so I have much to draw from when running my campaigns. So if you are one of those that believes you don't know anything about Middle-earth unless you have read the books, then you might want to just move on to some other campaign blog.

I want this campaign blog to be just about our current campaign so it is easier for my players and visitors to navigate this blog so in the beginning stages this blog might be a little short on information but as we start playing it will grow quickly. The easiest way to navigate through this blog is simply using the links across the top instead of browsing page by page. Pretty much everything my players will need will be located in the journals section which has a link at the top of the blog. Drop us a comment in our comment section which is located here and let us know what you think of our humble corner of the internet where we share out own Middle-earth experiences.

One big thing is, with me being out of the game for close to twenty years, this is bound to start off a little rusty but I have never ran adventures online digitally before and the excitement has started to kick in for me. I still have a lot of reading to do to get myself back into DMing again and especially in the Middle-earth setting, this will be something all new for me and then on top of it all we will be playing online using Roll20 for battlemaps, character sheets and dice rolling and Discord for audio and video so this will be educational to say the least.

My plan is to run the Eaves of Mirkwood adventure and slide right into the Mirkwood campaign. Another thing I plan to do is move this campaign 30'ish years ahead to coincide with Frodo leaving the Shire (give or take a year or two). Towards the end of the Mirkwood campaign I want to adjust the story a little to merge into the War of the Ring time period. Personally, I just prefer the Lord of the Rings story over the Hobbit story, it's just a more indepth story (imho of course).

All of our game sessions will be locally recorded and then once we finish each session I will go back and do a lot of editing to give it a more ambience with sound effects, background ambience music and other things and then upload them to our Youtube channel as a playlist.

Giving the Middle Finger to WotC/Hasbro Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

This guy touched on a lot of stuff that he pulled from Twitter and one thing I want to make clear, all of these people I am about to highlight are affiliate with Hasbro/WotC in one form or another . . . some are editors, writers, executives and content creators. They publically say stuff that is pure racist and WotC/Hasbro lets them get away with it, and as a matter of fact Hasbro/WotC does its best to go along with these people and what they say. It is a sad state with what our world has become. To see some of the stuff people do these days is just disgraceful and personally I'll have nothing to do with it.

It's disgusting and embarrassing. It's bad enough with how WotC/Hasbro tried to redo the OGL to screw everyone over, sure they backed down but only because the entire community rose up against them and forced them to back down. It's just sad how this game has went down the toilet.

Dominique Dickey tweeted a couple of tweets here and here. How much of a racist can someone be? It's beyond belief how bad this person is.

Then you have Sadie Lowrie who assisted as a writer for Call of the Netherdeep making tweets like this. I send her a tweet asking her about her tweet and this is the reply I got from her. Instead of explaining herself, she blocks me. Typical racist hiding from what she has done. The exact same thing happened with Sarah Madsen . . . when I sent her a tweet about these tweets that she made and I got another reply just like I got from Sadie Lowry.

Lets look at Makenzie De Armas with her tweet or how the one and only Christopher Perkins tweeted this and to think, it pretty much all started with this from Kyle Brinks. It's just gotten out of control. I am washing my hands of WotC/Hasbro D&D for good. My group will never have anything to do with D&D/Hasbro and its products.

Every where you look you see this kind of stuff, and it is just sad. My Middle-earth campaign setting might not be as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it, especially since we are basing our campaign off of the six films by Peter Jackson but I promise to do what I can to maintain the spirit of Middle-earth and what makes it special.

Let's Talk About It Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

I would like to go on record at the start of this post by saying some of what I am about to say is going to offend some folks so . . . if it does, then I guess you'll be offended! If you dislike what I am about to say then move along to something else because I don't need you here trying to force your point of view on me or my players "who also feel the same way" and how we feel Middle-Earth should be. Alright, now that that's been said, on with the post . . .

I understand everyone is going to have a difference of opinions and I respect that but if your opinion does not agree with mine then I guess that is how it goes. This version of Middle-Earth will be 100% homebrew. Why is it homebrew you might ask? Well, I have not read the books so I have no way to remain true to canon. My campaign will be based totally off of the six films but I will be reading the novels in the near future so I will try to hold true as best I can to the Tolkien spirit.

My Middle-Earth will not feed off of a single thing from the Amazon "The Rings of Power" series that has been released #BoycotAmazon. I will not get into the reasons behind why I personally feel like Amazon just gave Middle-Earth fans a hard slap to the face and giving us the middle finger with the other hand, I will let you folks decide for yourself if you like or dislike what you have seen so far concerning that series but one thing is certain ... Amazon took down the video they had on the Amazon channel where the words "representation & diversity" was said a million times . . . this speaks volumes. One other thing I want to point out is how Amazon made it so people could not post reviews on Rotten Tomatoes "hmmm . . . I wonder why that was done" lol.

All Amazon is concerned with are the words "representation & diversity" - and with Amazon removing that video from the Amazon channel, it just goes to show you that they realize that they screwed up. I am also now seeing how they are race swapping main characters, turning white characters into black characters . . . lol ok let's just spit all over the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. They don't care about the actual Lore and it speaks volumes about what they are trying to do with this new series with that video being removed from the Amazon Youtube channel ... nuff said on that.

Personally I feel the entire concept of this new Amazon series to be sad & embarrassing and I personally will not have anything to do with that shit show. I want to also go on record by saying Wizards of the Coast race swapping Aragorn is a disgrace and they can line up right along side Amazon with how I feel about them.

Anyways . . . to finish this thing up, yea my campaign is going to be based off of the films. Sure the Hobbit trilogy was a little silly with the CGI and at times and I see where Peter Jackson added non canon stuff into the prequels, but in the end the films kept with the "flavor and feel" of Middle-Earth and I loved all six films even with some of the rediculas CGI stuff going on in the Hobbit trilogy. All of my current players have not read the novels but are huge huge fans of the films and this will be how they envision what is going on in my campaign so it just makes sense to build my campaign off of the films and just add in as much canon as I can to it.

Middle-Earth is something very close to my heart and with Amazon doing this stupid shit to this new series really upsets me which in turn causes me to speak my mind about how I feel about how my Middle-Earth campaign should and will be. I'm sure if I read the books it would mean so much more to me and eventually I really do hope to be able to find the time and sit down and read the books.

Most if not all of my group know about Middle-earth from the six films so in a way basing this campaign off of the movies works better for my group anyways. I've had multiple movie nights with my players where we sat around and watched the extended versions of all six films "at different times of course" and we had a wonderful time. I am very excited to be bring our own Middle-earth to life for my players to explore. Knowing that at times they will undoubtedly meet some of the iconic characters from Middle-earth which I hope is a real treat for them.

So, be patient with us "especially me" because we still have a lot of perpareration to get done and this campaign blog is just beginning to get worked on so a lot more content is coming to this little corner of Middle-earth. I'll have more news coming soon for everyone so stay tuned.

Ready, Set, Go! Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

Hello everyone ... I have some things that I would like to touch on with those of you that are first time readers on this blog. The first thing that I kind of want to get into is what many call the "Matt Mercer Effect". I think one thing we all can agree on is Matthew Mercer is ranked in the top level of Dungeon Masters. The man knows his stuff, but it isn't just about Matthew, his players bring a huge part of what makes Critical Role special to the table. To quote an old saying ... "it takes two to tango", or in this case, it takes a Dungeon Master and a group of players to make a game special.

As you can see by this blog, I plan to run my own personal Middle-Earth campaign setting based off of the six films that were created by Peter Jackson. I'll explain in an above post on why we will not base this campaign off of the novels. For the most part I want to keep this setting as close to canon as possible but from our starting point forward, I am sure things will be more along the lines of how the films portrayed things.

One thing I very much want to emphasize on is "I am not Matthew Mercer" and if you expect me as a Loremaster to be like Matthew Mercer is a Dungeon Master then I would say "go find yourself another campaign to follow" because I am not on his level, nor will I even try to be and to be perfectly honest I am not sure if the world has a Loremaster that even comes close to his level of story telling "well maybe but I have yet to see one". I try to run a good game where my players have a good time (plain and simple) and in the past my players have all had a great time so I guess I am doing something kind of right.

Critical Role is a staged game, with some scripting involved - Matthew and his players are all voice actors. When you watch his campaigns, this is not what Dungeon & Dragon games are really like. His campaigns are strictly constructed to bring entertainment to his viewers.

The next thing I would like to talk about is this campaign and how it will be ran. At the time of me writing this post, I have just started working on this campaign setting and this blog so it will still be a ways down the road before this thing takes off so if you plan to follow us, please be patient. We have always ran classic 1st edition D&D and up until now we have never felt the need to move to 5th edition but we decided to take the plunge and give it a shot with the Adventures in Middle-earth setting.

About this Pandemic going on ... yea, it has really screwed a lot of things up in the world and also in my life. I will not go into detail about my personal life being affected by Covid-19 "no, I have never had it" but it has affected my life, my free time and socializing with friends and family "just like I am sure the same has happened with many of you". It's just part of life and I will find ways to work around it where my tabletop gaming is concerned.