Sunday, August 20, 2023

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.

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Ready For Content
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