021 - The vault of the Royal Library

October 30th, FA 15

The deep purple of night faded to gray. A scene of carnage that couldn't be missed laid beyond the door frame of the stone house. The company members preferred to stay inside and chug their coffee. This night had been a long one. Most members kept the watch at some point during the night: many lived in fear of seeing the corpses of the trolls rise all over again to exact their revenge. Of course this didn't happen: this was all night fright. The hunting hours for the trolls had gone by in peace and quiet.

020 - The blind scouts

October 30th, FA 15

Finbert and Irina slowly teetered in the dark up the road, through the tunnel and finally reched the troll camp. The ease to defeat two trolls almost convinced the company to casually walk to meet the other trolls in their home. The idea was turned down, probably for the best. However, the hobbits wanted to see what was going on over there. Although seeing is something that they could hardly do as the world was at this time made of two shades of black and one dark purple [-4 to all checks].

019 - Why can't we all be friends

October 29th, FA 15

Once the trolls walked away from the camp, the members of the company hustled to come up with a plan. It seemed probable that the trolls were to come back on the same path. The main challenge of setting an ambush was that none but Halin could see in the dark. It was decided that the four walls of the camp would be used as a strong point to constrain the trolls into a tight space. Meanwhile, Finbert would act as a bait, well in sight in the old city gate barbacane. Irina was to cover with her bow while Sir Galdor and his squire Kasper would hide, mounted on their horses, across the road from the camp.

The GURPS Middle-Earth Troll

Background

Trolls were created by Morgoth in the First age to be oversized fighting minions. They were fashioned from stone, and have the fatal flaw to revert back it when exposed to direct sunlight (overcast skies are fine, but seen as unpredictable). Although bred for fighting, many sub-population of trolls have diversified and defined culture of their own. As trolls are not very intelligent, and usually hungry, the bulk of their culture is centered on eating and hoarding. The late because they are big, the former as a remnant of their design as pillagers. 

The GURPS hobbit

I wonder if there are apple pies East of the Misty
Mountains

Overview

The hobbit needs no introduction. It is a mysterious Middle-Earth creature, and an interesting kind of folk to roleplay. There used to be three kinds of hobbits: the stoors, the harfoot and the fallohide. Today, they are all known as Shire-folk or Bree-folk, although each hobbit has to select one of three sets of character traits which relates to these distant ancestries.

Experience for Session 4

Session 4 saw some scouting and some traveling. The heroes for this session was Arnadil's prep-work back in Minas Tirith and Edoras. The other story heroes are Irina and Finbert for scouting into the great unknown white. Here is the breakdown of experience granted for this session:

Flight or fight!

Many attempts to roleplay NPCs in combat requires to get them to make "flight or fight" decisions. Coming up with formal mechanics to model this would be probably inelegant. However, some kind of mechanics, even if vague, allow players to employ other strategy than to kill or render unconscious. Here is an attempt to sketch this down.