Quick thoughts on 'Boromir Lives' for The One Ring RPG
I intended to share these after-thoughts en experiences at the end of the previous article but that proved to be a lot. So here’s a separate post.
But first:
When you talk to someone about an RPG based on Tolkien’s world, the expectation is that the setting is about the War of the Ring. Well, it’s not. The One Ring started with adventures set in Eriador (there’s a solid reason for that, more on that later) and that’s something to get over. As an additional sidenote on The One Ring, I sometimes find the written adventures so far not feeling enough ‘Middle-Earth’ to my taste and some elements are clearly imported from generic fantasy. In ‘Boromir Lives’ however, the campaign features the time, the places, and the NPC’s that will make your heart beat a little bit faster.
For those playing The One Ring solo, there’s a dedicated solo mode called Strider Mode. That’s pretty cool but requires you to come up with your own quests and adventure ideas (unless you don’t mind playing the prewritten adventures but that’s not something I enjoy). ‘Boromir Lives’ fills in that gap. It gives you a predefined hero, an oath, a timeline, and descriptions of places. From there the story unfolds partly like a ‘choose your own adventure’. You can use the default Travel Events, or go with the specified tables for each location that comes with the campaign. I went with the second one without a doubt - I find that the standard travel events can feel a bit disconnected from the place my PC is in.
One of the bits I had the most fun with is the timeline. With the timeline you know who’s where and what is taking place at any given moment in the written story. Next you can compare the timeline with your own game and see if Boromir somehow comes into the scope of the written story. One of the many examples in my game: March 7th, when Boromir found Faramir, who just captured the hobbits that same day.
‘Nazgûl at Mordor’ by Alan Lee This is a guided adventure and so has a specific scope. There were times when ‘my’ Boromir could veer out of the written material. March 10th for example, I considered sending Boromir instead of Faramir back to Minas Tirith. It’s an exciting idea but I realized there is no content about the city in TOR. That story line is too far off from the path of the hobbits for ‘Boromir Lives’, so I would have to come up with a lot of stuff myself, so I steered Boromir back to Ithilien. This felt a bit forced and left me a little unsatisfied. But perhaps we will find official material later for The One Ring on these cool places?
Which brings me to a personal challenge: I can now understand why Free League decided to place The One Ring before the events of the War of the Ring, in the rather empty (lore-wise) Eriador: Because LM’s wouldn’t have to wrestle their storyline into the existing lore.
With ‘Boromir Lives’ you are both player and LM (as in any Solo RPG). But on top of those two, you’re also a random editor of Tolkien’s work. I had moments where, by pure luck, my story meshed excellent with the written story line. Because this is all very randomly set up, the story could also veer in a totally different direction, one where there is no content in the campaign nor in the published TOR.
If I stayed too close to the protagonists, on the other hand, it means I’m suddenly rewriting the world’s best-selling story. Oops.
I spend a lot of time pausing the game, to consider a ‘place’ for Boromir where he could do his own stuff without interfering too much with the canon.
All in all I had a wonderful time playing the campaign. In between play I relistened the chapters from Phil Dragash magnificent audiobook/soundscape and reread chapters from the Lord of the Rings, staring at Alan Lee’s gorgeous artwork. What a way to spend a free evening!
I wished The One Ring would fill in the gap with more of these solo adventures, but while we wait, I hope we solo players can relish in more of these quality fan-made works like ‘Boromir Lives’.
Boromir Lives is a partially guided solo campaign for The One Ring 2e rpg that takes place in an alternate version of the War of the Ring. It is written by Will at the World’s End. In this version of events, Boromir is wounded, not killed, at Amon Hen. You will take on the role of Boromir after he makes the fateful decision to follow Frodo and Sam into Mordor... You can buy ( or PWYW) the campaign here
