The week of Gen Con coincided with the release of Free League’s latest supplement for The One Ring TTRPG. Moria – Through Durin’s Doorand 5E Lord of the Rings Role Playing Equivalent Moria – Shadow of Khazad-DoomBeing a huge Tolkien fan, I’ve of course been quietly excited for months at the prospect of unearthing one of the coolest locations in Middle-earth, so I jumped at the chance to speak with Lord of the One Ring designer Gareth Hanrahan at Gen Con about the creation of the new book.
Large The Lord of the Rings I am a fan, The One RingI’m really looking forward to speaking with you, and I want to start by talking about Moria itself, which is one of the places I’m most excited to explore in Middle-earth, and the most interesting place in the whole setting. So, what was it like actually exploring Moria (no pun intended)?
Gareth: Scary.
Yeah?
GarethOne that I keep coming back to is Gimli’s line about the caves of Aglarond: The dwarves tend a glade of blossoming stone, tapping once each day for 100 years, slowly opening up new vistas. My really first roleplaying experience was being given a sheet of cards that said your elves are going through Moria. I remember looking at the old Moria books, I know how much spiritual weight this place holds. It’s really like a primal dungeon. So, to go in there was… absolutely terrifying. Because I know it has to be right. Everyone has their own concept, so it has to be absolutely right. So trying to stay true to Tolkien but still make it useful, playable, and provide enough detail for the GM to feel like you’re supporting them, while at the same time making it their own.
So the first chapter of the book was a chapter on tone and mood. How to make it feel right for Moria. That’s what I personally think and what you have to achieve with all of us. It made it easier because there was a path to follow in the darkness.
With the other books, we started to move a little bit away from the material that’s covered in Tolkien’s books. All of the stuff in Eriador and Mirkwood, areas that the characters are close to but nothing that actually impacts their journey. Whereas with Moria, it’s right on the path. And while of course the GM can do whatever he wants in the game, I mean, canon, whatever, we had to walk a very careful path between giving the players a lot to do, adding a lot of orcs to kill, and making sure that everything lines up with the canon later on. Because as a licensor, and, you know, as the game line goes, everything lines up, but your own campaign can also deviate a lot.
We thought very carefully about what players could do without it having any impact. In the original draft, you could play Balin’s Expedition and start the whole thing over, but this time we’re being a little more flexible and setting it earlier, basically making it a more generally usable supplement. You can pop in tomorrow, which of course won’t affect the canon at all. Or you can play The Reclamation and tell them you’re going to go kill Balrog.
Overall, it’s been really fun to be able to play around with those margins – people want to actually experience what they’ve seen in the movies and the books, but being able to delve into the deeper levels of Arnor and Eriador is really cool.
Gareth: It’s such a sacred text for fantasy. There’s a scene where the Fellowship of the Ring is forced into Mother Bull’s chambers and Frodo feels a tunnel leading out of the darkness. When you try to explain the mystery or the unknown, it loses its power. There’s a mission in Dead Men Tell No Tales where there’s a skeleton walking through a door, and it’s a wonderfully mystical and powerful image, and it’s puzzling.
With Moria, I had to offer suggestions and choices and possibilities for what might be there, but leave some flexibility so that players could observe some mysteries and explore others. The act of getting that right is an incredibly delicate balance. I’ll be honest with you, I said I was scared to write it; I was even scared when it actually came out, because I thought I’d done a good job, but I wasn’t sure if I’d threaded the needle until more people were ready to come and talk about it. It was probably the most nerve-wracking release for me to date.
What Tolkien did was bring a world to life, and people are really hyping it up, creating stories in their heads based on his notes. We’re just opening the curtain a little bit.
Gareth: And the other thing is, there’s a big difference between a novel and a book, or a novel and a game, because Tolkien can just pull back the curtain a little bit, and let it down. And he has this great line about it. The essence of it is that you’re on top of a mountain and the mist all clears and you see this sunlit land sliding by in the distance, and there’s the mystery of the world that you’ve never explored. But in a role-playing game, you push back the curtain, and the player says, “All right, curtain!” [EN: At this point Gareth mimes yanking a curtain back]
Some players will hear Gandalf say cryptic things and say, “Explain that to me. Give me bullet points on what to do. Stop making cryptic statements.” That’s a very narrow range. I’m very happy that we’re almost there.
Were there any parts that you really enjoyed exploring and writing?
Gareth: One of the things we want to do is add side entrances, lots of other entrances. Because officially there’s a west gate and an east gate. But there’s a lot more traffic outside, and there’s not enough orcs and dwarves. One of my favorites is that there’s a human settlement in the mountains north of Moria. At some point many generations ago, they dug down into the earth and invaded the path that leads to Moria. One of the things we’re trying to do is a vast scope of history. Moria fell 1000 years ago. They’re short-lived, mortal humans. They’d heard the legends of a dark place to the south, but they weren’t aware of the connection. They think they’ve invaded this mysterious underworld, which is like the realm of the gods.
I was going to see Maria from a totally different perspective, not that I can say everyone knows her, but those who think they have stumbled upon these wonders by chance, without knowing they were exploring the Dwarfs, as if medieval people had broken into a Roman tomb.
You can grab Moria – Through Durin’s Door Equivalent to 5E Moria – Shadow of Khazad-Doom now Free League Publishing Shopin Drive-Thru RPGand in your FLGS too.
Image courtesy of Free League Publishing
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