The Darkening of Mirkwood (The One Ring Roleplaying Game)

The Darkening of Mirkwood is a gorgeous collection of adventures culminating into a cohesive campaign. As a book, it's incredibly evocative with exquisite artwork laid out in a most elegant fashion. Furthermore, the information with regard to the timeline of events between the end of the Battle of Five Armies and the beginning of the Lord of The Rings is insightful and thought provoking. Overall, it's easy to recommend either for those looking to play the adventures or those that are simply RPG collectors. Tolkien enthusiasts would do well to own a copy for its extremely loyal portrayal of Tolkien's world.

The best treatment of Tolkiens vision since MERPS. This book brings the eeriness of how mirkwoods change came about. A fine supplement from people who clearly love the source materials.

This is a fantastic campaign supplement for The One Ring rpg. The book works best if you also have The Heart of the Wild. The art is wonderful but buyers should know that these adventures are written purposfully with less detail than the adventures in Tales from Wilderland. The adventures shown in the book are meant to be suggestions or starting points for greater adventures.

A great addition to The One Ring RPG, the book is one huge series of adventures in Mirkwood and adds a lot of background material, but make sure you get The Heart of the Wild as well. You need both books for all the information.

So lushly detailed but open!!

This book is primarily geared towards Loremasters, as it is an adventure book (similar to Tales from Wilderland). This is the companion book to the Heart of the Wild. While the Heart of the Wild IS NOT REQUIRED to use this book (sorry, there seems to be some confusion about that), the Heart of the Wild will provide extra setting information necessary to fully develop some of the side-plots.The layout is NOT like that of Tales from Wilderland. Instead, the book takes each year starting with 2947 and gives an overview of that year. So in 2947, Gollum passes through Mirkwoood, Ceawin the Generous sends messengers to the Woodmen asking the elders to ally with him, and the Werewolf of Mirkwood wakes up and attacks a party of Dwarves that had strayed from the elf-path. Once the overview is complete, an outline for an adventure set in that year is given. These adventures are more like outlines than fully fleshed out adventures (like those found in Tales from Wilderland), but in many ways, that is a good thing. It makes the Loremaster work harder to prepare the adventure, but it allows the Loremaster to more easily change the adventures depending on player choices. This may not matter much in 2947, but the book goes all the way through the year 2977, by which time the player will have royally messed with the overall story.All elements necessary to run the main outline given for each year are included and detailed in this book (including re-stats of several creatures from Heart of the Wild, and stats for several new monsters). It is only in the event overview at the beginning of each year that references are made to the Heart of the Wild. This is why the Heart of the Wild is not necessary to use this book, but it is extremely helpful (especially if the Loremaster wants to turn one of those events into an adventure).Finally, there are some cool rules for players to create their own home, called a holding. This holding can make the players money, or it could cause trouble.I definitely recommend this book. There are so many adventure ideas that most groups will take a long time to play through this book. The layout is excellent, the artwork is beautiful, and the physical quality of this hardcover book seems to be high. Don't hesitate to purchase this if you ever plan on perhaps being a Loremaster for the One Ring rpg.

This is going to be a gorgeous book. Adventure seeds cover 30 years, bringing the game up to the year TA 2977. Those 30 years are broken down into three distinct periods: The Last Good Years: 2947-2950; The Return of the Shadow: 2951-2960; and The Darkening of Mirkwood: 2961-2977. There are a few pages near the end of the book that largely duplicates information from the companion sourcebook The Heart of the Wild, this is the Appendix, which covers the Nazgul of Dol Guldur and other Characters and Creatures specific to the campaign. However, the duplication is probably worthwhile for ease of reference.This is definitely a book for Loremasters/GMs as opposed to Adventurers but well-worth getting. The physical product is expected to be in stores in April. Recommended.

My gaming group just finished playing through the Darkening of Mirkwood campaign. It's great fun, really true to the feel of Tolkien's books, and provides plenty of opportunity for the player characters to drive the story. It does require a gamemaster who can flesh out events that are lightly sketched (and, in later years, that may be very different depending on players' early choices and their successes or failures). We also played the adventures from Tales of Wilderland, and they worked well in conjunction with this campaign. Highly recommended.

Fantastic book

Excellent supplement.