I recently had the joy of listening to Fellowship of the Ring in audiobook format, and took the opportunity to take notes about the journey the characters took as they traveled from the Shire to Tol Brandir, where the book ends. Specifically, I wanted to compare the journey to my country-as-dungeon idea and see how a tale famous for its description of adventurous travel differs from the experience I have been setting up. At the end of this post I'll reproduce the notes I made, but I expect them to be only of passing interest.
Instead, here are the observations I made.
1. Middle Earth is big! Using my ad hoc and approximate standard for converting a continuous journey into distinct regions, the party saw 20-25 areas while trying to efficiently cover ground in a long journey. If they were trying to fully explore each region like a party "clearing" a dungeon, the full Fellowship countrycrawl could easily be 100-200 keyed areas, ignoring true dungeons and adventure locations like Moria that would want to be keyed themselves. My "megawildernesscrawl" is probably as small as possible to try to recreate this feel, and it feels notably smaller than Middle Earth.
2. Tolkien makes many of the "doors" between regions distinct landmarks in their own right. Passes, gates, and rapids see love. This is probably something worth emulating.
3. There are a good mix of regions we would categorize as being of the empty, monster, treasure, trap, and special types. Most of the traps serve to confound and challenge travel through the wildernesscrawl, cutting off routes or requiring some expertise or preparation to overcome.
4. Gandalf and Aragorn understand the lands they travel through. They can distill their reasoning for the routes they take to relatively simple considerations that are easy to follow, avoiding dangerous places and choosing which obstacles they want to risk. There are enough dangers that it is clear there is no totally safe path to pick.
5. There is pressure on the party. They face many hostile random encounters, and there is a strong, well-framed reason that so much threatens them. A malevolent force is actively attempting to impede them, giving the wildernesscrawl a "mythic underworld" hostility.
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Route Notes
I'm certain this is not all accurate, but I believe it is accurate enough for me to learn principles from. Indented entries are mentioned routes or routes the Fellowship intended to take, but ultimately did not.
For connections between regions, I use D ("door") for normal connections, S for secret connections, R for connections that require a ranger or elf, X for blocked connections, and L for locked ones.
Hobbiton
D
Buckland
D: east gate
S: brandybuck hedge gate to West Old Wood
West Old Wood
X: due east (old man willow’s choice)
X: due north (old man willow’s choice)
D
Barrow Downs
D
Bree
D
outlying villages
D
main road
And
D
Wooded country
R
Midgewater Marshes - slows travel
D
Line of hills (Weathertop)
D
Main road again
D
Wilderness - slows travel
D Last Bridge
Hills - slows travel
D
Troll country
X hills and passages
Old path (cliffside troll hole)
L ford of Bruhenan (forbids evil)
Rivendell
End book 1
Rivendell
D
Wooded country (routes not commonly known)
D
Treacherous swamps
D Holly RidgeD
Caradhras mountain
D Redhorn gate pass
Dindril Stair (deepvale)
D
Silverlode river
D
Great river
D
Secretwood
D
Siranon, the Gate Stream
L
Moria
D
Dimril Dale and (Mirrormere) (also accessed by Dimril stair from the Torrent river)
D
Northern Lothlorien
D South-facing gate
Caras Galadhon
D Mouth of Anduin
(Western Side)
Depopulated Borderlands
D
bleak wolds
D
Barren country of stony vales
D Amon hen
(Eastern Side)
D
The Brown Lands
D
Barren country of stony vales
D Amon Lhaw
D
Bleak hills (Rohan)
D
Bleak marshes
Mordor
(Route for Delaying their Choice)
Anduin the Great River
D
River past the brownlands
D
Gravel shoals
D Rapids of Sarn Gebir (also leads to western shore with Open Doors roll)
More river
D Argonath, the pillars of the kings
Tindrock/Tol brandir/
D
More river
D Great falls of rauros
The Nindalf/The Wetwang
D
The entwash (to Fangorn)
wetwang haha
ReplyDelete"Tolkien makes many of the "doors" between regions distinct landmarks in their own right. Passes, gates, and rapids see love. This is probably something worth emulating."
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good point, and something I never thought a lot about in wilderness crawls.