My current D&D homebrew campaign has been put on hold, because I just got a new job, and to eliminate a stress factor, I decided to run a published campaign, to cut prep time. Instead we will pay Wilderland Adventures for Adventures in Middle-Earth by Cubicle 7.

I’ve written about Adventures in Middle-Earth on this blog previously (Player’s Guide and Loremaster’s Guide), and been quite excited on their use of the D&D 5^th edition rules and their very thematic take on Middle-Earth.

But you can’t really know how well the rules work unless you’ve tried them in your game. As the youtuber Matt Coleville, so rightly puts it: the map is not the territory, the recipe is not the meal.

This new – and relatively short campaign – will therefore be an ongoing review of the seven adventures that makes up the Wilderland Adventures. They read well, but do they play well? And where do they need adjustments? Playing the campaign should also provide other GM’s, who might be interested, some insight into how the rules actually play out? In effect a review/playtest of the entire game.

When we’ve played through the seven adventures, we will return to my home brew campaign. I hope I can publish my backlog of session recaps over Christmas, so we have the game recorded while we are on a break.

As I’ve also bought the Rhovanion Region Guide and the Mirkwood Campaign, two new products for Adventures in Middle-Earth, I may drop in elements of those source books as well.

We make characters December 6^th, and I hope we also get to play the first part of the first adventure.

Initial Review of Wilderland Adventures

This is not an in-depth review of the 156-page campaign. It is hard to really recommend a published campaign you haven’t run. This is more my first impressions from reading it, and getting ready to run it.

I won’t describe all the adventures. But it will have mild spoilers. So, if you are a player (especially one of my players), and you want to know absolutely nothing about the story or adventures, you should read no further.

Wilderland Adventures is seven linked adventures, where the first four can be dropped into most Middle-Earth campaigns set in this area. The final three are more closely linked, and are hard to run independently. The adventures take place in various locations in Wilderland and will take the adventurers to around 7^th level.

My first impression of the seven adventures is very positive overall.

All of the adventures feel like they are set in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. The mood is spot on and follows the themes outlined in the Loremaster’s guide (such as The Long Defeat in a Fallen World and Deliverance Arrives as All Seems Lost).

Particularly the second, fourth and fifth adventures looks like they are excellent. The second one features a captured hobbit and fun goblin feast song, the fourth evolves around a Noldor elf the players have to escort towards the sea, but her powerful song and presence attracts a lot of attention and the fifth is an infiltration mission.

Actually, I think the first adventure is the weakest of the seven. It takes the group through Mirkwood, and has quite a dark tone. It is not a bad adventure at all, but I would have liked a much stronger hook.

As it is for 1^st level characters, it would have been nice, if the adventure also accommodated getting the group together, with a strong motivation, as Mirkwood is a dangerous place for first level characters. Instead it assumes they already know each other and are wandering along the Long Lake, when something happens. The designers opt for having an action hook that can result in combat. I think it will work as intended, but I would have appreciated getting help with getting the group together.

But let’s see how it plays out!

The book is very well organized with summaries of the campaign and each adventure. It is also fully colour illustrated like the rest of the Middle-Earth products. As an added bonus, it contains colour battle maps for most of the encounters. But

On the design side, I really appreciate that all the adventures don’t assume the heroes succeed. There are usually options for various alternate solutions or paths that the adventure might take and failure is frequently an option – the one they are supposed to protect dies or they are discovered and need to flee before they learn key information. This is a refreshing change from the published adventures I’ve typically seen. But to be fair, I’ve not run a published adventure since 2007 or something like that.

That said, it is not a sand box-style series of adventures, like e.g. Curse of Strahd. Each adventure has a clear plot line, with a hook, a journey and a couple of adventuring locations, and a climax.

The transitions from one adventure to the next may need a bit of work, and I expect I might add some minor additional adventures or events to create a smooth flow.

An excellent additional value for money is the customized journey events that are included. A journey has 12 possible events, and there are 12 unique events for all 7 adventures. That will add some interesting spice to each adventure, and will ensure that two groups running the same adventure will have somewhat different experiences, as typically only two or three events will come into play.

On the role-playing side, there are plenty of opportunities and interesting NPCs. I particularly like that there is a box on how to role-play the major NPCs. They describe speech patterns, mannerisms and movement – elements that I’m generally not great at coming up with for my own NPCs. I hope the assistance will add a lot of extra fun to my game.

All of the adventures also use the Audience mechanic, and sometimes the outcome of an audience can be critical for the outcome of the adventure.