Brandybuck

[Steerpike]

BRANDYBUCK

''¦most of the folk of the old Shire regarded the Bucklanders as peculiar, half-foreign as they were.' '" J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

You're not one of them Hobbiton boys, cosseted deep in the Westfarthing.  You're one of the odd folk, from the wrong side of the river, from the colony, from the eastside of the Shire '" from Buckland.  You've been in boats and can even swim a little, and you know the private door through the Hedge.  You wear dwarf boots when its muddy and you take your ale at the Golden Perch '" the best beer in the Eastfarthing and the rest of the Shire besides, thank you very much.  Your family are from Bucklebury and Crickhollow; you grew up in the shadow of the High Hay, a mere stonesthrow from the brooding eaves of the Old Forest, where queer things lurk, and the trees whisper.  You keep your doors bolted and your windows shuttered after dark, unlike the carefree folk of Bywater and Tuckborough.

The usual quiet of the Shire has been disturbed; these are strange times.  The Bounders and Sheriffs have their hands full with all manner of Outsiders and riffraff, and eerie things have been sighted in the wilder parts of the Shire '" and there's no part wilder than Buckland.  Rangers, Wizards, and other Big Men have been spotted on the roads, and even a few dwarves have been seen on their inscrutable errands.  The Fair Folk themselves have been glimpsed, here and there, making their way west.  Old and nameless things that have slept for long years are beginning to stir.

Gameplay

Dust off a few old mathoms and sign up with the Bounders to help keep the Shire's borders secure and perform other Inside Work.  Trek into the Old Forest in search of rare herbs or obscure species of pipe-weed, fending off huorns and unfriendly trees.  Haggle with Rangers and more sinister travelers; poach vegetables from your neighbours fields; fight off wolves and goblins come down from their holes in the North Downs; delve into ancient burial mounds; traipse the high hills and glimpse the weird things that prowl there.  Evade trolls, pinch mushrooms, sup with Tom Bombadil, and watch out for Old Man Willow!

Rules

The player begins as a first level Halfling (Hobbit) commoner or expert.

In addition to the regular Halfling racial traits, Hobbits have a heightened sense of hunger, typically consuming a minimum of seven meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper.  They require as much food as a full-grown human per day, despite their Small size.  In addition, for every two hours a wakeful Hobbit goes without food he or she must make a Fortitude save of DC 10 + the number of hours since his or her last meal or incur a -1 penalty to all rolls.

Hobbits cannot swim and suffer -4 to all Swim checks.  Brandybucks, however, can take ranks in Swim to alleviate this penalty.

[ooc]One of my favorite parts of The Lord of the Rings is the first book of Fellowship, particularly the chapters 'The Old Forest,' and 'Fog on the Barrow-downs.'  There's a real feel of creeping weirdness and almost eldritch horror to these chapters, heightened by the fact that the hobbits are alone, without help from the more robust members of the Fellowship.  I'm TAing for a fantasy course that's currently studying Tolkien and I found myself thinking that it might be fun to run a short game set in Buckland, the Old Forest, and surrounding environs.

I'm envisioning something very similar in style to the Commoner Campaign (which also inspired the single-player Goblin Campaign I ran this summer), with a very limited, fragile PC, probably facing nothing more vicious than a wight (and this would be a fairly high-level opponent).  I imagine the players as somewhat roguish hobbits in their tweens similar to Merry and Pippin; I've always liked the idea that Brandybucks and Bucklanders in general come from 'the wrong side of the tracks' in the Shire, and the idea that Buckland adolescents are kind of rebellious mischief-makers is quite alluring.  I think with the right treatment a kind of weird-punk flavour might even be injected into Tolkien's otherwise coddling world: the unquiet trees, the restless spirits, the slumbering evils only now awakening, combined with slightly jaded hobbit anti-heroes.

I don't intend to update this thread very frequently or anything but I wondered what you guys thought of running this sort of campaign.  I might attempt to run a few sessions of something like this over the winter... we'll see.[/ooc]

[SDragon]

Please, write up a 3.x adventure for this. I'd love to run a game.

[Nomadic]

This made me smile.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Rorschach Fritos]Please, write up a 3.x adventure for this. I'd love to run a game.[/blockquote]Good idea - it might take me awhile, but I'll see what I can come up with.

[Steerpike]

From Tolkien's The Adventures of Tomb Bombadil:[ic=The Mewlips]The Shadows where the Mewlips dwell
Are dark and wet as ink,
And slow and softly rings their bell,
As in the slime you sink.

You sink into the slime, who dare
To knock upon their door,
While down the grinning gargoyles stare
And noisome waters pour.

Beside the rotting river-strand
The drooping willows weep,
And gloomily the gorcrows stand
Croaking in their sleep.

Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way,
In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey,
By a dark pool´s borders without wind or tide,
Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide.

The cellars where the Mewlips sit
Are deep and dank and cold
With single sickly candle lit;
And there they count their gold.

Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip;
Their feet upon the floor
Go softly with a squish-flap-flip,
As they sidle to the door.

They peep out slyly; through a crack
Their feeling fingers creep,
And when they´ve finished, in a sack
Your bones they take to keep.

Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road,
Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode,
And through the wood of hanging trees and gallows-weed,
You go to find the Mewlips - and the Mewlips feed.[/ic]

[LordVreeg]

Brandybuck is a family name, the family that ran buckland.  So you asking them to play a Bucklander, when you say they are from Crickhollow and Buckleberry.  
So they'd be most likely Stoors, whereas the Brandybucks have some serious Fallowhide blood.

I did My Tolkien TAing back in 83-84, and it was actually the hobbits in my old Tolkien campaign that finally pushed me out of the comfort of using someone else's rules.  My PC's spent a lot of time building and socializing and starting a pipeweed company...things D&D was not suited for. [note=Pipeweed]Their Pipeweed was grown in a field bewteen 2 hills, just east of Stock, close to the river.[/note]

I wouldn't be a biy surprised if my love of Tolkien subconciously is the root of my dominant Hobyts in Celtricia, or if Tolkien's habit of subraces made it a necessity in Celtricia.  I look forward to any and all posts here.  

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Lord Vreeg]Brandybuck is a family name, the family that ran buckland. So you asking them to play a Bucklander, when you say they are from Crickhollow and Buckleberry.
So they'd be most likely Stoors, whereas the Brandybucks have some serious Fallowhide blood.[/blockquote]I was under the impression that the Stoors and Fallohides were the old hobbit progenitor-tribes or ethnicities and were not themselves family names - i.e. Brandybucks are (or were) Stoors, probably with a bit of Bree and Fallohide in them as well.

 Brandybucks do indeed run Buckland (a region, rather than a town - referring to everything across the Brandywine, beyond the edges of the Eastfarthing).  Bucklebury is the seat of Brandybuck clan, centered around Brandy Hall, while Crickhollow is a neighboring village that various Brandybucks and others move to when they get tired of the (often crowded) Brandy Hall and Buck Hill.

That said, while I was assuming a Brandybuck player (since Brandybucks are the ones who visit the Old Forest the most, and the forest is sort of the center of the campaign in terms of adventure) any of the other Buckland families would work.

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=Lord Vreeg]Brandybuck is a family name, the family that ran buckland. So you asking them to play a Bucklander, when you say they are from Crickhollow and Buckleberry.
So they'd be most likely Stoors, whereas the Brandybucks have some serious Fallowhide blood.[/blockquote]I was under the impression that the Stoors and Fallohides were the old hobbit progenitor-tribes or ethnicities and were not themselves family names - i.e. Brandybucks are (or were) Stoors, probably with a bit of Bree and Fallohide in them as well.

 Brandybucks do indeed run Buckland (a region, rather than a town - referring to everything across the Brandywine, beyond the edges of the Eastfarthing).  Bucklebury is the seat of Brandybuck clan, centered around Brandy Hall, while Crickhollow is a neighboring village that various Brandybucks and others move to when they get tired of the (often crowded) Brandy Hall and Buck Hill.

That said, while I was assuming a Brandybuck player (since Brandybucks are the ones who visit the Old Forest the most, and the forest is sort of the center of the campaign in terms of adventure) any of the other Buckland families would work.

Stoors, Harfoorts, and Fallowhides are the old tribal bloodlines from before they crossed the Anduin.  Bucklanders are generally Stoors.  Fallowhides were the least numerous.  However, strong Fallowhide blood is attributed to the Oldbuck (brandybuck) family and the Took family.  
Similarly, all Hobbits have 'bree blood', since the Hobbits Exodus (first Harfoots, with the other following) to Eriador ended up in Bree first, and it was only when Marcho and Blanco (Fallowhides) got permission from Fornost that they led the first 'colonists' to the Shire.  So all Shirefolk and Bucklanders descended from Bree Hobbits.

[Steerpike]

Interesting.  Thanks for the info!  And I'm glad you like the idea.

[Gamer Printshop]

Tom Bombadil was always my favorite character out of LotR and his "wife" the river daughter (river spirit, I think?)

GP

[Nomadic]

I always most enjoyed gandalf, primarily in his interactions with the hobbits in both the hobbit and the lord of the rings.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Gamer Printshop]Brandybuck is a family name, the family that ran buckland. So you asking them to play a Bucklander, when you say they are from Crickhollow and Buckleberry.
So they'd be most likely Stoors, whereas the Brandybucks have some serious Fallowhide blood.[/blockquote]Yeah, Goldberry the River-daughter - almost as enigmatic a figure as Tom, who's been interpreted as everything from a Maiar spirit to God to a sort of Gaia figure, an avatar or manifestation of Middle Earth itself (I also read one goofy, tongue-firmly-in-cheek reading that claimed Tom was none other than the Witch King's alter ego); Tolkien was very non-committal about Tom and one gets the sense that he didn't really intend Tom to fit into the otherwise fairly neat ontological categories he devised.  

The story of Tom marrying Goldberry is in Tolkien's The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, by the way.

I like Tom in a way - I like his whimsy and how strange and enigmatic he is, and how he contrasts so sharply with the creepy elements - but I find him a bit annoying at times.  I much prefer Treebeard and Galadriel as "nature-y" figures in the books, but I love the idea of the Old Forest and the Barrows and the Hedge, and the wild, Ranger-prowled country that's really only a very short distance from the Shire itself, replete with all manner of nastiness leftover from Angmar (did you know that at the fall of Angmar, at the Battle of Fornost, a company of hobbit archers joined elves and men in fighting the Witch-King?!?).

[LordVreeg]

Tom Bombadil was always my favorite character out of LotR and his "wife" the river daughter (river spirit, I think?)

GP

Tom Bombadil is an enigma in Tolkien's work, as was Goldberry.  The amount of theory about this is tremendous, and includes Tolkein's letters and his son's thoughts.

I personally do not believe that Tolkien, in this one instance, wanted it to fit.  I personally would classify him as a Non-Aratar Valar in game terms, though there are (purposeful?) contradictions to almost any theory, as Tom seems tied to Middle Earth itself and not of Arda in it's entirety.

[Steerpike]

In rules/game terms I'd almost imagine Tom in the same terms as the Lady of Pain.

[Gamer Printshop]

Another favorite oddball character in LotR was Beorn. Someone told me he was just a man, but I always had the feeling he was a "friendly" giant of some sort. Perhaps because he is a giant compared to a hobbit from their point of view. Those three Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and Beorn were always my favorites - I guess I'm attracted to the odd more so.

And sure I have a special place for Gandalf too.

Another odd character, that for some reason is not a favorite of mine is Radagast the Brown, was he not a wizard like Gandalf? I know he was only mentioned in LotR, and not an active character - he is mentioned in the Silmarillion though.

GP