Building a Better Beorning: Chargen in The One Ring, Introduction

A friend at Gen Con last Friday and a few too many positive RPG.net posts on the game caused me to give in and acquire a copy of The One Ring boxed set.  Overall I'm very pleased with the game--it's surely one of the best looking RPGs ever published.  I also feel that it goes further in recreating the feel of Middle-earth than any other Tolkien RPG before it.

I thought that I would create a character here on the blog as (a) a way of learning the rules for myself and (b) letting others get a sense of what the game entails (and thus becoming more able to decide whether or not it's for them).  As many of you may have heard, Cubicle 7 is taking a graduated approach to the game: the first boxed set introduces the basic rules and provides relevant game information for adventures in Wilderland (aka Rhovanion), the northeastern quarter of Middle-earth that is home to the majority of action in Tolkien's The Hobbit.  Characters are thus restricted in origin to one of the six Free Peoples inhabiting that region: the Bardings, the Beornings, the Dwarves of Erebor, the Elves of Mirkwood, the Hobbits of the Shire, and the Woodmen  of Wilderland.  Since Vargold is a blog nominally dedicated to barbaric games and narratives, it seems appropriate for my first test character to be as close to a barbarian as one can get in Tolkien and still be on the side of the setting's protagonists.  So Bardings, Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits will have to wait their turn.  The Woodmen are a viable choice under the conditions just laid out, but the Beornings (what with their berserkr chieftain Beorn) are an even better one.

Let's build a Beorning, then!  In my next blog post, I'll handle the first stage of TOR chargen, that related to heroic culture.  The post after that will cover individual customization.