Solo wargaming in Middle-Earth

(image borrowed from the interwebz)

My favorite fantasy setting is Middle-Earth. I wanted to create some scenarios and rewards to run a small adventuring party across Tolkien's wonderful world. As I usually play solo, I took this opportunity to create some generic soloing rules and Middle-Earth specific loot. While I did not want to play any of the Heroes/main characters from the books, I do love all of the new LoTR Lego minifigs. So I've created more generic (and slightly less fantastic) party members based loosely on the main characters...which will probably come across a bit cheese-ball. Whatever. It's my game :)

(image borrowed from Ganesha's Site)

 As always, I'm using SoBH (http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?products_id=7 ) as my rules but with a few tweaks. First of all I ignore the 'personality' rules because that seems too restrictive for a solo adventure campaign - which I think of more as an RPG than as a wargame. Next, I'm using markers (which could be a minifig base, a piece of terrain, a building, etc) like rooms described in the Song of Gold and Darkness suppliment to determine what happens. Whenever one of my characters comes in contact with one of these markers, or are within a certain distance (depending on the marker/scenario) I roll 1 d6 on the following table.





Marker/room Contents
1- empty
2- goons
3- goons + consumable/loot
4- Major Challenge
5- Major Challenge + consumable/loot
6- Final Challenge + Loot

Once I know what the marker represents or contains, I roll on the following tables based on the above info.

Goons
1- Orc d6-1
2- Spiders d6-2
3- Uruk-hai d6-2
4- Snakes d6-1
5- Wolves d6-2
6- Barrow-wight d6-2

Major Challenge
1-2: Troll + 4 Orcs
3-4: Orc Leader + 4 Orcs + 2 Orc Archers
5-6: Uruk-Hai Leader + 3 Uruk-Hai

Final Challenge
determined by the scenario.

The goon/major challenge tables are likely to change depending on the scenario as well.

To keep up the randomness, if my characters are not in a 'room' or engaged with a marker, at the end of each turn I roll 1 d6. On a 5 or 6, I roll another d6 on the goon table. The resulting goons spawn one long away from the center of the party in a random direction. The direction is determined via a popular way that I picked up on the Ganesha site. Two d6 are rolled. The direction is determined by drawing a line from the lower d6 to the higher d6.

If loot/consumables are indicated, I roll one d6. On a 1-4, I roll on the consumables table, if a 5-6, then I roll on the Loot table. Note: I use the traps system from SGD.

Consumables (d6-2 quantity. Roll for each)
1- Cram: Grants long move for 1 turn
2- Miruvor: grants 1 reroll
3- Honey Cake: +1 to one C roll or -1 to one Q roll
4- Dwarf Root: grants +2 to one C roll
5- Ent Draught: increase size by 1 for rest of scenario
6- Lembas: Hero special for rest of scenario

Loot
1- empty
2- Elven Cloak: Grants stealth
3- Spider Venom: Grants poison
4- Bow of the Galadhrim: Grants shooter: M
5- Elven Blade: grants Lethal v Orc-kind
6- Mithril Shirt: Grants Heavy Armor without the disadvantages

This may not make a ton of sense right now, but hopefully it will once I start throwing up some batreps.

Stay tuned!