I really enjoy using the rules for Ally Bands in The One Ring from the Moria: Through the Doors of Durin supplement – which, by the way, is one of the best RPG supplements I’ve come across, and a total joy for any fan of Middle-earth.
Bands have featured heavily in our campaign Twilight of the Western Shores. There are two player-heroes in this game, and we have adapted the Band rules to represent the groups of NPCs they recruit.
This page collects my notes on using Bands during play, along with the extensions I’ve created.
Overview
Bands are introduced in the context of doing a solo campaign in Moria, set during Balin’s ill-fated expedition to retake those hallowed halls. You craft a player-hero, but you also create a Band of Ally dwarves that accompany you.
Bands as a whole have one Target Number to roll against (“Readiness”), a “Burden” level, and five skills – Expertise, Manoeuvre, Rally, Vigilance, and War – that roughly map onto the skills of the player-heroes. Readiness can be improved by succeeding at missions and “Hardening” allies. Band skills can be adjusted by changing the size of the Band, deciding how heavily kitted it is, and selecting a specialization.
Individual members of a Band are distinguished by a gift – a unique characteristic that can be invoked for +1d on a roll – and a quirk – a narrative detail about personality or appearance that sets members apart from one another. Members also have their own injury and fatigue tracks.
The Band rules also cover Clashes, which expand the standard combat rules in The One Ring to model the effect of having larger groups in play. You can resolve things at the level of the Clash, or your player-hero can focus on dueling an “arch-foe” while the Band dukes it out.
Expanding Bands
Supporting Other Cultures
In the context of Moria, Bands are composed of dwarves on a mission to reclaim their ancestral halls, and many of the tables are themed around that premise. Because of this, questions often come up about how to adapt Moria Bands for other cultures or for use outside of Moria.
In Twilight of the Western Shores, this was never really a problem: we picked culturally appropriate Gifts and Quirks to model the NPCs that were recruited. Most of the Gifts and Quirks are also relatively generic, or easily adjusted to be so.
While our group is fine with narrative selection, other players want more structure. I took it as a fun exercise to create alternative tables for other cultures. Some entries are unique to each culture, some are reskinned variations of the same idea, and some are a direct port of a “stock” entry.
- Alternative Gifts and Quirks for Ally Bands
Once I organize the materials, I will also add name tables for different cultures.
Ally Burdens
Ally Bands help organize supporting NPCs in a way that makes them distinct and usable through Gifts and Quirks. I’ve expanded on this with Ally Burdens, which flesh out key Band members with additional details about what they might be seeking… or running from.
This is most useful when you want to give someone more narrative weight – the party’s favorite NPC, an ally who has survived three expeditions, or perhaps someone who seems to be driving the Band apart. Restraint helps here: not every Ally needs one (some of us do well to keep our burdens hidden, after all). Though if what you’re after is more of a soap opera feel, then the more burdens the merrier.
Related
- Ally and Player Burdens for The One Ring
- Alternative Gifts and Quirks for Ally Bands in The One Ring
- Phillip’s Notes on The One Ring 2e