Author: phillip

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My Waking Up Gatha

For many years, I recited several poems immediately upon waking:

  1. Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Waking Up” gatha
  2. The Dalai Lama’s “Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life…”
  3. Haim Ginott’s “It’s my personal approach that creates the climate, it’s my daily mood that makes the weather…”

I tried to combine the essence of these three into a single practice poem.

Gatha

Waking up this morning,
I smile.
I am alive,
I have a precious human life,
and I am not going to waste it.

I will use my energies
to heal myself,
deepen my connection with others,
and build a beautiful continuation.

I will offer peace to others.
I will not lash out or attack others.
I will benefit other life as much as I can.

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Working with Dough Gatha

I have been increasingly practicing being in touch with my ancestors. Whenever I cook – especially when I work with dough – I think about all of my ancestors who have done the same mixing and kneading and baking, and all the nourishment they provided their own families, friends, and communities.

With the hands of my ancestors,
I add the ingredient of love.
May our practice
nourish all beings.

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Flossing my Teeth Gatha

Flossing is a difficult habit for me. My parents didn’t model good tooth care (my father died with no teeth), and it’s always been a slog for me. Which is why I have developed several different practice poems!

Flossing My Teeth I

This is the first one I came up with and taught to my young children.

Flossing my teeth 
and strengthening my gums
I improve my overall health
I know that even the smallest detail matters

Flossing My Teeth II

Between each tooth,
space for patience.
By caring for this body,
I care for the Earth.

I deeply want to care for the Earth, and my body is not separate from the Earth, and so it deserves my patient care too.

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Gatha Practice

Gathas are short practice poems. They can help us bring mindfulness, concentration, and insight to daily activities.

Practicing with Gathas

The basic form of practice is to: pause before you undertake some action, come back to your breathing, recite the gatha in your mind or out loud, and then initiate the action with mindfulness. Another method is to keep the gatha flowing through your mind while you perform the action, tying one line to an in breath and the next to an out breath.

I find that gathas, especially when practiced regularly, can wake you up to things you take for granted, expose habit energy, and steadily retrain your inner voice. I also find that my days are more beautiful when filled with poetic reminders of the practice and the wonders of life.

My Gathas

Writing your own gathas is a longstanding Zen tradition. I take great inspiration from my teacher in this, using gatha-crafting as a way to personalize and deepen my practice. Writing gathas makes the practices meaningful to me, and it helps me to reclaim areas of my life that I am less present to (for me, flossing is a great example of a rich area of practice.)

Here are some of mine:

References

Articles about gatha practice:

Sources of gathas from Thich Nhat Hanh:

  • Present Moment, Wonderful Moment
    • A gatha-focused book, containing 49 gathas and Thay’s commentary
  • The Energy of Prayer – How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice: See Appendix 2, “Buddhist Prayers and Gathas,” pp.145-155.
  • Stepping into Freedom – An Introduction to Buddhist Monastic Training: This book is not just for monastics but is for everyone. It begins in Part One with 68 gathas.

Other sources of gathas:

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Phillip’s Notes on The One Ring 2e

I’ve been cleaning up and publishing some of my notes from running The One Ring (2nd edition). This page serves as a place to collect and organize the various posts.

Table of Contents:

  1. For Players
  2. For Loremasters
    1. Regional – Eriador
  3. Ally Bands

For Players

For Loremasters

Regional – Eriador

Ally Bands

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Where Can a New Party Start in Eriador?

I would say the majority of games I’ve played in and observed start at The Prancing Pony in Bree. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it is an iconic location for Lord of the Rings fans and a great meeting place for multiple cultures.

But sometimes we like to mix it up. Here are some suggestions for other starting points:

  • Bilbo’s house in the Shire
  • The Summer Smoke Ring Festival at Staddle
  • The Dwarven House outside of Mithlond
  • The Halls of the Dwarves (detailed in Realms of the Three Rings), particularly Clearweather Market
    • I called the inn in Clearweather Market “The Bedrock”
  • The Bridge Inn at Tharbad
  • The Queen’s Hall at Lond Daer
  • The Last Bridge or Sarn Ford, with a crisis already underway
  • Weathertop, with Rangers asking for help with a crisis from those traveling on The East Road
  • In media res – traveling on The East Road or south on the Greenway, with a destination already in mind

These are suggested with the idea of being a newly formed mixed-culture party. Other locations might be suitable with a more restricted set of cultures.

References

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Running The One Ring 2e for Two Players

I’ve been running a campaign of The One Ring for two players for over a year now. Questions about adjusting TOR for two players seem to come up surprisingly often, so I wanted to share my notes.

In short, I recommend giving 5 extra experience points, adjusting the fellowship pool amount, and playing as you normally would. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be!

Table of Contents:

  1. Character Creation
  2. Fellowship Pool
  3. Fellowship Focus
  4. Situational Difficulty
  5. Combat
  6. Benefits of Two Players
  7. References

Character Creation

I do not recommend reducing the attribute TNs (i.e., calculating from a base of 18 instead of 20). While it makes things initially easier, players can ramp up to a power level where it’s difficult to challenge them. Starting with base 18 makes this happen much sooner.

I do recommend adding 5 extra starting experience for each player.

Players need to be aware that in a two player game, not all combinations of cultures and characters will work. I recommend some extra hand holding here to make sure that there’s good coverage of the necessary journey/council/combat/healing skills.

We have not used the Strider distinctive feature in our game, and this hasn’t been a noticeable difficulty for the party. It is an option though.

You could start the characters at Valour and/or Wisdom 2.

Fellowship Pool

DanW uses (8 – player count).

“I sometimes calculate the base pool = 8 less number of heroes, rather than just number of heroes. It boosts small parties and debuffs larger ones, with no impact on a typical party of 4.”

We play 1.5 hr sessions, I gave them with an extra +1 to the baseline (i.e., 3 points per session before cultural and patron bonuses). The end result is effectively the same as DanW’s.

Fellowship Focus

With just two players, we don’t play with fellowship focus. No shadow point when the other takes a wound, only +1d when assisting.

Situational Difficulty

My personal approach was to start with mimimal adjustments, tell the players that we might have to adjust things along the way if we find there’s a balance problem, and then just dive into the game.

I think the big pitfall to avoid in a two player game is making things too easy out of worry about difficulty. I observe my own tendency to pull punches and give extra rewards when playing with two players. And this does help in the beginning, but it’s also easy enough to get yourself into a spot where it’s hard to challenge the players.

I recommend remembering you have the option to offer Success with Woe instead of a Failure in many circumstances. This can allow the players to push the narrative forward instead of getting stuck, while having fun, awful setbacks accompanying it.

Combat

Fights are definitely a place where I worry – I don’t want to make every fight easy, but I also don’t want to wipe the party unexpectedly. In the first combat roll of our campaign, one of my players took nasty wound and I thought it was going to be a TPK. But since then, they have gone better than expected.

It’s fine for parties to struggle with combat. My players have gotten wise about recruiting help, using situations to their advantage, and finding alternatives to combat.

Moria warbands are a good way to model help from multiple NPCs.

I recommend giving one of the players the Cleaving quality on a piece of treasure – this helps keep the momentum up in fights.

I’m open to Skirmish stance from Strider mode, they haven’t reached for it yet. But it’s something to consider.

Benefits of Two Players

We focus so much on the adjustments needed for smaller parties, I just want to talk about some of the benefits I see from my small group:

  • Scheduling is so easy – we played 44/52 weeks in 2025!
  • Each player gets plenty of spotlight time, and they also get plenty of breaks
  • Splitting the party is easy to manage – switch back and forth between players.
  • Decisions get made quickly

References

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Crime and Punishment in Eriador

Something that has come up in several different games of The One Ring has been the topic of taking someone prisoner and delivering them to justice in some settlement or other. This comes up especially often in relation to a certain published adventure with a despicable dwarf, but has also happened in other situations as well. I wanted to capture my thoughts on this matter, and how I approach this type of situation in my games.

I understand the drive to do this. We are roleplaying Tolkienian heroes, oriented to the good, and non-Orc enemies should be captured and tried by those with more authority. The problem is that the sense of justice and judgment that holds in our world doesn’t really hold in Eriador. We have a “justice system,” and we put punishment and locking people up out-of-sight and into the hands of “qualified people.”

But the towns and villages that remain in Eriador are small, disparate remnants of an emptied, collapsed kingdom. There is no central authority. Each settlement makes their own law. Nobody wants to take prisoners off of your hands. Nobody wants to lock up prisoners for long periods of time, continuing to feed and care for them in the meantime. People certainly would not appreciate you to bringing problems INTO their homes!

In fact, what we think of as “jails” or “prisons” are (mostly) non-existent!

  • Different villages might have a lock-hole to keep a drunk overnight or to briefly hold a criminal awaiting trial. This would be the most that you might find, and even this might be something that doesn’t exist!
  • Bree would likely have the above, or even a small jail of sorts. But a 1e adventure notes they would have to construct a gallows for an execution, they don’t have one ready.
  • The Shire is not a place I would take prisoners for justice…
  • Perhaps the Halls of the Dwarves are similar to Bree here.
  • Tharbad is probably the one place with a proper prison, but conditions are grim and justice is wanting in that place. Also, why would the Master want to take in an external prisoner, unless he was someone who escaped from the city that will be publicly executed as a warning to others?
  • Why would the elves appreciate you bringing a bandit to their borders to deal with?

If you bring a prisoner to one of these places, the first question that should arise is what do these people care about the alleged crimes?

  • If you take a dwarf to the Halls of the Dwarves (where they were already exiled from!) for troubles in another land, what do you expect these people to do about it? It didn’t happen in their land, you were the one who brought him back.
  • Perhaps you’ve taken a problematic dwarf to Bree for the Reeve to dispense justice. But the relevant crimes in Bree, at best, might be a failure to pay for goods and services. You probably had something bigger in mind for punishment!

In many cases, the people are likely to not be interested, and if they can be persuaded to care, they’re going to offer lesser punishments than what the players are expecting, including the prisoner’s likely freedom.

Because the nature of punishment is not quite the same as what the players are expecting. If you’re not keeping prisoners long-term, you are left with a small set of outcomes. These outcomes are not oriented around an ideal of “justice” as much as maintaining social stability and limiting the possibilities of vendettas and revenge cycles. Execution is extremely unlikely as an outcome, though if crimes were heinous enough it might happen. That means you’re left with:

  • Financial settlement (e.g., paying a fine, weregild for a death)
  • Another form of restitution, like a period of indentured servitude or manning a necessary-but-unenjoyable position for a time
  • Exile or outlawry (declaring them outside the protections of society, free to be hunted down and killed)

This judgment is likely to be decided by a local leader, a council of leaders, possibly involving a neutral arbiter to set the terms of settlement among the parties.

So, for the most part, nobody’s going to help you take prisoners off your hands and serve them justice (unless you’ve been asked to do just that). If they do, it’s not going to be the “justice” you’re wishing for. They’re likely to be banished at best, and that means their freedom to do the same elsewhere.

What options are left?

  • Make the prisoner swear an oath before releasing them (which should be taken very seriously, very Tolkien-esque)
  • Try to scare someone straight
  • Hope that the hard life in the wilds will care of killing them eventually
  • Eat the misdeed shadow and dispense your own justice

A tough set of choices for the heroic players who wish “justice” to be served in a more “civilized” manner!

References

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The One Ring 2e: Going to Rivendell with Bilbo

I started thinking about this after discussing a matter with other The One Ring loremasters: would Bilbo be able to find his way to Rivendell, or should they all still have to search?

First, there’s the question of what’s Bilbo’s actual familiarity with Rivendell? Because that can strongly impact the question. If he hasn’t been back since, he can’t offer any help!

Table of Contents:

  1. What’s Bilbo’s Familiarity with Rivendell?
  2. Opinons From Other Loremasters
  3. What I Did
  4. References

What’s Bilbo’s Familiarity with Rivendell?

For myself, it seems apparent that Bilbo has to have visited Rivendell more than the several instances we learn about in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. We know that Bilbo remains odd and disappears from the Shire occasionally. But the biggest evidence to me is that he becomes quite proficient in Sindarin and has translated several Elvish poems and songs into the common tongue (or the Hobbit tongue), as we see in the final accounting of his writings at the end of Lord of the Rings.

Together with extracts from Books of Lore translated by Bilbo in Rivendell.

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (p. 1027). (Function). Kindle Edition.

To me, that seems hard to do this well with simply a short number of years spent in Rivendell at the end of his life – a period where the Ring’s preservation powers were no longer affecting him and he became increasingly tired. Is that the most likely time to pick up a new language, rather than continue to translate a language he’s learned well enough in years before? I, personally, do not think that he did most of this learning after giving up the Ring, when old age started setting in on him in earnest. Though it is not out of the question.

It is also noted that he taught younger hobbits songs and stories, and that happened years before he left the Shire for Rivendell.

‘He did not make it up,’ said Strider. ‘It is part of the lay that is called The Fall of Gil-galad, which is in an ancient tongue. Bilbo must have translated it. I never knew that.’

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (p. 186). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Another exchange shows that Frodo has been taught at least enough Elvish to have Bilbo be surprised at Frodo’s ignorance.

Suddenly Bilbo looked up. ‘Ah, there you are at last, Dúnadan!’ he cried.

‘Strider!’ said Frodo. ‘You seem to have a lot of names.’

‘Well, Strider is one that I haven’t heard before, anyway,’ said Bilbo. ‘What do you call him that for?’

‘They call me that in Bree,’ said Strider laughing, ‘and that is how I was introduced to him.’

‘And why do you call him Dúnadan?’ asked Frodo.

‘The Dúnadan,’ said Bilbo. ‘He is often called that here. But I thought you knew enough Elvish at least to know dún-adan: Man of the West, Númenórean. But this is not the time for lessons!’ He turned to Strider. ‘Where have you been, my friend? Why weren’t you at the feast? The Lady Arwen was there.’

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (pp. 232-233). (Function). Kindle Edition.

This passage demonstrates that Bilbo obviously has a relationship with Aragon. That relationship seems connected to Rivendell based on his ignorance of Strider’s Bree-name. We certainly know that Bilbo is the one who composed the All that is Gold lines that are associated with Aragorn.

There’s a strong possibility that this relationship developed in the end of his life. Bilbo settles in Rivendell in 3001, and Aragorn and Gandalf leave to hunt for Gollum in 3008, which does leave enough time for a friendship to develop in that period.

But it is also possible that Bilbo and Aragorn have a much longer relationship. Aragorn would presumably have been present in Rivendell during the stopover on the way to the Lonely Mountain. However, he would have been 10 and called Estel, with no knowledge of his heritage (which is revealed to Aragorn in 2951). There is also the potential that Bilbo visits Rivendell again sometime (or more than once) between 2951-2956, before Aragorn begins his errantry.

Another factor to consider is the change in disposition of the elves, as reflected on in the post Notes on ‘The Coming of Bilbo to Rivendell’ from The Blog of Mazarbul. In The Hobbit, the elves are mostly bemused at Bilbo, but he is a respected figure by The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps even a figure of curiosity. To me, this transformation in opinion speaks to more encounters than those described in The Hobbit.

While not cannon, in TOR 1e, the adventure “Concerning Archers” places Bilbo in Rivendell, too. That’s canon in my game, at least, and colors my thoughts.

Opinons From Other Loremasters

All of this musing is set to anchor a question of game mechanics:

My players have decided to travel to Rivendell for the first time with Bilbo. Bilbo’s visit was planned in advance. Would you still have them search for the entrance? Seems like they should have no trouble with Bilbo, but any return visit would require the searching.

Some opinions that I appreciated from the TOR discord:

  • FreesiaJasmine: “I would say canon says Bilbo knows the way for sure. Whether it’s simply a matter of him telling them the way so they can come back or not, though… I play it that the valley has guards so even if you find the way in, if you’ve not been given permission, you still ain’t getting in (except in pincushion form), but I also generally make sure my heroes have permission – or at least some of them do and are made responsible for the behavior of the others!”
  • DanW: “Even Gandalf struggled to find the white stones, so I would have them roll.”
  • robert20210126: “I’d assume that Vilya (Elrond’s one of the Three) plays a part.”
  • DanW: “I don’t think that finding Rivendell should play out as a genuine peril (unless they’re being chased by a giant ward or something), rather a few rolls to signal that it’s hidden and special. Get the players’ anticipation level up.”
  • DanW: “I might have Bilbo inconveniently disappear on the way. Thinking about it, he could literally disappear.”
  • RedneckRPGer: “How about have Bilbo get them in the general location, and then one of the Imladris Scouts/Guards recognise Bilbo and then escort the group to the Hidden Valley?”

And a counter-opinion:

I don’t recall any extravagant amount of time he spent trying to learn the path, though. Not even sure why he’d want to put in that kind of work. Even less likely a goal the more he aged.

I see Bilbo more as cheerily blundering along the woods, confident that sooner or later one of the elves will find him and escort directly to a banquet table.

What I Did

In my game world, Bilbo has certainly been back to Rivendell several times and has an ongoing relationship with the Elves.

This does not eliminate the need to find the stones, though Bilbo would have an easier time of it.

However, I had Bilbo disappear at an inopportune moment, causing the party to search for him and the path. Narratively, I described this as a situational problem: BILBO was invited to Rivendell, but he had extended this invitation to his friends as well, only remembering as he closed in on the valley that his two guests had not actually been invited by the elves… something he needed to sort out with the Rivendell wardens.

The players still executed the search, and they eventually found by Bilbo and the wardens, who then led them into the valley proper.

References

  • Phillip’s Notes on The One Ring 2e – for more Loremaster notes and resources
  • Aragorn/Bilbo Relationship Timeline | Mythgard Forums

    The earliest moment when Bilbo could have met Aragorn was in The Hobbit when 10-year-old Aragorn was living there with his mother. But Aragorn did not then know his true identity: he was Estel, and I don’t think anyone in Rivendell would have told the truth about the boy to a hobbit passing through.

    Aragorn learns his true identity at age 20, in 2951, which is two years after Balin and Gandalf visited Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit. So even if Bilbo had visited Rivendell during those 10 years he is still unlikely to have learned who Estel is.

    Aragorn meets Gandalf when he’s 25 (2956) and from age 26-49 he’s wandering Middle-earth, serving in Rohan and Gondor.

    Frodo is born in 2968; his parents die in 2980 (same year Aragorn meets Arwen again in Lorien!). If we assume that Bilbo adopts Frodo in 2980/81, it is unlikely that he would have left Frodo for long trips to Rivendell after the adoption.

    The Farewell Feast is 3001; that same year Gandalf ‘opens his heart’ to Aragorn and the Ranger guard on the Shire is doubled.

    Bilbo settles in Rivendell in 3002.

    Gilraen, Aragorn’s mother, dies in 3007. From 3008-3017 Aragorn and Gandalf seriously search for Gollum.

    So when did Aragorn tell Bilbo his story? The first option is that Bilbo visited Rivendell sometime between 2951-2956, before young Aragorn goes on his great wanderings. Aragorn, being new to his true identity, might have told Bilbo his story. But his identity was secret for a reason, and would he have revealed that secret to a visitor, even a respected one?

    The second option is that Bilbo didn’t hear Aragorn’s story until he settled in Rivendell. This is after Gandalf ‘opened his heart’ to Aragorn, who would then have had good reason to establish a relationship with Bilbo. This leaves only 6 years of regular contact (before Aragorn takes up the hunt for Gollum), but that’s long enough for mortals to become friends.

    My head-canon, thean, is that Bilbo composed the All That is Gold poem after Gilraen died in 3007, to comfort his friend and let him know that he, Bilbo, believed that Aragorn would fulfill his destiny and bring Estel back to the world.

  • Notes on ‘The Coming of Bilbo to Rivendell’ – The Blog of Mazarbul

    Further, I quickly decided that if I was going to attempt something fairly unique, it would be best to consider Bilbo from an outsider’s perspective…and not just any outsider, but the Elves of Rivendell. It may seem a strange choice, for upon Bilbo’s first coming to Rivendell, the Elves seem to think of him (not unjustly) as a fairly banal figure; amusing and good-hearted, but of little consequence.

    Yet it struck me that this perspective must have been altered by the time Bilbo returns to Rivendell to dwell there, following his 111st birthday. Not only is Bilbo a character altered by his experience, he is (I would contend) altered to the point of being amazing…even to the Eldest. For now, he is girt with a blade out of their own ancient history, bedecked in mail surpassing that of many of their captains and lords, with tales of dragons and eagles and gollums. Bilbo is not just strange, he is wondrous, even to an Elvish perspective.

    And he is ungreyed by age. Half a century and more has passed – a small span of time to an Elf, but not so small as to be wholly unremarkable. The Elves are not unfamiliar with mortals, they know how swiftly they wither and perish…yet Bilbo does not, Bilbo has not.

    And, of course, there is the matter of his magic ring. Of course, none truly guessed that it was the One at this time (and how much greater would their wonder have been upon realising what he had truly borne!), but for a mortal to have stumbled across, worn, and willingly given up even a lesser ring, one of the essays in the craft…even that is extraordinary. Even that is a feat.

    So not only is Bilbo exceedingly strange, he must be strange to the fairies themselves. It’s a rare thing, I think, for an Elf to truly experience that Faerie wonder…yet I am sure that Bilbo must have inspired it in them. He is extraordinary, quite simply, even to Faerie creatures. And I felt like trying to explore at that and pick at it was a worthwhile attempt.

  • How did Bilbo learn 🧝elvish? | 🧙The Tolkien Forum🧝

    It seems that he had some knowledge of Elves before LOTR or The Hobbit but had probably not met them personally before his journey unlike Frodo. The Baggins family never did anything unexpected and you probably knew what they would say to a question so usually you didnt bother asking them. Frodo did however most likely taught by Bilbo who became friends with the Elves after the Hobbit.

it was only due to freequent visits to Rivendell that he grew learned in the lore of the elve tongue…

He often visited elves, so one would presume he picked it up, as one would pick up Spanish, if one took a holiday in Spain annually, for instance.