THE FALL OF Moria

A Tabletop RPG Campaign set in the world of Tolkien to take players through the ending of the great kingdom of Moria.

Overview

Time Frame: ~12 Weeks

Date: September 2022 - December 2022

Team Size: 4

Team Members: Caitlyn Lenhoff, Amber Griffith, Jeffery Liu, Michael Wong

Role: Narrative Designer, Producer

Tools: Google Docs, Final Draft

Keywords: RPG, Tabletop, Narrative, Dialogue, LOTR

Read the Entire Book

Description:

The Fall of Moria is a tabletop RPG campaign designed on the Dragon’s Breath (Dragon’s Quest) table top game system for the course RPG Writing Workshop for the Fall 2022 semester at Carnegie Mellon University. The purpose of the assignment is to help students learn to examine and dissect existing Intellectual Properties (IPs) and create a compelling story that fits the narrative of that world. Each student is placed on a team in which they are responsible for developing their own individual act, combat encounters, characters, and dialogue scripts.

This particular campaign follows the lives of four dwarves who try to find the truth behind digging too deep, before it is too late. The story was made to describe how Moria fell, and more importantly, how anyone made it out.

Duties and Personal Contributions:

Producer / Showrunner in charge of organizing the team
Narrative Designer for Act 4 encounters
Narrative designer for Introduction of the book
Character designer for playable character Thiddumir
Character designer for multiple NPCs, in particular Brynwyn, Theldohr, Beldor, Nain I, Thrain I, and the Balrog's second and third transformations.
Writer for character section before the stat blocks.

Encounters

Encounters:

For the project, I was responsible for designing and writing Act 4, in which the characters face the balrog in order to buy the common folk a chance to escape Moria. I wanted to focus on the emotions and the reality that the characters were bound to feel due to the fact that there is a large possibility that they will not be surviving the battle, especially since we had designed the campaign with the decision that we wanted to end with a TPK (Total Party Kill). I designed my section to have the necessary action at the beginning and end of the scene, but the middle is strictly for emotional impact where their resolve is tested.

The button to the right will open a PDF with only the portions of the book that are entirely my own. For anything written by more than one person on the team, or by another team member, please open the PDF of the full book using the button above.

Excerpt

After discovering Regumor’s evil plot, the party
fought a difficult battle against Regumor and
his men, and emerged victorious. They then
wasted no time rushing off deep into the mines
in an attempt to save their King from death
that awaits him.

Read Act 4

Dialogue Scene

Excerpt

THELDORH continues to cry until he feels a large warm hand on his shoulder. He looks up to see his father smiling tenderly at him.

THIDDUMIR
Let me ask you this Theldorh. If your little brother was in trouble, would you help him even if you might get hurt?

THELDORH’s eyes widen a little and his brows raise from the question. His sobs quiet to a sniffle.

THELDORH
I-I’m his older brother. I would help him.

THIDDUMIR smiles.

THIDDUMIR
It is the same for me too. My friends Gemmora, Galin, and Thrarnumlir are my brothers and sister.

THIDDUMIR ruffles both his sons’ hair.

THIDDUMIR (CONT’D)
They have agreed to help the king and I need to stay by their side and protect them. And while I protect them, I am ensuring you and your mother’s safety.

Each member of the team was responsible for writing one dialogue scene, preferably about their character and in their own scene. Thus I chose to write the moment where Thiddumir says his farewells to his wife Brynwyn and his sons Theldohr and Beldor before he goes off to fight the balrog with his comrades.

I wanted Thiddumir to struggle with the choice of deserting his friends to stay with his family or to fight along side his friends to give his family a better chance at escape. I was also inspired by the ideas of family in comradery in Shakespear's St Crispin's Day Speech from Henry V.

This is the same dialogue sample as on the scripts page of my portfolio, but I wished to showcase it here as well since it is an important part of the project as a whole.