For Christmas, I got a new Kobo Clara Color, and the first book I loaded onto it to read was The Hobbit. Back in middle school, I used to go through a box set of the entire Baggins saga every year as the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out. It’s been a while since I did one of those read throughs, but the effect that Tolkien has had on fantasy, and especially on fantasy gaming was on my mind and I decided to reread The Hobbit.

As I was reading through, the entire traveling party was reminding me of a D&D party, even if Bilbo is much more a main character than our own tables should really have. I took some notes on sections that I think would make especially good scenes for a game and thought about how I would adapt the book into a TTRPG campaign.

An Unexpected Party, or That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates

There’s some chewy scenery at the intro of The Hobbit, with the famous “Being Good Morninged by the Son of Belladonna Took” scene with Gandalf, but the first scene that really stands out to me as one that I might adapt into a scene in an RPG.

Bilbo is our viewpoint protagonist for the scene in the book, but for our hypothetical RPG party, we’ll switch POV over to the host of dwarves. The party is essentially Gandalf having tricked Bilbo into agreeing to a job interview with the dwarves. So we’ll imagine our party needing some assistance from an NPC and one of their number having essentially tricked them into a meeting.

Stealing from Older Editions

Assuming I were running D&D 5e for my party, this scene is one where I’d take a page out of Matt Colville’s book and lovingly steal from Fourth Edition. I loved skill challenges back during the 2011-2013 years when I ran the D&D Encounters program for a couple stores in Seattle and Lansing.

The challenge here is to get on the good side of the tricked party host while clearing up the detritus of the party without causing damage.

The Fourth Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide lays out a chart of levels of complexity, which sets a required number of successes on skill checks before a threshold number of failures is reached. The number of failures is half the number of successes for any given complexity. The Guide also recommends a complexity of 5 for a Skill Challenge which is intended to take the place of a combat encounter.

Since this party and what it sets up take an entire chapter and essentially serve as the catalyst for getting Bilbo out his door for the rest of the story to happen, I feel like that complexity of 5 is correct for us. That means that the Dwarven Party must succeed at 12 skill checks before accumulating 6 failures.

With the complexity selected, we need to design the challenge around which skills players will be able to use to meet the challenge. Along with applicable skills, we’ll select whether the skill is a medium challenge (DC 15), or whether some factor about the challenge makes it easier (DC 13), or harder (DC 17).

Carefully Carefully With the Plates

The first skill that came to mind for me was Sleight of Hand, seeing as the song has plates flying around in what appear to be precarious and dangerous ways only to end up perfectly washed and carefully stacked. Going along with the scene in the book and the movie, I’m going to treat this one as the baseline skill and call it our basis for Medium difficulty (DC 15). When all else fails, lend a hand to the cleaning!

Since we’re trying to get help, we also need to get some Persuasion into the mix. I’m going to take some cues from The Hobbit here and assume that our party host is a homebody who would really just like everyone to leave and get back to enjoying his food and drink and tobacco. This one will be Hard (DC 17).

Of course, we can’t forget that we are in a Tolkien story and that as soon as the scene needs levity a song breaks out. Performance is absolutely called for as an allowed skill. Looking at the reaction Bilbo has in the story, I’m setting this one at Hard (DC 17), but I’m maybe sneaking in a bonus for an especially good Perform roll (DC 20) that will give a bonus to the next check in line.

I might also add Investigation and Perception to the list of skills, giving characters built around Intelligence and Wisdom something to add to the encounter. Noticing the importance of a given piece of china or that Bilbo is more intrigued by tales of adventure than a hobbit would be expected to be could be helpful when recruiting a burglar.

Intimidation is going into the automatic failure category on this one. Bilbo is already inclined to tell the dwarves to get off his lawn, but feels a duty to be a good host “no matter how painful.” But, if the group decides to put themselves outside the role of unexpected but polite guest…

There and Back Again

Lastly, when designing a Skill Challenge, we have to decide the stakes. And I think what I said about the role of this party in the book exactly lays the stakes out.

If the challenge is succeeded, Bilbo joins the group and some future tasks involving trickery become easier for the group.

If they fail, then we’ll see how our dwarves manage without Bilbo’s keen eye and sneakiness in places like the Wood King’s palace or the doorstep to the Lonely Mountain.