by RockyMountainNavy, 3 August 2026
The Loremaster in The One Ring roleplaying game from Free League Publishing seemingly always faces a major challenge: How to run an adventure in a world that so many players already know? The Free League solution is to place the setting in the time period between the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Many things can happen in those eight decades, like the fall of the White Wizard, Saruman.
Or does he?
That is the question for the player-heroes to answer in Hands of the White Wizard, a campaign for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of The Lord of the Rings – Based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Hands of the White Wizard is the latest campaign from Free League Publishing for The One Ring roleplaying game (RPG). The player-heroes are agents—or hands—of the wizard Saruman. The campaign spans 35 years between 2965 and the year 3000 of the Third Age.
You read that right…a 35 year campaign.
Now, Hands of the White Wizard does not have a single adventure covering those 35 years, but six individual ones. As the campaign book states, “Chapters 1, 2, and 3 can all be run at any time after 2965 and in any order, although all three should be run by the start of Chapter 5” (p. 7). The book recommends running Chapter 4 anytime before Chapter 5 but is recommended after Chapters 1-3. Chapter 5 is a time-hack as it takes place in 2994. Chapter 6 is another time-hack and takes place around the year 3000, specifically, “just before Saruman dares to look into the Orthanc-stone for the first time and becomes ensnared by the enemy” (p. 7).
Maybe. Maybe not. It turns out that is up to the player-heroes.
If you are a Lord of the Rings aficionado you likely already know the story of Saruman:
In the story as told in The Lord of the Rings, many things contributed to Saruman’s fall from grace. Ambition, jealousy, and arrogance all played their role. So too did despair, for like the Denethor, Saruman was ensnared by Sauron and shown the invincible armies of Mordor. Unlike Denethor, who ultimately chose self-destruction rather than yielding to the Dark Lord, Saruman opted for appeasement, for accommodation, for the possibility of compromise with an eye toward eventually replacing Sauron on the throne. (p. 17)
That is the history as written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but it does not have to be the history as written by the deeds of the player-heroes in Hands of the White Wizard. Here the player-heroes have grand agency for the fate of Saruman can take one of three different paths:
- In “Saurman, Your Staff is Broken” the fate of Saruman is predestined and the story instead tells the fate of the player-heroes.
- In “Upon the Edge of a Knife” there is some small hope that Saruman can be redeemed. Saruman likely will fall but can the player-heroes delay—if not change—the seemingly inevitable?
- In “Even the Wise Cannot See All Ends” Saruman’s doom is not pre-ordained and it is the actions of the player-heroes who can save him. If they fail, however, the fall will come.
Hands of the White Wizard recommends that the Loremaster, “before starting, should choose one of the [above] options (possibly in agreement with the players)” (p. 17). Personally, I am not sure that meta-information—i.e. the potential fate of Saruman—should be provided to players. This is a case where I sense the Loremaster should know the players and determine which pathway to Saruman’s fall—or salvation—to pursue to maximize the group’s gaming enjoyment. [I cannot seem to find any guidance in Hands of the White Wizard on how to change paths mid-campaign which nonetheless may be another Loremaster option.]
[Hands of the White Wizard requires the Loremaster and player-heroes to be intimately familiar with the rules for Shadow. As found in the chapter, “The Shadow” in the core rulebook, “Challenging an almost all-powerful Enemy and facing its terrible minions is bound to instill a sense of fear and doubt in the Player-heroes, a sentiment that in time comes to weigh heavily on their hearts and minds” (Core rulebook, p. 136). A player-hero that accumulates too many Shadow Points becomes ‘ill-favored’ on all rolls (Core rulebook, p. 137). A player-hero that goes too far down a Shadow Path succumbs to the Shadow and, “is going to disappear from the game soon” (Core rulebook, p. 140). In Hands of the White Wizard the Shadow Points that matter are Saruman’s. The number of Shadow Points accumulated by Saruman over the course of the campaign are the measure of his fall. ]
In Hands of the White Wizard, Saruman is introduced in the chapter, “Saruman the White” which provides an in-universe narrative of the White Wizard himself. A subsequent chapter, “In the Service of Saruman” explains how the player-heroes come into the service of, and interact with, Saruman. The primary location for Saruman, the fortress Isengard, is described in another chapter.
The background for Hands of the White Wizard takes up the first 18 pages of the campaign book. The balance of the 144 pages are the six adventure chapters. Each chapter is broken down into four to six parts with a situation, personalities, and locations. The fact that the six adventures in Hands of the White Wizard take place over 35 years means this entire ‘campaign’ can either be run sequentially—with long narrated gaps between each adventure—or in a home-brew campaign with the adventures placed as needed.
The flexibility of Hands of the White Wizard is what impresses me the most about this campaign book. First, Hands of the White Wizard is not a rail-roading campaign but much more like a series of pre-generated adventures that can be added to a campaign as appropriate—call it a ‘campaign within a campaign’ if you will. Second, as one who not deeply steeped in the details of the mythology and lore of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, I welcome—nay demand—the Loremaster be empowered with the ability to collaborate with player-heroes to make their collective story and not be relegated to some obscure corner of a setting. In Hands of the White Wizard it is possible to write an alternative ending (beginning?) to The Lord of the Rings. In the “Aftermath” of the final chapter in Hands of the White Wizard, should the player-heroes save Saruman from the fall, one is asked to imagine:
And at the end, at the Grey Havens — Saruman and Gandolf would ride to the last ship together, and return to the West. There would be no need for the Ringbearer to seek healing, and he might instead enjoy the fruits of victory in the Shire.
All this might come to pass though — if the deeds of the Player-heroes are enough to move the heart of Ilúvatar (p. 141)
If you cannot already tell, let me be clear: I love the agency of player-heroes in Hands of the White Wizard. Players of The One Ring RPG (or the 5e version The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying) who previously thought the only way to create an ‘alternative story’ was to play the boardgame Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship (which, face it, is kind of a lite-RPG with players controlling heroes in cooperative play) now have a true RPG choice. The most powerful potential unlocked in Hands of the White Wizard is not just playing in the world written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but the ability to write your own story that greatly matters—even if it ends differently than Tolkien.
You, a mere player-hero in The One Ring and Hand of the White Wizard, have the power.
[A special thanks to Free League Publishing for providing The Armchair Dragoons with review copies, both physical and digital. If you pick up a copy to Hands of the White Wizard—or any product from The One Ring RPG line—make sure it is the physical version. Sure, the pdf is less expensive but you miss out on a physical book that is so beautifully laid out and illustrated it brings adventures alive in your hands in a way no book on a tablet ever can. Sorry to tell all you penny-pinchers out there but this absolutely is a case where deadtree beats digital “hands” down.]
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