Sun 17 Dec 2023, 09:41
Hi.
What year is your campaign set in? And how old is your Barding?
TOR2e is set to start about a quarter century after the Hobbit of course
The Battle of 5 Armies was therefore at least 24 years ago. The youngest fighting Barding (or Esgarothian really) would be a teenager at that time. Anyone younger than that would not have been in that battle.
This means all Bardings less than 35 years old are not veterans of that fight.
They have grown up with parents etc who did. This Previous generation would have had their own mini version of rebuilding a bombed out Europe after WW2; a shattered Yugoslavia after the events of the1990s; the uprooted America after 1865.
The children of the victors would be born into a time where they would be told it was now an era of optimism and opportunity.
Except of course, the IMMEDIATE opportunities have already gone! Dale has been rebuilt, farming is re-established and the immediate lands all taken and "owned". Any new businesses are competing with the established ones now that the pattern of demand has changed. In addition, the inevitable baby-boom is in mid flow, and, if the Dale economy does not expand, then the second post-Smaug generation will start to find not enough to do, and recession will strike.
This is the time of your Barding adventurer.
An intelligent person will be looking OUTSIDE of Dale for newer opportunities. What rumours will they hear in the taverns?
Tales of wealthy dwarves from over the mountains that funded Thorin's expedition... Traders who came to New Dale from both east of the forest and west to the inland sea with their goods.... Visitors and scholars, musicians and artisans, will have arrived from non Human Cultures to see the restored Erebor and to grab a bit of the New Wealth
All these are places that can intrigue an enquiring or adventurous mind . "Go West Young Man" ( and if you don't mind the forest)!