I got my copy a week ago. After the initial read, I am in love with this game. I like how travel and combat work. It retains the flavor of fantasy RPG combat without a massive grid. The Endurance v. Fatigue and Hope v. Shadow mechanics are slick. It feels like the rules are there to SUPPORT the story and the game, not DOMINATE them.
Once I have re-reread the rules and made a few characters, I plan on running this with my usual gaming group (who like D&D 4E, Pathfinder, Legend of the Five Rings, and a lot of other RPGS). I will post my own "Loremastering" experiences here.
I look forward to seeing all your Loremaster experiences. I too, want to run this game. My desire was further enhanced after seeing the Hobbit trailer over Christmas!
Just got this myself- very nice set of books.
Free adventure at RPGNow.
thejeff,
Their plans are to cover the 60 years that pass in between the end of the Hobbit and the beginning of The Lord Of The Rings, releasing two supplements that expand the time frame covered, though I think it will still be focused on the same region. Right now, the Core Set covers the first 20 years after The Hobbit. The next book will cover years 21-40 and the third one will cover years 41-60, taking it to the beginning of The Lord of the Rings.
It looks simple enough- weapon proficiencies are cultural, you set a 'wealth level' for your character from poor to wealthy based on your culture, then have six backgrounds tied to your culture and personal history. That determines whether body, mind or spirit are primary, secondary or tertiary and what skill has a focus. Further up the thread, I believe there are links to fan-made additions.
As incongruous as it is that there are Hobbits represented, I think there would be more people asking why there aren't Hobbits if they were left out- they are the anchor of Tolkien's world after all.
It's not so much the source material I'm concerned about, but it looks like the character mechanics are pretty deeply tied to that specific time and place. Rules for Bardings, Beorning and Woodmen for example. Not for Breemen and Dunadan, etc.
And yet they have hobbits. Who live hundreds of miles away and don't travel.
While the flavor of the Cultures and Backgrounds seem like this, the actual mechanics could be fudged a bit to create characters from different geographical regions. You could, essentially, "reskin" a Barding to resemble a Breeman... or an Elf or Dwarf to represent their cousins elsewhere. Or you could reverse-engineer each culture and background to figure out an approximate point value for starting characters and go from there. Someone with a decent grasp of the lore could easily make rules for most Cultures. Some might be harder to do at this time, like a mounted rider of Rohan, but with some creativity it could be done.
As for Hobbits, most are indeed sedentary in nature. However, a few become curious about the world around them and travel. A few may wander into the Wilderland. Those select few are the PCs. It would probably be fairly rare to find many NPC hobbits in the area, but one could pop up.
And having an RPG that is focused around the events just after “The Hobbit” that does not have an option for playing a hobbit would seem rather off. :)
I play this a lot
it is easy to fiddle with, and indeed on the C7 forums lots of people had done this
if they had made it ME wide it would have been an enormous book and they would have cut lots of setting material i imagine
It plays fast enough, really captures the feel, and characters progress both storywise and mechanic wise at a satisfying rate
I think hobbits and elves are playable because for this short snap shot in time ME is as safe as it will be to travel, and folk will know what a hobbit is etc.
elves and dwarves are talking and trading
25 years past this and memories will have faded and folk go somewhat isolationsist i think
Good thread on custom Cultures and character generation here.
For the folks reading this thread who have not bought the core set yet, you really should go to Amazon and get it. It is only $38 with free shipping versus the $60 cover price. I know it is good to try and support the company and buy directly from them, but with that difference in cost and Cubicle 7 being in England, it is a big deal to those of us in the US.
I'd encourage anyone to purchase it at a local retailer; I understand the lure of shopping at Amazon but brick and mortar shops are disappearing. Even Barnes and Noble is looking more and more anemic as time goes on. The fact that Amazon is also just straight up publishing their own books now is another reason I don't like to shop there anymore. Your mileage may vary and it depends on your wallet, of course, but that's my opinion.
I have helped make six characters, and once you get the hang of such it goes pretty fast. We start our campaign this Thursday. I plan to post details on my blog. Here is the Prologue Post.
I look forward to running the game and writing about it.
I may have to check this out. It seems to have a better grasp of the Tolkien feel than MERP ever did.
I do wish they hadn't focused quite so much on the one time period and setting though. It looks like it wouldn't be too easy to adapt to another area/time. Going by their preview Character Types, it looks like each race/culture gets its own rules? So you'd have to redo all that if you wanted a game set in Eriador after the fall of Arnor, for example.
I have gotten my copy too and now that I am reading through it, rather than skimming a friend's pdf, I found this sentence that will make you happier. In case you have not read this yet, from page 10 of the Adventurer's Book:
"The second and third sets of The One Ring will progressively widen the geographical boundaries of the setting, and will detail events further along the timeline."
So if using the rules for an entirely different time, you would still have to improvise, but it looks like the expansions will cover more regions at least.
It also talks about the three sets covering 70-75 years total, not the 60 we were originally hearing, so there must be some time overlap between the sets, or the third set is going to cover the time of the LotR through the end of the third book, or both.
My only complaints about the game thus far:
1. Delay in release of new material. (ex. Tales From The Wilderland)
2. No individual dice sets for sale (except with a German company).
Reading over the company's forum, the release of new material appears to be an issue across their product lines. Such is discouraging, but I am learning to be patient. In the meantime, they did give us a free adventure on PDF, so I am happy with that.
I would really like some extra dice sets. Yes, I realize that regular D6s and D12s could be used, but the dice are an important part of not only the rules but setting the feel and atmosphere for the game. I may break down and purchase some from Germany for now.
These two complaints aside, I love The One Ring. It may be my go-to fantasy RPG for now. I highly recommend picking up this game if you have not already.
My only complaints about the game thus far:
1. Delay in release of new material. (ex. Tales From The Wilderland)
2. No individual dice sets for sale (except with a German company).Reading over the company's forum, the release of new material appears to be an issue across their product lines. Such is discouraging, but I am learning to be patient. In the meantime, they did give us a free adventure on PDF, so I am happy with that.
I would really like some extra dice sets. Yes, I realize that regular D6s and D12s could be used, but the dice are an important part of not only the rules but setting the feel and atmosphere for the game. I may break down and purchase some from Germany for now.
These two complaints aside, I love The One Ring. It may be my go-to fantasy RPG for now. I highly recommend picking up this game if you have not already.
buy a stack of plain white dice
buy small set stickersmake your own
....this way you can colour the gandalf and eye of sauron
i did this so we have about 30 dice to use
I have helped make six characters, and once you get the hang of such it goes pretty fast. We start our campaign this Thursday. I plan to post details on my blog. Here is the Prologue Post.
I look forward to running the game and writing about it.
Sounds like it'll be fun.
You may not care btw, but the Sindarin name of your party's elf should more properly read;
Eruveldir (assuming he's going for 'Friend of Eru/God' Eru+meldir), with u as the last letter of the first compound, it changes the first letter m of the second to a v. I personally prefer Eruvellon for the same meaning - using 'mellon' for friend, but that's just personal preference.
This site is very useful for showing the basic rules (though it has a limited vocabulary);
http://elffetish.com/SindaFrame1.php
You may not care btw, but the Sindarin name of your party's elf should more properly read...
Short Answer (to skip wall o' text below): for Tolkien-based works, I am not too picky. But I understand others' desire for authenticity.
***
Long Answer: Yeah, none of us are big Tolkien buffs. I know the most currently due to my research on the topic... and yet I have never read the LotR trilogy or any of the works after (and I only read The Hobbit for the first time recently with the help of supplementing it with the BBC Radio drama). Huzzah for compendiums and wikis... and for used book stores and the internet.
It's great that some people really get into languages and culture, but it is just a story-telling game for us in the end. I won't expect my players to be 100% accurate for the sake of a (massive) work of fiction. But I don't judge others for it because of my own demands with other games and settings.
[Ex. Legend of the Five Rings. I own "Name Construction in Medieval Japan" by Solveig Throndardottir, which I used for both the SCA and L5R for names. I also owned at one time a lot of material for both L5R, Sengoku RPG, and the "Sengoku jidai" period of Japanese history. I am (or was) to L5R/Medieval Japan what others are to LotR.]
PS: That being said, because I play Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) on an RP-Encouraged server, I did do a bit of research on the name of my only elf character. It may not be 100% "correct", but it is in the ballpark. :)
Yay, new product updates on Cubicle 7's website. Here is some info and their planned release schedule for 2012:
The design team has been hard at work on the supplements, as well as developing our plans for the game. We originally envisaged the game as a series of core sets interspersed with smaller supplemental releases, but while we were preparing material for the second core set, we realised that we would be repeating more information than we had expected. That didn’t sit right with us – both Cubicle 7 and Sophisticated Games strongly believe in producing quality games that give gamers value for money. The last thing we wanted was to leave people thinking that they had to buy the same information again just to get the new content. We also realised that moving away from the core set structure would give us a greater degree of freedom with our releases, and that we would be able to cover more areas of Middle-earth and playable cultures sooner.
So, we decided to keep the The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild slip case as the core set for the game, and release supplemental material in sourcebook-sized chunks.The current 2012 schedule is:
Tales from Wilderland - Adventure anthology playable as a campaign - May/June*
The One Ring Dice Set - Seven dice in hard plastic box - May/June*
Loremaster’s Screen and Laketown Sourcebook - Heavy duty screen, and information about the busiest city in the North, including a new playable culture: the Men of the Lake - July/August*
The Darkening of Mirkwood - epic campaign sourcebook and adventures spanning over thirty years - August
Rivendell (title TBC) - core supplement introducing 'unique' cultures: Rangers of the North and Rivendell Elves. Includes material on The Last Homely House, the surrounding areas, magical artefacts, and more - Autumn
And here is the now live pre-order page for Tales from Wilderland. And not to take sales away from Paizo or local stores, but when you go to the page, you will see that a pre-order direct from Cubicle 7 will include a free pdf of the book.
Tales from Wilderland is just about all I need to get much more into running a game of The One Ring someday. Seems like there's a lot of cool ideas and fleshed out places and people in there and it all feels appropriate to the setting.
Something about writing adventures for this game seems more intimidating than for others, so supplements like this are right up my alley.
I got my copy a week ago. After the initial read, I am in love with this game...
I hope people won't mind if I resurrect this thread as a search revealed only two threads on this topic, and I'm eager to chat about it, having just bought into the system this week.
The releases have been behind schedule, but the Wilderlands adventures book, the Mirkwood sourcebook, and the "Darkening of Mirkwood" campaign book are out. So are individual dice sets. The Rivendell sourcebook, which includes far more than the Rivendell area, is out on PDF and will be out in printed form in a matter of weeks. At least one of the books was delayed by a printing problem this year. "Ruins of the North" will be out in early 2015 I think. Unsure when "The Adventurer's Companion" will be out.
My copy of the revised core rules arrived today and I am pleased so far by it. Lovely art, good quality hardcover book, and good mechanics. The layout has been reorganized for easier reading I am told, but remain compatible with the previously published books. I'm excited to digest and eventually play the game. :)
|
Cubicle 7 has unfortunately faced a variety of logistical issues this year that have delayed the products, as you say. Having said that though, once they arrive, I personally find them to be absolutely stellar. They just have such a nice feeling to them with the design elements, color palette and art.
Mirkwood was a wonderful read, so far I'm really enjoying reading through Darkening of Mirkwood as well. The adventure design may be a bit ... intimidating ... for those who are more used to a structured scene by scene design, such as those from Paizo's APs and modules, but I quite enjoy it.
I've also picked up a copy of Hobbit Tales, but have not had a chance to look too deeply into how it integrates with the hazard mechanics of the main system.
Reading through the revised rules, I think I have a good feel for them. Sometime this winter I hopefully will begin two separate groups of players in the game. I am curious which of the published adventures would be the best introduction? One group is younger -- tween to teen -- and the other is mid-20s and older.
The adventure design may be a bit ... intimidating ... for those who are more used to a structured scene by scene design, such as those from Paizo's APs and modules, but I quite enjoy it.
My primary experience leading a tabletop RPG in the past involved a fan-made campaign someone had shared online for Decipher's Lord of the Rings game. That one lasted a few years and was great fun. It began more scripted but became less so later on as the players kept diverging from expected behavior. So I had to improvise more in the end.
I also led a disastrous homebrew Pathfinder game that died in four weeks. I aimed for a sandbox game but the players, who I no longer game with, needed more than that.
Beyond that, I've led a few groups in playtests of a homemade superhero RPG. Those were entirely improv on my part. Mixed results with some great game sessions and others less so.
Yay for thread necroing!
I had forgotten that I had posted several times in this one back in 2012. lol
Anyway, I still love the game, even though I have still not had a chance to get a group together to play it or to find it being run at any local conventions.