Quote from: danskmacabre;1107994OK. Thanks. That feels like a bit of an oversight to me.

Think of AiME as a supplement to D&D 5th edition rather than as a standalone RPG. It formatted the same as my Majestic Wilderlands in regards to Swords & Wizardry.

Likely the issue was that page count would be grown beyond what Cublicle7 was willing to risk on a project like AiME. Since you have two sources of free 5th editions rules (Basic and SRD) Cublicle7 likely felt comfortable with doing it this way.

As to ToR. I bought the original edition some years back when it first came came out. It was a slipcase edition and it came with those special dice too.

The rules were VERY poorly organised.
Character gen was split between the player book and Loremaster book, which made the whole process tedious and lots of page flipping around to find the right sections.
From memory, the index was terrible too.

I ran/played some sessions and the combat rules were equally unclear, very messy, tedious and just not fun at all.

Still, the setting information was lovely.  The art really suited the game and the books were of good physical quality.
But the game itself was just terrible.

It's my understanding a later edition sorted out some of the poor organization, but I sold my original slipcase edition and never went back, which is a shame really, as I LOVE Tolkien's work and have since I was a child.

Anyway, having played and run 5e since it came out some years back, some of the recent discussions here finally convinced me to get the AiME books and so far it makes a LOT more sense and generally feels like a better RPG that ToR.
5e isn't a GREAT system, but is works well enough and this conversion takes away a lot of the issues I had with 5e, so if I DO end up running it, then I think I'll be having a LOT of fun with it.

And thanks for the information all who answered my original question.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1107990Do I lose any LotR flavor with AiME vs. TOR?

What are you looking for that this answer didn't provide?

The short answer is no you don't lose any flavor by using AiME over TOR. AiME is a far better as a Middle Earth RPG than the situation with MERP.

Quote from: estar;1107996Think of AiME as a supplement to D&D 5th edition rather than as a standalone RPG. It formatted the same as my Majestic Wilderlands in regards to Swords & Wizardry.

Likely the issue was that page count would be grown beyond what Cublicle7 was willing to risk on a project like AiME. Since you have two sources of free 5th editions rules (Basic and SRD) Cublicle7 likely felt comfortable with doing it this way.

I hear what you're saying and I understand it considered a supplement from 5e, but it's a dramatically changed supplement.
I doubt it would have effected the cost just to put in a mention for clarity. It could have been a couple of lines.
That and I would not have been surprised if it had it's own system for attribute selection, seeing as so much of other systems were changed.

It's a minor gripe though, mildly annoying.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1108000I doubt it would have effected the cost just to put in a mention for clarity. It could have been a couple of lines.

That and I would not have been surprised if it had it's own system for attribute selection, seeing as so much of other systems were changed.

What AiME focused is altering the list of "stuff", cultures instead of race, classes, magic items, no vancian spells, virtues instead of feats, and monsters. Outside of that 5e was left unchanged. Which includes some to all of the rules in the sections I circled in the Basic ToC.

While it understandable to want a complete rulebook, the amount of material omitted makes it understand why Cublicle 7 didn't do this at first when the demand for AiME was unknown. I bet at some point they do revise AiME and the Loremaster to form a complete RPG without needing to refer to elsewhere.

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@Estar

Oh I don't expect or particularly want AiME to be stand alone and I understand there's a space constraint. It's just this particular point I have a minor issue with and that could have had at least a couple of lines saying, "see the core 5e Rules".
Character gen is a very fundamental part of an RPG, so whilst it was safe enough for me to assume to just use 5e ability generation, I feel it's an unnecessary hurdle for someone new to DnD and in particular these books to overcome.

Really, I LIKE that it's a supplement, as I can take the knowledge I already have with 5e that I've been using for years and focus on the setting and specific rules itself.
I would not like to see this done as a stand alone product and the same system.

I have the later edition of The One Ring, the one that apparently cleaned up the formatting. I have encountered some page-flipping during character creation, but nothing egregious. Mainly this came up because of players going for options not found in the main book.

Having become utterly burnt out on 5e D&D, to the point that seeing "Wisdom" and "Charisma" next to each other makes me want to quit RPGs altogether, I can't imagine playing AiME. I'm just too tired of 5e. I don't know why I react so strongly to it, but I do.

I like the TOR system. There are aspects of it that I would do away with in my own version of the game, notably hit-points and some aspects of the combat system. I'd like simpler combat that didn't deal so much with "damage". But it feels the most like Tolkien's world of any game I've read. And that gives it immense value to me.

Re flavour of AiME, I have a bit of an issue in that it's so heavily based on Lord of the Rings, "oh we are so weary" tone, rather than the more fun and sandboxy vibe of The Hobbit, which I find much more suitable for RPG play as a general fantasy adventure game. The adventures I've bought all seem pretty railroady, even the ones in Breeland which I bought thinking the area would make a nice starter sandbox.

Quote from: estar;1107998What are you looking for that this answer didn't provide?

OMG, I am a dork. Thank you estar!!

Quote from: Jaeger;1107920In defense of 5e - I had the one ring, system wise, it was not really that great.

I have to disagree. Been running a TOR campaign for a while now and everyone loves the system.

Do you have any specific complaints or is it just a general negative feeling?

Quote from: S'mon;1108221Re flavour of AiME, I have a bit of an issue in that it's so heavily based on Lord of the Rings, "oh we are so weary" tone, rather than the more fun and sandboxy vibe of The Hobbit, which I find much more suitable for RPG play as a general fantasy adventure game.

Well the Hobbit had it dark sides just about everybody was a dick to each other at first meeting. And after Smaug died the shadow of the dragon's horde was heavy until the goblins and wargs showed up.

Quote from: S'mon;1108221The adventures I've bought all seem pretty railroady, even the ones in Breeland which I bought thinking the area would make a nice starter sandbox.

That not my impression having run  several of the adventures. I think the main issue is that most at their heart are social adventures. While they have some actions, social interactions drive most of Cublicle 7's adventures. One consequence that action can be straightforward. For example the Marsh Bell is a mission from Gloin to find Balin and his friends. There is really no other way to approach it in terms of action other than to follow the route they took.

However along the way there several important social encounters that can shape the campaign going forward. The encounter with Gloin, the encounter with the people living in the hamlet on the south end of the lake. The encounter with the Mirkwood Elves. Finally the how the rescue plays out with Balin and company.

I am willing to cut Cublicle some slack on this as I run some of their adventures more than once and sure enough they were in the ballpark as to what players are likely to do given the initial circumstance. However when the PCs did something different it was easy to see how the NPCs would alter their plans. The authors explained the NPCs motivations in sufficient detail to allow me to alter things on the fly.

I seen social adventures (like for Ars Magica, Vampire, etc) where they wasn't done well or not all. Where subsequent events didn't make sense given the initial circumstances or motivations of the NPCs.

Having said that. Their region sourcebooks are sandboxes, they describe the region and numerous locations and say little about how things ought to go.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1108250I have to disagree. Been running a TOR campaign for a while now and everyone loves the system.

Do you have any specific complaints or is it just a general negative feeling?

For me the way The One Ring abstracted the actions made it difficult form me to equate what the PCs wanted to do as their characters with the mechanics they gave. I felt like you had to play the game they gave you and interpret the result. Compared to what I do normally which to take the player's description of their action and break down into a series of rulings using the mechanics of system.

The adventures are somewhat of a railroad, but anyone wanting a sandbox can just buy the region books and go wild. I find that's probably a preferable way to run the setting for those not wanting to bother going through the "official" adventures, which are still pretty good. The nice thing about the adventures is that they can still be chopped up, connections removed/added, and dropped into a sandbox campaign as needed, so there's still plenty of use to be had there.

Quote from: Brand55;1108280The adventures are somewhat of a railroad, but anyone wanting a sandbox can just buy the region books and go wild. I find that's probably a preferable way to run the setting for those not wanting to bother going through the "official" adventures, which are still pretty good. The nice thing about the adventures is that they can still be chopped up, connections removed/added, and dropped into a sandbox campaign as needed, so there's still plenty of use to be had there.

Mmm yeah . I did buy the Eriador book and the Wildlands book.

The Wildlands book, whilst the adventures are linked, can be run separately.

The Eriador book I got as I was specifically interested in, but it's not really a region guide and the adventures ARE linked, but they could be modified to not be.

I'll probably restrict myself to region guides hereafter.

I really do miss the MERP "Scenario" books, which were really detailed region guides.
You weren't expected to do anything in a particular order.

You got nice maps, detailed descriptions of areas, politics, personalities etc.  

It'd have adventure suggestions at the back, but the whole thing was set out as the characters drive events by their actions and things are going on around them anyway.

Still, railroaded adventures have their place for one offs and introducing players to a gaming world.