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Cubicle 7 & Sophisticated Games announce The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® RPG

Started by Angus_A, January 20, 2010, 10:56:03 AM

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J Arcane

I always got the sense from ICE that while they may have technically started with a core of actual Tolkien lore, and sprinkled it here and there through the rest of the game to give it an air of authenticity, they more or less just made most of the shit up whole cloth.

It wasn't a bad world they'd created, and in a way you kind of have to modify a lot to get something playable out of it, but authentic it was not.  

Shit, they added whole new continents and shit to the setting.
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ColonelHardisson

Quote from: Claudius;356686In this regard you might be right, I've heard a lot of people state that LotR Coda is based on the films and not the books. When I ask them if they have played or read the corebook, you can imagine the answer. Yes, maybe the movie pics did more harm than good.

I agree, to an extent. When they did have original art (the magic and creature book), it was pretty uninspiring. But you're right; anyone who thinks the game was movie-based hasn't read the core book at all. It would be too bad if this was because the movie stills turned them away, but damn, I'd have at least looked for a review or simply asked someone about it before writing it off if I was a Tolkien fan.

Quote from: flyingmice;356692I agree 100% with this. Decipher LotR was very much faithful to the books. I wouldn't have used that particular system, but they tried *hard* to adapt it to Tolkien, and the work paid off. As Claudius says, it drastically needed some solid playtesting. There were a few holes that would have been apparent, and easily fixed, had done done so.

-clash

I agree with the idea that it could have benefited with more playtesting. It's when it gets passed off as "broken" or "unplayable" that I object. I can't see anyone who actually played a session or two thinking it was either, but there were some things I would have suggested if I'd been playtesting that would have made my playing of it more enjoyable. But as you say, they're easily fixed, and I did so at the table.


Quote from: Akrasia;356743The main reason why I abandoned Decipher's game was that I found it to be poorly edited (at least the first printing).  I spent too much time simply trying to figure out how to create a player character.  It clearly was a system that needed more playtesting and more editing.

I'm hopeful that Cubicle 7 will put out a better product.

Yours is, in my opinion, the most accurate criticism. The organization of the core book was a pain in the ass. It could well be that this is the very thing that gave people the impression the game was "broken."
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.

ColonelHardisson

Quote from: J Arcane;357356I always got the sense from ICE that while they may have technically started with a core of actual Tolkien lore, and sprinkled it here and there through the rest of the game to give it an air of authenticity, they more or less just made most of the shit up whole cloth.

It wasn't a bad world they'd created, and in a way you kind of have to modify a lot to get something playable out of it, but authentic it was not.  

Shit, they added whole new continents and shit to the setting.

Yeah, you'd have to modify quite a bit to make it playable as Middle-earth, but y'know, your point about it not being a bad world is a good one. Had they simply filed the numbers off and renamed and rearranged things to avoid copyright infringement, they could have had a decent "original" setting. It might have gotten the same attention as the Midnight setting, which was essentially Middle-earth, but if Sauron recovered the One Ring. ICE could have had a setting that was closest to Middle-earth, but without the baggage.
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.

J Arcane

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;357358Yeah, you'd have to modify quite a bit to make it playable as Middle-earth, but y'know, your point about it not being a bad world is a good one. Had they simply filed the numbers off and renamed and rearranged things to avoid copyright infringement, they could have had a decent "original" setting. It might have gotten the same attention as the Midnight setting, which was essentially Middle-earth, but if Sauron recovered the One Ring. ICE could have had a setting that was closest to Middle-earth, but without the baggage.

I think you can do well embellishing on an existing setting, so long as you keep the core truths and canon still in there.

WEG Star Wars is a fine example of that.  The add on material for that was so widely respected it got used in other licensed EU novels and references as well.  Earlier versions of the "Star Wars Encyclopedia" actually widely used them as references.  But the core events of the movies were never tampered with, and I think they even worked in a lot of stuff that was only in script notes and such.  

ICE's MERP though, while neat, felt more like a heavily-inspired by, but rather modified version, that was still allowed to use the names.  It was still cool, so long as you could stand the system, but it seemed like they felt they had to do a lot of tweaking to make something people would actually play, and I don't blame them.

Middle-Earth is sort of boring, and takes a lot of tarting up and modification to get to a place where players have room to adventure, without over bearing metaplot and a lack of interesting character options.
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ColonelHardisson

Quote from: J Arcane;357362Middle-Earth is sort of boring, and takes a lot of tarting up and modification to get to a place where players have room to adventure, without over bearing metaplot and a lack of interesting character options.

See, I've never seen it this way at all. The setting always seemed to have tons of potential. I'm not saying you're doing this, but a lot of people get stuck on the Ring Quest, as if it's the only thing worth doing in the setting. Take it away, though, and you still have a setting with as much or more to do than any given low or medium magic setting - from Harn to Greyhawk. This becomes perhaps even more true after the Ring is destroyed (I've detailed this elsewhere), because it then becomes a setting much like most RPG settings - no overarching plot, but tons of possibilities for PCs to make their names in the world.
"Illegitimis non carborundum." - General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell

4e definitely has an Old School feel. If you disagree, cool. I won\'t throw any hyperbole out to prove the point.

crkrueger

I think the Fourth Age is the best age to run Middle Earth in, especially after all the Ringbearers and Fellowship members are dead or passed into the West.  FA 127 or so IIRC.

There is tons of work to be done, the rebuilding of Arnor and Gondor, retaking of Khazad-Dum and Carn-Dum.  There's always Mount Gundabad for Orcs, not to mention the cleansing of Gorgoroth.   The PCs have room to explore and grow, out from under the shadow of the books.
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Peregrin

Quote from: CRKrueger;357403I think the Fourth Age is the best age to run Middle Earth in, especially after all the Ringbearers and Fellowship members are dead or passed into the West.  FA 127 or so IIRC.

There is tons of work to be done, the rebuilding of Arnor and Gondor, retaking of Khazad-Dum and Carn-Dum.  There's always Mount Gundabad for Orcs, not to mention the cleansing of Gorgoroth.   The PCs have room to explore and grow, out from under the shadow of the books.

True dat.  The Mouse Guard hack Realm Guard focuses on the Fourth Age, and the premise of playing a ranger scouting through the old ruins in search of places to rebuild or flushing out leftover dangers/evils is attractive to me, even if the game system it's based on isn't trad.  

However, there exists the problem of working with much larger threats if you want a more epic continent-spanning adventure that goes beyond the patrol-style of Realm Guard.  I'm not really familiar with much lore outside of The Hobbit or LotR, but are there really any large threats leftover that could cater to groups that might want to focus on your stock Good vs. Big Evil High-fantasy type game?
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selfdeleteduser00001

Quote from: jdurall;356738Could you explain which sourcebook that was?

Two published sourcebooks were named for the 1st and 2nd books, and had sections on "how the film diverges from from the book," with the default source material being the book.

I bought and used both sourcebooks for my BRP Middle Earth games and they are clearly book based but with a clear guide to the movie differences.

I didn't mind them using the movie art which was awesome, but then again, I like the movies.. and I guess that this thread has a lot more to do with liking the movies than the CODA game..
:-|

jibbajibba

Quote from: Peregrin;357404However, there exists the problem of working with much larger threats if you want a more epic continent-spanning adventure that goes beyond the patrol-style of Realm Guard.  I'm not really familiar with much lore outside of The Hobbit or LotR, but are there really any large threats leftover that could cater to groups that might want to focus on your stock Good vs. Big Evil High-fantasy type game?

At the very least you have all those Easterling kingdoms / empires etc that extend beyond Mordor. I can easily see an evil empire building up there based on some fragment of old magic. Maybe the blue wizards have just been biding their time and are now ready to strike.
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