I expect there have been many threads on this in the past, but I thought I'd start my very own, because I am a special snowflake.

What are people's thoughts on The One Ring? I've heard bits and pieces about it and like some of what I've heard, but it also seems to me that some people out there loathe it.

Specifically, will it satisfy a huge Tolkien devotee like me? Does it capture the mood and feel of Tolkien's legendarium (note: not Peter Jackson's increasingly vulgar wank fests) and is it geared towards people like me who use words like "legendarium" with a straight face?

Some good ideas that turn into exercises in dice rolling.

Felt like busy work. Every time we were in danger of having fun the game barged in and called for 27 dice rolls.

Boring combination of too much dice rolling and too much storygamey crap. It's the actual game that people complain about WFRP3 being. Utter waste of money.

As a Tolkein fan, frankly you'd be better off hacking your own LOTR stuff, unless you really want a pretty art book (And to be fair, it is very pretty).

I've made a character, and that looks very good to me, now I need to try and play it.

I don't know about "storygame" stuff, but it definitely feels like Tolkien stuff to me.

I liked the basics of the hex-based travelling rules (only read, never played). They seemed simple enough.

Quote from: noisms;785800I expect there have been many threads on this in the past, but I thought I'd start my very own, because I am a special snowflake.

What are people's thoughts on The One Ring? I've heard bits and pieces about it and like some of what I've heard, but it also seems to me that some people out there loathe it.

Specifically, will it satisfy a huge Tolkien devotee like me? Does it capture the mood and feel of Tolkien's legendarium (note: not Peter Jackson's increasingly vulgar wank fests) and is it geared towards people like me who use words like "legendarium" with a straight face?

i like it. if nothing else you should get your hands on heart of the wild and darkening of the mirkwood which is basically KAP the great campaign for middle-earth.

also, i am using modified journey rules for my DCC kingmaker campaign and they work like a charm.

of course, different strokes and all that...

Made me want to re-start one of my Middle Earth campaigns using D&D or GURPs or The Fantasy Trip or hacked Pendragon or hacked Runequest. Basically, I hate, hate, hate licensed games that have a different fucking rule for every little thing, for reasons that have little to do with the setting. That said, the treatment of the setting is terrific.

Our GM ran it. I liked the adventures, but we abandoned the system by the third session and used our own instead.

It reads very well. And the mechanics serve the interests of Tolkien's themes cleverly.

However, it's a massive pain in the ass to run at the table. There are a shocking number of sub-systems scattered over two poorly organized books. I gave up after three sessions.

Indeed; it is a little like running Burning Wheel after it has been completely disassembled into individual pages, which are then shuffled to a completely random distribution and stapled back together into two different volumes. Absolute madness.

I ran the heck out of a MERP / Rolemaster game when I was in college (Thorin hedges his bet and hires the players to get rid of the dragon somehow for their weight in gold).

How does The One Ring compare with MERP for "feel"?

Quote from: Lynn;785864I ran the heck out of a MERP / Rolemaster game when I was in college (Thorin hedges his bet and hires the players to get rid of the dragon somehow for their weight in gold).

How does The One Ring compare with MERP for "feel"?

Completely different. MERP didn't try to mimic Middle-earth at all. I was really excited for The One Ring RPG but like someone said above it takes everything I hate about storygaming and adds a lot of die rolling.

I'm still a huge fan of Decipher's Lord of the Rings game.

I Gmed two sessions, in a nutshell :

_character creation was very good, we ended up with characters really grounded into Middle Earth, not like a regular fantasy party.

_the rules, while being an interesting read, quickly became a chore. I was left with the impression that the rules were trying too hard to "create the story" when my players and myself simply did not need that.

If I was to go on with that campaign I'd use Legends of Anglerre or Fate Core while keeping some chargen elements from the One Ring.

ToR is a much better representation of canonical middle earth than any other game. I just dislike the system and think the rule book organization is a travesty.

MERP is deservedly famous for its maps and completist coverage of the world. These remain my first-rank resources whenever I run a middle earth game. But the system is a drag (yes, I played a lot of it years ago...). And the details of the way the setting is presented strike a lot of bad notes. Outrageously high power level. Magic items everywhere. I could go on.

LotR was a great product line — better than ToR, I would say, with one fatal flaw: The game itself was one of the few I would say is genuinely 'broken' That word is over used in our online world, but it actually applies in this case. You get the sense it wasn't even play tested. If you think I'm wrong, try resolving a fight between a half dozen humans and a half dozen orcs. Call me when you are 1 week into the process and we can talk about how it is going. But, the Moria boxed set is awesome. And the boxed set of maps is absolutely required by anyone who wants to run a middle earth game. Just use them with another game system...

Interesting. So nice fluff, terrible mechanics/organisation is what seems to be the consensus?