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>>94785085
>18 euros for a dice set

>>94785254
It's the second edition thing, apparently? I know you could just throw the regular dice and pretend they have the corresponding symbols. Especially since the set is so damn expensive.

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>>94785085
Stop consuming, you disgusting consoooooooomer.

>>94785085
I fucking hate proprietary props games but at least the one ring has nothing you can emulate anyways with cheap dice and a permanent marker if you want to be fancy enough.

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>buying proprietary dice for a game
>not just having bought dice with the same layout 15 years ago without knowing what they're good for and finally finding a use for them

>>94785085
You could buy the starter set to test it and it also comes with a set of dice for it.

The One Ring 2nd ed is the best TTRPG I have ever run. It is a joy to GM, the game actually gives you rules for things that many games just give you vague suggestions for.
>Best travel system, actually gets the rigor and arduos nature of crossing untracked wilderness across
>Codified rules for important social situations. Makes improvising encounters much easier
>Combat is zone-based, no individual initiative, and it has a high lethality. Lighting fast compared to D&D
>Classless, skill based system is amazing and makes character growth more gradual and believable
Also, if you get the Moria book, it has very good solo rules if you're into that.

It isn't a flawless system though. The hardest things to get adjusted to as a GM will be improv-ing your journey events without having them become repetitive. Strongly recommend making small tables for different regions and then replacing events as you use them.

As a player, the hardest adjustment I noticed from my previously D&D players is the lack of paper button type options (ie spells, feats, etc). Combat allows players to do whatever they want in addition to their normal attacks, and it relies on player creativity in addition to the LM. The game also encourages dice jockeying by players, giving them bonuses for playing into their distinctive features or interacting with the world to gain advantages. Many players in my experience are unused to having a bigger share of control on the narrative and so they need nudging for a while.

Bottom line is I love this game and could go on for hours. It captures the spirit and themes of Tolkien's books better than any other game, and many of the systems are so good I will be stealing them to use in other games.

>>94790491
Not OP but thank you for an actual answer. I've been looking for good travel rules to steal, I'll check it One Ring.

>>94790491
I've been looking over the books seeing if there's anything of note to swipe for a more tactical and crunchy style of game. Anything you'd recommend I give more than a glance over in that regard?

>>94790491
I've been reading the books lately, really like how it's set up. Would ideally want to join a game, but at this point the urge is such that I'm beginning to consider GMing one.

For the first time in my life, with a system I barely understand.

>>94790523
Same.

>>94791047
Hmm. TOR isn't necessarily crunchy, it just has rules for things that many other games do a bad job of and just leave it up to the DM to come up with game mechanics. However for a crunchier campaign, I would definitely steal the Journeys and Fatigue systems

The basic gist is, Journeys help illustrate the rigor of cross-country travel in a way that mechanically gets the arduous nature of the task across. You have roles which handle the tasks needed on a day to day basis (Guide, Hunter, Scout, Look Out) and you have to make rolls that determine how many hardships the company encounters which the game calls Journey Events. Events are usually small things themed after whatever location you're in that build up Fatigue and other negative statuses. I like to throw in a couple bigger Events that can turn into adventures in their own right during long travel stretches (think Bilbo and the Dwarves encountering the trolls on the way to Rivendell)

Fatigue is the real star here. A temporary increase in your Load (aka carry capacity) that is very hard to shake off. You lose it at a very slow daily rate of rest, and only if you are resting in a safe, comfortable place like an inn. When you are weary due to your high Load, all your rolls get much worse. If your company travels 100 miles through swamps and hills to an orc fortress without a resting spot along the way, they may find that they are too weary to effectively do what they came for, without great risk of injury or death.

That's the real secret sauce, because now your players are actively engaging with travel. They're trying to find info about the wild lands between places so they can safely plan a route. They're trying to find places to rest along the way. Its wonderful. I've never seen a game where the players are doing this on the big "overworld" scale as you get in TOR.

If I were porting this, I would really focus on making sure the fatigue substitute is equally punishing and difficult to toss off.

>>94785085
Before going all in on retail price, check if there's a bundle. that's how i got mine from free league, and it was a good price. I have yet to run it, but the books are high quality and the game looks like it has the right granularity for being about journeys. I don't know if they have rules for mass combat, but i think they should.

Since I'm still thinking about, here is my breakdown of the books, and my ranking of each.
>The One Ring Core Rules
>Rating : Very Good, Required
For the most part organized very well. Great art, very helpful for the LM and the players. Has a decent Gazeteer style section for the Eriadaor region to help the unfamilar run the game, and the starter adventure in the back is actually very nice and helps you design your own adventures in the future. Weaknesses are that the adversary list is a bit spartan, and information regarding equipment is spread apart into two areas for no real reason.

>Ruins of the Lost Realm
>Rating : Okay, Situational
This book is odd. It wants to be a gazeteer about the city of Tharbad, and a collection of unrelated adventure locations, and a campaign book. The Tharbad details are pretty good and tie in to Tales from the Lone Lands. And the locations by themselves range from average to great. One underrated aspect of this book is all the new NPC stats and the short rule changes in the Appendix. The alternative Council time limits makes Councils WAY better in my opinion and should always be used. Overall its a mixed bag. It can be really nice to jumpstart ideas for your campaign, but it might be tricky to find ways to tie these locations in logically.

>Tales from the Lone Lands
>Rating : Very good, but somewhat linear
This is more of a traditional campaign book. It is a collection of six "stories" which are multi-session adventures of their own. You are best served adding your own stuff between chapters as your players move about, to get them moving in the directions the book wants. The adventures are almost all great and present many possible approaches for the players to take. It also adds a lot of great monster stats and cool items for the players to get. The lore connections to Silmarillion are really fun for Tolkien nerds like me to play with. It pairs well with some of the info in Ruins. I ran this campaign and it was a ton of fun.

>>94795598
(Cont)
>Moria : Through the Doors of Durin
>Rating : Amazing, the best book
This book blows the previous two out of the water. It's the ultimate campaign book. Lots of new, interesting NPCs, from rivals to monsters to allies. Including orc cultures within Moria, and ways the players might even interact with them. New rules for Journeys underground which do an incredible job getting the oppressive atmosphere of Moria across. The map of Moria is huge and extensive and there are TONS of adventure locations. It has rules that dictate how players need to find locations based on how famous or hidden they are, and the locations are all varied and interesting. It also has extensive solo rules, which are also useful in a normal game if the company has a group of NPCs with them.

It even adds a new dwarf subculture. This book is really cool. Easy buy.

>Realms of the Three Rings
>Rating : Great, second best book
This one is more like Ruins of the Lost Realm than Moria, but it has much better direction than Ruins and is more focused. Has a much more robust gazeteer section on all the Elven lands east of and including Lorien. Includes new elven player subcultures for Lorien, and the based high elves that were previously only in a side pamphlet. The adventure locations have a lot of variety and interesting social setups. The suggested campaigns link to the adventures inside better than Ruins and are more compelling. This book is really good, like Moria, and if you want to interact with Elves it is the best option.

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>>94795794
Liked the Moria one so much that I actually bought it as a proper thing, it looks so cool. Would love to be in a Balin's Expedition campaign with it.

>>94785085
You actually just missed a Bundle of Holding that had a huge chunk of the books in it, PDF of course but getting a taste for about $20 isn't bad.

>>94786807
How did this anime get so popular despite being so ugly?

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Also don't get it confused with this, both made by Free League but this is 5E rather than TORs own style of game.

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>>94785085
You need to have a party who wants to play LotR.
There is no economics.
There are unnecessary overlapping skills.

>>94796884
That'll be the hard part. Of my current social circle, I can't think of any who are really LOTR fans (or at least not the same autistic degree I am, which is always a recipe for disaster). And it's been so long since I've looked for a game I don't even know where I'd begin.

>>94796884
Ah yes, the lack of economics is important to mention, as it is a pretty radical departure from most TTRPGs. Its abstracted away into "treasure" and "standard of living" which doesn't really do too much besides indicate if you can afford the top tier heavy armors, how good of a horse you can have, and stuff involving raising an heir. I get why it isnt here, I mean nobody goes ona shopping trip in Tolkien's stories. Even in the story about finding treasure. Definitely an adjustment for most players.

>>94797772
In my group, I'm the only one who is super obsessed with Tolkien. I am running the game, I think as long as the most autistic one is running the game, it will be fine. One of my players hadn't even seen the movies until last year. Simply do as Tolkien did, and elude and hint at a greater world in your descriptions. Remember, their characters shluldnt even really know everything most people do from the movies. So their ignorance actually helps versimilitude in my experience.

>>94797793
Nah, I don't think I can be a GM, at least not yet. I've never done it before in my life, and there's still a lot about this system's mechanics I don't understand at the moment. Probably ones that I'd need to see in action.

>>94785085
>before I pull the plug
You know that means to just stop the thing right?
To cut the power, to stop supporting it.

You should do that.

>>94790491
Does the book respects Tolkien lore? Can you faithfully play other races like Elves and Dwarves?

>>94790491
Based "actually plays games" anon

>>94798751
I consider myself fairly well-read when it comes to Tolkien. I consider most of the content of the various books to be faithful. Particularly the mechanics strongly support the morals and themes of Tolkien. You can play as Dwarves/Elves/Hobbits, they're separated into individual heroic cultures, IE Dwarves of Durin's Folk, Elves of Lindon, High Elves of Rivendell, Men of Bree, Rangers of the North and so on. They've each got some different cultural virtues, which are somewhat like feats in D&D, as well as (slightly) different stat arrays, starting skill levels and so on. Generally the themes of each race come across pretty strong. Elves can basically "cheat" and succeed magically at skill checks, but they take a long time to recover from Shadow, and have lower Hope ratings. Hobbits have really high Hope and resist Shadow very effectively, but can't use big weapons and have lower strength ratings. You get the idea.

As for the adventures and other books, it is very clear that a lot of love and respect for Tolkien's world has gone into it, but I will say that they are also unafraid to "fill in the blanks" to make interesting adventures and varieties of encounters. Some adventures feel more like the Middle Earth of The Hobbit, and some feel more like the Middle Earth of Lord of the Rings. For what it is worth, I have not encountered anything offensive to my sensibilities in the books, whereas I have found much to dislike about say, Rings of Power. Nothing really like that here.

>>94798979
Thank you for the reply anon. This is kind of a whitepill. I'm one of those raging autists that goes apeshit if I see anything that can be perceived as a disrespect toward Tolkien's vision. So reading this really makes me want to check the books out and even give them a try. Is the book designed around always betting a big bad, or you can just go missing around, like in The Hobbit with friends? Also, kind of an unrelated questions, but do you think things like TOR could make Middle-Earth beat stuff like Forgotten Realms or D&D in terms of richness and popularity for people to play?

>>94799024
Most books are almost more designed around going around and doing small good deeds rather than beating big bads. Tales from the Lone Lands has more of a "big bad" flavor though. The starter set has a small campaign set entirely within the Shire and is pretty low stakes, with only a handful of dangerous combats. Your characters are considered to be more like slightly above average to start, and not at all reaching Aragorn level. The combat is quite lethal, and even an equal number of orcs could quickly turn into a deadly encounter, so the scope is usually smaller.

As for popularity, I think it is unlikely, and the reason for that is the license. Anybody can make and publish a D&D "compatible" adventure without issues and it mostly works. You cannot do that in Middle Earth without a license. Popularity relies on a stream of content, and Free League is unable to compete with the entirety of the D&D industry on their own in that regard.

>>94799076
I was mostly talking on a hypothetical scenario where free rein is giving and Middle-Earth beats 'rivals' on the strongness of appeal as a setting.

>>94799204
Oh I see. In that case, maybe. Back in the old days way before the movies, MERP was a pretty strong competitor to D&D, it had tons of small releases. So I'm sure it could happen again, it would just take an equal output and lots of marketting. TOR already has it beaten in quality imo.

>>94799273
>TOR already has it beaten in quality imo.
Not that Anon, but I kind of agree also, just from reading the books. I feel like it's captured the vibe of the original stories much better, the feel of them. MERP was good, and sure cast a wide net (I do feel the absence of much information on Wilderland somewhat keenly for TOR, but perhaps they just haven't got to it yet) but I felt like it went too far with quantifying everything. Assigning numerical values to literally everything, like it's a trading card game. Felt like missing the point a bit.

>>94798979
Totally this. I DM'd a year long campaign in TOR 2e and it quickly turned in my system of choice. The Eye counter rising is a great way to add tension to sessions too

>>94800115
I love the Eye Awareness mechanic. It's cool that the players know that rolling 11s/Eyes is bad and that it leads to "something bad" happening because it builds tension. I keep the actual number a secret so that they never truly know when its coming. I also like that it discourages flagrant use of magical items and such. It really gets the feel of the setting across. Of course Gandalf didn't use his powers often, he didnt want attention.

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>>94799024
>TOR could make Middle-Earth beat stuff like Forgotten Realms or D&D in terms of richness and popularity

there's a problem for that: TOR takes Tolkien's world seriously, which means there's no room for the stupid antics most mainstream players look for. The scope is centered on the interim between the Hobbit and Lotr, which means no world changing events, and the tone is mostly sombre and serious. Characters losing hope makes them turn gradually into corrupted individuals with noble intentions who are well represented in the books (Denethor, Boromir), which is also a big pitfall for beer and pretzels rollplayers.

There's no character builds, spells or combos, no wacky races and no nonsense diverse cosmopolitan societies. Most folk keep to their own race and travel is almost nonexistant (there's a small settlement described in Ruins of the Lost Realm in which a family has been reusing their iron tools for generations, to the point of wearing them down so much that when they break, they cannot repair them because there's no trade). The feeling of the gravity and melancholy is ingrained in the setting, and thus requires adult player mindsets to engage properly. So no, it will never be a thing with mainstream FOMO children, and the game is all the better for it.

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How do we feel about this allowing us to play as Elves, High Elves and Elf Lords?

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>>94804369
Pretty good, I think they're balanced enough, and the Elf Lords bit is up-front about how using these guys in a full party would probably make the game way too easy.

Feel like a good way to capture the books using picrel or whoever as someone who turns up to help the party get through a tight spot, then leaves.

>>94804416
Wait, is the book out already?

>>94804459
It is and it isn't- the physical versions aren't shipping yet but the PDF one gets sent straight to you.

>>94790491
Thanks for the write up my party is too autistic for most games as they are unable to even remember basic things like to hit numbers

One issue I have with the system: having magical items just grant you +1d to a special roll makes them boring fast. I just homebrewed them as having special effects instead and maybe giving extra dice if they are designed to aid you in tasks.

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>>94804661
What kinds of special effects? Especially for something like picrel, where it's very pretty but still just a rock.

>>94797793
>I think as long as the most autistic one is running the game, it will be fine
That's good to hear. I've been wanting to give it a try since the books seem really well thought out, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in my group who's read the books seriously or who reads books for enjoyment at all

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Speaking of autism (I love sentences that start this way), how much of LOTR's historical backing do you like to put in your games?

That is to say, all the kind of vibes of the Anglo-Saxon period that Tolkien drew on in the first place. How far would you want to go with that?

I've a feeling I'd go nuts for it myself if given the chance, I love working in historical fiction stuff to fantasy like this. Totally haven't been reading up on classical and post-migration public sanitation to figure out how the plumbing and wastewater systems in Moria should work, lmao.

>>94806846
Just fun things like jetpacks, flamethrowers, guns and a few other items that came though a strange portal.

>>94810830
To me, Dwarves always just shit in a bucket and dump it into the mines.

>>94796801
I pirated this just to steal the magic system only to not find any. Pathetic really.
It's just plain impossible to play anything other than DnD with the DnD spell list.

>>94811765
>Get 5e splat for a setting with five (named) wizards
>Gets mad he cannot be a wizard

The nerve on some people

>>94814309
5e splat that instead of building on top of 5e says what you can't use instead
>The nerve on some people

>>94818392
yes.
>I want to play a totally incompatible game system built for fantasy super heroes in Middle Earth, a setting with barely any magic, high lethality and no freakshow races
>I also don't want to lose any options even if they make 0 sense in the context of the setting

Why even play in Middle-Earth then dipshit

>>94818392
Nta but the niggers like you that assume everything written inside the manuals should be automatically and always available are the main reason for d&d being fucking shit.

>>94818910
>Why even play in Middle-Earth then dipshit
Dipshit, the question should be why even use 5e as a base.
>>94818934
I don't play 5e. I'm just dumbfounded why negros like you accept splats that are just lore blog entries with zero rules for the system in question. Might as well just print out something from a Tolkien fan blog page paypiggie

>>94818995
I don't play 5e as well but i do understand that themes inform the available options regardless the game in question. I do also agree that using d&d for lotr is fucking retarded.

>>94818995
I doubt anyone in this thread plays the 5e version of the game.
The real experience is in its own The One Ring system.

>>94804661
The +1/+2d effect also usually means that the item grants you a magical success. In other words it can do things you would not be able to do without magic, basically the players or LM come up with the effect. This relies on player creativity to take advantage of. But your idea of stacking other homebrew effects on to items is actually supported in the books. Several of the items in Tales From the Lone Lands have other effects (there is a cursed dagger that turns creatures wounded by it into wraiths, a ring which extends your lifespan, etc). So you have precedent to add effects, I frequently do this.
>>94818392
You are genuinely retarded. This guy has your number just right >>94818934

>>94818995
I dont even play 5e and in a few minutes I have already found that the splat does contain
>new rules for Journey, Council and Skill Endeavor systems ported from The One Ring
>All the heroic cultures and their feats/virtues
And I'm sure many other things. So no, just because it (rightfully) excludes superhero powers doesn't mean it is a "lore blog". Would I use it over TOR though? No.

>>94785085
Good investment

>>94785085

>anything I should know..
>'pull the plug'

yeah, learn what pull the plug means.

Can I play as a Balrog?

>>94826375
No, its not called Mines & Balrogs

>>94829758
It sounds like you're playing it wrong.