The Lord of the Rings RPG by Decipher

[Jeivar]

(This one) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Roleplaying_Game)

I've only seen the book itself once, several years ago in the hands of an acquaintance I've long since dropped out of contact with. I've recently started thinking about it, and given how massively popular and detailed the Middle Earth setting is it struck me as odd that I never see it mentioned anywhere.

Is the game itself just crap, or did it get a limited release or couldn't it just compete with more over the top settings?

[Daremonai]

Aside from certain races being hugely more powerful than others without any kind of balancing factor (elves), I quite liked it as a system. I think it was just a very limited release, because I've never seen a copy on shop shelves.

[Frozen_Feet]

I own the core book, and the system is pretty solid, and the book has beautiful imagery from the movies. Yes, Elves are super, but that's because the game's focused on faithfully presenting Middle-Earth, which is only a bonus in my mind for a game that calls itself Lord of the Rings RPG. :smalltongue: In practice, an elf doesn't overshadow others in a mixed race group very badly - and people play other things than elves simply by the virtue of, well, not wanting to play elves.

I've only used the system for a brief while though, and hardly to its full extent, so I can't tell how good it is overall just yet.

[STsinderman]

It might be a thought to look at cubicle 7's release in 2011 The One Ring. Though i have yet to get to grips with the system myself i have heard only good things.

[Janus]

I had the book years ago (since I couldn't get D&D at the time for certain reason), but never got the chance to actually play it with anyone.
Like Daremonai said, elves were insanely powerful, and I remember finding some interesting rule exploits, too.
I think that players could spend "action points" or something to boost their dice rolls, and since humans got extra points, that meant they could perform amazing feats once a day without fail (my favorite being jumping 20ft straight in the air for no gosh darned reason).
Also, I remember the transformation spell being way overpowered. I looked, but never found a rule that could stop a mage from transforming a balrog into an insect and squashing it.

[The_Snark]

I played this once, briefly; one of my friends got a boxed adventure that ran a pregenerated Fellowship through Moria. One of my first introductions to tabletop RPGs, in fact.

I feel some nostalgia for it, but when I looked at the full book years later I felt it was sort of clunky. It's functional, and not too complicated, but the mechanics are not very imaginative and the balance is haphazard. Combat could get pretty repetitive, since it consisted mostly of rolling some combat skill against some defense skill until all the enemies were dead. (Note to anyone who decides to run this system: don't make your players wade through hordes of orcs. It's boring.)

And I recall being annoyed that characters could be spellcasters right from the start. There may have been some half-hearted attempts to stress that magic was rare and PCs were supposed to be heroic exceptions to the rule, but when every party ends up with one or more wannabe wizards that falls pretty flat. The overall impression the book gave was that wizards' apprentices and dwarven runecarvers and such were commonplace. Not a fan of that; I can deal with game imbalances to reflect the setting (i.e. Elves being powerful), but I do not like changing the setting to make it more gamelike.

[Balain]

I played it a few times close to when it came out. I picked it up a couple years ago , thinking our current group may play it now and then as a break from other systems.

I remember it working well. I don't recall being able to play wizards. They were elite classes or master classes or what ever they were called.

There was some weaker magic using classes, you could be from the start. I was okay with that. From what I remember from Middle Earth history (Simirilion I think) The wizards taught others (mostly elves) to use magic. That's why there is a bunch of magic items in middle earth. (Gandalf tells Frodo there are many magic rings that make you invisible, so he wasn't sure if it was the one ring)

I didn't like wizards being a playable master class. That's why in are game used the same mechanics and magic, just called it something else.

Anyways I think what worked well in the game I played of it, We weren't allowed to make our own characters. The GM pre-made some characters and said, You can be this one or this one.

[Beleriphon]

(Gandalf tells Frodo there are many magic rings that make you invisible, so he wasn't sure if it was the one ring)

I think the comment was more about there being many magic rings, all of them dangerous in one way or another.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I've heard that The One Ring is much, much better. I'm also going to offer Burning Wheel Gold as an option for Tolkienesque gameplay. I'm currently using the system (with very little modification) to run a game based on Fourth Age Gondor mixed with some aspects of the Dragon Age world, but dark and gritty as it should have been.

[horngeek]

Keep in mind that if you can only play pbp, The One Ring doesn't have many players...

[Glaurung]

A case could be made for the 5 Wizards and many elves (at least Noldor and Sindar, especially old elves) not being player characters, especially if the rule set one chooses emphasizes balance. Dwarves, Wood Elves, men (Numenorian or otherwise), and hobbits. If one boils the novels down to a glorified RPB, Glorfindel, Elrond, Celeborn, and Galadriel were the equivalent of NPCs, consulted by the fellowship, lended assistance to the fellowship, and so on.

In this view, Gandalf moved between PC and NPC. At some points he functions as a member of the fellowship but at other points he steps out and does god-like things (such as slaying a Balrog, dying, and being resurrected). He was uber-powered compared to the rest of the fellowship but Tolkien included limitations. Olorin gave up much when he took the form of an old man and returned to Middle Earth. At various points in _Fellowship_ he points out that he does not want to use magic for fear of Saruman or the Nazgul locating the him, his companions, and the ring. When your job is to be cheerleader/motivator for the free peoples, soloing the adventure is not an option...

I could imagine a game where one player takes on a role of a Wizard or older elf, but they would have to function with limitations. Easier said than done at a game table. And the system would have to allow for a goblin's spear being a lethal thing to anyone...