Lord of the Rings RPG, Is it any good? Options

[theartthief]

I happened to notice a Lord of the Rings RPG in the bookstore and was wondering if anyone had played it knew anything about it. It is produced by Decipher ®, who as usual, have nothing useful about game mechanics on their website.

I did very briefly look the core book over and noticed there are a ton of attributes which is a normal turn off, but I love Lord of the Rings. If anyone can help I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

- theartthief

[Ancient History]

It sucks. Avoid it like the plague. If you must, go back to Iron Crown Enterprises or the old war games for your LotR fix.

[Kakkaraun]

Yep, ICE's MERP (if you can't figure out what that stands for, shame!) was actually a pretty decent system. I still have a few of its books right here.

[shadd4d]

Character creation in that game takes longer than Shadowrun with all the bells and whistles. I also have no real positive feelings toward a random generation, as opposed to point building and such.

Don

[Hida Tsuzua]

I've got the LotR RPG. And while I haven't gotten a chance to play any, I have gone over the book many times.

The system is a 2d6+skill+attribute mod+whatver with a TN that ranges from 5 to 20 so tests can be somewhat hard at times, but seems alright (I'll run tests on the chances another time).

Character creation is somewhat unusual. You choose your race gaining the usual racial advantages (some useful some just flavor like the hobbits +3 to cooking) and attribute modifiers. Then however you choose 6 skills from a list and gain advantages and disadvantages at a 1:1 ratio from another list. Afterwards you choose your order (a fairly lax class) that gives you more skills depending on the class and you choose a special class ability (like pick locks or favoured weapon). Finally you're given some extra points for skills and advantages as well as points to put into your attributes.

The attributes are your standard RPG fare (a quickness one, a health one, a smarts one, etc), but charisma is replaced with Bearing and that has some uses in the game outside of talking to people.

Some of the classes stink (mariner?). There are also advanced classes that give you new nifty abilities to choose from when you "advance" if you meet certain requirements. Leaving is done by "advancing." You gain XP until you get a certain amount. At which point, you gain some skill points and a new class ability.

Lastly, they allow for spell-casting PCs. I understand why they did it (to allow for people to play as Gandalf type characters), but it doesn't really fit into the setting to have wizard hobbits. To its credit, it keeps the magic fairly low key but useful (the good stuff is "evil" though) though Enhance Food is of questionable usefulness outside of the wizard hobbits. You learn spells and then you cast them using your bearing stat. If you're successful, the spell works. If not, you take what basically amounts to drain (weariness). Casting a lot of spells in a shot period of time causes the casting TN to go up risking failure and drain. It's interesting but I don't know if stacks up very well.

The RPG also tries to enforce the roleplaying aspect of the LotR with codes of a Tokien hero, hints for reducing combat and flashy displays of magic, lack of quick healing, etc. Basically they are trying to say "Don't play this as D&D in Middle Earth" to varies degrees of effectiveness.

The only aspect in the RPG from the movies are the pictures. When the movies and books are different they go with the books, and the text is full of quotes from the books as well with references from The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.

The default time of the game is the "Watchful Peace" or the rather long time period between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Though I've always been itching to play a First Age game.

My review is that it's worth checking out a bit before getting as it is rather expensive at $40 US. Or just use another game system and set it in Middle-Earth (a good choice might be a modified 1st Edition Legend of Five Rules system). Lastly, I never want to hear "the subtle magic of Middle Earth" ever again.

[Ditaki]

If you're interested in looking at ICE's MERP, if you head on over to www.merp.com, they have downloadable PDFs of most (if not all) of the books that ICE put out. It looks like it's on the level too, legality wise.

[Kagetenshi]

Order: Burglar?

~J

[Kakkaraun]

[Daishi]

The system is broken. Character creation is heavily loaded in favour of some races and orders, the rest of them just being filler really. Combat is either long and tedious, or completely disregarding of character capabilities. The magic implementation is fascinating in terms of spell selection and concepts for melding spells together. The actual all-or-nothing casting system is weak.

The RPG has many strong points, but they are isolated and it is largely unplayable as shipped.