The One Ring RPG - anybody tried it yet?

[tenuki]

A friend gave me the rulebooks in the hope that I'd run a game. I went through them and my first thought was 'mixed bag'.

Plus
- I like the choice of time and location (Rhovanion after Bard punched Smaug's ticket)
- Hardly any magic. Zap-em spells don't belong in a Tolkien setting of course (unless you're a Maia), but it's still a courageous decision on part of the designers given the preferences of roleplayers in general.

Minus
- The Heart stat has huge synergies -- Hope (which works roughly like Karma points in Earthdawn), HP, ... -- to the point that it looks almost futile to max out anything else.
- While the combat system looks interesting on paper, I think they seriously fucked up their math. I predict severe balance issues, e.g. the Great Spear being the obvious go-to weapon if you want to actually kill stuff and not just look oh-so thematic.
- The way armor works is just plain weird. It reduces your chances of taking a crit ('piercing blow') while reducing your available endurance. This means that the average (non-critical) hit affects you more when you're wearing heavy armor.
- The 'stances' system completely denies NPCs/enemy critters any tactical options. Besides, no PC in his right mind would ever take anything other than a defensive stance.
- For a system that uses only 24 (or so) skills, a lot of them pile up in one relatively narrow area: Explore, Travel, Hunting, Search, Awareness are all crucial for ranger types, while a fighter needs only a strong weapon skill. Also, non-combat skills are significantly harder to raise after character creation, at least in the mid range, which is where stuff tends to happen.
- When characters do what passes for leveling up, they can choose between new special abilities ('Virtues') and getting new or improved gear ('Rewards'). That's a load of crap. Why would anyone spend XP on gear that can also be found? Might be moddable by turning the Rewards into abilities that enable characters to use stuff in new ways.

Anybody tried it out?

[Josh_Kablack]

- Hardly any magic. Zap-em spells don't belong in a Tolkien setting

But Gandalf turning trolls to stone, spooking goblins with Pyrotechnics, throwing Fire Seeds grenades at wargs happens in The Hobbit - so if you want to go the "unless you're a maiar route", then being a maiar needs to be something PCs can do.

While it's not a zap-it spell, Aragorn totally cast healing magic on Frodo after the run in with the Nazgul. Meaning that at least two members of the Fellowship have access to magic. Furthermore, Elrond, Galadriel, Tom Bombadil, Sauramon, and Sauron all perform various feats of magic in the trilogy, meaning that it's a damn sight from "hardly any magic" in the setting.


And then Luthien Tinuviel is pretty explicitly a 7th-10th level bard who walks around with "songs of power" pretty explicitly including Disguise Self, Invisibility or maybe Greater Invisibility, a workable update of Deep Slumber, 'Cure and Dispel Magic or maybe Break Enchantment and depending how literally you want to take the text possibly Nightmare and Delay Poison. While you can make the case that she's half-maia and half sindari, it's pretty dumb to ask that a game about middle earth not support playing a PC like that.

[tenuki]

An endearing feature of the internet is that even if nobody replies to the OP, you can always find somebody who takes the thread OT. But since we're at it and nobody seems to be able/willing to answer my questions anyway, I might as well take the bait and have some fun.

Bullshit.

- Gandalf is one of 5 Istari in Middle Earth. Definitely not PC material. Ditto Saruman.
- Aragorn uses an innate ability tied to his being the only living direct descendant of the kings of Numenor. Not PC material.
- Tom Bombadil is a Maia of Yavanna and has been around in Middle Earth forever. (Gandalf calls him the Oldest, and Gandalf is thousands of years old.) He's unique, pretty much a feature of the landscape, and definitely not PC material.
- Sauron? Oh yeah, I guess he'd make a great PC. Ditto the Ringwraiths.
- Luthien lived in the 1st Age, thousands of years ago, when the stars shone brighter, yadda yadda yadda. She was the daughter of a Maia and one of the most powerful Elves around. Definitely not a PC either, not even in a hypothetical 1st Age campaign, which The One Ring isn't designed for.

And '7th level bard'? D&D is probably the worst imaginable game system to capture a Middle-Earth flavor, with Traveller as a distant second.

As I said above, in The One Ring, the game takes place in Rhovanion in late 3rd Age. PCs are intended to be Bardings, Beornings, Woodmen, Hobbits, Dwarves of Erebor or Elves of Mirkwood. The latter two have some low-key magic potential. The rest have no business casting anything.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Beorn turns into an enormous bear. I'm just putting that out there.

Also, in the right sort of game Istari and heirs of Isildur are perfect PC material; but this isn't that game. This is a game where you play in a crack in history where almost nothing of great importance happens, because ideally you should be able to imagine your campaigns fitting in seamlessly with the published books. This doesn't mean you can't do heroic things, it just means the scale is pretty small, saving a lost girl here, wiping out a warg pack there, etc. Presumably the PCs eventually become mighty captains who do great deeds at the siege of Erebor or some junk.

Magic is virtually everywhere in Middle Earth; it just tends to be subtle: Dwarves make magic toys, hobbits use magical stealth, and the restorative powers of fresh air are goddamn magic.

I would really like to see a magic system which reflects that kind of world, a kind of scholarly and classically alchemical tradition, about using and magnifying the esoteric powers that surround and permeate everyday life unnoticed; things which anyone could learn to do if they only bothered to study. The kind of world where the skill to cast a fireball has the side effect of knowing how to sculpt smoke and make awesome fireworks because you have learned a whole lot about fire in the process.

[tenuki]

Beorn turns into an enormous bear. I'm just putting that out there.

And rightly so. However, this ability is not a learned spell à la "druid level 5, and you need a 1st-edition copy of Winnie the Pooh to pull it off", but an expression of his nature, or a birthright if you will.

Magic is virtually everywhere in Middle Earth; it just tends to be subtle: Dwarves make magic toys, hobbits use magical stealth, and the restorative powers of fresh air are goddamn magic.

Yeah, complete agreement. There's also the statues of the Woses, Bardings speaking with thrushes, etc. p.p. But again, this stuff is more like innate abilities than your run-of-the-mill fantasy notion of magic.

In Tolkien's books, people who seek powers that are not in their divinely ordained nature to have -- those who 'delve too deeply', 'forsake wisdom', or any other of these reactionary turns of phrase -- tend to a) lose their birthright and b) come to a bad end. Melkor/Sauron/Saruman becoming imprisoned in their physical bodies, Feanor's sons becoming unable to touch the Silmarils because of the sins committed in the struggle to recover them, men striving for immortality and becoming slaves of darkness, even Hobbits using primitive mechanics to ease their daily toil.

I would really like to see a magic system which reflects that kind of world, a kind of scholarly and classically alchemical tradition, about using and magnifying the esoteric powers that surround and permeate everyday life unnoticed; things which anyone could learn to do if they only bothered to study. The kind of world where the skill to cast a fireball has the side effect of knowing how to sculpt smoke and make awesome fireworks because you have learned a whole lot about fire in the process.

Hmm. Maybe Ars Magica could do the trick if you downscale the magic severely.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I don't understand what you're asking.

Try using language.

[Dean]

I disagree with your assessment of what constitutes PC material and why. When you reach the point that a third of the Fellowship is unplayable in your opinion you've done it wrong. That's not Tolkien that's "Hobbits; the Luncheoning".

I am willing to accept, however, a game making the statement "This is a game about playing Gimli" or whatever and then running with that. Your game can be as narrow within your genre as you'd like as long as it does it well. So I'll move on.

I think that whatever magical subsystems that are represented will go a long way toward defining the game and providing its feel. Middle Earth is after all a pervasively magical world. Having not played the game yet I'm interested how magical items/creatures are supported in the text.

[RobbyPants]

But Gandalf turning trolls to stone

I'm sure I'm being pedantic by this point, but didn't the trolls turn into stone because they stayed out until dawn? Granted, it has been nearly two decades since I've read the book.

[Kot]

@RobbyPants: Exactly that.

[Stubbazubba]

- While the combat system looks interesting on paper, I think they seriously fucked up their math. I predict severe balance issues, e.g. the Great Spear being the obvious go-to weapon if you want to actually kill stuff and not just look oh-so thematic.

The Great Spear has two downsides; it has a high encumbrance, reducing your available Endurance, and it's a two-handed weapon, meaning no shield, which is virtually the only way to increase your Parry. I would like to see the math, though.

- The way armor works is just plain weird. It reduces your chances of taking a crit ('piercing blow') while reducing your available endurance. This means that the average (non-critical) hit affects you more when you're wearing heavy armor.

It's weird, but not that weird. It's designed to make being dressed up for battle all the time make you Weary faster on Journeys, and it actually makes sense that, all things being equal, someone in heavier armor will get worn out faster than if they wore lighter armor. What is weird, is that having a high Body score doesn't affect your ability to wear Armor. Thus, my favorite Body vs. Heart balancing house rule I've seen is the one where you subtract your Body from your Encumbrance from Gear, while leaving Heart as the determining stat for Endurance. But yeah, the RAW handles Armor in a problematic way.

Besides, no PC in his right mind would ever take anything other than a defensive stance.

? If you've got a high Parry/Shield, then you can make Forward work for you a lot better. I can see Open stance not getting much love just because it's hard to know when Forward is too reckless and Defensive is too timid, but Forward and Defensive are equally appealing options, depending on your circumstance.

- When characters do what passes for leveling up, they can choose between new special abilities ('Virtues') and getting new or improved gear ('Rewards'). That's a load of crap. Why would anyone spend XP on gear that can also be found? Might be moddable by turning the Rewards into abilities that enable characters to use stuff in new ways.

You can't find gear, nor can you buy it, not according to RAW. So, yeah, Rewards are the only way to get better stuff in the game.

Pros-

• Overall, the game tries to make you balance your ability to Journey with your ability to Combat, and the trade-offs are usually effective.
• The combat is unique and goes relatively fast
• As OP mentioned, lack of overt magic makes it very appropriate for Third Age heroes not already accounted for
• It focuses on building relationships between characters, and gives mechanical teeth to do so (Fellowship Focus = Sam gets all kinds of bonuses when he's trying to save Frodo)
• The book is gorgeous

Neutrals-

• There's not a lot of min-maxing to be had; good because your knowledge of how the game works is not a very big factor in how effective your character is, bad because two people from the same race ("culture") are less differentiated than in other games.
• There's only a shadow of a tactical positioning system, which is the price they paid to make their combat more streamlined; the only choice the NPCs make in a battle is who to attack and which ability to use. Kind of nice for the GM to not have to agonize over so much, but some will miss it.

Cons-

• Hope is OP; not game-breakingly so, but its noticeable just in a read-through, and it's not easy to fix, either.
• Encounters (their social system) is a drunken 4e skill challenge; it details how to figure out how many failures before you lose, but doesn't give you any hints on how to win. Sitting it out is often your best bet.
• The setting; Rhovanion, 5 years after the end of The Hobbit, is very limited. There are no rules for playing men of Gondor, Rohan, one of the Rangers, a Rivendell, Lorien, or Lindon elf, let alone an Istari, Vanyar, or half-Maia like Luthien. The Bestiary is also limited to forest monsters; no Ringwraiths, no Balrog, no Barrow-wights, no Black Numenoreans, etc. (Disclaimer: Of course they intend to go on and release sourcebooks for more areas, but the core book doesn't have them)
• The Journeys include a lot of mathematical operations by the GM to figure out what to roll. Since the players are likely to decide their path during play and not between sessions, the GM has to do all this during play. Also, longer Journeys can just be an extended series of dice rolls without serious effort on the GM's part to create a satisfying narrative.
• There's no guidance given as to what equates to a 'level appropriate' encounter. Enemies have 'Attribute Levels,' so you can kind of tell their relative power (though these can still be way off as Attribute Levels were not designed for this), but there's no way to tell what Attribute Level would be appropriate for how experienced a party.

All that being said, it is very evocative of Tolkien's works and Middle-earth itself. The system's flaws seem big, but they're actually quite nice compared to D&D's. The streamlined combat, intuitive Journeys, focus on Fellowship, and lack of trap options in character generation will more than make up for the system's weaknesses for a bunch of Tolkien fans. It's definitely no D&D replacement, though, not as-is.

[Cynic]

To go OT again.

Aragorn uses an innate ability. So kinda like an SLA. That's fucking magic. Also, being the last living king of numenor is totally player background. I would totally play the character whose main driving characteristic is "I am the lost prince of this dead country. I fight to reclaim that glory."

Beorn turning into a bear is totally magic. I'm sorry, just being a creature of magic means there is magic in the setting. Even if you just call that being a werebear, that's another awesome source of PC material.

[Krusk]

I'll stay OT.

Grima directly learns magic from sarumon. (more heavily implied during the movies than books)
A bunch of dudes create magic rings
The Voice of Saruman is clearly a mage/magic
There is a harry potter style wizards school before it gets shut down at Isengard. Gandalf even mentions how he used to pal around here and enjoy walking the grounds like a dumbledor/hagrid combo.
The door to get into Kahazad-dur took magic words to open. Someone had to make it. (speak friend and enter)
Balrogs cast magic a lot in somarillion. They are just also giant fire demons, and don't do it in the movie because "giant fire demon"
Elrond sends giant waves to crush the nazgul
Galadrial does wizard-ie stuff
the Witch King is known as a dark sorcerer. He also calls himself the WITCH king.
No one is every shocked or suprised by the spells gandalf casts.

You can probably write off a lot of those as "their nature" or whatever. But really thats just a dnd sorcerer.

[Stubbazubba]

Grima learned magic? Citation needed.

The 'bunch of dudes' who created magic rings were all Elves that were as old as dirt and had lived with gods. Also, they were being taught how to do so by a demi-god, Sauron himself, disguised as Annatar.

There is no wizards school at Isengard, you're being ridiculous. The Istari may have hung out there, and by that I mean all of Saruman and Gandalf, as Radagast was living like a hippy in Rhosgobel.

The doors of Moria were made, again, by Elves who were really, really awesome.

So, aside from maybe a dozen or so power players in the world, there really isn't any overt magical capability to speak of. If your 1st level PCs are the elite 1% of the powerful in the world, what do they fight and where do they go from there?

Now, I do agree with Cynic that having those small flourishes of magic, very low-key, such as Aragorn's Healing Hands, is necessary, and so far, the races that actually are mentioned as being magical whatsoever do in fact have magic available to them. The Dwarves can learn 'Broken Spells,' like Opening/Shutting spells, Prohibition/Exclusion spells, and spells of Secrecy, while the Elves can learn Wood-elf magic, including Stinging arrow, Elf-lights, and Enchanted Sleep. If they released a Dunedain cultural package, I'm sure Healing Hands and perhaps a selection of other magical effects would be present.

If they released a Noldor or a Vanyar package, there might be some Elrond- or Galadriel-like effects available, but not from chargen.

What passes for a Class in this game gives you roughly 20% of your stats, and customization another 20%. Your Culture gives you the other 60%; 40% from one of the Backgrounds (each Culture gets 6 to pick from), and the last 20% is common to all of that Culture. If you want magic, pick the right culture, take the right Virtues, and you've got it. But there's no overt magic exhibited by anyone but Beorn in the whole of Rhovanion, I think it would be rather disingenuous of them to make that normal for PCs.

[Krusk]

Grima - Can't provide because its implied. But they go on and on about how he is unnaturally persuasive and poisoning the kings mind with his words. Seems pretty much like a beguiller/enchanter to me. I had always assumed he was magic until I talked to someone who said he wasn't.

So to be magic in the game being an older elven dude helps. In your RPG all you do is slap a "Must be elven" requirement on the "magic dude" class and then have a few exceptional people who can take levels in it without being elves. (An interesting PC usually has something like "is the only non-elven mage" or other unique thing about them)

Your PCs are those few power players. They have to start somewhere, but those power players are late game PCs. To assume that those few power players were super magical demi-gods from day 1 of their birth is silly. They go on adventures and do cool stuff. After learning it, they become awesome.

Example power levels for elrond, the water bender.
Level 1- Breathe under water and walk on it. Archery
Level 2 - Bend water, and can throw globs at people as a weapon.
Level 3 - Make water from nothing
Level 4 - Giant water horses that trample people in rivers.
Level 5 - Like a t-1000 but water.

There you go, you have a progression for elrond the PC water bender. Elrond is the god elf goes on an adventure. Eventually he is super old and hangs out with gods. Late game he is powerful, but early, not so much.

[Chamomile]

Krusk, is it really so difficult to understand that a game might set out with the intent of making the PCs not globally relevant power players? Like, maybe instead of saving the entire world you just save one or two kingdoms? That's a totally valid design goal, and saying that players should be able to play as people on the same scale as Elrond and Gandalf just doesn't work with the Third Age at all, because in the Third Age all the people on the same scale as Elrond and Gandalf are already accounted for. Unless you literally want to play as Elrond and Gandalf, that game concept just doesn't work. Most people who want to play Lord of the Rings want to play as members of the Fellowship, and Gandalf is explicitly way more powerful than the rest of them (he says as much when fighting the Balrog).

Aragorn's magical ability doesn't seem significantly more impressive than the ones the Bardings, Dwarves, and Elves get in TOR (arguably also Woodmen). When they release the Dunadan(sp?) culture in a sourcebook (something they've said they're going to do), I wouldn't be at all surprised if that culture had a Virtue that included some magical healing powers, the same way the Dwarves have a Virtue with some nifty locking/hiding spells.

So, yeah, an RPG about the Third Age that doesn't allow you to emulate the works of the First and Second seems totally reasonable, as does one that doesn't allow you to emulate the one member of the Fellowship who is specifically called out as being OP in the actual source material.

EDIT: Also, being a T-1000 but with water is not something I could see even Elrond doing. The magical giants of Middle-Earth often had access to about two or three second- or third-level D&D spells, and that made them awesome by the standards of their setting. Elrond's water-horse stampede was constrained only to Rivendell, his place of power, it wasn't just something he could pull up anywhere. Gandalf's fire tricks are incredible by the standards of the setting, but are less powerful than a D&D fireball.

[Krusk]

I can buy a third age RPG that is scaled back in power when compared to first and second. I didn't realize thats what the discussion was about. If so, my bad.

He isn't at t1000 level yet, he is at summon giant water horses level. Level 5 gives room for improvement if you want it.

[tenuki]

Example power levels for elrond, the water bender.
Level 1- Breathe under water and walk on it. Archery
Level 2 - Bend water, and can throw globs at people as a weapon.
Level 3 - Make water from nothing
Level 4 - Giant water horses that trample people in rivers.
Level 5 - Like a t-1000 but water.

If the Lord of the Rings had been written by Terry Brooks, it might actually work that way.

:puke:

[Stubbazubba]

The giant water horses were Gandalf's touch, the river flooding was Elrond's work. Notice that there was already a river for him to work with. So, between 2 of the top half-dozen or so most powerful people in the world, they were able to create a single powerful effect from a pre-existing feature of the natural landscape. Your Level 2 for Elrond is already far more magical than he is in the books.

Even a First or Second Age game wouldn't carry on like that; even while there are more magical effects described in the Silmarillion than in LotR, no one learns magic, or uses it to fight, unless it's a Balrog or Sauron. Your cultures may have access to a few more magical effects, granted, but there would be no progression of magical abilities, certainly no 'mage class.' The nature of the narrative is like that of a Norse epic, which favors feats of valor over deep, arcane knowledge.

[tenuki]

Stubbazubba, I forget: Thank you for the review.

[Chamomile]

I generally agree with everything in Stubba's review, but I think it's important to point out another con: The rules are most definitely not laid out for easy reference.

That said, I would consider The One Ring to be one of the best RPGs on the market right now. That's pretty faint praise, but beggars can't be choosers. Besides which, the book is easily worth at least $20 of its $35 price point based on nothing else but the artwork.

[Stubbazubba]

Oh, right. If the art gets to be a plus, the organization (or lack thereof) is definitely a negative. The indices are extremely unhelpful.