One Ring General /org/

Arwen Undómiel

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Last one. Anyone there?

Man I love Jon Hodgson's art.

I am here, can you say a bit more about the system and what kind of adventurs you can play?

mediafire.com/folder/gvokcl1c28vvc/The_One_Ring

The system is a dicepool d6, with every test no matter what being rolled with a d12. You add up all of the dice together to get your result to get above a number. If you roll a 12, that's a Rune of Gandalf and good things happen. Roll an 11, and that's an Eye of Sauron, and your roll counts as 0.

d6s just get a Trigger with a roll of 6. Triggers can lead to extra damage in combat and such.

As to adventures, it's pretty focused on small scale stuff but because of the level of civilization+population that means players can actively be known and friends with some of the big names. Erebor has all of the Thorin's Company that's alive in it, so players can become friends of Balin. One of the High Elf backgrounds is a fucking Counseller of Elrond.

Nice picture with that link there. Thanks!

>As to adventures, it's pretty focused on small scale stuff but because of the level of civilization+population that means players can actively be known and friends with some of the big names. Erebor has all of the Thorin's Company that's alive in it, so players can become friends of Balin. One of the High Elf backgrounds is a fucking Counseller of Elrond.
This sounds pretty great.

Thanks user!

Bump.

Rohan and even Erebor are in the Veeky Forums archive last I checked.
I do love both the game itself and the books whoch are a incredible work by themselves, though I don't play TOR as much as i'd wish. There are only so much game sessions I can attend or GM.

>Erebor
I'll be damned, it is. Thanks, user.

No problem, just had the link laying around from a previous thread.

btw that's only tengentialy related but there's that guy (pic's name related) who emulates quite nicely the "official" Jon Hodgson artstyle, and is open for commision, if the two of you guys interested in TOR have the desire someday to order some character.

I always wanted to order an artwork of Feredrûn (character of the Ruin of the North book) less "White Lady" and more like a forest spirit, wild looking and as lithe and slender as a doe, but in the end it was a may too minor matter to pay a custom artwork for it.

It is pretty great. I'm going to run Darkening of Mirkwood once my SR game wraps, but we still have about a third of the campaign to go so I come to these threads sometimes to ameliorate the waiting sting.

So who was right: Feanor, Fingolfin or Finarfin? Angry blood crusader, going along with the angry blood crusade to try and help mitigate the suffering of his people, or nope.avi the King?

Alternatively, LotR/Hobbit/Silmarillion discussion to keep this thread alive. What kind of stories would you want to tell with TOR?

>What kind of stories would you want to tell with TOR?
Can you play a game at the times of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad? I could imagine a short campaign of a ragtag group of people trying to survive.

The game is built around the time between the Hobbit and LotR, so if you wanted to do this you'd have to homebrew a lot of cultures and stuff since you build PCs pretty deeply entwined with their birth people. It isn't impossible but you'd have to do a lot of work as a GM, everything from cultural gifts to a whole regional map since the game incorporates a few board game elements in the planning and making of journeys.

Thank you user.

so, what would be a fair assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the game/system?

If your group likes Tolkien it's very good.

Combat is more fun to conceptualize and to have close calls through rolling but on a strategic level it doesn't engage much at all.

Advancement is very slow. Some people are just straight up better than others at the same things because it focuses on emulating the lore rather than keeping balance, and people are supposed to drive fun from playing as a group accomplishing a rich romp through the countryside while completing a modest goal in the grand scheme of things.

>while completing a modest goal in the grand scheme of things.
Honestly this sort of goes out the window with their one published campaign. Play that right and its a 30 year saga where you people single handedly save or doom a lot of people and have potential reaching impact on the course of Lord of the Rings since by like halfway in you're killing the last werewolves and vampires and there's no fucking way that the Lamp doesn't have one of the lost Silmarils inside it, as much as they try to pass it off as a potential lesser work of Feanor. People want that thing too damned much for it to be nothing.

Well I haven't looked at the published modules so maybe you're right. Or maybe it's just an example of how things can be much larger than what their books give.

Darkening of Mirkwood is fun. The Lamp is probably not a Silmaril but given its powers and how even filtered through opaque crystal its light repels the Shadow it is something old from the First Age, but the whole campaign weaves between fairy tale Mirkwood horror and Anglo-Saxon Woodmen politics, with the PCs having the options to confront and defeat the last mighty members of the true shapechanging vampires rather than their fallen Third Age kin and angry Maiar spirit-wolf werewolves in some pretty epic adventures.

Also if you are super awesome you meet Orome the Hunter, but that is contingent on if you yourself become the Werewolf of Mirkwood and then last many years without the Shadow overwhelming you.

I'm trying to get at this just as an example of how your quests in TOR don't need to be little bits of nothing but could well be sagas worthy of remembrance in the long histories of the elves and men of the west.

Time for some bishie Sauron to help this thread come alive, even if it is with just whining.

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Think we'll ever get a TOR book for the kingdoms of the East or South?

I'd fucking love it ... but I don't think Tolkein wrote that much about them, so they'd have to wing it a bit, and make their own stuff.

Which is fine, mind you - it'd actually be really interesting to see what they'd come up with, though I'm sure some fag would get angry about them making shit up.

They've done it before, but try to work with what he wrote first.

D&D 5th got a LOTR adventure/conversion book not long ago. It seems to change up quite a bit about how 5e works. For someone who already knows 5e but not One Ring, would it be worth learning that conversion book, or would it be better simply to dive into One Ring?

How do people run a game in The One Ring? I feel as though I can't really run a game unless I know everything about a setting and I know practically nothing about Tolkien's universe.

Bishie Sauron is best Sauron.

A lesser work or Feanor would by no means be considered as "nothing" during the late 3rd Age. And a Silmaril would be much more potent I imagine, also keep in mind it belonged to the elves at some point who would probably have, you know, kinda noticed if there were a Silmaril within it.

The books give a whole lot of background that fills the blank spaces of Tolkien's books, If you read Bilbo and LoTR you'll kow well enough to improvise as it goes and emulate the very specific atmosphere of Tolkien's work.
I very much like the feeling that there are many wondrous and terrible things out there that the Fellowship never approached, heard of, or even imagined.

Pros:

Narrative elements that make characters feel useful. ie Traits like "Small" for hobbits that don't just add +1 to some shit.

System and setting tied in together well.

Abstract combat system is done really well.

Cons:

Much like MERP your characters are weak. It's tiring to have the default zero to hero assumption. I could just read the books or watch the movies if I wanted to live in the shadow of the main characters.

There are correct mechanical choices ie. take 3 in travel and primary weapon skills or your character will get fucked. It just feels like you're punished for trying to make starting characters outside the box in a game that oozes flavor.

The modules are combat heavy in a game that purports being about exploration.

The travel system is really cool, but after a while it just feels punitive and you'll be spending most of your time weary/miserable.

The fellowship mechanics aren't fully realized. The actual amount of teamwork in game is disguised pretty well by simply being niche protection which is further blurred by having ill defined character roles.

Overall its a great system and tons of fun with people who are into Tolkien. I'm not, but having people excited by the nuance captured in the lore makes the game come alive more.

It just does one kind of story and does it well. This might change at the high end, but after about 8 sessions it hadn't changed.

I honestly pegged the wood elves as deliberately hiding whatever is in the Lamps based on minor clues in the book. They do have the one offset box to discuss just what's in there but that is GM information, not any IC revelation. Be they maiar, lesser works of Feanor, the two lost Silmarils, or who the fuck knows I think in the game the PCs aren't ever expected to do more than guess.

But one possible campaign ending being a desperate race to smuggle it to the elves of Rivendell, who it implies are the rightful keepers of and only ones who can protect it, makes me think it is something of the First Age.

thanks a lot, that was the kind of informed feedback i was looking for. a couple points raised my interest:
>Traits like "Small" for hobbits that don't just add +1 to some shit.
this is curious and sounds pretty cool.

>take 3 in travel and primary weapon skills or your character will get fucked
fucked? how so and how badly?

>The actual amount of teamwork in game is disguised pretty well by simply being niche protection which is further blurred by having ill defined character roles.
i don't think i can quite follow you here.

>how so and how badly?
By being killed by orcs after you botch a travel roll through high risk terrain and accidentally have a random encounter you can't win.

MERP had that too. suggestion: either give them the infamous ring-to-elrond we had back then or, for a less absurd solution, have the GM set up an encounter with orcs that isn't about killing the orcs? random encoutner = combat encounter is a bit too much D&D/MERP style?

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Melkor looks terrified.

Friend of mine claims to be setting up a campaign for TOR but it's taking fucking ages.

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Don't believe his lies, make your own TOR. With blackjack! And hookers!

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I just want to explore Middle-Earth dammit. If he wasn't so keen on doing it I'd take over and ditch the Only War campaign for it.

Faggot bishie Sauron is the reason Tumblr should stay the fuck away from the Middle Earth mythos.

TOR is awesome, but I feel that it can be kinda tricky to pull off sometimes. I've been running the Darkening of Mirkwood for about a year and a half and we're only 6 years into the 30 year story (I'm also running a SW campaign that we switch between, but my players enjoy TOR more and it's our primary game). This book is incredible and can provide actual YEARS of gameplay. I find the length partially a curse though, as I feel all the really epic, nuts, cool-as-shit enemies, battles, and choices appear closer towards the last half of the campaign. Now, my group and I are probably slower than most as we're all fairly new to TTRPGs and maybe this also has to do with my GM style, for good or ill, but the game seems to promote a very slow build up, both in the way the campaign is written out and because characters do take a pretty long time to become very powerful (which i actually like because reasonable things like spiders or a few too many orcs remain threatening and you don't have to send a damn army after them every week to make it a fair fight)

I love this kind of pace, but I can feel some players becoming complacent or bored because they can't sense what big things are being ramped up to. Again, this may be on me, but the campaign is so big I feel that I've spent those 6 years of game time just setting up all the characters, locales, conflicts, and tone and just this week we're finally introducing the werewolf and Shelob's children.

I don't mean this as an argument against the game or DoM book, just feel like it is tricky and GMs should be aware that this has a very long-haul feel and run-n-gun high-octane junkies may feel disappointed.

I feel like Darkening really kicks off with the corruption of the River Maiden and attack on Black Tarn by forest goblins.Which is a full 10 years into the story. Before that really is basically more exploring the setting, making your names as heroes, and becoming invested in the setting and possessed of rank and renown enough to be the heroes the last 20 years need, or for the slow boil plots introduced there early on to pay off.

But yeah the bi-weekly play cannot be helping. Are you guys also doing side adventures or just the one included per year in Darkening?

> and just this week we're finally introducing the werewolf and Shelob's children.
If you can, use this to get them hyped up again, the Werewolf of Mirkwood story is kind of one of the major ramping up points to the first big climactic shit. How have they been handling it so far? What did they do about the Tyrant? Tell me their choices, user. And also the party in general, I'm really intrigued to hear some actual stories of this being played.

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Anyone want to explain/translate?

The Battle of Unnumbered Tears. It represents the major turning point, when the left flank fell apart due to the Men of the East betraying the rest of the army, dooming it.

Fucking humans.

They were already surrounded, they were doomed anyway unless the relief force could stage a break thru.
Wasn't this on that field... that I forgot the name of...
>fucking darkies
Get it right.

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The text outright says the tide of the battle was turning, the Orcs were losing faith, and the advance of Balrogs and Dragons had been stopped dead. The outcome was in doubt, for both sides. Until the Easterlings flopped.

Yeah I'm looking forward to playing up the Werewolf. There's enough of them that they could probably defeat it (though it'll be bloody) and I can't wait to send it lunging outta the woods after them in a month's time.

We've got 7 players but usually 1 person can't make it. There's a Hobbit, two Woodmen, two Mirkwood Elves, a Dwarf, and our Beorning player recently retired his character to make a Man of Rohan. All really great, most have their niche that they excel at and the rest are okay generalists.

They rejected Mogdred at the Moot and so far I've only given them rumor of violent men lashing out at traders and Tarn folk in the southern end of the forest. I moved up the date of the Ringwraiths' arrival by one year so that our curious Woodman (despite numerous omens) stumbled upon the Lieutenant in the throne room of Dol Guldur. That gave our tanky Beorning a good fight and reason to retire - he was permanently maimed.

Our last adventure was the Helm of Peace, and they actually managed to save Ceawin. That was really fun, I expanded on the barrows so that it became more of an old fashioned dungeon crawl where they had to split into groups, each overcoming their own challenges and the group that performed the best arrived at the scene w/ the Wight.

I've been running the suggested adventures in the book minus the first one and will probably take a few out later on (unsure about the dragon...) I expand on each greatly, touching on goals and characters the PCs have taken a shine to. I had them actually craft the Helm of Peace, which led to researching the design, Woodmen history, bargaining with Dwarven suppliers, a sabotage plot by rivals.

Are you playing through it?

I'm going to run it after my current Shadowrun game ends in...probably half a year. I'm running a published campaign for it and we're not quite 2/3 done with it but I really dig TOR and like the Darkening of Mirkwood as this huge 30 year saga.

I've been a GM for a long time so while I fear in some ways I'm still mediocre as shit I think I might be able to handle the long form story the book weaves. I like hearing your tales though. Bad luck for them they didn't support Mogdred, that's one of those choices that seems perfectly right at the time but actually works out better for all if they help him.

I bought and read TOR and it was a joy, but I've never been able to find a group interested in playing it.

For those who have played it, what mechanics did you end up glossing over or disliking, and which did you think were fun and unique? I have some ideas but I want to hear it from people who have played.

I'm planning on running a TOR game on Fridays, don't know what time yet.

Email me here: [email protected]

As to your question, I have to say out of combat character skill rolls are the best ones.

Who was the best High King of the Noldor and why was it Fingolfin?

>Not Fingon
>TA 2960

Argue in favor of Fingon.

Repaired a broken relationship between the divided Noldor, invited Men and Dwarves into the war with Morgoth.

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100% accurate

Gondor has a culture write-up in the D&D 5th edition adaption, so presumably they have one for their own system.

Either, the 5th edition book just lays out the cultural gifts and less magic, all in the TOR core book anyway.

The only LoTR RPG I've played is the CODA system. How does One Ring compare to it?

>so presumably they have one for their own system.
They do not, actually. Honestly I figured the next book would hit Gondor. How many pages was the culture writeup? Because a book covers a lot of that and a huge geography chapter. With any luck they're mostly done there.

Very unique but very specialized to these sorts of tales.

>Very unique but very specialized to these sorts of tales.

How so? What exactly is "specialized" about it?

At their core, an RPG is a system of rules designed to promote certain activities, slapped onto a setting. If you're basing it on Tolkien, you've got the setting part already taken care of, which just leaves the rules aspect.

CODA does a reasonable job in making a set of rules primarily based around travel, a lot of skill use, extensive langauge differentials, some fighting, a bit of magic. How does TOR function? How would a combat typically work? How does it handle encumbrance? How do you have your character learn a language in it? What rules (if any) are there for fate and prophecy and the domination of one will upon another?

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You can definitely run it -- DoM is my first campaign, only started GMing a little over 2 years ago and definitely feel mediocre, and while it seems tricky to me for all the reasons I was talking about earlier, I also can't compare it to a DnD or Shadowrun campaign cuz I ain't never run one, so it may be no more complicated than those. Plus, I know my players are having fun, cuz they've been coming back for more than a year, and we get drunk.

The adventure seeds and characters are also all so cool that it practically ensures success, just be prepared to add a lot of your own stuff. Which I like, cuz I usually get bored reading a pre-gen from a book. If I could go back to the beginning, I'd also stress very clearly to my players that they're not going to be or feel like Aragorns and Gimlis for a long time, so just enjoy the ride while it's comfy.

The Gondor culture is coming to TOR with the Adventurer's Companion, essentially a Player Handbook which includes all of the new cultures published outside the Core book and a few new ones like Gondor, Bree folk, and Lorien elves. According to the devs, the Companion should be available for pre-order soon.

Bumpu