What is the best Tolkien based RPG?

Never tried one but I'm interested. Seen people praising One Ring but I've never tried it.

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Gurps

MERP by Iron Crown Enterprises, back in the 1980's, is the gold standard.

MERPs is a piece of shit that tried to make Tolkien into DnD despite the setting not really supporting people who fly and shoot fireballs.

I'd go with CODA, One Ring, or Burning Wheel, but to be honest, I don't think Tolkien, as awesome as the legendarium is, is great for RPGs in the classic sense.

>le flying and fireballs maymay
>le Tolkien's too good for rpg's maymay
Fuck off, shitposter, and take your lame memes with you. This thread already has a troll

It's not a meme you idiot, and the poster you're posting isn't saying Tolkien's too good for rpgs. It's a extremely low-power setting, which would already turn off a lot of people. Mortals (which on the setting is synonymous with humans and variations of humanity) just plain can't learn, do, or see most forms of "magic". Other than their crafts, which is most of the magic on Middle-Earth, even elves and maiar are mostly limited to exerting their wills on others via magical songs and supernatural presences. Elves are just plain better than humans at everything and the actual "drawbacks" of being immortal (no free will, no real afterlife) can't be mechanically recreated unless you want to make your players the subjects of formalized railroading.

Then, unless you're playing on the East (and fuck if anyone knows what is going on on the East past the Edain marching westwards) history is already pretty set and there's very little room to change the world. This extends to a cosmic scale, unless you're willing to play fast and loose with major themes of the setting. Due to Melkor shitting all over the music of the Ainur saving Middle-Earth on the long term is literally impossible. The last chance to do it was millenia before LotR when humanity awoke, and he took care of that too.

And to actually answer the question: Avoid actually playing on Middle-Earth like the plague because it's likely going to suck. For a similar feel see Burning Wheel (or One Ring for the more lighthearted parts) like . Good luck actually finding a game, though

That's not actually any of the reasons I would avoid LoTR; and I would take issue with the notion that Elves are necessarily better than humans at everything, they do fail quite a bit at fighting the shadow.

I was more thinking along the liens of how much fate and mind control/influence magic there is in the setting, and how YOU WILL LOSE IF YOU DO THIS is very, very explicitly part of the setting. Hell, the McGuffin that drives the trilogy is a mind control device, and one that works in every direction, against bearer and target alike.

LoTR would necessarily crib a lot of the choices that you can make as a PC, and that's not what most people want in a game.

Don't listen to this idiot - he's a memeing troll who doesn't understand how to roleplay and knows absolutely nothing about Tolkien and Middle Earth. The people who made MERP were Tolkien experts; they knew what they were doing. The splatbooks are comprehensive and detailed. No game has done Tolkien justice like MERP. Do yourself a favor: if you like Middle Earth, find MERP.

I see we're dealing with advanced bait

I see we're dealing with an advanced idiot.
Quit slagging what you don't understand, sir memes-a-lot.
MERP will show you things about Middle Earth you never even thought of.

MERP
>reason: it's simulationist, even if inaccurate

D&D itself was an inaccurate simulation of fantasy, including tolkien

>even if inaccurate
le sigh
All these people with zero imagination think Middle Earth is and always was just like in the War of the Ring.
There's over 6000 years of history BEFORE that, without including the entire god-damned First Age.
Fucking stupid to think you can't 'accurately' roleplay something in there somewhere....

I can't speak for One Ring as I've never played it. But, I can tell you that MERPS, while an excellent resource for information on the world of Middle Earth, misses the mark greatly as far as the mechanics go. My advice would be to take your favorite low-powered generic system, one designed to play fairly human characters, and just go with that. Personally, I would (and have) used a more narrative system, like Wushu or The Anti-Pool, since I feel that Tolkein roleplaying benefits from systems that encourage description rather than decision-by-dice. But, just about anything will do as long as you and your players are all in the same boat about how the world works.

MERP isn't accurate for any age of middle earth

Look at them and laugh.

The one truest to the original material would be FATAL

It is known what happens in the 6000 years of history before the third age. The Silmarillion explains the years of the lamps, the years of the trees and the first and second ages on detail. It's not some blank slate that tolkien left in so people could fill them in, he's pretty unambiguous about what happened in those periods

>Tolkien covered in detail each and every day of the 6000 years of the second and third ages, and every detail of the timeless first age; there is NO ROOM for ANY other adventures in Middle Earth, anywhere, ever.
Thanks, retard!! You go have no fun in your no fun game: we'll be enjoying Middle Earth and having fun!

He did not, but he definitely did not leave enough room for the setting to secretly be D&D lite. It changes literally everything about what magic is on a fundamental level to make it more fitting for an action RPG

And I have plenty of fun in my games. Part of it is because I don't play on games or systems where shitty fanfiction is shoved down my throat

>muh elfs ain't super-powerful gods of war
>muh magic ain't super-powerful angledust
>muh humans can't magic in Tolkien!
Dude, you seriously need to reread Tolkien - you missed several important points. You seem to be under the mistaken belief that there is no magic in Middle Earth.
WRONG!
There was no magic during the war of the ring, because Sauron was a cunt. Before he arose (i.e. 50 years before lotr), folks used magic. Dwarves used magic, men used it, birds even. You are clinging to a very narrow (and incorrect!) interpretation of Tolkien. Read it again.

user, I've read the Silmarillion twice. I'm telling you you are fucking wrong, and this is my completely informed opinion. And no, men who weren't Numenoreans or Druedain and who weren't close servants of Sauron or Morgoth didn't EVER use magic. Mortals are literally not capable of doing magic elves can because they have no spiritual connection or presence on the Unseen, which is why the Ring makes them invisible by partially pulling them into it. Dwarven stuff is magic because they were made directly on the image of the Valar who reigned over ingenuity

gygax and arnesson didnt set out to simulate all of arda. they set out to recreate stories like LOTR, among others.

Um, no? Arneson and Gygax were wargamers that wanted to add some unique rules to their games. Arneson started a "Braunstein" game where the players took control of not armies but a single unit with a roleplay motive to explore under a castle while Gygax introduced rules in his Chainmail game for fantasy rules and "man-to-man" rules that Arneson used for his games.

So really it was just them wanting semi-historical but also fantasy style games where you played A character.

Oh user!
The elves in the Elder Days taught the birds and the beasts and the winds and the waters and, yes, even the men EVERYTHING - how to speak, how to craft, how to sing, how to make magic. As time passed, and with the horrors of the Dark Powers, these teachings gradually diminished; but to utterly dismiss them is ludicrous and ignorant on your part.
For shame, user.
tl;dr - infinite amount of room in Middle Earth for rpg adventures - reed moar, faget.

the unisystem lord of the rings fan ebook

The One Ring is one of the best fantasy RGPs available, and subjectively for me THE best. I'd recommend it even for people that aren't interested in roleplaying in Middle-Earth in particular, but just want to have any fantasy game.
Also it disproves the "Middle-Earth has no room" maymay (I used to believe in this bs too before) by providing tons well-crafted setting material and plot hooks that perfectly fit both thew lore and atmosphere of the original works, unlike MERP.

Oh, and MERP is shit


>It's a extremely low-power setting, which would already turn off a lot of people
Well those people are shit then. ANd "Extremely" is a stretch.
>avoid playing in middle-earth
>but play one ring
u wot m8?
Because they were made up by bunch of spergs that might posses some dry tolkien lore but had no sense of tolkien's feel and atmosphere. So they threw in tons of unfitting and terrible stuff into it.

you can grab it near the bottom of this thread if ypu want to check it out

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/50339951/#50341953

um, yes. i know some moron would require me to break out Playing At The World.

> Tolkien permeated the culture of the day, but weighing the influence of Tolkien
on Chainmail and its successor Dungeons & Dragons is not a simple process. The
Fantasy Supplement in Chainmail introduces itself as a means to “refight the epic
struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers,” and
in that light it is striking that the foreword to the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons
invokes the work of many founding fathers of the fantasy genre—Edgar Rice
Bur roughs, Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt and Fritz Leiber
—but not Tolkien.
>Naturally, Dungeons & Dragons inherited from Chainmail the
presence of hobbits, orcs, ents and balrogs, all of which are unambiguous
appropriations from Tolkien. Even dwarves, elves, wizards and the like resided, as far
as the popular imagination of the early 1970s was concerned, firmly within the
borders of Middle-earth, regardless of their prominence in folklore and the works of
other authors.

we can learn from that that gygax was aiming at recreating the fantasy works of his day and that the major influence of it was, of course, LOTR.

i don't like its combat system and that's why I prefer MERP/Rolemaster

>inb4 aventures in middle-earth
d20? hell, no