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 Ok so the recent The One Ring -KS funded in like four minutes, so I figured I'd post a low effort thread for the game in anticipation of getting to maybe play it again. Link to Ks, in case you want to check where it is at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/the-one-ring-roleplaying-game-second-edition/ (spoilers: the KS is blasting through all the stretch goals like a motherfucker.) The One Ring is kind of an odd one out among licensed games, because unlike say, MERP, it treats the source material as really defining for the experience you should have. So instead of D&D in Middle-Earth and that sort of thing, the original 1st edition of the game is about being just a random person, puttering about the Wilderland, trying to do good things for the Free folk of the Wilderland. The big Mirkwood campaign got you into the events happening thereabouts for some 40 years of something, during which things get a lot worse as Sauron's power increases. Doomed heroism, all that. The rules actually support being this type of person, and don't really work if you do the whole rpgnet type thing and want to use the rules for something completely different, like being cyborg pirates or whatever. Part of this is that the lead on the game, Francesco Nepitello, isn't an elfgame designer but his background is in board games, and I guess board games insist on having rules that work. The initial release of the game was kinda clunky and poorly edited, the revised edition that came out a bit later was a lot better about how to actually play the game. The new edition is published by the Free League instead of C7, because some bullshit happened behind the scenes and Nepitello left C7, since it turns out he actually owns the license and C7 didn't. Idk, what else to say right now, I am beyond pumped about the new edition coming around. It's going to move the action from the Wilderlands to the Eriador, so it's all about Bree, the Shire, Rivendell, the ruins of the old Northern Kingdoms and so on and so on, which saw some support during the C7 1st ed, but not much. I am stoked. And since it's customary to link some images, here is a Nazgul and Gandalf from the finnish translation of LOTR, and a Rude Boy version of Bilbo from the french one.   Kemper Boyd fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2021 17:14
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The one ring really is one of the best designed RPGs I've seen. Its very impressive how much it understands the source material and translates that into RPG rules incredibly. I'm tossing up the price but the first edition was excellent and I'm curious how its going to the region, which is a lot less fleshed out than the past game's location.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:04
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Anyone care to dissect what made the systems so unique? If all the PCs are just dudettes in the wilderness what separates the characters mechanically?
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Feb 14, 2021 05:06
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Gameko posted:Anyone care to dissect what made the systems so unique? If all the PCs are just dudettes in the wilderness what separates the characters mechanically? http://azrapse.es/tor/sheet.html Playing around with character creation shows this better, but basically: you pick your cultural background, so you're not a Hobbit, Human, Elf or Dorf, but Hobbit from the Shire, a Beorning, a High Elf from Rivendell, or a Dorf of the Iron Hills, which affects basically everything you do. Your culture decides the special things you got access to (Cultural Blessing special ability, your possible rewards, which are special items, and virtues, which are cultural special abilities). For instance, Hobbits are great at hiding and at shooting bows, as appropriate to the literature. Rangers are good at resisting supernatural terrors and being awesome. And then there's traits and defining features, which can be used in narrative ways. The classic example is when a Hobbit wants to spy on someone during a feast in a Hall, they call on their Smoking trait to quietly pop out for a smoke so no one suspects them. All the choices you make in character creation have a significant effect on how your character works mechanically. Dorfs generally have good skills at travel, Hobbits less so. Technically, more advanced characters should end up kind of samey, but in practice I have not seen it.
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Feb 14, 2021 07:56
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Gameko posted:Anyone care to dissect what made the systems so unique? If all the PCs are just dudettes in the wilderness what separates the characters mechanically? the main things are the big focus on journeys and mental/emotional wellbeing, there's a lot of things that really match the source material well though, like the skillsets, valour and wisdom, room for non-combat, etc. A proper dissection would really take a whole fatal and friends writeup really.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:36
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What are some of the cool moments that people had playing TOR? I think I have the rules hanging out somewhere from when I bought it and the journey mechanics were the ones that people always highlighted, but I never really gave it a proper read-through.
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Feb 15, 2021 04:12
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aldantefax posted:What are some of the cool moments that people had playing TOR? I ran one of the 1st ed mini-campaigns, and it has a really cool setpiece in one adventure where you get cornered by orcs on a hill, and your job as GM is to convince the players that their characters are all gonna die. Of course that doesn't happen for reasons, but it was fun. Letting the moment before the battle breathe a bit worked out nicely for my crew.
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Feb 15, 2021 06:33
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I don't know if anybody else watched the Q&A about the 2nd Edition Fria Ligan posted around the same time as the Kickstarter, but here's a low-medium effort post about some of the things I caught: In general, the biggest change is a tightening up of mechanics--1e had a lot of rules that were only engaged in one or two specific places, and it sounds like 2e has tried to consolidate that somewhat. A couple of examples: In 1e, you had Attribute values and Favored Attribute values, with Favored Attributes being higher and added to your roll when you used a Favored Skill (and spent a point of Hope). Other mechanics occasionally allowed you to reroll the "Feat die" and take the more advantageous result--those have now been consolidated, so when you roll a Favored Skill, you get to reroll the Feat die and take the better result (which is actually called Favor and is used throughout the rules, as is Disfavor, which as you might expect is just the opposite). Another example is the "magical" abilities of the various peoples of Middle-earth. In 1e those were mostly represented by character build options called Virtues, which represent the cultural skills and heritage of the Free Peoples. Francesco mentioned that this was specifically pretty difficult in some cases (i.e. it's really hard to make a Virtue that covers all of Elf Bullshit(TM)), which also left weird cases where, say, an Elf didn't really feel like an Elf because you didn't pick the option that had all the iconic Elf abilities. In 2e, they've merged the system for these kinds of abilities with the system for magical items introduced in the Rivendell supplement--every culture has a list of skills with which they can achieve a "magical result:" basically, on a successful roll you spend a point of Hope and the result of your action is in some way "supernatural." Specific examples given were Hobbits moving utterly soundlessly and being able to hide so quickly they seem to vanish, or Legolas running along snowdrifts and being untroubled by the storm on Caradhras. There are six PC cultures in the core book. None of them are "new" in the sense of "never seen in 1e," but they aren't the same spread as the 1e core--which makes sense, given that 2e's core book focuses on Eriador (the Northwest of Middle-earth, from the sea to the Misty Mountains) rather than Rhovanion (the Northeast, roughly from the eastern faces of the Misty Mountains to the Lonely Mountain and Dale). I think it's safe to assume "Hobbits of the Shire" will be one of them, and my guess is there will be at least one Dwarf and one Elf culture--could be Dwarves of the Blue Mountains (who are more "local" to the region) or Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain again (who are more recognizable and do seem to travel the region enough to fit). I'm less sure about the Elf one--we know it's not High Elves of Rivendell since that's confirmed as an add-on for the Loremaster screen, and it's not Wood-elves of Mirkwood since they're a different stretch goal. I assume we'll also see the Men of Bree and Rangers of the North as core options--in 1, Rangers were considered a "powerful culture" and had special rules regarding advancement and such, and I expect they'll want those rules in the core for 2e rather than having to reprint them in any later book that introduces a new powerful culture. I'm less sure what the sixth could be--none of the cultures in 1e really seem to fit the region, so maybe Francesco was overstating when he said none of them were new. EDIT: Welp, I'm a dummy, one of the example pages on the Kickstarter is the beginning of the character creation chapter and shows a list of the available PC cultures as:
All of the cultures and their Treasures and Virtues have been given a major balance pass--not to make them balanced with other cultures per se, the goal was never to make, say, Hobbits have the same "power level" as High Elves--but to make sure that within each culture there are no obvious "every character should take this" options or "don't ever waste your time with this" options. The goal is to make every choice within a culture viable. There are "a lot" of monsters in the core, but the only things that got explicit confirmation were things that will not be included: no dragons and no giant spiders. Well, I guess the fact that there will be a "build your own Nameless Thing" system for weird things like the Watcher in the Water isconfirmed since that was a Kickstarter stretch goal. Some production-side info: They're looking into whether their license allows them to make an art book, but it definitely does not allow them to make miniatures. They might be looking at additional dice designs (and since the video was posted, at least one new design has been added as a stretch goal). EDIT 2:  Ring-a-dong-dillo, motherfuckers. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 09:43
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GimpInBlack posted:So it looks like maybe they're dropping the specific homelands from the non-Man cultures? I'm not sure how I feel about that, TBH--on the one hand, yeah, the difference between "Dwarf of the Blue Mountains" and "Dwarf of the Grey Mountains" weren't huge, but on the other it was a kind of nice change of pace from the mono-cultures of a lot of other fantasy settings. Hopefully there's still some specific cultural background elements in these. My guess is that since High Elfs are already back in (in the Rivendell addon), they're probably doing something about that, anyway. Its hard to imagine them actually walking back on the differentiation of different Dorf and Elf groups. 1st ed didn't get anything besides the elfs of the Woodland Realm before the 1st ed Rivendell book and the rest showed up later. GimpInBlack posted:
gently caress yes
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Feb 15, 2021 16:15
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I'm such a mark for this game. I even considered playing the 5E version. My big hope is that advancement is less of a pain.GimpInBlack posted:. If his requests aren't all in songs that make the PCs scratch their head wondering what they were even asked to do, you're legally required to tell the GM to turn in their viking hat.
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Feb 15, 2021 16:22
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Kemper Boyd posted:My guess is that since High Elfs are already back in (in the Rivendell addon), they're probably doing something about that, anyway. Its hard to imagine them actually walking back on the differentiation of different Dorf and Elf groups. 1st ed didn't get anything besides the elfs of the Woodland Realm before the 1st ed Rivendell book and the rest showed up later. Yeah, but even in 1e core they were called "Wood-elves of Mirkwood" and "Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain," not just "Elf" and "Dwarf." I suppose it could just be placeholder text in the sample image, though.
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Feb 15, 2021 17:44
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Dropping by to notify that Tom Bombadil is now in:
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Feb 18, 2021 15:42
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Kemper Boyd posted:Dropping by to notify that Tom Bombadil is now in: Hey come, merry-dol, Tom has filled his larder! Ring-a-dong, hop-along, Tom is on Kickstarter! Onward stretch the goals, now's no time for resting! Hey come derry-dol, Tom will send you questing!
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Feb 18, 2021 17:46
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does this game let you get high and kill sam
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Feb 19, 2021 19:37
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:does this game let you get high and kill sam Yes, but sadly we'll have to wait for a supplement for rules on burying Gimli in a hole and beating him with a stick while hurling racial abuse at him to unlock the doors of Moria.
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Feb 20, 2021 10:19
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GimpInBlack posted:Yes, but sadly we'll have to wait for a supplement for rules on burying Gimli in a hole and beating him with a stick while hurling racial abuse at him to unlock the doors of Moria. A+ rebuttal, deep cut reference, absolutely stellar
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Feb 21, 2021 06:04
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There's five days left on the KS, and all the stretch goals are unlocked and apparently they do not have new ones in mind, which I'll take as a good sign. They're doing fancy cloth maps of Eriador and the Shire, and those are not stretch goals but you gotta pay extra to get one. Again, a good sign in my book. Have been doing a re-read of some 1st ed materials and I am again madly in love with TOR.
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Feb 27, 2021 07:32
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36 hours to go. Apparently the last stretch goal (which they're about $120,000 away from if my mental math is right) is solo play rules.
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Mar 3, 2021 08:49
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Project just hit 15m SEK and the last stretch goal. Very appropriately, the Solo mode (by Shawn Tomkin, creator of Ironsworn) will be called "Strider Mode". I currently have a standard pledge but I'm strongly considering upgrading to collectors now. Ironsworn is one of my favourite games of the last 20 years.
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Mar 4, 2021 08:28
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canepazzo posted:Project just hit 15m SEK and the last stretch goal. Very appropriately, the Solo mode (by Shawn Tomkin, creator of Ironsworn) will be called "Strider Mode". Awesome! I bought in this morning with 2 hours left. I went with standard; I was initially thinking collectors, but while the tier description describes the book as leather bound, the actual page says it's faux leather. I certainly don't fault them for going with faux leather, but I've seen enough crappy faux leather covers that I wasn't going to bother paying the extra $50.
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Mar 4, 2021 20:44
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Resurrecting my thread to post this: There's an Eriador map preview and it kinda sucks. Luckily they're reconsidering it, because it is awful. Otherwise, it looks like the KS is rolling along rather nicely and they're on schedule for everything.
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Jun 7, 2021 18:36
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Kemper Boyd posted:Resurrecting my thread to post this: Undertaking an epic quest from the warm southern lands of Ador to the frozen Eri.
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Jun 7, 2021 18:50
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Kemper Boyd posted:Resurrecting my thread to post this: Wow that's terrible in a few different ways. They're thinking again? Even just changing the lettering would help.
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Jun 7, 2021 19:13
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HopperUK posted:Wow that's terrible in a few different ways. They're thinking again? Even just changing the lettering would help. The KS comments on the update were not extremely kind to the lettering, and they replied something about reconsidering.
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Jun 7, 2021 19:18
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Kemper Boyd posted:Resurrecting my thread to post this: wow thats bad
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Jun 7, 2021 21:40
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alpha pdf dropped for backers, looks like the playable races/cultures will be: Bardings Dwarves of Durin's Folk Elves of Lindon Hobbits of the Shire Men of Bree Rangers of the North
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Jun 29, 2021 12:27
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The Bardings are kind of a weird choice, but I'm fine with it. I read the alpha while drunk but generally, it seems a good update for the game.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:44
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I'm not a big fan of the setting change; Eriador is much less interesting than Rhovanion just because it's such well-trodden ground. The mechanical changes do seem pretty solid, though, agreed.
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Jul 7, 2021 15:42
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Lemon-Lime posted:I'm not a big fan of the setting change; Eriador is much less interesting than Rhovanion just because it's such well-trodden ground. For me I find the setting change good since my plan is to play with people who are not huge fans of the books like I am. They have a bit more familiarity with the stuff there. To me it has potential since there is all kinds of stuff to get up to in the north.
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Jul 7, 2021 15:56
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I'm a bit disappointed they dropped the background packages as part of the character creation process -- I thought they were fun, and I wish there had been an option to either use a preset background or design your own from scratch, like in many Gumshoe-based games. Other than that, though, the mechanics changes look pretty sensible from what I've seen so far.
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Jul 7, 2021 19:22
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Kemper Boyd posted:Resurrecting my thread to post this: New Kickstarter update: they didn't change it.
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Aug 30, 2021 21:06
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Ok so the PDFs for the Starter Kit, Rivendell and the Core are out and first impressions in no particular order: - The art's good, but I keep missing the Vibe that wosshisname brought to the C7 edition, and not being full color is sad - I like the inclusion of lots of random tables to come up with poo poo happening during travel - Rule changes seem to be generally good - I'm a big dummy but I think I might love it - It puts some interesting vibrancy into Eriador which I think the first edition's Eriador stuff lacked, it feels more naturalistic than 1st Ed's version of the same as a setting, generally getting the vibe that there's a lot going on in Eriador that isn't present in LOTR itself because most of the time Strider and the Hobbits are loving about in the wilderness, trying to avoid people, so it would make sense they'd avoid stuff like homesteads etc that might be around
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Oct 5, 2021 20:20
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Kemper Boyd posted:Ok so the PDFs for the Starter Kit, Rivendell and the Core are out and first impressions in no particular order: Thats why im excited for the setting. It's always been my personal interpretation that while Eriador is full of wilderness, it would not be actually Empty. The elves would have to have significant infrastructure in the grey havens, given the dwarves there as well. there would be humans in the surrounding areas. There would also be plenty of homesteads, small communities, and other groups along the East West Road and the Greenway. Rivendell would also likely have more people in and around it than just The Last Homely House since otherwise Sauron would just zergrush them down.
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Oct 5, 2021 22:37
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My personal feeling (and admittedly this is just from reading and crunching some numbers, so maybe there's another dimension in play that I'm missing) is that, while overall I like the vast majority of the rules changes, the changes to how TN is calculated and the effects of spending Hope represent a significant downgrade in player heroes' odds of success. 20 - Attribute is just too high, requiring an above-average Attribute rating of 6 just to hit 1e's "average" difficulty. And with Hope now adding an extra Skill die to the roll instead of a flat bonus from your Attribute, there are good odds that you'll end up getting less of a bonus than you would have in 1e. Worse, since the extra die from spending Hope in 2e is a regular Skill die, when you're Weary (aka the time when, both mechanically and thematically, burning Hope should be a real clutch moment), there's a 50% chance that your Hope expenditure is completely wasted. Even if you're Inspired and thus getting 2(d) per hope, there's a 25% chance you get nothing. Now, for skill checks this isn't necessarily a bad thing--the new Favoured mechanic means you always get a bonus on Favoured skills, no resource expenditure required, and the rules are more explicit that you should only be calling for rolls if the action being attempted is dangerous, uncovering hidden information, or trying to influence an NPC. But in combat? Well, 2e no longer allows combat abilities to be Favoured, so that bonus is out, and you're rolling an action every round on your turn, no automatic successes on attacks or combat tasks. Also, 2e has gotten rid of the free roll for combat advantages at the start of a fight--getting bonus dice is now an action that takes your turn. Let's take a couple of simple starting character as an example: Wundo Proudfoot and his cousin, Tudo. Both are Hobbits of the Shire, with a starting Attribute spread of Body/Strength 3, Heart 7, Wits 4. Wundo is a 1e Hobbit, so he has two points in Short Sword, while Tudo is a 2e Hobbit and thus just has Swords 2. Wundo's Favoured Body score is 5, and Tudo lacks the concept of such a strange thing. They are otherwise identical, and both fighting the most basic Orc in their respective editions, the Orc Soldier, in Open stance. Wundo's base TN is 9 + the Orc's Parry rating, which for a 1e Orc Soldier is 4 (3 if he loses his buckler), for a total combat TN of 13. Without spending any resources, he has a nice, even 50% chance to hit his Orc. (The Orc, meanwhile, also has a 13 TN to hit thank's to Wundo's Wits 4, and with his 2d combat ability, the Orc also has 50% odds to hit). Tudo, meanwhile, is staring down a Difficulty of 17 (20 - Strength) + the Orc's Parry, which in 2e is thankfully only 1. That means Tudo's TN has jumped to 18! Without spending any resources, he has a roughly 16% chance to hit. Meanwhile, the Orc's TN is equal to Tudo's Parry rating of (12 + Wits 4) 16, but the 2e Orc Soldier picked up an extra die in his combat ability, so his odds of hitting that TN have gone up to 54%! Now, let's see what happens when each of our Hobbits spends a point of Hope: With his Favoured Body score of 5, Wundo sees his odds to stick an Orc Soldier with his short sword jump to a hair over 87%. Poor Tudo, meanwhile, is only adding an extra d6 and gets no bonus for Favoured anything, so his odds to hit only jump to slightly below 39%. And if they're Weary? Hoo boy. Without Hope, a Weary Wundo has about a 38% chance to hit, while Tudo is looking at about 15% odds--so at least his chances don't drop too much (but that's a very low bar to clear). With Hope, on the other hand, Wundo's odds are about 71%, while Tudo squeaks his way to 26% odds. That is a hell of a downgrade. Now maybe you could make a case that 1e was a little too generous with success, but I would have to disagree--for me, at least, 50% base odds is about the lowest I find tolerable when the failure state is "accomplish nothing, wait until your next turn." 16% odds to hit is just ridiculously low. (For the record, using the optional "18 - Attribute" TN calculation helps a bit, but it's still pretty harsh: Tudo goes to 27% base odds, 54% with Hope, 20% when Weary, and 35% when Weary and spending Hope). If anybody else wants to check the odds, I used anydice.com to calculate probabilities, simulating TOR dice with this code: code:GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Oct 6, 2021 |
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Oct 6, 2021 10:31
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Game is available now in PDF and for preorder. And you can order the PDF separately from the book on DriveThruRPG https://twitter.com/FreeLeaguePub/status/1466406810026270725 I played a game of this about a month or so ago and had an absolute blast.
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Dec 2, 2021 18:48
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Roman Reigns posted:Game is available now in PDF and for preorder. That bundle seems extremely value for your money. Free League always has wonderful material quality and you get the core book, starter set, gm (loremaster) screen, dice, lothlorien book and cloth maps!
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Dec 2, 2021 19:55
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Anyone have a chance to actually play 2e yet? I'm curious whether the stuff GimpInBlack posted bears out or not.GimpInBlack posted:My personal feeling (and admittedly this is just from reading and crunching some numbers, so maybe there's another dimension in play that I'm missing) is that, while overall I like the vast majority of the rules changes, the changes to how TN is calculated and the effects of spending Hope represent a significant downgrade in player heroes' odds of success.
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Feb 8, 2022 14:12
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I got my stuff today. I just had a brief look through the starter set but it looks quite nice.
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Feb 10, 2022 21:15
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Pham Nuwen posted:I got my stuff today. I just had a brief look through the starter set but it looks quite nice. Oh poo poo i'll have to watch for that, thanks!
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Feb 10, 2022 21:47
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The paper quality on the core book is odd - I'm used to glossy paper for high-production-value hardbacks, but Fria Ligan decided to go with what feels like completely uncoated paper? It made the book feel oddly fragile when I started leafing through it, but the grammage is solid and the papery texture actually does contribute to the rulebook feeling like you're perusing a tome and not reading a textbook.
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Feb 11, 2022 10:54
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