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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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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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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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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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Dropping by to notify that Tom Bombadil is now in:
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Feb 18, 2021 15:42
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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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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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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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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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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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I kicked off a campaign with a short session zero, in which a Hobbit Warden, a Ranger Treasure-Hunter, a Breewoman Messenger and a High Elf Scholar went looking for a lost merchant, and found him being kept hostage by some rather scruffy bandits. The session happened without any combat whatsoever, the Ranger simply sneaked in and freed the prisoners. At this point I kinda like the new emphasis on the attributes, favored rolls and skills, and all the little things characters get. Though it does feel weird that there's no Specialities anymore, since I always felt those were fun and served to make characters more distinct. I'll likely adapt the mini-campaign from the 1st ed Bree book, as the High Elf is an artificer who's loving about in Bree-land looking for interesting items and relics, and that thing is rather well-suited for it. I've warmed on the Eriador map despite the awful layout of the letters. We'll test Travel rules a bit next sesh, when we're joined by a Dorf Champion, who's backstory is that he's looking for a lost Dwarf he swore to keep safe.
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Dec 26, 2022 21:34
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Re-reading the 1st Ed Bree book: Gorlanc is a great villain. It's like someone bought Saruman from Wish.com. There's some distinctly weird choices in some of the TOR books, like the first adventure in Ruins of the North takes the players to Carn Dûm which feels like uh, maybe build up to that a bit? Gorlanc is cool tho because he's an evil guy and a local threat who's also a low-rent scumbag with pretentions of greatness, and fighting a guy who is dressed in a hobbit's bathrobe for the finale is a good mental image.
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Dec 27, 2022 10:03
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Trip Report: I ran Old Skin and Old Bones last night for my group, the Ranger in my group was unfortunately absent, but we got a new player who plays a Dorf Champion. It turned out to be a quite hilarious bit that was also kinda lacking in gravitas, but my group just rolled with it. They racked up gigantic amounts of fatigue tracking the troll, and it turned out that the scenario doesn't really plan for players coming up with alternative solutions. They got the warning from the Ranger Haleth that the Old Troll has foul magic, if they fight it in his troll cave, so after they found the cave, they built a pyre to smoke the troll out of the cave, and spent a bunch of Battle rolls setting up logs to roll at the troll, so I figured they'd get three Opening Volleys: one from doing an ambush, one as usual, one for having good weapons and tactics. Since I converted the troll using the 2nd ed Troll rules, I figured they'd have some trouble with it, what with trolls being able to pop back to full endurance, but I figured a good fight was worth it. The Breewoman 360noscoped the troll with her third bow shot, and Wounded it straight off the bat. First round of melee, the Hobbit is the third one to attack and hit the troll, and causes a second wound immediately. Troll dies without actually having done anything. They retrieve the treasure map and go hunting for the eaten uncle's treasure, and end up fighting the Dwarf out for blood and his henchmen outside the barrow, and doing a real poo poo job at it too: the High Elf got wounded, and barely avoided another wound. After the Dwarf Gror was dead, and three of his henchmen gone, the other two dudes fled. It's a drat bizarre adventure really, since the players aren't really strongly motivated to do anything but my players basically rolled with it. The Elf also rolled double Saurons on his first Magical Treasure roll and found a spear and a lantern, and is now sitting at 7 Shadow with 8 Hope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZiEAdpX3_o
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Jan 9, 2023 18:40
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:25 |
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The first non-KS expansion to the game was announced, it's adventures as expected: https://twitter.com/FreeLeaguePub/status/1633105219989954565
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Mar 8, 2023 08:43
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