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Same here. I backed the Kickstarter for that and was oddly underwhelmed. 'Can't quite figure out why.
I think it's just underwhelming. Flat and unevocative. Which is a shame because my number one criteria for a Tolkien game is evocative and given the source material it shouldn't be a huge ask.
 
I think it's just underwhelming. Flat and unevocative. Which is a shame because my number one criteria for a Tolkien game is evocative and given the source material it shouldn't be a huge ask.
So when I jump to a new system with my Majestic Wilderlands I have a checklist of items that I need to cover to make the result feel like the setting in terms of verisimilitude. I can go pretty lite on the mechanics and handle some of the details with just background notes. But I found there is a lower limit on complexity after which the result just feels flat. For example without the ability (skills) system and the Rogue class, OD&D or Swords & Wizardry would not have cut it as a system for my Majestic Wilderlands. It would have been too minimal.

Perhaps the issue is that Fellowship didn't cover enough of the details in terms of mechanics and background notes to make it ring true as a Middle Earth RPG.
 
Perhaps the issue is that Fellowship didn't cover enough of the details in terms of mechanics and background notes to make it ring true as a Middle Earth RPG.
It felt more like a very very high-level toolkit on creating your own world, fantasy races, their shared histories and a "Dark Lord". It also had a bit on how to avoid some Tolkien tropes (I'll avoid touching on that because it veers a bit into politics).

Due to the nature of the PbtA engine, a lot of world creation is assumed (and encouraged) to be shared with the players in-game, so there really isn't much you are expected to setup in stone beforehand.

Which is why I felt it was too vague. I ended up giving it away.
 
I'm confused. Is this going to be an update of Adventures in Middle Earth or a whole new thing? I know the rights changed publishers so I don't know what to expect. The ad copy mentions the TOR designers but not the designers for this.

I love AiME but I'm going to wait to see how this pans out before buying in.
Good point. I assumed that this was a new edition of AiME, but there is no mention that this is the update to the ruleset that C7 put out.

So now I'm scratching my head...

If its not an AiME 2E then things are gonna be messy. There's no point having two versions of D&D 5E Middle Earth, so I will hold back until I see more. Much more.
 
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I have to admit, I can't quite wrap my head around why this wouldn't be, effectively, a second edition of AiME regardless of what the title actually is. Was there that much of a difference between the two versions of The One Ring?
There's no point having two versions of D&D 5E Middle Earth, so I will hold back until I see more. Much more.
Only one of them being in print would be one.
 
Free League probably doesn’t own the rights to the name AIMe, hence the title change. I would imagine it would be as much a second edition as their Tor was.
 
I have to admit, I can't quite wrap my head around why this wouldn't be, effectively, a second edition of AiME regardless of what the title actually is. Was there that much of a difference between the two versions of The One Ring?
I initially presumed it is basically AiME 2E - but as Stan Stan pointed out, there is no reference to AiME at all, so we don't know if it's AiME or a brand new take on D&D 5E Middle Earth.
However, as UnplayedRanger UnplayedRanger says, perhaps Free League is unable to reference the title Adventures in Middle Earth, as it may be copyrighted to Cubicle 7.

Who knows at this stage?

Only one of them being in print would be one.

Yeah that's true.

However that's not a big factor for me, as I already have most of the AiME books sitting in my bookcase.
I am more after consistency with my current resources, rather than a brand new line of D&D Middle Earth books.
 
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Thanks for the confirmation. I'm going to forget about it until it's out with a few reviews. I already have the core TOR book and the majority of AiME.
Same here. While I have some disposable income that I can save up for things like this, another 5e game is extremely low on my list of priorities. Especially since I already own most of AiME.

It actually feels a bit "tacky" to release something so soon, but I guess that AiME has been out for a while.

Still, the edition treadmill makes me queasy and the whole "EVERYTHING 5E" thing going on is starting to get on my nerves.

Nothing WRONG with D&D, but the sheer number of people I see online and real life whose first ever RPG is D&D, and who are also 100% reluctant to trying anything else, is tragic to me.
 
I can’t really blame FL, I think the number one question during the Tor 2e Kickstarter was “when is AIMe 2e?”
 
I used to be a 5e-fanatic, yes. Then I finally played it after being a GM for 6 years. Cripes!
I’ve been strictly a player (albeit very sparsely) throughout this edition but I suspect O wouldn’t exactly love GMing it either.
 
As a GM and a player, my experience with 5E is more positive than negative.
It's a solid system that's a lot of fun. During our first game of 5e Bunny and I played a Barbarian and Rogue crime duo. Right out of the gate I was sneaking up on and grappling fools, then knocking them down so my wife and I could stab the shit out of them with advantage while their attacks were at disadvantage. There was some fun with shoving and ready actions as well which we used to absolutely dominate. The DM was kinda pissed and muttering but it was all RAW without playing "mother may I?" or dealing with complicated rules. Despite the setting being some Tolkien derivative kitchen sink bullshit we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves and I thought huh, there might be something to this edition
 
As a GM and a player, my experience with 5E is more positive than negative.
Mine has been "D&D: Lowest Common Denominator". With an experienced but not stellar GM it's just OK. But I've seen several novice GMs bounce off it hard, to the point of one rage quitting mid game & refusing to GM for anyone over 12 years old.

Combat is fine, but outside that I keep getting recurring AD&D vibes.
 
I'm confused. Is this going to be an update of Adventures in Middle Earth or a whole new thing? I know the rights changed publishers so I don't know what to expect. The ad copy mentions the TOR designers but not the designers for this.

I love AiME but I'm going to wait to see how this pans out before buying in.
Well, TOR 2E wasn't really a new game at all, but a revision of TOR 1E but in the Shire instead of the Wilderlands. The authors said they didn't want to just reprint old stuff but add onto existing material.

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game may be similar. Clean up rules from the core book, but not change things significantly so this might be compatible with the older AiMe stuff. Also, the first "module" book is for the Shire, which matches what TOR 2E did. It may be the same background but with different game stats.
 
Well, TOR 2E wasn't really a new game at all, but a revision of TOR 1E but in the Shire instead of the Wilderlands. The authors said they didn't want to just reprint old stuff but add onto existing material.

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game may be similar. Clean up rules from the core book, but not change things significantly so this might be compatible with the older AiMe stuff. Also, the first "module" book is for the Shire, which matches what TOR 2E did. It may be the same background but with different game stats.
Yea maybe. But AiME already covered the shire some in one of the books. If they don't have rights to use AiME stuff (except where it's a copy of ,TOR) things will be awkward. I'm not definitely against it, just adopting a wait and see stance. For me, the biggest obstacle is that both TOR and AiME are so good that a new product has to add a fair amount of quality to make more LOTR purchases worth while.
 
There’s a post upthread where Free League flat-out explains that it will NOT be specifically built with AiME in mind. Since they’re both 5e-based, they’ll have some compatibility, of course. But there will be some overlap. Just a different approach.
 
Remember when they announced the Moria boxed set for TOR 1e and AiME? Necrozius remembers…

:sad:

Free League has said they're still going to be putting Moria out, and Gareth Ryder Hanrahan has mentioned as recently as last year that he was working on it.


 
But I've seen several novice GMs bounce off it hard, to the point of one rage quitting mid game & refusing to GM for anyone over 12 years old.
I'm quite curious to know why? My own experience in running 5e is that I won't DM for PCs of over level 6. And it needs a bit of houseruling too, but to rage quit... I'm not feeling it. Oh, and I'm fine playing characters over that level, so that's more like an eccentricity of mine I guess.
 
I found running D&D again after a bunch of other games somewhat unpleasant.

A big part of it for me is needing to think about what treasure and magic items there would be, rather than making up what seems logical on the spot. (You can do that with magic items too - it's just in order to do that you first need to have a logic of magic items to make use of - which is even more work).

I also found that you really have to give quite a lot of thought to combat encounters - it's just too much a part of the game and takes too long to not give thought to make it interesting in some way (and it's not like 4e or 13th Age where you can just follow the basic guidelines for an encounter and it will basically work).

In short I found it involved more homework then I was used to, or am really willing to do these days.
 
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I can’t really blame FL, I think the number one question during the Tor 2e Kickstarter was “when is AIMe 2e?”
Well FL should of grabbed those AiME rights as well, they would have captured an audience. Although given their reputation for high production products, I’m sure they will get the numbers they want.

I am not gonna back the FL LotR kickstarter now as I already have a D&D 5E Middle Earth with AiME. Down the track I may possibly look into it further if a good War of the Ring campaign is published alongside the LotR core book, but otherwise there’s not much point for me given that I already have TOR, TOR 2E, and AiME.

I do love the setting and collect Middle Earth stuff, but I think I’ve already got things covered on the trpg front.
 
Regarding D&D 5E, I find it to be the smoothest version of D&D mechanics, and it isn’t as bloated as the previous WotC editions (It is starting to get there with expansion books etc, but I never grabbed Tasha’s for this reason)

After Level 5 I find things are definitely in the Heroic Fantasy territory, and I don’t think there is much point after Level 10.

I find it a decent game from Level 1 to 5 character, and it hits the spot for me being a DM to my teen sons. I was also a PC in some of the D&D 5E Forgotten Realms adventure path books/campaigns, and found it quite enjoyable.

Overall I prefer a more Low Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery flavour to both setting and characters rather than Heroic Fantasy, and I prefer the vibe that TSR hummed at with Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms in the late 80s to late 90s. These days Forgotten Realms seems a bit different, but it’s still okay. I think Rime Of The Frostmaiden is perhaps the best current D&D 5E Forgotten Realms that we are likely to see for some time.

I’m not really into the art direction and general vibe that WotC has been going with in more recent adventure path books, I really just want to grab their Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk material.

Given my classic fantasy/sword & sorcery tastes, you can see why I find Fateforge as a more viable D&D 5E option than some of the more recent WotC books.
I also have some D&D 5E conversions of other games, such as Adventures In Middle Earth, Trudvang Adventures and Ruins Of Symbaroum; as well as Odyssey Of The Dragon Lords and Neverland. I’m starting to think that the best current offerings for D&D 5E are unlikely to be found in WotC.

However as most people know here, D&D is a little down my priority ladder when it comes to trpgs - I am much more of a BRP/Mythras and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay guy myself (also Against the Darkmaster & HARP), these systems just hum how I like it.

D&D 5E and OSR are really just a Lingua Franca for me (much more than 3E and 4E ever were).
Pretty much a 4th or 5th choice of systems I look for when considering running a trpg, but I am always happy to play in someone else’s D&D game (but that goes for almost any trpg for me, heh heh).
 
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Given my classic fantasy/sword & sorcery tastes, you can see why I find Fateforge as a more viable D&D option than some of the more recent WotC offering.
I just saw the trailer for Fateforge the first time. The last words in it were: "ascend into godhood". That doesn't sound like traditional sword & sorcery to me :goof:
 
I just saw the trailer for Fateforge the first time. The last words in it were: "ascend into godhood". That doesn't sound like traditional sword & sorcery to me :goof:
Nah that’s more a Mcguffin from what I am reading, perhaps marketing blurb for the meta-campaign endgame material they are hinting at.
Fateforge is certainly not the return of the old D&D Immortals box, heh heh
I think I would describe Fateforge as a Classic Fantasy setting, predominately High Fantasy with some Sword & Sorcery elements around the edges.
 
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I'm quite curious to know why? My own experience in running 5e is that I won't DM for PCs of over level 6. And it needs a bit of houseruling too, but to rage quit... I'm not feeling it. Oh, and I'm fine playing characters over that level, so that's more like an eccentricity of mine I guess.
It was the first year of the game, his first time DMing for more than preteens, trying to run one of those giant book campaigns without doing a ton of prep & reading ahead.

Combat was fine from a player perspective, if dull because everything was functionally a empty room death-match. DM despised the heat metal spell after a while though.

It was all the noncombat stuff that whacked him. We habitually rolled low (like +7 v dc 13 gets 3 fails in a row) against mostly 15-18 dcs and missed basically every possible clue, info, talking npc, etc. Eventually pushing us all into being casters or multiclassing casters because non-spells just weren't working. Bard, fighter1/bard, warlock, fighter starting cleric for spirit guardian & heals, and... someone else, cleric or pal/lock plan? Been a long time for that specific game. Started trying to avoid any noncombat rolling with spells.out of time gotta go

Ok, back. Yeurgh. There are other people in this house and I don't get to ignore them.

Oh, yeah. Avoiding or pimping as much rolling as possible out of combat by pimping short rest mechanics & at will magic. Poor DM couldn't handle us morphing from a sad slapstick not funny comedy sketch into a bunch of people who either had a spell to auto-yes, avoided things we didn't have spells to solve, and threw extra dice & rerolls at anything we couldn't avoid. Then someone took an illusion image spell...

That was my first 5e DM. None of the others fared particularly well. Combat is fine, if bland and generally unable to keep people interested off turn (counterspell and one of the bard subclasses excepted). But they all struggle with exploration, social, and generally any noncombat checks. PCs either swing from randomly incompetent to supercompetent and back, or they're built to utterly crush one or two specific checks. And it just seems like the less experienced DMs can't deal with that for more than a few sessions. The one 5e game I've seen last more than 7 sessions has a very experienced DM who has been grumbling about having to homebrew basically everything outside combats.

I'm not saying 5e is bad. Its just my experience as a player has been universally "meh" at best and 0/5 novice DM success stories. Personally I don't find it compelling enough to run and I wouldn't play except that in my town DMs running anything but the most recent D&D edition seem to number at "me".
 
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It was the first year of the game, his first time DMing for more than preteens, trying to run one of those giant book campaigns without doing a ton of prep & reading ahead.
D&D5 giant book campaigns are IME, very easy to run with minimal to basically no-prep. But then again, I've DMed for more than 30 years by now. I just prepped a WFRP1 campaign called Death's Dark Shadow. Old style writing tends to not consider the ease of reading much...
Combat was fine from a player perspective, if dull because everything was functionally a empty room death-match. DM despised the heat metal spell after a while though.
Heat Metal works both ways too. As a player whose character is wearing any real armor, I tend to despise it more.
It was all the noncombat stuff that whacked him. We habitually rolled low (like +7 v dc 13 gets 3 fails in a row) against mostly 15-18 dcs and missed basically every possible clue, info, talking npc, etc. Eventually pushing us all into being casters or multiclassing casters because non-spells just weren't working. Bard, fighter1/bard, warlock, fighter starting cleric for spirit guardian & heals, and... someone else, cleric or pal/lock plan? Been a long time for that specific game. Started trying to avoid any noncombat rolling with spells.out of time gotta go


Ok, back. Yeurgh. There are other people in this house and I don't get to ignore them.

Oh, yeah. Avoiding or pimping as much rolling as possible out of combat by pimping short rest mechanics & at will magic. Poor DM couldn't handle us morphing from a sad slapstick not funny comedy sketch into a bunch of people who either had a spell to auto-yes, avoided things we didn't have spells to solve, and threw extra dice & rerolls at anything we couldn't avoid. Then someone took an illusion image spell...
Too many casting characters is a big turnoff for me too. I'd jump with joy if someone made an alternate PHB with martial classes only, like Monte Cook's Iron Heroes was for 3.5. And yeah, illusion spells can be difficult to handle for novice DMs. Hell, they can be difficult to handle for moderately experienced DMs too!
 
Huh, I had the opposite experience with illusion spells. My GM made me make Deception checks every time to make sure that the illusions were “convincing”. Yes, even with Major Image.

Also, charm magics: NPCs always knew after that they’d been manipulated (regardless if the spell said so or not). Always had negative repercussions with those spells as a Glamour Bard.

I’ll never make an illusion/charm spellcaster again.
 
And yeah, illusion spells can be difficult to handle for novice DMs. Hell, they can be difficult to handle for moderately experienced DMs too!
Minor illusion is a cantrip so players can overwhelm an unprepared DM with creative use of illusion right out of the gate at level 1. In fact minor illusion is arguably the best cantrip in 5e.
 
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Huh, I had the opposite experience with illusion spells. My GM made me make Deception checks every time to make sure that the illusions were “convincing”. Yes, even with Major Image.

Also, charm magics: NPCs always knew after that they’d been manipulated (regardless if the spell said so or not). Always had negative repercussions with those spells as a Glamour Bard.

I’ll never make an illusion/charm spellcaster again.
Unbelievable. Did the DM tell you they were deviating from RAW concerning charm and illusion when you made the character or did they shut you down without doing their homework?

Not only is there a huge and active community which can provide clarification on rules, but Jeremy Crawford has weighed in on a ton of issues from a design and RAI perspective in Sage Advice. I've frequently referenced those articles and have found them extremely helpful.

There's a lot of interesting nuances in 5e if you look. Did you know that the spell target specifications are intentional and most offensive spells have to target a creature? Contrary to popular belief, spells aren't pew pew lasers and you can't blast inanimate objects with magic missile or whatever; I tell my players that offensive sorcery is keyed to the animating force of a creature and rarely directed like a gun in a video game.
 
Did you know that the spell target specifications are intentional and most offensive spells have to target a creature? Contrary to popular belief, spells aren't pew pew lasers and you can't blast inanimate objects with magic missile or whatever; I tell my players that offensive sorcery is keyed to the animating force of a creature and rarely directed like a gun in a video game.
That’s very interesting, but confusing to me.

Many of those attack spells do elemental damage, which sadly seems to do nothing special in the world unless the target has the right resistance or vulnerability. A fireball doesn’t set anything on fire, I guess, even if you cast it into a barn full of dusty, dry hay.

And if attack spells target the “living animate force of creatures”, then why does the spellcaster have to make an attack roll?

Honestly I’d love to see a complete re-write of the D&D spell lists.
 
And if attack spells target the “living animate force of creatures”, then why does the spellcaster have to make an attack roll?
I don't understand why a spell would have to be directed like a conventional projectile weapon simply because an attack roll is made. Typically, the spell's success is determined by the caster's skill at sorcery and the target's ability to resist.

That’s very interesting, but confusing to me.

Many of those attack spells do elemental damage, which sadly seems to do nothing special in the world unless the target has the right resistance or vulnerability. A fireball doesn’t set anything on fire, I guess, even if you cast it into a barn full of dusty, dry hay.
The way 5e damage types are presented is a good example of exception-based design which has been the gold standard since Magic the Gathering was released. The main purpose of having different damage types in the core rules is facilitating resistances, vulnerabilities, and immunities. Making it more granular than that in the core rules would be both needlessly complex and restricting. Special exceptions can be presented in the relevant spell or weapon description. For example, in this case if you read the spell description you will see that fireball lights things on fire.

Honestly I’d love to see a complete re-write of the D&D spell lists.
What would you change?
 
What would you change?
Not Necrozius, obviously, but the first thing I'd change is fireball. It is the hammer in wizards toolbox, and all problems start to look like nails.. I eyeballed the DMG rules for creating own spells, and noticed that fireball would be a fifth level spell if designed through those guidelines. :shock:
 
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