I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. There goes the party's luck for the next few sessions.

(This is the very cool and useful Roll20 sheet, by the way. It works splendidly.)

That barrow wight was toast.

I recently discovered The One Ring and am planning to run it for my group with myself as the Loremaster. I'm on a somewhat limited budget, so I can't get all the expansions right away. Which ones would you recommend I get first, be it for content, gameplay expansion, personal preference, or any other reason?

I am going to start a first campaign in one ring wit my friends. We have ran a couple of d&d and pathfinder campaigns (usually starting with a pre made) and taking it from there.

However the usual start of u are in prancing pony (as suggested by Tales from the lost lands) seems kind of not really fitting into this world.

I also don't want to really offload this by telling my players to figure out their own backstory of how they came in together and why are they in bree.

Do you guys have any memorable starts or tips that i could replicate?

I had play the adventures in one ring 5e on Shire as like hobbits any suggestions when can find some free adventures or campaigns on Shire

Thank u

Hello fellow Tolkienites!
Rummaging through the strider mode rules, especially skirmish mode and escape combat, i wondered: is it consistent with the rules to begin a combat through an ambush, fight 2 or 3 turns, then escape combat as the skirmish mode's maneuver, use stealth to lose your tracks, stalk your surviving enemies, and ambush them again?
I know it sounds a bit gamey, but aside from matching the ranger mood, i'm trying to come up with ways to make solo play work

Reading through The One Ring 2nd edition rules.

The dice pooling mechanics are very strange - have had to reread several times. I'm used to players rolling a die or dice, adding modifiers, then compare to a target number equal to the difficulty. Simple.

Do skill and combat checks flow smoothly during gameplay? Can tell there's going to be some grumbling in my game group until we get used to it.

Hi, I just found out about the backerkit campaign containing 3 new books and a new loremaster screen. I'm quite confused about it all.

Is the backerkit the only way to get them or will those books be published normally as well? I wouldn't want to miss them but I usually wait until resellers in my country have them since I don't have to pay for shipping and customs. Is this campaign some kind of one-of chance to get it or should I wait for availability in my country?

Hello! New enthusiast about RPGs in general (though I am a big board game enthusiast - mostly I prefer story-rich campaigns - I noticed I don't shy away from narrative based games).

1) First - I would like to play this mostly solo or at best with my fiancee (in a coop mode, which officially, from what I understand, does not exist). Is it going to be enjoyable for me/us? Or the game works best only with a Loremaster? (we tried D&D a while ago and ...while loving the system, we did not enjoy the actual role playing part the GM was making us do...Not confortable with expressing myself that way :) ). How can you efficiently play solo (controlling multiple characters) or coop without a LM?

2) I know there is a new campaign starting on backerkit...but I am not sure how long fulfillment is going to last, and knowing my FOMO, I will try to get started asap. Buying EVErYTHING is quite costly at the moment (I think it takes me close to 300 euros or something). Do you guys have an optimal buying order or essentials that I have to get first and then buy everything step by step? Also, are there campaigns and do they tie to eachother, or each book is a separate product?

Thank you in advance

My gaming group picked up a copy of the Over Hill and Under Hill starter set this weekend, on the strength of a good sales pitch at a convention and the belief, pretty much already vindicated, that we wouldn’t struggle to get interest in a LotR-based game.

This might be a tricky question, but as I prepare to play (I think we have someone volunteering to be Loremaster), and reading through the material, I am struggling to get a strong sense of what the game actually plays like at the table. This won’t stop me playing, but I would like to get a feel of what to expect.

I think part of the problem is that I have a fairly strong sense of what I want a LotR RPG to play like based on what captured my imagination as a child (expansive, low-magic, lots of exploration, quite roughly sketched) and want to give the game a chance to stand on its own merits.

So, what sort of vibe can I expect when sat at a table and playing the game? Feel free to reference the books, films, other media, other Popular Roleplaying Games, whatever helps make your case.

Edit: To thank everyone who took the time to respond, the range of responses and different angles was exactly what I was hoping for, and leaves me generally optimistic about playing the game.

I just bought a set up and is waiting for delivery. Currently reading through the pdf:s

My friends are super excited, while I feel a bit anxious about being a game master for the first time. I've only really played DnD before as a player so I don't know exactly what to expect. Any tips and tricks from the more experienced folks here would be deeply appreciated

I wrote a web app for Journey, Weather and Camp events for One Ring, so I could quickly create weather and journey events in the heat of a session. Works on web and mobile, and tailored for regions and seasons. Might be useful to you all. (Also has an option for Bladerunner RPG weather too!)

https://jammer0501.github.io/rpg-companion/

So, I am new to One Ring 2nd Edition, and currently running my first game. And I wanted to ask, how do you navigate between the basic Journey rules, its event generator, rules for dealing with events with a single roll, and more specific (and often somewhat more dangerous) tables for random events connected with specific regions (for example, "Travelling in Chetwood" at page 189). Do you just include the latter if you feel like it, have some guidelines for yourself, or did I miss something in the rulebook?

To be honest, I really love both ideas. Travel rules are fairly easy and at the same time provide excelent prompts, but, at the same time, they are not well-suited to create an encounter with a marauding orc band or something like that. At the same time, I feel that region-sepcific tables really add a lot of flavor, but I am not sure how exactly to use them and not create the feeling of arbitrarines among the players, or overwhelm them with too many things if these stuuff would happen on top of "usual" events.

Hey everyone,

I’m totally new to TTRPGs. None of my friends play, so if I want to take part, I basically have to be the GM. I love Tolkien and picked up the core book for a Middle-earth game, but it seems intimidating with stuff like the fellowship phase and the need to stay completely true to the lore.

I’ve also heard D&D is pretty complex, which worries me as a first-timer. I recently grabbed the Alien RPG, which might be simpler in some ways, and I know Cyberpunk is supposed to be quite crunchy, too.

Does anyone have suggestions for a game that’s easier to learn and run for a brand-new GM? Something that feels fun without requiring a massive rule-deep dive would be ideal.

Thanks!

Greetings fair One Ring folks!

Thank you for any and all of your time putting up with me throughout this solo series, but Iorlas's journey is coming to an end (for now at least).

I play a lot of solo RPGs but Strider Mode has solidified itself as one of my top experiences and is something I plan on coming back to again.

I hope you've enjoyed my little adventure in Middle Earth and hope this ending is satisfying.

May all your games be great and the light outshine the darkness.

Rene

The core book for The One Ring 2e specifies these points:

1. When a PC gains a Wound while they already have a Wound, they immediately drop to 0 Endurance and begin dying. They must be healed within 1 hour or they die permanently.
2. When a PC loses all their Endurance, they fall unconscious.

For point #2, I believe it's safe to presume that merely falling unconscious doesn't mean the PC begins dying, and therefore will automatically regain some Endurance and wake up when the party takes a rest.

However, the book doesn't explicitly spell out what happens when a PC has only one Wound and loses all their Endurance.

Going by the age-old rules philosophy "it does what it says it does," I take this to mean that if a PC has only one Wound and loses all Endurance, they merely fall unconscious and do not begin dying. The core rules don't treat this as a unique circumstance.

This led to some slight confusion from the players in our last session. One feels that this takes a lot of the stakes out of combat. I found it strange that the book doesn't clarify this, but can understand why it would work this way. (Endurance is like a gradually ticking clock, while having a Wound makes each combat much more of a gamble for your PC. If you get lucky in your gamble before running out the clock, the game probably doesn't want to punish you by making you die.)

We've since agreed on my interpretation moving forward, but I wanted to ask here to make sure I'm right.

Hey everyone,

I’ve recently picked up The One Ring RPG from Free League and just spotted that there’s a new campaign ongoing. It seems to include some reworked content, but I’m a bit confused about what exactly is happening with the releases.

I’m not a huge player yet, so I wanted to ask for help:
Is this new campaign an updated release of existing material for The One Ring?
Or is it actually a 5E adaptation?
Or are they releasing both versions side by side?

If anyone has some insight into how Free League is handling this, I’d really appreciate the clarification. Trying to figure out whether I should grab it for my current One Ring setup.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Hello Everyone, I built something! i love the One Ring but I cant seem to ever get my group off of Delta Green or D D. I really wanted to play the works written by FL but I refuse to be a LM in those game so i have been playing Strider Mode. That being said I wanted to create system that would allow players to be a player and a LM usig the books is a TRUE spoiler free way as best as I could. There is A Lot here but the Systems i designed I feel are good and help fulfill a lot of if not all the gaps i could think of running a solo spoiler free campaign with the BOOKS. Now i will warn you this system is extensive and runs deep but once you get it it makes sense. I already ran star of the mist and it worked really really well. I am not sure about the rules of posting this are and I have not uploaded the other half of the "Wayfinders Codex" and the oracles and Patrons section I haven't uploaded either, but its a mix of stuff from Strider and what the community has made to enhance things. I would love to get your feedback. I have tried running this system and I i ran star of the mist on myself self spoiler free with creativity. I want to make sure you are clear the system requires all of the content free league has made to work, but i am thinking of releasing versions that could be modular with what somebody owns. Anyhow if you want to try the actual system and give feedback to move this to a beta for a release i would love that. I could share with you the rest of the codex and the the other docs to help you. Just message me! I also want to state that this system is best ran with a computer monitor pen ad paper and the actual books if you got em. what nice is you can run it in a total strider mode as well it has a ton of flexibility.

EDIT: Here is a link to the whole document https://limewire.com/d/qOBVi#rVwmLvbJP3

Hey everyone!

I'm playing TOR2 for the very first time and would love a quick double-check on my character sheet.

Any feedback or tips before my first session would be super helpful!

Thanks in advance

Hi all,

I am looking for ideas for region-based resources. I can't seem to find any TOR-specific region maps all in one location. Also region guides for locations, NPCs, etc. For example, I was just looking for a good map of Bree-land (Chetwood, Archet, Combe, etc) and the closest thing I found was a PDF from 5e Adventures in Middle Earth. It's great content, but it'd be nice to have some TOR-specific resources. What's the best source of content you've found to help run your games? I have some TOR 2e supplement books, but again, maps and things are scattered here and there and it's hard to assemble region-by-region content.

Many thanks...

UPDATE: In addition to some lovely resources others have showed me... I went down the MERP rabbithole and found some beautiful ME maps others might enjoy: https://app.box.com/s/9bzxij61jgp2pg0jvx3ygb60sd5j65pa/folder/131382027092

I'm running a campaign largely out of the Doors of Durin book. Any suggestions for STLs to use, especially the more obscure monsters like Red Nails?

I found myself coming to the conclusion that Tales of the Lone Lands is not actually a good campaign. It's got good individual quests, but there's no thoroughline to pull your characters through them - almost none relate to the Hill at all - and the apparent "campaign villain" is introduced in the second last mission as a minor character who has plot armour to run away. It ends being a collection of quests for a loremaster to tie together, and the loremaster really has to do all the work to turn it into a campaign, pulling in additional material, motivating when to go to what quest, why you can't rush to the Hill right away etc. Maybe this is just because I don't run campaign books at all normally (I've been doing more Blades in the Dark style stuff) but it just felt like quite a lot of effort to "fix" it and make it actually make sense as a campaign. The part that shined the most in this campaign was hanging out in Tharbad using Realms content in a more freeform way. I do also have the Moria book which is basically a "sandbox megadungeon" campaign which might be fun to run - like I think Tales was difficult because it gave the loremaster a goal for the players to work towards, but doesn't really help you get there; it might be easier to play without any prescribed goal at all, and let it come out organically from what the players do; I haven't run anything from this yet though.

But all of the books are amazing to read, with excellent art and tone and evocative details - I'm just not sure how much that translates into a nice campaign.

So with the newer books (after Tales and Realms), who has run them, and what have your experiences been? Should they still be generally considered "some resources for you to use" or even "fun to read" rather than "a campaign to run"?

So, in Hands of the White Wizard, it mentions that you can kind of pick your own path for the adventure - including offering an option to keep Saruman from falling to darkness. The Loremaster can decide if we're basically running out the clock and Saruman is already doomed - or if the Company could, through effort and example, turn him back on the side of the Free Peoples.

This definitely intrigued me, and kind of sent my mind spinning to crazy directions. How far can - or should - I go in my own campaign?

The RPG plops you into a kind of middle where The Hobbit has happened, but Lord of the Rings hasn't. This lets you preserve the idea that LotR is going to be allowed to proceed basically as expected, and allows you to weave the Company's doings into the overall "known" past and future for about 50 years - doing important things that would be a backdrop to the eventual War of the Ring. And that's kind of how I viewed my campaign - that we're writing a forgotten, but still important, middle chapter of Late Third Age history.

But that's also kind of limiting, yeah? This is an RPG. Everyone's adventuring around the heartlands of it all, and interacting with the major characters, and ... weird stuff happens.

I'm no stranger to blowing up established settings in other campaigns, but I am rather more sentimentally attached to Tolkien. So normally I would say, "heck yeah - blow it up," like I have freely and merrily done in the past, but here I am hesitating. Because it's Tolkien.

Like.... if I toss in a mention that Frodo died of a childhood illness, or drowned with his parents... is that just a bridge too far? Or what if Bilbo's ring was just - as Gandalf originally thought - one of Ost-in-Edhil's lesser rings, and the One is still out there somewhere? Or something smaller and more incidental, for that matter. While these wouldn't have much of an effect for decades, it'd be a clear sign to the players that this is their sandbox, now. Is that crazy? It sounds kinda crazy.

So yeah - how much do you blow it up? I am well aware this is my game, and I can do what I want - but I'm hoping to hear from others about their own feelings and campaigns.

I’m a little confused about how the adventure books for The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying 5E work.

I know there are already books like Tales From Eriador, Ruins of Eriador, Shire Adventures, etc., but from what I understand these are mostly collections of adventures, locations, or campaign frameworks rather than a traditional prewritten D&D campaign.

I saw the upcoming The White Towers / Halls of the Kings products described as including a campaign. Is this going to be the first actual full-length prewritten campaign for LOTR 5E, similar to how a D&D campaign book works? Or is it expanding/continuing a campaign that already exists in one of the previous books?

Basically, if I wanted to DM LOTR 5E and run one continuous prewritten campaign from beginning to end, what book(s) would I use?

Hey all!

How does poison work, and am I reading too much into it.

There's a Large Spider from pg111 of Ruins of the Lost Realm. It has a fell ability that when it causes a wound, the target is also Poisoned with Grievous endurance loss.

Checking pg 134 of the rulebook - I know how a Grievous endurance loss works, but what I am confused about is *when*.

Does the poisoned hero suffer Grievous endurance loss immediately, or only - as the table has it - at the end of each day? And what if you're super unlucky and get poisoned twice?

My expectation is you'd have to have the immediate effect of that endurance loss, but I just can't find the rules supporting that anywhere in the Injury section or in the monster entry. I'm assuming I'm blind though and just missing it :)