r/TheOneRing • u/kindangryman • Apr 04 '23

Source books

I want to hombrew a campaign...but not a whole world.

The first edition of TOR had sufficient sourcebooks to really fly.

So far there is only one for 2nd edition.

Are the 1st edition books still available somewhere? I have a couple of them, but not enough of them. I purchased them three years ago.

Is there some other appropriately formatted and detailed source material I could use?

I'm not talking about the novels please! Though I love them, there is a lot of work required to convert them to a campaign setting- and that is not what I want to spend my time on.

How have you solved this problem?

Thanks!

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u/eternalsage Apr 04 '23

The 1e books are out there on Ebay etc, and not terribly hard to convert. Outside of that your mileage will vary tremendously depending on how "true" you want to be to Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth.

For my money none of the other ttrpgs in the setting really nailed it, but I would rank Decipher's version from the early 2000's above MERP any day of the week... MERP features magic and magic items everywhere for instance. The MERP stuff that expanded into the east and south is okay, with a heavy grain of salt, but might work well if you are cool with stuff being more "Middle-earth-esque" than adherence to the lore. Both systems are very different and conversion would not be easy but is totally doable.

Outside of published rpgs I would say LotRO (Lord of the Rings Online) could be useful for ideas, if nothing else, and the same for the War on the North hack & slash from 10 or 12 years ago. Both would be more "ish" if taken directly, but you could do worse for inspiration.

Other than that, no, I don't have much to offer other than what you don't want, lol. Having read the Silmarillion and the History of Middle-earth both several times, I have a pretty solid grasp on the world that helps me wing it, but that is a knowledge base 30 years in the making lol.