OSR-ing The One Ring

[Falconer]

I want to like The One Ring Roleplaying Game, but, inspired by some 5e threads, I thought I’d start one designed to make this game halfway understandable for us old-schoolers.

After seeing this condensed version of 5e, I have to wonder if anyone has done the same for TOR.

Also, compared to games I’m familiar with, it seems like it has a lot more rules. I mean, layers and layers of rules for things I don’t expect rules for in a RPG, you know? Is this game’s design such that whole subsystems can be excised.

[Stormcrow]

The subsystems are tightly integrated into the whole; you can't remove bits without adjusting other areas.

Most of the fundamentalists round these parts won't care for The One Ring. It is most decidedly not old-school.

[Falconer]

Mean.

[Finarvyn]

That's kind of sad. When TOR came out I bought the thing and some extra dice. I have a couple of the sourcebooks and the DM screen. I love the art work and the maps but never really got into the actual rules. I was kind of hoping for something easy to play.

[Falconer]

I still just have to wonder: wouldn’t it be possible to run a RPG essentially the way I run OD&D, that is, largely freeform, only consulting the TOR rules at the same points I would normally consult the OD&D rules? So, obviously filling out the character sheet at the beginning, and thereafter primarily for resolving combats and spells. Would it really be the end of the world if no-one ever got to roll his persuade skill check?

[Finarvyn]

No, but if you don't make those rolls one might ask why have persuade (for example) on the sheet at all. That's where a streamlined rules version would be neat.

I think I'd have to look at TOR again, but maybe the notion of using TOR for its spell list and OD&D for the rest might work out pretty well. (I know you suggested both combat and spells, but I don't recall enough about the combat system to repond to that part at the moment.) I know that I've done something like this with Decipher's LotR RPG a while back, where I stapled their spells onto OD&D. Worked pretty well.

[Stormcrow]

The One Ring doesn't really have a spell list. A few cultures have magical abilities available to characters, but it's hardly enough to produce the variety needed in a spell list. Use the Decipher game for that.

If I were going to play D&D in Middle-earth, I wouldn't try to port The One Ring; I'd just play D&D with customized spells and monsters. The mechanics of The One Ring are designed to produce the "feel" of Middle-earth. By playing D&D you simply put the responsibility on yourselves to provide that feel.

[Stormcrow]

Oct 25, 2014 21:22:12 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I thought I’d start one designed to make this game halfway understandable for us old-schoolers.

If anyone doesn't understand something about how The One Ring works, feel free to ask. I'm fully conversant with its rules.

[Falconer]

The original ruleset says it is the first of a trilogy of core rulesets. Is that still true? Rivendell seems to be a pretty major addition.

[Stormcrow]

No. They changed the plan, in part because they realized they were going to have to repeat too much of the rules each time.

Rivendell is the first part of the second stage of the complete campaign. Wilderland is the early years, Eriador is the middle years, and the South will be the final years leading up to the War of the Ring. Next up are the adventures book for eastern Eriador and a book of character options.

Rivendell is indeed a major addition, including rules for actual magic items, plus High Elves and Rangers. Magic items are pretty neat, in that the referee doesn't just place them. Instead, each character has a sheet of items he will potentially find over the course of his career, which are particularly suited to his own use. When certain treasure hoards are discovered, the players can roll to see if they find one of these "destined" magic items. Items are also not just +1 weapons; they have various powers and even curses that match the people who made them (such as ancient dwarves, men of Westernesse, or High Elves of the First Age).

High Elves and Rangers are more powerful than characters from the core rules, but they come with their own hindrances: Rangers cannot use fellowship points, and High Elves can only reduce Shadow by marking a common skill as used for that purpose. They lose more Shadow the higher the skill, but from then on for the rest of their career they get a point of Shadow and automatic failure whenever they roll an Eye while rolling that skill.

[Falconer]

Oct 27, 2014 7:16:23 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

The mechanics of The One Ring are designed to produce the "feel" of Middle-earth.

Yeah, and in some ways they do an excellent job. I’m a big fan of the board games by these same designers (most famously War of the Ring) — good design combined with really excellent theme integration makes for some really fun gaming. So that’s a big part of the appeal of TOR, for me.

I have read some of the TOR rules and scenarios, and part of what’s bugging me is that it is too “safe.” It’s true that Tolkien didn’t have fireballs and airships, but his stories were nevertheless always grand. There’s a part in TOR where it lectures you that Aragorn was extraordinary, Aragorn was not your average Ranger, Aragorn was not just “Strider,” your Ranger PC is no Aragorn. But Tolkien only wrote about extraordinary people. Aragorn, Bard, Túrin, Beren… each had a lost royal ancestry and an inherited magical artifact (or two). They faced dragons, balrogs, and evil wizards in open contest. They founded, saved, and toppled kingdoms. The fact that it seems like you can’t really even aspire to any of this in TOR, that you have to be content with feebly pushing back against the inevitable coming darkness for a year or two by humbly saving a woodmen village from a wolf, or rescuing a dwarf from the marsh… that’s weak sauce that Tolkien would never have bothered with. That’s not “the feel of Middle-earth.”

Now, because I have no interest in running their published scenarios, it seems like I will have to wait for them to slowly publish enough material that the RPG can be used as a toolbox. It is encouraging that now you can at least play a Noldo or a Dúnadan, and magic items are available. I noticed that MERP was basically the same deal: It took them several years before they were able to publish a monster collection, a treasure collection, and a gazetteer, all collecting information from their previous modules. I hope the same thing happens for TOR.

[Stormcrow]

One of the basic themes of the game is that you're participating in the War of the Ring without contradicting the novels. You're not the central protagonists of the novels. You're one of those "quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures."

This also frees you to explore areas of Middle-earth Tolkien left undetailed. We see a little of Wilderland, but we get a map of much more. The game lets you explore the "much more."

As for the stature of the protagonists in the novels, while The Silmarillion is about epic figures, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—which is all Cubicle7 is licensed to use—centers around small, insignificant people who make a difference in world affairs. There are epic people helping them, but in the end these books still use hobbits as our most familiar frame of reference.

Even in D&D you start at level 1.

[Falconer]

Oct 27, 2014 13:59:45 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

As for the stature of the protagonists in the novels, while The Silmarillion is about epic figures, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings … centers around small, insignificant people who make a difference in world affairs. There are epic people helping them, but in the end these books still use hobbits as our most familiar frame of reference.

The hobbit characters are the only exceptions; and even they are not exceptions, upon closer examination. Merry is the heir of the Master of Buckland; Pippin is the heir of the Thain of the Shire. Frodo, of course, is Master of Bag End, “the most luxurious hobbit-hole in the local area,” which obviously functions as the manor house of Hobbiton (as is obvious from Bilbo’s Birthday Party and from Saruman later headquartering there). That they are landed gentry is par for the course in the genre, with Sam tagging along as Sancho Panza. But I think the real point of the story is that they seem small and insignificant, yet they prove to be of much greater worth and importance than the mighty. To say they “make a difference” is a gross understatement—they cast down Barad-dûr! Even Sam—perhaps, especially Sam—who is not only a Hobbit but a lower-class laborer, does deeds greater than many a mighty “Elvish warrior” of old. At the end of the story he is Mayor of Michel Delving, the most important position in the Shire (even more so than Thain or Master of Buckland).

So, you see, I see continuity, not contrast, between the “Great Tales” and the two novels.

Even in D&D you start at level 1.

Exactly. You start as “Strider” and perhaps you die as “Strider” or perhaps you end up as “King Elessar.” That potential greatness and lordship should be there for all PCs. My complaint is that TOR seems to be saying your PC is “Strider” (or “Sam the Gardener”) and always will be.

One of the basic themes of the game is that you're participating in the War of the Ring without contradicting the novels. You're not the central protagonists of the novels. You're one of those "quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures."

This also frees you to explore areas of Middle-earth Tolkien left undetailed. We see a little of Wilderland, but we get a map of much more. The game lets you explore the "much more."

Yeah, I can see that. The problem is it values canon Middle-earth over Tolkienian story logic. That’s not the case in The War of the Ring. Any given game can end up with a radically different result that nevertheless plays out a story that feels like Tolkien could have written it. I think the way it uses randomness (dice and especially cards heavily flavored with Tolkien story elements) to generate a Tolkienian story could have a lot of value in a RPG. Tolkien’s books read like strings of “random encounters,” with the maps fleshed out around them after the story, not before. So, I think TOR is going about it backwards, by fleshing out the maps with inoffensive little monster lairs and villages and letting you explore that. Instead, there should be table and tables of inspiring story elements mined from Tolkien and compatible myth and legend. You send the fellowship off to a known destination on a defined quest, but overland across vaguely defined landscape (of which there is plenty on the map, as you point out). And as they travel, you populate the map with Tolkienish things, and it’s a freeform exercise on the part of the DM and Players to decide how they all interrelate.

Just my musing.

[cooper]

I've mentioned it on other boards before, but a great emulator of tolkien is burning wheel. Elven characters have grief, dwarves have greed and the game even fully supports playing an Incredible orc only campaign with a brilliant character creation mini-game that trades power for greater and greater likelihood that your orc starts the game with serious maiming caused by having fought up through the ranks. The demihumans aren't just people with infravision and higher dexterity.

If you want to play fantasy CHAINMAIL, then d&d, MERP, and all these other games are fine, but if you want to play tolkien, then burning wheel is the game (there is even a dedicated "strider" lifepath.)

[Stormcrow]

*shrug* Can't please everyone.

[kingofelfland]

The problem with Burning Wheel in Middle Earth is the human life paths; they are clearly too late for the Tolkien feel. I think I've read that they are based on 12th cen France but they seem a little later than that actually. This might be a result of development in the game; I'm only familiar with BWGold. Also, the human life paths don't interact with the non-human in any meaningful way.
I think the system would work, but the GM would have to do a good deal of work to get the humans and hobbits into play.

[cooper]

As to human life paths not interacting with non-humans. I see it as a feature not a bug. Although the game does give brief mention of how one could "cross over" (half-elves), the races of tolkien didn't really hang out much either. If one wants their strider, knight, bandit, cook, to be an "elf friend", he's got to earn that title in game, the game can, but doesn't push players to have a typically d&d/fellowship of the ring multiethnic party. How one would get an elf a dwarf and a human into the same party would take place during the first game (world burning) before adventuring technically began. The human life paths can be seen as very 15th century francophonish and tolkien never really talks about human religious institutions that I'm aware of, but I think it's easy enough to say certain life-paths aren't available for play.

The true worth and tolkienish quality is with the elf dwarf and orcs however. The rules for grief, greed, and hate make non-humans so special, so tolkienesque that I still wonder why every person with a jones for a mature RP (not sexually mature, but mature in the sense of sensibilities) isn't clamoring to play this game. Elf-song magic? So, so different from human sorcery? Neither remotely vancian? amazing! Unbalanced races where elves are simply better than humans? great! Tolkien didn't write his book for game balance. The game specifically does not include hobbits, if they exist at all in a BWG game, they are all hidden small-folk who don't participate in the larger world. Which, somewhat ironically, makes BWG again, more tolkienesque than all other games laying claim to the title. If your game can have a hundred merry pippin sam and frodos running around, its not really a tolkienesque game...its a game based on tolkiens world...which is a subtle but important difference.

The mere fact that you would be able to distinguish Fea/noldor/sindar and Aman/valinor elves in BWG tells you a lot about how robust the system can be. Also, that you could have an amazing game playing a tribe of orcs in service to the white hand.

[kingofelfland]

I don't disagree about the elves, dwarves, and orcs. They are perfect for Middle Earth. In fact, as you mention about the hobbits, not having human adventurers might make it more Tolkienesque. The Hobbit certainty doesn't have them and Aragorn is hardly typical as a member of human society (and he really isn't). But the human section of Burning Wheel Gold sends off a clear Warhammer vibe that I just can't get past. I'd certainly use Burning Wheel to play a 1st or 2nd age game though. And I'd use The One Ring's dice.
PS. If I remember correctly Burning Wheel Gold doesn't have the world building element in the book—which is a shame because it sounds cool.