Here's a ground breaking thought that just snuck into my brain pan. What would you guys like to hear the TOR team talk about in our videos? Any burning questions you'd like to ask anyone who worked on it?

We're working on new video material right now, and it struck me that I've never asked you good people out there what you'd like to hear us discuss, or if you have questions to ask that we haven't covered. Is there any aspect of development or production, anything about the rules you'd like to know more about?

You can post here, or if you're of a mind record us some audio or even video and send it (or a link to a downloadable file if it's video) to jonnerzh AT gmail D0T com, and you could very well appear in a C7TV extravaganza!

Thanks in advance!

Hm. Things I'd like to hear about...

How the Playtest campaigns went & things that were dropped or added as a result of playtesting

Upcoming books

I personally love seeing podcasts of actual play, so seeing some videos of people playing a TOR session or even a series would be very cool.

Upcoming books

Other than upcoming products I'm interested in what you may have left out of the game, due to space or time constraints, that you would have included. Also, what is your favorite piece of art in the books?

Maybe this is already done, but I'd like to see a game played or at least the creation of characters.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Some will be easier to implement than others, but we shall do our best.

I've been plotting getting a recording of a session for a while. The main issue thus far is I'd dearly love to do it with multiple cameras, to do it properly, and it would also need some additional sound recording. But hey I have friends who work with this kind of equipment so we'll see.

On other fronts I've already started on some of the ideas. Thanks!

Keep 'em coming if you have 'em!

After two months with the game both in leading a campaign and following the forum, let me just say one more time THANK YOU! Not only to the designers but to the community that is forming around the game and dialoguing on this forum, I am amazed and appreciative.

The area I appreciate the most is what feels like a faithful recreation of Tolkiens's Middle-earth into a gaming world and the dynamics of Tolkien's mythology into gaining mechanics, and the capture of Tolkien's narrative style into the overall structure of the game. This is just my impression.

What I would really be interested to find out is how the designers thought through the process of capturing Middle-earth in game mechanics. Say for example the journey rules, what from Middle-earth inspired their final form and content? The same could be said for combat, character creation, etc.

As I've followed the forum noting especially where people challenged and stretched the functionality of the rules in real game play as well as theoretical conversation, I often felt the tension come from the two competing poles. The first pole and the most prevalent is the expectation of how a RPG should work based on prevailing game design. The second pole comes from designing a game that is trying to capture a very specific world, mythology, and narrative. That is, say something like BODY doesn't seem to work well in a gaming environment when you expect it to work like other games. However, take the way BODY works according to TOR and insert that into The Hobbit or LotR narrative, and it works really well. I want to say that's because the way BODY works is based on studying sources like The Hobbit and The LotR as opposed to prevailing RPG systems. However, this is purely speculative on my part.

This is where my request comes in. I would really be interested to hear the designers talk about designing the game mechanics.

Best regards,
E