So while I have been fan of Middle-earth stories / books since my teen days, I didn't ever "study" Middle-earth until The One Ring as it was the first RPG set in Middle-earth that I really felt drawn to actually play.

In my mad craze of cramming as much M-e lore as possible over the past 14 months since I started playing, I simply don't have the time to read as much as I would like or know I should in order to really run a truly setting spirited campaign.

Enter the E-Zines of Hall of Fire and Other Minds.

What I would like to know from our community here is some breakdown on the differences of the two.
(I do know need subjective opinions of "which is better" as that is a bit unhelpful).

For instance:

Are they geared towards a specific age? Thus many plot hooks within would be irrelevant to TOR....

Is one more about crunchy bits like treasure, adversaries, and NPCs while another is more about setting and history and culture?

Are they geared towards a specific game system so that crunchy info is too incompatible?

Do either have adventure ideas? Or just setting fodder?

etc etc.

This may help me sift through less important reading (for me) and focus on some info that would really help me fine-tune some TORrific game sessions and memorable encounters/places etc.

Hall of Fire was written for the Decipher game with a few generic articles.

I think Other Minds / Other Hands were aimed at MERP, but I seem to remember many articles being very light on game stats or system-less.

Both had lots of setting information and a some adventures.

I think Tolwen on this forum is something to do with Other Minds.

Well, I'm certainly somewhat biased, so I'll restrain myself from too much talking

As far as OM is concerned, the mag itself is not restrained to any specific type of content or game systems as long as it related to RPGing in Tolkien's world (including peripheral topics like miniatures).
By now almost every type of material has appeared, though there is a lot of content on historical, cultural and in general "Tolkien lore"-related stuff.
Speaking of game systems, by now MERP (and derivatives) has seen the most part, but that is due to the interests of the submitting authors. We (speaking for the OM editorial team) would be happy to see other systems getting more prominence as well, but that depends on people who are submitting their ideas/stuff.

As I see it HoF is (was?) focussed on crunchy game stuff (rules, items, adventures, NPC's etc.) for the LotRRPG alone.

And speaking of ezines, on the OM website there are electronic versions of the 1990s Tolkien-RPG hardcopy zine Other Hands, which is a predecessor and inspiration for OM. It had a lot of material, with a lot of stuff usable for any game system (e.g. adventures). Naturally (given its time of existence), the GM stuff is primarily with MERP stats, though some RQ material is found as well.

Cheers
Tolwen

Thanks for the replies; they have been mostly helpful.


Thus is it safe to say that from a "current plothook" perspective - OM/OH is primarly 2nd Age (due to it's heavy influence in MERP), and that HoF is for about the time of the LotR???? (late 3rd - early 4th?) I'm not extremely familiar with Decipher's setting - My buddy was and tried to get me into it - but it wasn't inspiring as a system for me to stop with my regular D&Ding (which later turned into Pathfinder fandom bigtime).

TOR is the first system that truly has me curtailing my PF (D&D) since I started it in '82. I've tried many other games/systems over the years, but I always went back to D&D for most of my gaming interests.

Tolwen (as always) did a great job answering you, but I just want to address your point about OH/OM focusing on MERP during the Second Age. Yes, their articles ran/run the gamut of all the ages, but usually aim toward the MERP default setting; Third Age 14th-17th centuries (the Kinstrife, Wainriders, Plague, etc.)

Yes, HoF focuses on the time of The Hobbit & LOTR.

For OM/OH, yes and no. The content published so far reflects the interests of the authors, not any default set by the editors. It would be very good to get as much differing views and preferences (author-wise) as possible.

Some of the stuff is for the earlier Ages (1st and 2nd), but most for the 3rd, though with a slight temporal focus on the the mid-Third Age from about 1400 to 1650, since the default MERP timeframe was TA 1640. Concrete gaming stuff for the late Third Age is by now somewhat lacking. Here is enough room for prospective authors to set standards

One Issue was dedicated solely for ideas about the 4th Age though. After all, the zine itself does not give any defaults for temporal focus, game system etc., but publishes what idealistic authors (since there is no royalty of any kind involved) think might be of interest for the Middle-earth RPG community.

HoF was heavily focussed (IIRC almost solely) on the LotR-era (i.e. TA 3015+), as the game stuff trailed the books (and movies) very closely as far as temporal focus is concerned. System-wise, it was LotRRPG-only.

Cheers
Tolwen

EDIT: The next Issue will already have a good deal of stuff directly (and indirectly) usable for TOR, so it does not look bad at all

Once again - thanks for all the direction everyone.

ooops - double post somehow; sorry.