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Since there will be a new rules edition out soon, how about a quickstarter along with that? If you leave out character generation (instead providing pregenerated characters for all cultures), I'm sure you could boil down the basic rules to 12-14 pages, if you leave out things like favoured skills, special combat tasks, and most of the advancement rules. Add a short adventure, and you would have a great introduction into rpgs in general and TOR in particular. I would really love to see somthing like this ...

It's a nice idea, but the time and staffing (writer, artist and layout etc.) would take away from the release schedule already laid down and that would annoy current players whose tolerance for delay in releasing material for the game is notoriously low.

A starter version is something that really needs to be properly planned for at product launch as part of the marketing push for a new product rather than tacking it on several years down the line. It's also a good tool for pushing a new/fresh release of older product lines. I see that WOTC are offering a 5e starter kit for USD20 on July 15th before the release of the other new edition books between Gencon and November. They employ a lot of folks in the Marketing Department to make sure that the release goes well. I suspect that C7's staffing levels including freelancers and independent authors doesn't even come close to the number of booth staffers WOTC employ for Gencon.

I see the point ... however, now would probably the best time - as I said, there's a new edition of the rules coming, and also, by now there's a lot of material out there (it makes little sense to publish a quickstarter when there is very little to buy for people who like it).

Im mainly saying this because I recently played TOR at the monthly games night at our bookshop with a group of RPG novices, and I noticed that it is actually very easy to get into for newbies. Pretty much everyone knows the setting, and the rules still work if you stick to the basics and leave out extra stuff like combat tasks, traits, virtues and rewards. I'm sure that a lot of these newbies would readily pay about 10 euros/$ for a quickstarter, as opposed to about four or five times that much for the full game.

What would you put in to such a product?
A set of pre-gen characters (one per culture at minimum I suppose).
A short adventure - I like Blood in the Water and the LM book's Marsh Bell as starter adventures, but a 3-4 hour/1 session - 4 page adventure to show off the features of the game is easy enough to write.
The basic Rules for Combat - stances without the non-combat Tasks.
Simplified Travel rules relevant to the included adventure.
Simplified rules for Encounters.
The rules for using Traits (as this is a big feature of the rules).
Some Hate and Hope rules to provide the flavour of the full rules.

What I'd leave out
Rules for Hazards except maybe mentioned in passing as part of the adventure.
Advancement rules except the mention of how AP's are gained wrt to using Traits etc.
Armour and weapons rules except where they impact on the pre-gens or adversaries.

Comments?

That's pretty much how I would do it - basically, provide characters and an adventure and then work your way back from there to find out what rules are needed. You could even leave the journey rules out and simply explain in the adventure which rolls the players have to make and what the possible consequences are.

To my mind, it is enough if a quickstarter provides one short adventure that presents the core elements and themes of the game, and everything that is needed for playing it.

By the way, to you have a link to "Blood in the Waters"? It's not from C7, or is it?

No, BotW is by one of the guys on here in the early days. I've put it in the folder on my G+ Drive (link in my sig) so you can get it from there.

I'd say it could be done as a 24 page B&W, plus 2 page color cardstock insert and color cover, saddlebound. And probably come out under US$20.

Title, credits, and legalalia: 1 page
What is Roleplaying: 1 page
Using the dice: 1/2 page
Rolling tasks/tests: 1 page
Endurance and wounds 1 page
Using traits: 1/2 page - no mention of advancement points.
Hope: 1/2 page
Fellowship: 1/2 page
Basics of Combat: 2 pages - only round process, stances, and attack actions.
Basics of Interaction: 2 pages - Only resolving interactions, and use of tolerance, not generating tolerance.
Basics of Travel: 1 page - only travel roles - results, legs, and test TN's in the adventure
Adventure: 6-8 pages. All travel legs prefigured, one type of result for travel sauron results per leg, pre figured.
Characters: 6 pages. 2 each from 3 cultures, including one non-human.

Insert: 3 pages on one sheet. Page 1 is blank; 2 is cardstock tokens or paper-minis; 3 is a travel mat, and 4 is a combat mat. Both mats similar to voidstate's. Both mats have a box reminding that 11=eye and 12=gandalf. the minis should be 2 each for each character (1 male, 1 female), and one per monster or hostile GMC.

A second version, differing only in the characters and adventure, and tokens/figures, and including the ones not in the first, would be a cheesy quick follow-on.

It's not official, but check out http://blogs.wylfing.net/coronas/2012/0 ... art-rules/ and associated PDF. May not have everything you are after, but good for a player quickstart (designed for handing out at conventions I gather).

As a thought would someone like to combine the LM character creation and make it for PC's with this to make a rules lite TOR?

That's IP issue and likely to be clamped down on by C7 and, as it's unlicensed, by M-e E as well.