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Ok everybody, having now read the Heart of the Wild supplement, here are my thoughts and I am very interested as to how others see this supplement:

The Good: 1: The layouts of the main sites - Dol Guldur, Mountain Hall, Rhosghobel etc. all seem very useful and well thought out.
2: The NPC's in the main also seem pretty good and plausible across the supplement. One minor quibble is the failure to put in Tolerance Ratings for these NPC's - I have found in playtesting that this is an essential stat for NPC's!
3. New Fellowship Phase Undertakings - these are very good and also bring out more flavour of the locales and cultures the PC's will encounter.
4. I loved the suggested outlook on how elves 'fade' on p.77 - different to how I viewed this. I also loved the greater emphasis on Shadow and Corruption, e.g. on p.78 how characters with 3 or more Shadow points will have a tough time in the Elven King's Halls!

The Bad:
1 Where is the Journey stuff?? A few generic paragraphs for each region and some paragraphs on p.68-69 were not enough IMHO, especially lacking is Hazards. This lack is surprising given the importance of the Journey rules.

2. No Adventure possibilities or suggestions for the desperate Loremaster looking for a few ideas!

The lack of this stuff is I suspect intentional - you really need to get "Darkening of Mirkwood" as well as this, hopefullly Darkening will address these two main 'holes'.

Robin S.

Personally, I agree with all your 'goods' Robin, but I'm disappointed by the fact Lorien is not covered, even though Haldir and his brothers are mentioned, and I'm also slightly irked by the way it constantly says 'buy Darkening of Mirkwood to fully explore/discover this possibility'

That said, it's beautiful, well laid out, and in my opinion has a wealth of possible adventures buried in its pages

From this report/review it seems almost like they had lot's of material material written but with all the prior delays needed to get something out fast before Gencon 2013 to sustain interest. The material they had may have been split up between HotW and Darkening to reduce the time taken/delays for approval. With the latest printer problem they will have had a major setback as Gencon seems to be a primary source of income/product chatter and marketing for many companies.

Beleg wrote:... and I'm also slightly irked by the way it constantly says 'buy Darkening of Mirkwood to fully explore/discover this possibility

That'll be because they were originally writing it as one book and my guess is when they split it into two, those comments are references to where information was removed for the next book.

That'll be because they were originally writing it as one book and my guess is when they split it into two, those comments are references to where information was removed for the next book.

I'd completely forgotten that. To be honest, I'm just happy to have all the information in Heart of the Wild

They've done a beautiful job on the layout, art, & writing, which are superb & up to their usual high standards.

In terms of content, they've developed multiple people & places that give LMs tons of material for adventures.

I concur, however, with the comments about the absence of hazards.

1. The journey rules are integral to the game & I thought they'd expand upon them in the HofW. I'm very disappointed that they haven't, & if they do in The Darkening of Mirkwood, it still means flipping between two books/pdfs during a game, not to mention the ones spread-out in the other books

2. Their original release hinted at Beasts of the Forest. They have some cool Monsters of the Wild, though the first one gives me pause in terms of canon - as do a couple from the Lake-town Sourcebook.

As for the others, however, they add a great deal to the game, but we continue to have abstract descriptions of mundane creatures. I understand why they do it concerning their narrative format, but there are times when you may wish to substitute a battle against Orcs or corrupted Men with something else for variety but still tone it down a bit.

I love this passage from the final battle at the Black Gate:

As when death smites the swollen brooding thing...so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved...

You can read 'beast spell-enslaved' in a number of ways, which opens up some cool possibilities.

3. It's obvious why they steer away from dungeons, but in Dol Guldur, for example, they describe underground lairs without providing them. If they release them in the future, it may not be an issue, but if they don't, you again have to wing it. One of the reasons many of us purchase these is to save ourselves the time

Oh well, it's still the best game that anyone's ever done on Middle-earth, IMHO.

PS I thought we could all use a quick positive note. I just checked RPGNow & The Heart of the Wild is 25 out of the top 100 on their sales list. Not bad, considering all of the games out there

Love the layout.

Love the presentation (history, wildlife, notable people, notable places).

Unhappy that while Lorien is on the Map, it is not covered (nor is Dimrill Dale).

Would have been nice to have sample area specific Hazards for each area.

I loved the book. The history and the detail of places, adventure hooks and ideas and npcs are just great. I started to use the adventure hooks right away!

I really liked the monsters too. Woodwight and forestgoblins are very nice for example imo.

But I agree with the lack of hazards and journey stuff. I always secretly pray they will roll a Sauron during journeys, I love hazards!

Also I can only one way justify the absence of Lorien, that is if you guys are going to write it's own book soon!

Mim wrote: I love this passage from the final battle at the Black Gate:

As when death smites the swollen brooding thing...so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved...

You can read 'beast spell-enslaved' in a number of ways, which opens up some cool possibilities.

I never liked the idea of statting out animals for the purpose of turning them into opponents, but the quote is indeed very tempting!

Francesco