Sell me on TOR. Or not.

[Stormcrow]

try Decipher's LotR RPG, which is heavily movie-based.

Not really. The books were filled with stills from the movies, but they generally assumed you were playing by Tolkien, not Jackson. Where the two differ, the books often gave you both versions and made clear which was which. The game's mechanics did not favor Tolkien or Jackson over the other.

[Majestic]

try Decipher's LotR RPG, which is heavily movie-based.

Not really. The books were filled with stills from the movies, but they generally assumed you were playing by Tolkien, not Jackson. Where the two differ, the books often gave you both versions and made clear which was which. The game's mechanics did not favor Tolkien or Jackson over the other.

Agreed. There were some aspects of Decipher's game that I feel don't feel as Tolkienesque as TOR, but it's not because it was modeling the movies more than the books. I think The One Ring captures the feel of the movies more than the CODA system did.

I don't think one's love of TOR will be that heavily based on which of the two one loves "more". I love the movies (especially the LotR trilogy), but I also love the books. Asking me to pick one over the other makes me feel like I'm being asked to pick one of my children over the other!

[finarvyn]

To further complicate things, my wife only plays wizards when we role play. She says that the whole point of an RPG is to be able to use magic, which she obviously cannot do in the real world. I haven't seen any wizard options in TOR, but I haven't had a chance to read much from the rulebook.

If your wife is interested in having more magic options than just those, you can check out my extended magic rules (viewtopic.php?f=56&t=1586). If you use the Attention of Sauron rules in that book, you can have a fairly active magic sort of experience. If you use the Eye of Mordor rules (from Rivendell) instead (especially with a larger group) then magic will necessarily be a bit more constrained.

Wow. That's a long thread. I'm in the process of downloading your Ways of Magic PDF to get the final version of all of your development, but what I'm seeing in the first few posts is pretty darned impressive!

EDIT: Got the file downloaded. Looks even better than "darned impressive."

[zedturtle]

Cool. Let me know if you have questions, here or there.

[mirdanis]

Oh Zed, this looks amazing. I remember following your magic thread in its youth, but I didn't realize you had written up a document. My group will probably play through their last session of Tales from Wilderland next week, and we've been talking about shifting to Ruins of the North; at least two players want to switch to Dunedain characters. A third player asked about the possibility of more magic use, and other than the track available to Elves of Mirkwood, I didn't know what to tell her. But there are at least two Ways of Magic I see there that would be quite appropriate to her Dwarf!

[zedturtle]

Cool! It's actually been done for a while (or at least hasn't been revised recently) but with the move to the house rules (which makes sense) I can understand it being off the radar. Let me know how it goes.

[finarvyn]

Yeah, I've been reading through Zed's rules and they seem amazing and the perfect fix to my "wife wants to play a wizard" issue. I'd like to know if anyone has used these in actual play and how they worked out.

[zedturtle]

You may want to ping the thread in House Rules, because some folks might not realise that this thread has drifted this way.

Obviously biased, but during development Rocmistro let me play a character with a couple of Ways (Beast and Hunt) in a somewhat long-running game. They didn't feel overpowered and seemed comparable to what the heroes with other virtues were accomplishing. And all of my magic was not sufficient to prevent Aragorn from being ganked.

[mirdanis]

Cool! It's actually been done for a while (or at least hasn't been revised recently) but with the move to the house rules (which makes sense) I can understand it being off the radar. Let me know how it goes.

I shall! I do have a question though: what's the name of the font that you used for the Tolkien quotes in your document, since I see that it's the same one that's used in the official books? And where did you get it? I'd love to be able to use it myself!

[zedturtle]

Cool! It's actually been done for a while (or at least hasn't been revised recently) but with the move to the house rules (which makes sense) I can understand it being off the radar. Let me know how it goes.

I shall! I do have a question though: what's the name of the font that you used for the Tolkien quotes in your document, since I see that it's the same one that's used in the official books? And where did you get it? I'd love to be able to use it myself!

That is Tolkienesque.