The One Ring vs. Adventures in Middle Earth

[daddystabz]

I own and have played The One Ring previously and found it marvelously evocative of the Middle Earth setting. I am excited about Adventures in Middle Earth and am a fan of 5e in terms of D&D. However, my fear is that if I get Adventures in Middle Earth it might just feel like D&D with a Middle Earth skin thrown on and not be as evocative or true to the setting as The One Ring.

What do you all feel about this? What are your thoughts? Do you feel that Adventures in Middle Earth will be as legitimate as The One Ring and just as faithful to the themese and spirit of Tolkien's world?

[Deadmanwalking]

Well, since AIME isn't out yet, none of us have seen it, which makes speculation perhaps a bit premature.

That said, they've said that the races and particularly Classes are bespoke creations specific to the setting (and thus lack stuff like overt magic ala fireball), that they're replacing Alignment with something more like Shadow, and that they're adding what amount to Journey and Encounter rules.

That still leaves several distinct differences (skills as such are a vastly bigger deal in TOR, for example, and the power ceiling for experienced/high level characters is almost inevitably gonna be higher in AIME), but it should definitely help get the vibe right.

That said, I imagine that AIME will still feel like D&D in most ways. It'll feel like D&D actually occurring in Middle Earth rather than just 'with a different skin', but D&D has a very specific vibe and I imagine AIME will retain that. The question is whether that's what you want in your game or not. Some people just want to play in the setting sandbox of Middle Earth (and quite possibly don't even want the D&D vibe), and I think TOR might be a better game for them...but a lot of people have wanted to play D&D in Middle Earth ever since they really started playing D&D, and I suspect AIME will fulfill that desire very nicely.

[daddystabz]

I browsed through it a tad at GenCon. I am sure many others did too. We know it will use the 5e rules overall but with some concepts thrown in from TOR.

[skywalker]

I don't see this as a 'vs' situation, but a 'and' one. More Middle-earth gaming the better and now people can choose the rules they prefer or can attract players for. AME doesn't stop me using TOR or vice versa.

I can say that I would expect C7 will maintain their primary goal as being true to Middle-earth regardless of the system.

[Elmoth]

Unless they get rid of clerics and healing potions it is quite unlikely it will fly for me. But let's wait and see.

[Majestic]

I'm very much looking forward to AME, and feel there's plenty of room for both games.

Though I don't see the games as competing against each other, I am tempted to (like at a local, annual con) have a game where our 5E D&D characters have to go up against our TOR characters. Sort of a 'Civil War' in Middle-earth, just for fun.

[Deadmanwalking]

Unless they get rid of clerics and healing potions it is quite unlikely it will fly for me. But let's wait and see.

Uh...it uses its own classes, so they've explicitly done the first part of that already (no Clerics). I'd guess they did the second as well, though I have no proof.

[Elmoth]

Glad to hear it. D&D is quite built around the use and recovery of resources, specially HP. Clerics and healing potions / surges or whatever they call them now are there to deal with this. getting rid of that would be a major impact on how the D&D system plays. Let's see what they have done.

[Deadmanwalking]

Glad to hear it. D&D is quite built around the use and recovery of resources, specially HP. Clerics and healing potions / surges or whatever they call them now are there to deal with this. getting rid of that would be a major impact on how the D&D system plays. Let's see what they have done.

This is a lot less true in 5E, because they went with HP representing being tired as much as anything (it maps pretty well to Endurance in TOR, thematically, to be honest) and thus have a pretty robust degree of natural (out-of-combat) healing built in to the system. Frankly, I'd expect them to need to curtail the natural healing rules or add additional conditions that make them difficult ala Wounded and Weary if they don't want healing to be vastly easier in AIME than in TOR even without any magic healing available at all (and I expect there'll be a little magical healing ala Staunching
Song available as well).

And yeah, I'm pretty curious to see what they've done with it as well.

[Elmoth]

My experience in 5th edition is limited to a single game in a convention where I played a too-important-for-your-group posh and opinionated (read: an asshole) elf in the middle of a dwarf party (described as such in the character background I received), so not much experience there myself. The game was funny and me and the other elf got in a lot of problems with the other 4 dwarf characters and we all had a blast , but nothing really serious happened in combat terms.