Troublesome Campaign Idea...

[Jez]

First up, howdy, first post. Long time Tolkien fan, long time gamer. So I'm curious about picking up The One Ring RPG, it looks nice and shiny, but from all I've read it's totally focused on characters from the Wilderlands around Dale, Esgaroth and Northern Mirkwood (and Rivendell in the next release) in the time period just after the events in the Hobbit.

Problem is, I've already done all that.

When the first Lord of the Rings films came out my crew all went bwaaaaah and I ran a four year campaign using the Storyteller system where the players tramped all over the Wilderlands, from Mirkwood to Rivendell, to Ost-in-Edhil and up to the Grey Mountains, and were just about to storm Dol Guldur along side the White Council when the game fell apart when I moved overseas.

To be honest I'm... well not bored by the idea of having to return to the Wilderlands again, but nowhere near as excited as say going some place new and different to keep things fun for me the GM, probably the Wars in the south against the Black Numenoreans and the Corsairs of Umbar, the remnants of Mordor's armies and their southron allies.

But to do that using The One Ring sounds like a total pain in terms of homebrewing new heroic cultures, unless there's fan material out there tucked away somewhere which my search-fu has so far failed to find. I could use the older Lord of the Rings RPG, as it at least has stats for most critters and covers all locations and is more friendly to various time periods, but the game itself is not without problems from what I can recall, and suffers from overpowered characters. MERP, much as I loved it back in the day I won't touch now.

So yeah, conundrum. And if anyone does know where to find some fan made heroic cultures related to that Umbar campaign idea lemme know. thanks heaps.

[Glorelendil]

If you're a serious Tolkien fan you'll want to get it just to read. It's that good.

[Elmoth]

Depends on what area you want. Unless you define a more concrete area helping might be difficult. People from Gondor might not be very similar to people from harad, after all. And there might be a pair or 3 different templates for Gondor due to its sheer size (city dweller, farmer, ranger).

For starters you have 4 templates to base humans around: 2 official (Dale + Esgaroth) and 2 unofficial (Rangers of the North + Rohan). I can see that tweaking those 4 templates should allow you access to any kind of human good guy. For elves from other places, moving some abilities around should bee enough, and I would use the same template for dwarves all around ME. You should only need tweaks and thinking a few virtues for them to get as Valor and Wisdom rewards here. Requires work, but it is not that massive.

Bad guys do not have full character templates in the game. They are easier to design than that, so that should not be that much work.

So, I think the work is not that massive if you want to get into it

Cheers,
Xavi

[Hermes Serpent]

Giblet Blizzard, Take a good look through the forum you'll find lots of interesting things going on.

You however will not find much about areas other than the current focus on Rhovanion.

As I've pointed out on numerous occasions Middle-earth Enterprises is much more fanatical about their licence and restricts C7/SG (AFAIK) to the period between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for publishing material in line with the licence from JRRT.

So if your main interest lies outside the greater Mirkwood area then you are really out of luck with this game at this time. Future supplements may cover other areas from the Hobbit but anything about Umbar or indeed anything covered in UT is really unlikely unless the Tolkien Estate has a change in direction and licences material directly.

[Glorelendil]

As I've pointed out on numerous occasions Middle-earth Enterprises is much more fanatical about their licence and restricts C7/SG (AFAIK) to the period between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for publishing material in line with the licence from JRRT.

I've been seeing a number of posts like this that state the nature of C7's license in definitive terms. Is this conjecture (even informed conjecture), or is there a public reference/source? I'd love to understand better what C7's parameters are.

[Hermes Serpent]

The licence details that are available are limited to sketchy details concerning the licence that JRRT sold and which is now held by M-e E. What is known is that material published since his death is not covered by the licence and the IP is held by the Tolkien Estate.

The One Ring web site had a recent post by a lawyer who is a gamer discussing the whole sorry saga of litigation between NewLine, Warner, M-eE and the Tolkien Estate. Some legal knowledge may be required and possibly some understanding of the English legal system used in the United States.

www.theonering.net/torwp/ and go back to Jan 5th or
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2014/01 ... -a-chance/

He does a good job of making recent litigation readable.

What is not available is the terms of the licence that C7 have with M-e E. But the details of the older, encompassing, licence probably cover that. That's why no rewriting or unauthorised work on UT or HoME is allowed without approval by the Tolkien Estate (basically JRRT's remaining children plus a lawyer)

[Jon Hodgson]

I've been seeing a number of posts like this that state the nature of C7's license in definitive terms. Is this conjecture (even informed conjecture), or is there a public reference/source? I'd love to understand better what C7's parameters are.

We have never, nor will ever, discuss the terms of Sophisticated Games' license.

[Jez]

@ Elfcrusher: Oh I most likely will pick it up,the question should have been "should I go to the effort of stating up a huge area outside of the Wilderlands, how big a job is it".

@ Elmoth: Thanks for those suggestions, that's something solid to work with. I've found the Rangers heroic culture fan supplement but no luck with the Riders of Rohan, if you have a link handy lemme know. Thx.

@ Hermes Serpent: I did spend a good chunk of yesterday looking for stuff on the new forums, is there much in the archived old forum that might be of use to my idea? Also I'm well aware of the restrictions of the license, Decipher and Peter Jackson had to work within the same constraints and still did ok with "edge of the map" stuff. They even had a half decent map of Umbar in their Maps of ME: Cities and Strongholds box set. I also don't expect The One Ring designers to drop everything and start pandering to my demands (nice as the thought may be ). There's a wealth of information about the ongoing struggle for Umbar between Gondor, the Haradrim, the Black Numenoreans and Castimir the Usurper's followers all through the LotR appendix; I can extrapolate enough adventure ideas just from what's there without having to turn to UT or the Silmarillion.

@ Jon Hodgson: Fortunately, the arcane workings of legalese and licensurian are non-essential ingredients in my cunning plans.

[Rich H]

@ Elmoth: Thanks for those suggestions, that's something solid to work with. I've found the Rangers heroic culture fan supplement but no luck with the Riders of Rohan, if you have a link handy lemme know. Thx.

I think there were a good two or three different versions of them to be honest, each had some really nice bits. I was playing with the idea of creating a hybrid version of all the elements I liked from them but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Anyway, here are the different versions:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/795 ... 20v1.1.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/795 ... 0Rohan.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/795 ... 0Rules.pdf

All good stuff.

[Jez]

@ Rich H: excellent thank you!