cal585 wrote:
As for other games, I really want to try this:
http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/Anyone had any experience?
I own their Doctor Who RPG which is rather nice, though I tend to be inexperienced at RPGs
I have read the rule books but not yet played. From just reading, it looks very good. I don't have actual playing experience of Decipher's Middle-earth RPG, but compared to ICE's MERP this is a completely different thing. One-Ring seems to be the most Middle-earth themed of the three RPGs.
For example, it has a Fellowship system, which lets characters support each other. It takes into account that Middle-earth is a vast and sparsely populated land and has a movement between locations system that sets characters in different roles (guide, scout etc.) and abstracts the travelling quite a bit so that it does not become simple random encounter rolling. And takes corruption into account. And the battle system seems to be quick yet dramatic. All in all, probably a very good system for story telling, not so good for numbers gaming, if you know what I mean.
The designers have clearly asked themselves "how do we do a Middle-earth game?" instead of "how do we glue a couple of Middle-earth special rules onto a generic game system?". MERP was like D&D with some Middle-earth names and requires a lot of work from game master to really make it Middle-earth, but OR seems like you can get to real Middle-earth with a lot less customisation.
I can't wait to finish my current MERP campaign to get a chance to try this out.
-- Pasi