I. First Impressions and Format
This is a very attractive book, hardbound and durable. The cover is a striking graphic of the One Ring. Inside the cover is a map of Middle Earth. While the game itself is based heavily on the primary sources, its imagery come from the movie. Attractive color art adorns many pages. The text is neat and readable, although the tendency toward winding columns fooled my eye, on more than one occasion, into wandering off-course.
II. Capsule Overview
The Introduction is short and sweet, addressing new players, new gamers, those unfamiliar with the milieu, and veterans of all of the above. Chapter One contains both an overview of Middle Earth geography and character creation, along with an assortment of pre-made characters. Chapter Two covers Attributes. Chapter Three covers races, Four is Orders (character classes or professions), Five is Skills, Six is Traits (Edges and Flaws), Seven is Magic, including numerous spells, and Eight is an equipment guide. Chapter Nine is the rules, including combat, travel, Weariness, Corruption, and various hazards of adventuring. Chapter Ten covers the epic experience. Chapter Eleven is specifically advice on Creating and Running the Chronicle. Finally, Chapter Twelve offers all manner of beasties. There is an excellent index.
III. Milieu
The setting is certainly the game's strong point. Set in Tolkien's Middle Earth, dipping heavily into the mythology of the Simarillion as well as the trilogy and the Hobbit, the game strongly evokes the feeling of Middle Earth and brings alive a rich world that is hard to contain within two covers (indeed, Tolkien himself could not do it). The Lord of the Rings is an epic, and the game seeks to emulate the romance, peril, morality, ethos, and sense of power and responsibility of the books. On many levels, it succeeds.
The realms introduced in Chapter One are touched on again in Chapter Three, giving us both history and a taste of the people who live there. Chapter Ten expands on various themes, while Chapter Twelve presents a satisfying array of adversaries. I commend this book on its treatment of Magic, both subtle and wondrous. Magic in Middle Earth is not used lightly, nor regarded so, but it touches on every part of life.
The Lord of the Rings, despite its patriarchy of the fantasy genre, is different in many ways from other fantasy games. The technology and culture are of the Dark Ages, not the High Renaissance. Warriors wear mail and use longswords, and the bow is the supreme weapon of distance. Middle Earth is largely devoid of religion. Religion seems pale in a world where history recalls the hand of the Divine. The Wise honor the Valar, while any who remember the legends tremble at the mention of Morgoth and his demons. But there are no churches and few miracles. The Wizards and others seem to be angelic. The Elves and those who know the oldest legends revere the One. Magic items are few and precious, often mighty, but rarely flashy. While the books provided a great deal of inspiration to Dungeons & Dragons, that game also includes elements of high fantasy and swords and sorcery. This game is based on the epic works of Tolkien, a unique vision of magic, good and evil, and above all, the power of hope.
III. The Rules
For good or ill, we don't learn until Chapter Nine that this game uses difficulty numbers, rolling 2d6 (open-ended on double 6's). The game is streamlined in execution, but wandering in presentation. The designers seemed to have aimed for the simplest possible detailed system for heroic actions. However, I would have preferred the mechanics have a stronger tie-in to the descriptions given in character creation.
Characters have six Attributes. They vary from 2 to 12, modified by race. Low scores don't result in any penalties unless they are really low, while high scores can grant up to 3 or more on Tests (and Skills). There are two methods for determining Attributes. You can simply assign a pre-determined scheme. Or you can roll for it; roll 2d6 nine times, and take the six best, arranging as you please. The assignment method is ideal if you have a clear idea what you want. Using the random method, I designed one character, a Southron Nomad, with unusual strengths, and another, a Dunlending Rogue, with unsatisfying deficienies in his role as a dashing spy.
The races are Men, Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits. Elves, true to the source material, are superior to the others, offering the most abilities and the most favorable bonuses with little in the way of weaknesses. However, the other Races do have their advantages as well. Men have a certain versatility, Dwarves are sturdy and dangerous warriors, and Hobbits are stealthy, agile, and have surprising strengths. Elves, with their bonuses, and Men, with their free skill picks and bonus point of Courage, are likely to be the most attractive.
Orders are archetypes or professions. The basic Orders include Warrior, Magician, Rogue, Minstrel, Mariner, and Barbarian. Besides certain Order-related Skills, each Order also has a number of Abilities, of which you may choose one in the beginning. For instance, a Warrior may take a Favored Weapon, while a Magician obviously wants Spells. Most of the Abilities are colorful and reward characters with a strong focus. Experienced characters may change Orders, advancing in two at a time, and may later take elite Orders, powerful and specialized characters such as Archers and Wizards.
The Trait list is generous, covering nearly every conceivable aptitude, advantage, or foible mentioned in the books or conceivable. There is noble Rank, the Armour of Heroes that seems to guard them from harm, even lightly armored, and a good Travel-sense. Dwarves are prone to being Stiff-Necked, while many in Middle Earth are Proud, Arrogant, or perhaps Craven. My main complaint is that in choosing flavorful and specific Traits rather than general ones, they tended to produce several overlapping and unrelated ways of modeling a Trait. For instance, it is not always evident if a character should be Lion-Hearted, lead a Charmed Life, or have Armour of Heroes, since all three are means of keeping a courageous hero alive, and combining the three leads to extremely powerful characters.
Skills are broad but well-defined, including Armed Combat, Run, Intimidate, and Craft. One curious but annoying fact is that Skill ranks go from 0 to 12 and "sometimes beyond." Sometimes? When, I wonder? Because if the limit is not in fact 12, it will take little effort for characters to advance to enormous Skill levels. By the time he aquires 6 Advancements, when he becomes eligible for Elite Orders, a character might take 20 or 30 Ranks in a single Order skill. A cap of 12 seems like a good idea to me.
Magic falls into two categories. Subtle magic belongs to the GM. It is the magic that brough the One Ring to Bilbo's hand, that fills Elven woods with wonder, and calls the beasts of the wild to witness the coming of a King. The second sort is spell magic, the spell-slinging such a part of fantasy role-playing and wargaming. To cast a spell, a magician must simply make a Stamina test to avoid exhausting himself. Casting several spells in succession leads to Weariness and weeakness. But judicious spell-casting can move mountains, or bring them down. Magicians can specialize in forms of spell-casting such as Songs or Runes, or kinds of spells, such as Secret Fire or Sorcery.
Experience points can be traded in for Advancements. Each Advancement graints five Picks, just like in character creation, except at a higher price in some cases. For instance, Edges count as two picks. This is where some of the game's major problems crop up. An Order skill takes one pick, an Edge two, and an Order ability costs three. So, for instance, an Archer may take 1 to Ranged Combat for one pick, Accurate for two, or Mighty Shot for three. Accurate raises the Specialty bonus from 2 to 4, which is at least no worse than raising Ranged Combat, although no better (and only affects one weapon), but Mighty Shot only cancels -2 worth of penalties. Who would not simply take three ranks in Ranged Combat instead? Mighty Shot does act as a prerequisite to the Archer's Swift Shot ability. But the Elite Archer's Swift Shot ability is effectively the same as the Basic Warrior's Swift Strike, but only applying to ranged weapons. They might have done better to provide fewer mechanical complications. Nonetheless, if your players can be convinced to ignore the math, the wealth of Edges and Abilities offers a way to make very distinctive characters.
The most broken thing in the entire game is the Warrior's Favored Weapon. Each skill pick counts as two for your Favored Weapon. So if you allot 6 Advancements worth of picks to it, you could have something like a 60 skill in Armed Combat (Longsword). Of course, you will have a -4 penalty to any other specialization of Armed Combat. That is when it is important to know if 12 Skill Ranks is really a limit or just an arbitrary suggestion. If it is a hard limit, you'll be limited to a combination of Preferred Weapon, Favored Weapon, and Weapon Mastery, for a grand total of plus 19 to hit with your weapon. LOTR's fast and loose approach to character advancement is a munchkin's paradise on many levels.
Besides the usual combat and adventuring stuff, you get a mass combat system (including rules for involving PC's), Corruption (the power of the Shadow), and legendary items. A surprising number of combat options are presented, giving LOTR the bones of a wargame under its storytelling flesh. I can't say if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
LOTR uses Courage for heroic boosts and butt-saving. If used dramatically, it can be a life-saving edge. Used foolishly, it can be easily squandered.
IV. Evaluation
As a sourcebook, Lord of the Rings is top-shelf, well-grounded in the literature and well-presented. As a game system, it's a rules-lite engine loaded with more knick-knacks than the White Knight, to its occasional sorrow. As this is clearly a Tolkien-based game, and not a Tolkien-flavored Rolemaster or D&D, it gets my cheer of approval. However, its loophole-ridden rules and disorganization suggest the need for revision. I suggest it to any fan of Tolkien, or any gamer looking for epic inspiration. As Saturday night entertainment, it is likely to fall short. In many ways, this is a game to be played and not analyzed, and on that level, it is evocative, elegant, and complete enough to be a success. Characters face enough tragedy and heroism, in good balance, to make the Tolkien mythos an excellent playground for yarn-spinners armed with dice. The multi-stage character creation definitely helps ground characters to the mythos. By the time you know your character is a Bold Gondorian Warrior with a Warrior's Heart, you're just about ready to go.
I rate this one a study and then buy. It's not for everyone, but it's good reading, and it's attractive and playable.
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