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Review of Adventurer's Companion
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Blurb from the publisher: 'At the heart of every great story are great characters. The Adventurer's Companion for The One Ring Roleplaying Game is a guide and reference for players, designed to help them make those truly evocative characters.
The Adventurer's Companion is packed with advice to make your player-hero truly feel a part of Middle-earth, along with new character options and exciting new rules including:
- Five new playable cultures, along with a comprehensive collection of cultures from The One Ring supplements, brought together for the first time: Dunlendings, Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, Dwarves of the Grey Mountain, Dwarves of the Iron Hills, Elves of Lorien, Men of Bree, Men of the Lake, Men of Minas Tirith, Riders of Rohan, Wayward Elves, Wild Hobbits, High Elves of Rivendell, Rangers of the North.
- A new Calling: The Leader, and new rules for Taking Courage.
- New combat options including: Two weapon fighting, new Combat Tasks, new rules for Combat Roles and expanded Called Shots.
- New rules for character development - Expanded Masteries, Training Masteries, and Mastery Dice.
- Rules Summaries present easy to use reference guides to Character Creation, Combat, Encounters and Travel.
- A catalogue of Fellowship Phase Undertakings from across The One Ring supplements, guidance on choosing a Patron, Famous Companies to join, new rules for yearly events and generational play with the Heirs of Heroes.
- Optional rules for further detailing your character's Traits, your travelling gear, musical instruments and even what you've got in your pocketses, you tricksy Bagginses!
The Adventurer's Companion is an invaluable asset to all players of The One Ring Roleplaying Game.'
What you get: Your USD 39,99 or GBP 26,99 will buy you the Adventurer's Companion, a 160-page full-colour hardcover for The One Ring, arguably the best RPG adaptation of the world's most popular fantasy franchise. With that price the buyer gets both the pdf and the physical version when purchasing either from Cubicle 7's e-shop or from the physical stores participating in the Bits & Mortar programme.
The book can also be purchased in electronic version only for EUR 18,71 or USD 22,99 or GBP 16,32.
Contents: The Adventurer's Companion is broken down in five different parts.The first part is about Characters, and character creation in particular. The book presents the whole character creation process by collecting 11 heroic cultures that have already been published in other sourcebooks and which were not included in The One Ring basic book. Examples include the Men of the Lake (found in the Loremaster's Screen and Lake-Town Sourcebook), the Men of Bree (found in Bree), and the Riders of Rohan (found in Horse-Lords of Rohan). Two advanced cultures are also presented (the High Elves of Rivendell and Rangers of the North), these however can only be played following the Loremaster's approval, seeing how they are stronger than the average heroic culture.
The second part of the book covers new rules. Leadership is a new trait. The least experienced of the companions can now gain courage from the most experienced one, depending on their experience differential. New combat rules include combat roles like the captain, the champion and the ward, which grant distinctive bonuses. New combat tasks include two new forward stances, two open, two defensive, and two rearward stances. There are also rules on expanded called shots, maiming strikes, breaking armour, rain of arrows etc. Expanded Masteries on the other hand offers an additional way of acquiring Masteries. The new expanded masteries list now includes ten masteries (four more than before).
Between Adventures is a 24-page chapter discussing in detail the practicalities of the Fellowship Phase. The chapter laboriously collects all the undertakings found in the books that have been published so far, and presents them in an intuitive, table-like format, divided by common and individual undertakings followed by regional undertakings (e.g. the ones you can attempt in Wilderland, Eriador etc). The chapter also covers patronage both when it comes to fluff, as well as through providing ten powerful patrons like Lord Elrond of Rivendell or even Gandalf the Grey. Famous Companies Of The Wild describes five such companies. Each company comes with its own special rules, as well as reasons on why the heroes may wish to join one company or another. The passage of years covers optional rules in order to incorporate the passage of time into campaigns. One yearly event may transpire, and can range from very good to very bad. The heroes can obtain heirs; a new fellowship undertaking is designed towards this end.
Curious Diversions is a chapter encompassing everything that couldn't fit in other chapters. Examples include further defining distinctive features through the use of a mega-table, item-generating tables in order to add detail to one's traveling gear and break from the system's abstraction, musical instruments, and even random stuff like what can be found in one's pocket. These may be used to create depth and adventure hooks out of thin air.
For Reference is a chapter with detailed step-by-step processes on three different topics: combat, journeying and encounters. I am not talking about a bullet-point presentation here. The shortest of these processes is two pages long.
The book ends with a four-page index.
The strong points: The Adventurer's Companion serves a dual function. It either presents new rules, or it collects rules and situations that have appeared on a different number of sourcebooks and presents them here in a tidy way. This can be very helpful, if one missed a sourcebook or two, and would like to increase the heroic cultures at his disposal. Some of them are expanded in comparison to their initial printing. That's a nice touch.
The new rules are mostly minor. They are also quite modular. If you don't want more details on your travelling gear, the initial abstracted rules work just fine. If you don't care about multigenerational campaigns, you don't need to have one. This is valid even for the more crunchy rules like the ones relating to combat roles or the ones on expanded masteries. I enjoyed the relaxed approach. Everything is interesting, yet there is no power creep. Nothing is as shiny as to overpower the initial design.
Part three is by far my favourite part of the book. The Fellowship Phase is one of TOR's most distinctive trademarks, and I liked the extensive spotlight it received. Its deconstruction and the solid advice on how to run it will help many a new and veteran Loremaster. Even more so, creating reference tables for all the fellowship phase undertakings that have appeared up to now is the sort of grunt work that puts Loremasters off; somebody else (i.e. the publisher) should do it for them. Thank you, Cubicle 7!
Even though the For Reference chapter is the smallest chapter and the way it deals with the game's processes is rather inconspicuous, I can't but praise it. It is not the most useful chapter for me personally. But then again, I am probably not this chapter's target group. Fledgling Loremasters however will find it very handy, seeing how it deconstructs everything on what is a fully-inclusive, step-by-step process. Nothing is missing; there are no insinuations. If you had questions about how either of combat, encounters or journeys are run, this chapter is most likely to answer them.
The production values are extremely high. The art is of the usual TOR quality and nature, even though it includes many pieces that have first appeared elsewhere. The inner parts of the covers depict the player version of two maps, Wilderland and Eriador. When it comes to visuals, this book does not disappoint.
The pdf is of a very high quality, and in line with practically all other Cubicle 7 releases. Everything is right where you expect it to be, including bookmarks for all the chapters, sub-chapters and boxed texts. Bookmarks go four levels down! Pictures are extractable, for you to use as you wish. The table of contents and the index do not have live links. I usually don't mind, yet the longer a book becomes, the easier it is to peruse with live links.
The weak points: I repeat it, in case it wasn't understood. This is not an autonomous book that the player can consult in order to create a new character or participate in the game. It does not do what the Conan Player's Guide did for its game line. Furthermore, it does not include all the additional rules that have ever been published in TOR supplements other than the main book; just a small selection of them. Using The One Ring main book is essential in order to understand the add-ons and options for this book. Even on simple additional rules, one will quickly realize that the present book is to be continuously used with the main book, meaning that you will be page-flipping through two different volumes simultaneously. Taking the subject matter into account, this is very unlikely to happen during scenes where the adrenaline runs high. If it is something that requires preparation, I strongly suggest using this book before sessions, or during the breaks of your game, lest you start fiddling around.
The book's biggest shortcoming is that more than 100 out of the book's 160 pages are devoted to heroic and advanced cultures. If you already own that material but not the present book, you will be effectively purchasing it for a mere 50-pages of non-essential rules, and a tidying up of things you already own. Your wallet knows better.
As much as the new rules are nicely meshed with fluff, there is no new fluff in this book. For any other game line, that would have been totally normal. For TOR, I admit that I was surprised to see it happen. From the main book to the Loremaster's Screen and Lake-town Sourcebook the line has continuously upped the ante when it comes to narratives, vivid descriptions and breath-taking, text-based vistas. Even though the game does not become more difficult (in reality it becomes much more engaging with only minor additions), it feels quaintly unexpected. On the other hand, that might just be me.
There are a couple of typos, yet they won't ruin your enjoyment of reading this book.
Conclusion: I am not unhappy I own the Adventurer's Companion. It does a great job of gathering disparate pieces of information, as well as presenting new rules than many Loremasters are likely to enjoy and use. On the other hand, more than two thirds of the volume relate to character creation, while the remaining rules are not game-shattering but secondary add-ons at best. For some Loremasters, and despite its name, it will be an indispensable volume. For others, it might be the weakest link in the whole line.
For more info on the Adventurer's Companion, The One Ring Roleplaying Game overall and Cubicle 7 visit its website at http://cubicle7.co.uk.
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