Anyone here ever played it? How did it do capturing the Tolkien “feel”? Anyone ever used a different system to run Middle Earth?
The One Ring RPG
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I adore the game. A while back, I ran a very successful 12-session campaign of it and I’m playing in one since last year.
How does it do Tolkien? In that it dares the players to behave like they would in a traditional fantasy roleplaying game. It doesn’t wag its finger at them saying: Don’t deceive and threaten! Don’t be power-hungry! Care about your home! Care about your friends! Value the small things! Instead it uses game mechanics to posit a world where doing the former or don’t doing the latter is perfectly possible, even reasonable at times, but will make characters vulnerable to their own flaws and failings who are exploited by the lingering influence of the shadow. I’ve seen people mistake a rule like gain two shadow points for lying as being forced to play a certain kind of person, when in fact it’s about what you choose when lying to someone seems like the right thing to do and what the consequences are. You only get one undertaking per fellowship phase so do you choose to journey home or keep at it to find out more about the enemy’s plans?
And then hope, sanctuaries, fellowship, their people, all the resources characters have, are ever dwindling and under threat in TOR. The various undertakings to regain a few hope points and how they’re tied into the setting are one of my favourite aspects of the game (I surveyed them here: https://rpggeek.com/thread/1998542/regaining-hope-and-confidence-mastery). In the end, it’s either settle down for some last good years or keep adventuring and fall prey to the shadow, end up with wounds that can never heal.
There are many more great things the game does Tolkien-wise but the hope/shadow economy really is the heart of it all.
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