The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Added to D&D Beyond

The core rulebook for Free League's The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, published in 2022, is now available on D&D Beyond. Today, as announced back in August, Wizards of the Coast launched the latest addition to its growing library of third-party material to D&D Beyond with the launch of The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, a TTRPG rulebook that adapts The One Ring RPG for D&D Fifth Edition. Unlike other third-party 5E material found on D&D Beyond, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying utilizes Callings and Heroic Cultures instead of classes and species, and also features a more extensive line of Virtues (an equivalent to Feats in D&D.) Also included are rules on exploration and journeys, as well as roleplaying through Councils.

D&D (2024) - WotC Announces 3rd Party Creator Partners

This content will be coming to the D&D Beyond marketplace--the selected publishers are The Griffon's Saddlebag, MCDM, Ghostfire Gaming, Dungeon Dudes, Hit Point Press, Kobold Press, and Free League. Generally, these are creators who have achieved million-dollar Kickstarters with 5E compatible...

www.enworld.org

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying was developed by Free League Publishing after it took over the publication of The One Ring back in 2019 from Cubicle 7. While Cubicle 7 developed their own 5E compatible RPG based on The Lord of the Rings called Adventures in Middle-Earth, Lord of the Rings RPG is a separate 5E system and approaches melding together The Lord of the Rings and 5E very differently. For one, Lord of the Rings Roleplaying utilizes 10 levels as opposed to Adventures in Middle-Earth's 20 level system.

D&D Beyond has added several new third-party supplements to its service over the past two years, including Dungeons of Drakkenheim, MCDM's Flee, Mortals, and several books by Kobold Press.

 

[SlyFlourish]

What happens when FL loses the license for LotR? I would imagine that you lose all access to your purchases.

Some others brought up a good point on this issue when I brought it up before. It's likely they would no longer sell it on the site but you'd probably still have access to the copy you "bought".

 

[SlyFlourish]

I hope that you are right. But I've seen content disappear on other platforms and it would be good to have some reassurance on that.

A PDF copy or the physical book (or both, which you can buy off of Free League's website for $50) is your reassurance. There is no other reassurance they can offer on D&D Beyond. The rules can always change.

 

[Nikosandros]

A PDF copy or the physical book (or both, which you can buy off of Free League's website for $50) is your reassurance. There is no other reassurance they can offer on D&D Beyond. The rules can always change.

I agree about those. I was talking specifically about the content one can "buy" on DDB.

 

[DarkCrisis]

The regular (non 5E) version is pretty good. Planning to run Moria after I finish my OSE game

 

[MarkB]

Some others brought up a good point on this issue when I brought it up before. It's likely they would no longer sell it on the site but you'd probably still have access to the copy you "bought".

That seems like it would depend upon the terms of the licence, which is presumably between Free League and the Tolkien estate and not with WotC. Since DDB is a live service, it's entirely possible that an expired licence would require them to no longer host any of the content.

 

[Simon Collins]

Note there are still some issues with the LotR ruleset application on the platform. New skills have to be added manually in the Web version of the character sheet (not the app). Some languages need to be added manually. A few bugs being noted on the forum such as new armour not meshing with class armour proficiency, etc. A lot of messing around with skill choices and manual setting of new skill proficiencies is required during character creation. 5e skills not used in LotR cannot be removed as far as I can see.

However, it is currently on sale at $10 off, so...

Here's hoping they'll apply fixes quickly.

 

[Morrus]

That seems like it would depend upon the terms of the licence, which is presumably between Free League and the Tolkien estate and not with WotC. Since DDB is a live service, it's entirely possible that an expired licence would require them to no longer host any of the content.

While we don't know the terms of the license, it is almost certainly between Free League and Tolkien. If that is the case, when Free League's license expires, WotC will have no contractual relationship with Tolkien, and no legal ability to provide that content. Maybe the license allows for sublicences which outlast the overall licence, but that doesn't sound much like the Tolkien Estate to me. But, hey, we don't know. Somebody should ask DDB what happens in that situation to the content they've paid DDB for.

 

[Malshotfirst]

"Hasbro, TIL ALL ARE ONE!" - Toy Galaxy

 

[Zaukrie]

While we don't know the terms of the license, it is almost certainly between Free League and Tolkien. If that is the case, when Free League's license expires, WotC will have no contractual relationship with Tolkien, and no legal ability to provide that content. Maybe the license allows for sublicences which outlast the overall licence, but that doesn't sound much like the Tolkien Estate to me. But, hey, we don't know. Somebody should ask DDB what happens in that situation to the content they've paid DDB for.

I did.....no answer on bluesky or dndbeyond yet (that I can see in a quick glance)

 

[Morrus]

I did.....no answer on bluesky or dndbeyond yet (that I can see in a quick glance)

It seems to be a basic piece of info that a purchaser is entitled to. On the other hand, it also seems, to me at least, a basic piece of info that a purchaser should want before purchase.

We'll investigate!