Is The One Ring 2E Kickstarter going to break the records?

Umbran · Feb 12, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
Do you have the old red book leatherbound set or another one, out of curiosity?

The larger has fine gilt edging, and a fold-out map opposite the title page....

Paragon Lost · Feb 12, 2021

Umbran said:
The larger has fine gilt edging, and a fold-out map opposite the title page....

I had this one.... Sadly back in 1982 my crazy mother tossed it and most of my gaming items and fantasy books. She thought the gaming maps were maps of potential break in locations in real life. She definitely made my high school final year a pain in the backside with her craziness.

Umbran · Feb 12, 2021

Paragon Lost said:
I had this one.... Sadly back in 1982 my crazy mother tossed it and most of my gaming items and fantasy books. She thought the gaming maps were maps of potential break in locations in real life. She definitely made my high school final year a pain in the backside with her craziness.

Oof. My sympathies. Luckily, back then, my parents were like, "So, you're really just telling stories like we used to do back in the Old Country. Better than being on the streets! Do you need some more dice? I can drive you down to the hobby shop this weekend."

Skywalker · Feb 12, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
Eh, fair enough. I don't need a whole new rule book for that, but I guess Nepatello is involved with it still, but like...I don't really know what was wrong with the journey or counsel rules, so...why remake them?

There is more to 2e than just the rulebook. I can see people picking up the 2e books to fill out their 1e collections regardless.

We don’t know enough about the rules changes yet to make a call, but given it’s the same designer who made 1e in the first place, I think we will see a genuine attempt to improve what was in 1e rather than just to supplant them with new ideas like with most new editions. TBH just seeing the magic item and nameless monsters rules from 1e being incorporated into the core rules is enough to get me excited

As for journeys and counsels, this will be a matter of opinion. However, even within 1e those rules were refined and improved over the supplements, so it will be good to see them consolidated and 10 years of lessons applied.

Paragon Lost · Feb 12, 2021

Umbran said:
Oof. My sympathies. Luckily, back then, my parents were like, "So, you're really just telling stories like we used to do back in the Old Country. Better than being on the streets! Do you need some more dice? I can drive you down to the hobby shop this weekend."

Wow, that's awesome. Yeah my step mother was more supportive and actually introduced me to gaming back in the spring of 1978 and a gaming store near us. My real mother, she was entirely different situation. :/

SageMinerve · Feb 12, 2021

Enevhar Aldarion said:
As much as I enjoyed MERP and the setting books for it, I never liked that time period because it felt meaningless.

But regarding rights to the different time periods, there is obviously a willingness to do other licenses, or the Amazon Prime Middle-Earth series set in the 2nd Age would not be happening.

There are two licensees for Tolkien Legendarium.

Middle-earth Enterprises own the rights to Lord of the Rings (including the appendices, very important!) and The Hobbit. Everything else in the Legendarium is owned by the Tolkien Estate (controlled by Christopher Tolkien's descendants).

The Amazon series license comes from the Tolkien Estate. They can use everything from the Legendarium except LotR and Hobbit.

The One Ring was produced by Sophisticated Games and published by C7 during the 1st edition of the game.

There was a decision about a year ago from C7 and Sophisticated Games to go their separate ways. No one really knows the reason, so I'm not going to speculate as to why that happened.

So Sophisticated Games went and got another publisher for the 2nd edition. Enters Free League.

Middle-earth Enterprises is very careful with the license, and they delineate quite clearly what each company doing business with them can and cannot do.

For example, Games Workshop is the company that holds the rights to gaming miniatures for LotR and Hobbit. Because of this, Sophisticated games can't produce miniatures for the RPG, even if they and Free League wanted to.

Same with the Legendarium. Sophisticated Games can only use material from LotR and Hobbit. Anything and everything else is off limits.

For example, Aüle couldn't be mentionned by name in TOR, because that name only appears in works other than LotR and Hobbit.

So TOR can only be placed, chronologically, between the beginnning of Hobbit and LotR's end, outside of details mentionned in LotR appendices. For example, they can refer to Aragorn's time as Thorongil because it is mentionned in the Appendices. And they did in 1st edition, in the Rohan source book.

doctorbadwolf · Feb 12, 2021

Umbran said:
View attachment 132650

The larger has fine gilt edging, and a fold-out map opposite the title page....

Gorgeous.

ctorus · Feb 12, 2021

SageMinerve said:
There are two licensees for Tolkien Legendarium.

Middle-earth Enterprises own the rights to Lord of the Rings (including the appendices, very important!) and The Hobbit. Everything else in the Legendarium is owned by the Tolkien Estate (controlled by Christopher Tolkien's descendants).

The Amazon series license comes from the Tolkien Estate. They can use everything from the Legendarium except LotR and Hobbit.

The One Ring was produced by Sophisticated Games and published by C7 during the 1st edition of the game.

There was a decision about a year ago from C7 and Sophisticated Games to go their separate ways. No one really knows the reason, so I'm not going to speculate as to why that happened.

So Sophisticated Games went and got another publisher for the 2nd edition. Enters Free League.

Middle-earth Enterprises is very careful with the license, and they delineate quite clearly what each company doing business with them can and cannot do.

For example, Games Workshop is the company that holds the rights to gaming miniatures for LotR and Hobbit. Because of this, Sophisticated games can't produce miniatures for the RPG, even if they and Free League wanted to.

Same with the Legendarium. Sophisticated Games can only use material from LotR and Hobbit. Anything and everything else is off limits.

For example, Aüle couldn't be mentionned by name in TOR, because that name only appears in works other than LotR and Hobbit.

So TOR can only be placed, chronologically, between the beginnning of Hobbit and LotR's end, outside of details mentionned in LotR appendices. For example, they can refer to Aragorn's time as Thorongil because it is mentionned in the Appendices. And they did in 1st edition, in the Rohan source book.

Since the Appendices cover much of what we know about the TA, particularly the story of the Realms in Exile, I don't think that restriction would preclude a setting in the mid TA: an exciting time when the declining Arnorian successor states were warring with each other and with Angmar, and a prosperous Gondor faced external threats from the East and South and corruption within. But perhaps the licence has further restrictions, and/or they have assumed that most players want to play in the time of Bilbo and Aragorn.

But anyway the game is what it is. Glad to see it do well and I love the look of it; hopefully this hastens the arrival of their 5e version. Not that I'm a huge 5e fan, but it's a more malleable system and doesn't force me to run a particular kind of game, which is how I felt about TOR.

Dire Bare · Feb 12, 2021

SageMinerve said:
There are two licensees for Tolkien Legendarium.

Middle-earth Enterprises own the rights to Lord of the Rings (including the appendices, very important!) and The Hobbit. Everything else in the Legendarium is owned by the Tolkien Estate (controlled by Christopher Tolkien's descendants).

The Amazon series license comes from the Tolkien Estate. They can use everything from the Legendarium except LotR and Hobbit.

The One Ring was produced by Sophisticated Games and published by C7 during the 1st edition of the game.

There was a decision about a year ago from C7 and Sophisticated Games to go their separate ways. No one really knows the reason, so I'm not going to speculate as to why that happened.

So Sophisticated Games went and got another publisher for the 2nd edition. Enters Free League.

Middle-earth Enterprises is very careful with the license, and they delineate quite clearly what each company doing business with them can and cannot do.

For example, Games Workshop is the company that holds the rights to gaming miniatures for LotR and Hobbit. Because of this, Sophisticated games can't produce miniatures for the RPG, even if they and Free League wanted to.

Same with the Legendarium. Sophisticated Games can only use material from LotR and Hobbit. Anything and everything else is off limits.

For example, Aüle couldn't be mentionned by name in TOR, because that name only appears in works other than LotR and Hobbit.

So TOR can only be placed, chronologically, between the beginnning of Hobbit and LotR's end, outside of details mentionned in LotR appendices. For example, they can refer to Aragorn's time as Thorongil because it is mentionned in the Appendices. And they did in 1st edition, in the Rohan source book.

That is unfortunate and silly. Typically corporate. Thanks for the break-down!

Maybe someday we'll luck out and one or the other entities that own Tolkien IP will buy out the other and bring it all together under one roof. An elf can dream . . . .

Any idea how this mess came about in the first place?

SageMinerve · Feb 12, 2021

Dire Bare said:
That is unfortunate and silly. Typically corporate. Thanks for the break-down!

Maybe someday we'll luck out and one or the other entities that own Tolkien IP will buy out the other and bring it all together under one roof. An elf can dream . . . .

Any idea how this mess came about in the first place?

Tolkien sold the film, stage and merchandising rights in 1969 to LotR to Saul Zaentz, a Hollywood film producer. The rights included everything published at the time, so LotR and Hobbit were in, but not everything that JRR's son Christopher published after his father's death in 1973.

So The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc. remained Christopher's for all his life, until he passed away about a year ago.

That's where the schism came from. It's regrettable for fans, but JRR wasn't a rich man and he was right to try and earn money for himself and his family through the sale he did.

Oh well...