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Middle-earth Enterprises would not go to the Tolkien Estate. Tolkien outright sold the rights to United Artists in 1969. UA sold the rights outright to Saul Zaentz in 1976. Zaentz formed Tolkien Enterprises to manage the rights, which was renamed to Middle-earth Enterprises in 2010.

The idea is to streamline considerations of distance and movement to something that doesn't require knowing exact positioning. Every thing else works as it normally would. So, yes, to your second question: someone in the front line zone could misty step to the opposing rearguard zone (30'...

It should be noted that Sophisticated Games' license is with Middle-earth Enterprises, which is the company that currently holds the media rights to Lord of the Rings (formerly held by the Saul Zaentz Company), not the Tolkien Estate.

A couple of years ago, I did a Let's Read of Sword World 2.5 (SW2.5), Japan's premier fantasy role-playing game. I thought it might be interesting to bring some of the ideas that I found interesting in SW2.5 as alternatives to "standard" 5e D&D (though I think any of these could be easily...

Let's now look at the Priest class group, and the "generalist" priest, the Cleric. Due to 2nd Edition's expansion of clerics to "specific mythoi", the first part of the Priest description explains that they are believers and advocates of a god from a particular mythos, and who intercedes and...

Sorry for the delay! A bit of work, a bit of other activities, and an unplanned binge of Haikyuu! got in the way of this, our look at the Specialist Wizards and the Illusionist. I will cover both of these at the same time, since the illusionist is a pretty straightforward implementation of the...

Technically, my first non-D&D RPG was the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG Advanced Box Set. But this was limited to a one-shot I ran for my brother. Then I got my first job and started spending my disposable income on game systems that I would read and make characters for, but never get to actually...

Yup! Specialist/Illusionist is coming up next!

Now let's look at the Wizard class group, which is made up of the Mage and Specialist Wizards. First, the elephant in the room (for me). Here lieth the Magic-user, 1974-1989. With 2nd Edition, and beyond, magic-users would be called wizards. Intellectually, I understand the feeling...

Yes, if the wizard is going to fireball the area, the fighter would want to hang back until after the fireball has taken affect. If the fighter did not move in the movement phase, they would have unused movement left with which to move on the melee phase, so they could then move in and mop up...

It angers me that you think so.

B/X used the following system: Side initiative, rolled every round. Once initiative was decided the side that won went through the following phases: 1. Morale (for monsters/NPCs) 2. Movement 3. Missile fire 4. Magic 5. Melee Defensive movement (fighting withdrawal/retreat) and magic had to be...

It bugs me that the fan translation used "class" for the ginou. Something like "Feats" for sentou tokugi (combat specialties) is fine, because the sentou tokugi live in the same design space and accomplish the same role. But I think the ginou is a place where Sword World design specifically...

To be sure, there's nothing stopping the Ranger from donning some chain mail or even plate armor, and going sword-and-board. But practically, Ranger players are going to want to use TWF and stealth, and so will spend most (if not all) of their time in studded leather. Well, yes, but that's the...

I'll speak in defense of Dragon of Icespire Peak. To be sure, the starting quests are all a little rough for a party of 1st level characters to engage in straight combat. That's exactly what I like about them. They encourage finding strategies or solutions other than straight, "We fight it." I...

Many thanks for the historical context! Eh, Snarf makes a good case that it wasn't mandated from on high in response to Drizzt's popularity, but my thinking was that there was a dearth of good D&D rangers. I mean, who did they have? Hank from the cartoon and Riverwind from Dragonlance? And then...

Unlike the paladin, which made the jump to 2nd Ed. almost entirely unaltered, the Ranger was heavily reworked in the new edition. To make the changes clearer, first let's look at the 1st Ed. ranger. In 1st Ed., rangers were limited to good alignments, and could only be selected by humans and...

The Paladin lays hands on this thread! With the exception of the consolidation of the fighter, paladin, and ranger into the Warrior class group, and the changes noted there earlier in the thread, the 2nd Ed. paladin is essentially the same class as in 1st Ed., with even much of the same text...

I think there are two distinct things to discuss here. One is B/X as a whole. I think the reason it has resonated with OSR/retro aficionados so much is that it distills TSR D&D to its most essential parts. It's exploration-focused, combat is quick and straightforward, and characters are simple...

I am a big fan of B1. You have a classic dungeon design perfect for the old style of mapping and exploring. The DM advice is some of the best in the game, superior even to the B2 advice, which cribbed heavily from it. But what I really like about it is what everyone else dislikes about it. The...