Cubicle 7 No Longer Producing The One Ring and Adventures in Middle Earth

Cubicle 7 has announced that it will cease publishing Tolkien-related games, including The One Ring and Adventures in Middle Earth, in early 2020. The One Ring 2E is cancelled.

‘I am with you at present,’ said Gandalf, ‘but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire.’

UNEXPECTED TOR2 UPDATE – Cubicle 7

www.cubicle7games.com

We have some very unfortunate and unexpected news to share. Contractual differences arose recently which we have been unable to resolve, and so we have decided to end our licensing agreement with Sophisticated Games. It is with regret that we have made this very tough decision to withdraw.

This means we will cease publishing The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-earth™ in the first half of 2020. Unfortunately, this doesn’t give us enough time to release the much-anticipated The One Ring – The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game second edition. As many of you know, our first edition of The One Ring is eight years old, and we had high hopes of a full product line to support our second edition. Our team have worked incredibly hard on this new edition; with many of the announced titles already written and edited, so being very close to completion makes this decision even harder.

We fully appreciate how invested so many of you are, both in regards to stock and your love of the game. Especially those who have followed our journey from first edition, or have customers who have pre-ordered the second edition or Rohan Region Guide. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

We will continue selling our existing stock over the next few months. We will be offering some discounts on our website for consumers as part of our Black Friday sale this week. We will not be reprinting any of these titles, so if you wish to stock up, we would suggest you contact your preferred distributor soon.

 

[vilainn6]

That's dreadfully inaccurate, and I know you know better.

Adventures in Middle-earth has custom Cultures (because a Man of Bree and a Man of Minas Tirith are very different) and custom Classes designed from the ground-up to play in Middle-earth. There are no casters by default, and while there is a list of spells in the Loremaster's Guide that you might fit into the setting, fireball ain't one of them.

Sure, we did build on the core of 5e for familiarity's sake, and that does mean that a 3rd level hero fits more comfortably into a lot of Middle-earth adventure ideas than a 17th level one but there are always options. Plus, with additional rules like Shadow corruption and expanded use of Exhaustion, Hit Dice and Inspiration there are plenty of ways to make the game feel different than standard 5e.

Sorry Zed but the day you decided to put your name on those pages and accept Cubicle 7 money, you loose the right to say anything. You are just now a spokeman trying to convince us your employer didn't sell their soul just for more money.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sorry Zed but the day you decided to put your name on those pages and accept Cubicle 7 money, you loose the right to say anything. You are just now a spokeman trying to convince us your employer didn't sell their soul just for more money.

Yeah, man, he’s just like, shilling for the man, man!

 

[KentDT]

Sorry Zed but the day you decided to put your name on those pages and accept Cubicle 7 money, you loose the right to say anything. You are just now a spokeman trying to convince us your employer didn't sell their soul just for more money.

OK, that's pretty . . . harsh.
I own all the TOR books and all the AiME books and enjoy both. For me the level question doesn't bother me or take me out of Tolkien's world. I think AiME works great as an example of how the 5e rules can be stretched to evoke a different feel and would work well as a basis for any other essentially magic-less (well, spell-less) D&D.
The original comment calling out AiME as "just lightly skinned Dungeons & Dragons, with fireballs . . ." was spot on. There are no fireballs (or any other spells) in standard AiME, and even the one page list of appropriate spells in the Loremaster guide for those who really want D&D style spells in their version of Middle-Earth explicitly does NOT include fireball. So, it was very misleading to the point of being antagonistic.
Now, I don't work for Cubicle 7, so do I have a right to my opinion?

 

[macd21]

Yeah, the whole ‘AiME isn’t LotR appropriate’ is just standard edition warring and one-true-wayism. Plenty of people have played it, enjoyed it thoroughly, and found it perfect for LotR - including people who’ve played TOR. Just because it’s not your cup of tea doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I freely admit that I bought AiME because I could easily transition my 5e players without them having to learn a new system.

But I was absolutely still able to play a game were miles were miles and Journeys took a toll on the characters, where cultural prejudices could be overcome to forge alliances against the shadow, were living in a world were you are fighting a losing battle against the shadow takes a toll on your soul, and were choosing to take the easy path takes an even greater one.

Also one were you could eventually become as powerful as Boromir slaying 20 foes in a single encounter before dying, or a Legolas or a Gimli taking out 40+ foes over the course of an adventuring day, Or as poweful as Aragorn able to not take a single injury at the battle of the black gate. Or even as powerful as Hurin slaying dozens of trolls (The Foehammer subclass is a real monster). The only problem is how long those encounters would take broken up into 6 second rounds

Or I could not explore do that, since I can dial it in as necessary for the kind of experience we had to have. We could do AiME E6 and still have have loads of fun.

Is TOR better at a purely Tolkien gaming experience? Probably. But AiME was still good enough for our table to do so too.

 

[mykesfree]

Totally agree with all your points @BookBarbarian.

 

[pemerton]

@aramis erak

Have you ever used Burning Wheel for Middle Earth RPGing?

 

[aramis erak]

@aramis erak

Have you ever used Burning Wheel for Middle Earth RPGing?

Not as such; I have, however, found a very middle-earth feel when running BW.

 

[TheSword]

AIME is great fun. Very good example of a low magic conversion for d&d. Could easily be adapted for other low magic settings -
Game of Thrones etc.

Ignore the few nay-sayers. See how many upvotes each comment has. It may not prove anything, it’s all just opinion, but it shows how many fans the system has.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

AIME is great fun. Very good example of a low magic conversion for d&d. Could easily be adapted for other low magic settings -
Game of Thrones etc.

Ignore the few nay-sayers. See how many upvotes each comment has. It may not prove anything, it’s all just opinion, but it shows how many fans the system has.

Yeah it’s a fricken fantastic port of low magic high stakes fantasy to dnd mechanics.

Most folks who don’t like it are either LoTR hyper-purists, people who can’t fathom having stories that matter in a world set before the war of the ring, or people who decided before opening any book or pdf that the dnd engine literally cannot do non-epic non-gonzo Fantasy.