M.T. Black
Hero
I finally got around to playing The Lord of the Rings 5E last night. My regular D&D group is playing the sample adventure, "The Star of the Mist". We were using the version in D&D Beyond, which has some definite problems with the implementation. The most serious is that it lacks the new skills, which are pretty crucial. We soldiered on.
Last night we did character introductions, journeyed to the Blue Mountains, and ended the session just as they discovered the bandit's camp. I was particularly interested to try out the much-vaunted journey rules. I do like the system in theory, as it deals very well with the fact that characters in Middle-Earth spend 95% of their time walking immense distances.
Having said that, the rules are laid out pretty poorly in the book, and I found myself shooting up and down the page trying to tie it altogether. Some terms are used ambiguously too. For example, the Journey Events table just refers to a "check" without further qualification (it's clear what it means on a couple of reads, but it would have been better to call this the "Event Resolution Check" or something). There is missing information too, specifically the definition of "border land", "wild land", and "dark land", which is critical to the system. You can figure it out with a few minutes examination of the map, but it's a bad miss.
This was our first time using the rules, so some clumsiness was inevitable. But the order of rolls does seem a bit awkward. You roll up the event first of all, for example Chance Meeting. The rules say the DM then must "describe what happens to the travelling Company, specifying precisely what happens in game terms."The affected person (e.g. Lookout), must make their check to resolve the event. If they fail the role, no Chance Meeting occurs, which feels odd since the DM has already described what would have happened if they made the roll. In future, I think I need to roll the event up in secret and ask them to make the resolution roll. But it feels a bit less interesting if they end up making multiple checks with no discernible result. Anwyway, I need to give it a few more goes.
The adventure looks ok, but it suffers from the lack of a keyed map of the whole area (sound familiar?). I had to piece the layout together from the narrative text, and ended up getting some stuff confused. Actually, the same thing happened on the journey map too. Overall, there are a few places where they could have made the adventure easier for newbies, so it's a bit of a missed opportunity. Having said some of the flaws, my group did enjoy playing in Middle Earth. They created fun characters and we had good interactions on the road. I'll be interested to see if they want to do more adventures or if this just becomes a one shot.
Last night we did character introductions, journeyed to the Blue Mountains, and ended the session just as they discovered the bandit's camp. I was particularly interested to try out the much-vaunted journey rules. I do like the system in theory, as it deals very well with the fact that characters in Middle-Earth spend 95% of their time walking immense distances.
Having said that, the rules are laid out pretty poorly in the book, and I found myself shooting up and down the page trying to tie it altogether. Some terms are used ambiguously too. For example, the Journey Events table just refers to a "check" without further qualification (it's clear what it means on a couple of reads, but it would have been better to call this the "Event Resolution Check" or something). There is missing information too, specifically the definition of "border land", "wild land", and "dark land", which is critical to the system. You can figure it out with a few minutes examination of the map, but it's a bad miss.
This was our first time using the rules, so some clumsiness was inevitable. But the order of rolls does seem a bit awkward. You roll up the event first of all, for example Chance Meeting. The rules say the DM then must "describe what happens to the travelling Company, specifying precisely what happens in game terms."The affected person (e.g. Lookout), must make their check to resolve the event. If they fail the role, no Chance Meeting occurs, which feels odd since the DM has already described what would have happened if they made the roll. In future, I think I need to roll the event up in secret and ask them to make the resolution roll. But it feels a bit less interesting if they end up making multiple checks with no discernible result. Anwyway, I need to give it a few more goes.
The adventure looks ok, but it suffers from the lack of a keyed map of the whole area (sound familiar?). I had to piece the layout together from the narrative text, and ended up getting some stuff confused. Actually, the same thing happened on the journey map too. Overall, there are a few places where they could have made the adventure easier for newbies, so it's a bit of a missed opportunity. Having said some of the flaws, my group did enjoy playing in Middle Earth. They created fun characters and we had good interactions on the road. I'll be interested to see if they want to do more adventures or if this just becomes a one shot.
