One Ring 2E - Who's Doing What With It?
Laurefindel
Legend
Ah, a brood of wizards are they?
Har har. My sausage fingers and touchscreen typing don't mix.
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aramis erak
Legend
I've given up on it already; the preview edition left me worse than cold about it.
I plan to put my preorder in a safe spot and sell it off later. If I run TOR, I'll run 1E and only 1E.
I plan to put my preorder in a safe spot and sell it off later. If I run TOR, I'll run 1E and only 1E.
Plus there's the solo material ("Strider mode" as it has entertainingly been dubbed) and Ruins of the Lost Realm coming up soon (a book of landmark adventure sites plus some plots/schemes to tie elements together). Both should help generate ideas.
Speaking of generating ideas: we were discussing on The One Ring's discord that the Forbidden lands adventure site images are good for sparking ideas for loremasters and for PCs during play: Fria Ligan | Forbidden Lands.
Speaking of generating ideas: we were discussing on The One Ring's discord that the Forbidden lands adventure site images are good for sparking ideas for loremasters and for PCs during play: Fria Ligan | Forbidden Lands.
DarkCrisis
Reeks of Jedi
You’re the first person I’ve seen say that 2E isn’t an improvement to 1E.
aramis erak
Legend
You missed a huge thread in FL's forums during the playtest, then. About 15 of us.
One of the most prolific fans of 1E has decided, like me, to walk away. Rich. I know he's on RPGGeek these days.
It has ONE improvement: the travel rules.
Everything else is not as good. At least, not in beta. I've not gotten my books nor my final PDFs, the latter despite complaining to them.
- Difficulty as adjusting number of dice means having to reveal difficulty to players before they roll,
- and prevents them from having correct dice pool in hand/dice-cup before their turn
- And the TN being fixed by doesn't speed up things when they can't be ready to roll without GM attention
- Song rules turned from multi-task to monotask
- too easy to regain hope in 2E. Overshoot.
- Weapons lose one stat, "Edge" - which was "What does my natural roll need to be to threaten a wound."
- No cultural weapons. Those added flavor
- Didn't fix the problems with the Rivendell treasure system, and made it standard rather than optional, this...
- upped the number of magic items in the party
- upped the treasure gained by the party
- Made the Eye of Sauron core... but didn't fix it. My party, after 3 adventures, was having revelations EVERY TIME THEY LEFT RIVENDELL!
- It's still per party, no correction for how many members.
- It's pretty steep due to the much increased amount of magical treasure.
- Monsters have trouble hitting PCs.
- PCs have little difficulty hitting anything short of the toughest monsters.
That's a shame! Although as a longstanding 1e fan I think 2e is a significant improvement, I can see there are people who prefer 1e and I'm glad it is still there for them.
i agree that 2e's journey rules are lot better.
Some of the changes in the final 2e may well address some of your concerns.
I like the pace of hope regaining in 2e:
- Hope isn't as reliable now (spent before a roll rather than after), but can generate a 6 (as it is an extra rolled dice rather than a static bonus. This can make for dramatic moments!).
i agree that 2e's journey rules are lot better.
Some of the changes in the final 2e may well address some of your concerns.
- Flavour from cultural weapons: these can now be unlocked by deeds during play instead, and then selected with valour. See p188 for an example (this chapter wasn't in the alpha).
- Magical treasures being too frequent: Core rules assume 6 treasure rolls across a 2-3 sessions adventure and a 1/6 chance of a treasure per roll. More likely to discover an treasure per adventure than not, but sometimes 0 and sometimes more than 1. But it will frequently "just" be a Marvellous Artefact/Wondrous Item rather than a Weapon/Armour.
- Core song rules: can now be used to avoid the affects of Weariness across combats/councils/journeys.
- Eye of Sauron: is explicitly an optional rule. It has been tweaked a bit, but there are some parties that will still have constant revelation events unless hidden by spells etc (this feels appropriate to the source material). In the published rules, after 3 adventures even if a company was fortunate enough to have discovered 3 famous weapons/armours in its opening three adventures is looking at 9 Eye Awareness, so they won't be triggering Revelation Episodes all the time. Starting Eye scores are lower as now you just check the highest Cultural score in the group and make other adjustments. In the Alpha you'd add up for each character, so a 2e Alpha Ranger, Barding, Dwarf, Elf party is 3+1+1+2 = 7 while in the published rules it would just take the highest number, 3.
- PCs hitting all the time: against an Orc solider with a Strength 5 Barding you're TN 16 in 2E and TN 13 (open) or 16 (defensive) in 1e. It's pretty similar?
- Enemies missing: Enemies in 2e can spend Hate/Resolve for +1d on attacks unlike in 1e. I find they hit often enough for my liking, but this is an easy way to make enemies more dangerous in 2e.
- "Edge" rating for weapons: Spears and arrows got a buff in published 2e, getting a larger bonus to the "Pierce" combat option than they enjoyed in the Alpha. Albeit I still think Axes are pretty strong relative to other weapon types. I miss Edge too, although the special combat options for 6s helps capture some of the 1e element and I'd love to see the list expand a little without overwhelming the game.
I like the pace of hope regaining in 2e:
- Hope isn't as reliable now (spent before a roll rather than after), but can generate a 6 (as it is an extra rolled dice rather than a static bonus. This can make for dramatic moments!).
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That's very true too, Material gains in organisation continue: the 1e hardcover was an improvement on the initial 1e material, and 2e is a further improvement.
