The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Added to D&D Beyond

The core rulebook for Free League's The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, published in 2022, is now available on D&D Beyond. Today, as announced back in August, Wizards of the Coast launched the latest addition to its growing library of third-party material to D&D Beyond with the launch of The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying, a TTRPG rulebook that adapts The One Ring RPG for D&D Fifth Edition. Unlike other third-party 5E material found on D&D Beyond, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying utilizes Callings and Heroic Cultures instead of classes and species, and also features a more extensive line of Virtues (an equivalent to Feats in D&D.) Also included are rules on exploration and journeys, as well as roleplaying through Councils.

D&D (2024) - WotC Announces 3rd Party Creator Partners

This content will be coming to the D&D Beyond marketplace--the selected publishers are The Griffon's Saddlebag, MCDM, Ghostfire Gaming, Dungeon Dudes, Hit Point Press, Kobold Press, and Free League. Generally, these are creators who have achieved million-dollar Kickstarters with 5E compatible...

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The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying was developed by Free League Publishing after it took over the publication of The One Ring back in 2019 from Cubicle 7. While Cubicle 7 developed their own 5E compatible RPG based on The Lord of the Rings called Adventures in Middle-Earth, Lord of the Rings RPG is a separate 5E system and approaches melding together The Lord of the Rings and 5E very differently. For one, Lord of the Rings Roleplaying utilizes 10 levels as opposed to Adventures in Middle-Earth's 20 level system.

D&D Beyond has added several new third-party supplements to its service over the past two years, including Dungeons of Drakkenheim, MCDM's Flee, Mortals, and several books by Kobold Press.

 

[Dire Bare]

You can download all of your purchases on DDB and I have done so. But mostly this just seems like the usual argument against purchasing digital media. I save a ton of money and storage, while getting way more stuff and producing way less waste. If my purchase doesn't last forever so my kid has to deal with it, that's usually a feature, not a flaw.

Also, I just bought this, because it looks cool and I want to see if I can get a campaign going.

How do you download DDB purchases? Honest question.

 

[Dire Bare]

Not sure that it makes much difference, but Free League licence the game via Sophisticated Games, not directly with Tolkien Enterprises. Here's the link to their site.

It's just one more link in the chain that can be broken. Happened to Cubicle 7, the company that originated "The One Ring" RPG by licensing through Sophisticated Games.

Currently the AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth) books from C7 I purchased on DriveThru, I can still download. But you can't purchase them anymore.

 

[Simon Collins]

Backgrounds are also a little screwy, partially due to how LotR 5E handles backgrounds differently. In LotR 5E, backgrounds are a subset of your culture (species) and show up there in the character builder. The builder still asks you to choose a standard D&D background, giving your character two backgrounds!

I simply ignored the standard Backgrounds tab, leaving it empty. Once I added the additional new skills in manually I also had to leave a number of skill proficiency choices blank and mess about with setting manual proficiency in those custom skills. It's a pain but it can be done.

 

[Dire Bare]

I simply ignored the standard Backgrounds tab, leaving it empty. Once I added the additional new skills in manually I also had to leave a number of skill proficiency choices blank and mess about with setting manual proficiency in those custom skills. It's a pain but it can be done.

Thanks, good to know!

However, I'll wait until (hopefully) WotC fixes these bugs in the character builder. The whole point is to automate and make things easy!

 

[Simon Collins]

Thanks, good to know!

However, I'll wait until (hopefully) WotC fixes these bugs in the character builder. The whole point is to automate and make things easy!

Fair, although I suspect the $10 discount will disappear if and when the fixes are applied.

 

[CM]

Note there are still some issues with the LotR ruleset application on the platform. New skills have to be added manually in the Web version of the character sheet (not the app). Some languages need to be added manually. A few bugs being noted on the forum such as new armour not meshing with class armour proficiency, etc. A lot of messing around with skill choices and manual setting of new skill proficiencies is required during character creation. 5e skills not used in LotR cannot be removed as far as I can see.

However, it is currently on sale at $10 off, so...

Here's hoping they'll apply fixes quickly.

So, half-baked. Disappointing. Still waiting on them to implement homebrew languages, equipment, etc. You still can't even homebrew something as basic as a feat that provides +1 Wisdom or Charisma - something that the 2024 Inspiring Leader feat does. If you clone it to create a homebrew version, it just plain doesn't give you an ability increase.

 

[Dire Bare]

Fair, although I suspect the $10 discount will disappear if and when the fixes are applied.

Oh, I already purchased the book on DDB . . . I have low impulse control.

 

[darjr]

I'd really love to get a PDF with the purchase. Or have it already and the book. Still though $30 for short term rental of it isn't completely awful if I get a campaign or two out of it.

I'd still be miffed I lost access to it.

If I bought it on ddb it'd be because of the functionality and share ability with some of my players.

 

[Dire Bare]

On the third hand, it forces many of us to make DDB alternate platforms, and thus increases competition.

I used to think I wanted all of my RPG digital tools on the same platform . . . but why, really?

Pathfinder on Demiplane, D&D on D&DB, Level Up on the A5E Tools site . . . I'm liking the competition, even if it gets a little hard to keep track of it all at times.

 

[occam]

btw, how is the game? I assume PCs are a lot less powerful, and there is less magic.....

Characters are roughly in the same ballpark as regular D&D 5e PCs, but I haven't playtested to see how that works out at the table. There are no spells, and it's worth mentioning that Callings (i.e. classes) only go to 10th level (as is called out on the DDB product page in a couple of places). There are rules to keep gaining abilities past 10th level, akin to the bonus feat rule for D&D 5e PCs after 20th level.