The One Ring - Cubicle 7

[Falstaff]

I bought the special preorder offer that gave me the pdf right away and an expedited shipment of the print version. I received the game early last week and have been reading it off and on (between my reading the new Hacklopedia, which is awesome!).

I like what I'm reading, and my lord is it such a beautiful game. I really like the slipcase and the art is top notch. I don't know when I'll get around to playing this, but I'll be buying everything they release for it.

 

[IronWolf]

I bought the special preorder offer that gave me the pdf right away and an expedited shipment of the print version. I received the game early last week and have been reading it off and on (between my reading the new Hacklopedia, which is awesome!).

I like what I'm reading, and my lord is it such a beautiful game. I really like the slipcase and the art is top notch. I don't know when I'll get around to playing this, but I'll be buying everything they release for it.

They were still doing the get a PDF with your order thing when I ordered last night. So I ordered and received my PDF this morning - so weekend reading for me! I've only glanced at it so far.

The art I had seen is one of the reasons I chose to get the physical product as well, but likely won't have those until September sometime.

Can't wait to start reading!

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I was wavering, but I got it and I'm very impressed. Great art, interesting mechanics and emulates the feel of the books perfectly (the Hobbit particularly with this first product). Its hard to quantify, but to me it feels like a cross between Mouse Guard and an older version of D&D, but with funkier dice than WFRP 3e.

My advice is if you love the books this is worth the price as a PDF just for the read. However, if you think the books are lame or are going to say "why can't I play a Mage" this is not the game for you.

That sums up my opinion as well. I saw the proofs at Origins and got to talk with some of the folks involved, and pre-ordered as soon as it was available. I'm really looking forward to playing it.

 

[gamerprinter]

I haven't played it yet, so I don't know myself, but Jonathan McAnulty (Wicht on these boards) ran One Ring (and Airship Pirates) for Cubicle 7 at Gen Con - I did stop by to chat with Jonathan right before he started his Saturday morning demo game (Jonathan is the designer/writer for my Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting and I had to meet him for that!)

Jonathan told me, that in his opinion, between the two games he was running, that One Ring was the superior game, and if one has any interest in LotR at all - the One Ring game was a great presentation of the saga.

He said on the LotR timeline, One Ring sits between the time of The Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring, so adventures won't conflict with the continuity of Middle Earth.

I too am interested, but I need some spare time to try it, then I'll make a purchase.

Since my Kaidan setting is also a print release by Cubicle 7, I was able to see the last One Ring box sold at their booth - they were hot products that showed up and disappeared in a short amount of time.

GP

 

[IronWolf]

I haven't played it yet, so I don't know myself, but Jonathan McAnulty (Wicht on these boards) ran One Ring (and Airship Pirates) for Cubicle 7 at Gen Con - I did stop by to chat with Jonathan right before he started his Saturday morning demo game (Jonathan is the designer/writer for my Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting and I had to meet him for that!)

Okay - let's try out my summoning skill....

[MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] I summon thee to this thread! We want to hear more!

 

[Matchstick]

I was one of the people that bought it at GenCon. I've read through a lot of it now, and though I haven't played, I'll throw out some impressions.

- The writing and editing is excellent. Top notch. It's easy to read, the tone and flavor of the text are spot on.

- The art is very good.

- There was, I think, a very conscious effort to remain faithful to the books. This is immediately evident from the lack of magic. I love this.

- The setting seems to me to be well chosen. There's lots of things going on. The shadow has been removed from Mirkwood, but surely there are still dark remnants there. Saruman is possibly starting to build his armies, as is Sauron who has returned to Mordor. Goblins in the Misty Mountains, new and growing relations between elves and men around the Lonely Mountain, and of course who knows what items or artifacts might have been stored in a dragon's hoard.

- I like the Fellowship stuff. Very cool.

- I'm surprised that traveling hasn't been done this way before. It's pretty easy to work out, but adds a nice layer to overland that I've never had in my games. Well thought out IMO.

- I like the combat, but I haven't played it. Seems like enough detail to be interesting without boggy. Plus again, I like the character interactions, how a group can work together in so many ways.

My one word summary? True. This reads and feels true to me.

 

[Wicht]

Was I summoned?

The One Ring is a great game. It reads well, looks great, and plays wonderfully. Of all the LotR games I have ever read, this was the best one IMO and we are going to start playing it on a regular basis at home, along with Pathfinder (we've already made characters and begun the frst quest). My kids have already taken to it and every table I ran at Gencon loved it.

It is the first of a trilogy, with all three books set between the Hobbit and Fellowship, each one advancing the time line and exploring a different region of MiddleEarth. This first book deals with Wilderland. The second will deal with the land West of the Misty Mountains, and the Third with lands further south.

The mechanics are simple, and yet at the same time, they make it possible to capture the spirit of the books very well. Francisco did an excellent job with making rules and flavor blend in a near seamless fashion so that as your characters fight and travel they can become weary and miserable (even with bouts of shadow driven madness) and yet at the same time the encumbrance/weary rules are not cumbersome themselves. This is not to say the characters cannot be heroic. The rules allow the characters to shine, over time even becoming paragons of valour or wisdom.

Oh, and one other thing I really like about the game. None of the PCs are ever going to be wizards, though they may learn minor runes or magics common to their culture. The wizards are presented as possible patrons, not as player characters. They are there to guide and give adventures. You don't have to worry about some hobbit learning to throw fireballs and ruining the spirit of the world.

 

[Wightbred]

Read through this more and still impressed, but I have a couple of questions for people who have played.

Is there enough Hope? Having a resource like this you manage over adventures / campaigns and not just sessions is really cool, but how much Hope do you use?

The hazards in travel are cool, but does play flow smoothly with each player making a number Travel rolls for each journey?

Both of these concerns would be simple to "fix" with house rules (eg: Hope refresh with rest and a single harder roll for journeys) but I may be concerned about nothing.

 

[Wicht]

Read through this more and still impressed, but I have a couple of questions for people who have played.

Is there enough Hope? Having a resource like this you manage over adventures / campaigns and not just sessions is really cool, but how much Hope do you use?

The hazards in travel are cool, but does play flow smoothly with each player making a number Travel rolls for each journey?

Both of these concerns would be simple to "fix" with house rules (eg: Hope refresh with rest and a single harder roll for journeys) but I may be concerned about nothing.

In my Con games, the players burned through hope like it was candy to make themselves succeed at most of their rolls. But in campaigns you are going to want to use it a bit slower. However, there is a mechanic for refreshing it a little each session of play. I have played two sessions at home and it has worked out fine. Also in my con games, we did not utilize shadow. But having used it in our home sessions, it does make the game more dynamic as the players (my kids) realize that they are slowly building up a measure of despair from tromping around in dark swamps. i would say it all works just as it is supposed to.

As for journeys, they have also worked out well, running the rules as written. The individuals rolls make the journeys more significant and the hazards, when they have arisen, have made things more interesting. The journeys are a bit gamist in nature and work well handled as such (paint with broad brushes until a hazard shows up). The whole game has a bit of this in it, with the need to give everyone a fair shake in encounters (as opposed to letting one player make multiple social rolls - 1 roll a player is the rule) and something to do in journeys. The players have to learn to communicate and work together to ease their mutual burdens when traveling. In some ways, the mechanics and the way they are resolved reminds me a bit of burning wheel/mouseguard.

 

[garyh]

Woah.

That sounds cool based just on the mechanics. I've been holding off on ordering this--it's a lot of money for a game I'm unlikely to play any time soon, if ever--but you've really got me wavering...

I've got this on pre-order. I know I'll probably never play it, but I (as many of us here do) love Lord of the Rings. My first RPG was, in fact, not D&D but rather ICE's Middle Earth Role Playing. I also got the core book for the Decipher LotR and thought it looked cool, though I never ended up playing that, either.