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Friday, September 2, 2011

How Many LotR RPGs Do I Own?

Upon finding Middle Earth Roleplaying 2e (otherwise known as MERP) under my bed, I got to thinking about the different versions of Lord of the Rings based RPGs that I own.

The first was the MERP boxed set from Iron Crown Enterprises.  I played the shit out of this game.  Rolemaster rules that the average gaming group could actually master.  Very sandboxie in nature, as there were tons of setting books released, not much in the way of adventures.

Then we had The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game.  I'm not even sure if I still own it.  From what I can recall, very dumbed down.

MERP 2e was next.  Somewhere between MERP 1e and Rolemaster in complexity, I don't recall if we ever played with the 2e rules.

The Lord of the Rings RPG from Decipher was licensed from the movie if I recall correctly.  Tons and tons of shots from the movies were included.  Not much if any real art.  I bought the core book, left it as bathroom reading for 6 months and never got past skimming it.

The One Ring - this is the latest and it landed at Gencon.  I only have this in PDF so far.  I need to spend some more time with it.  At first glance it seems fairly faithful to its source material.

That doesn't include games like Midnight, which is essentially LotR with the evil, alternate director's cut ending.  Well done but a depressing setting to play in.

Oh, and ICE published some endless quest style books using the LotR license.

Did I miss anything?


1 comment:

  1. Age of Shadow...http://ageofshadow.freehostia.com/ ...an Openquest (simplified Runequest/BRP) Middle-Earth setting with the numbers filed off.

    ReplyDelete

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