This is a play perspective rather than a book review. The majority of RPG 'reviews' are really book reviews and are generally not that helpful. Do you like pretty art? Do you expect chapters on character generation and background lore? Yes you will like this game, and almost every other RPG in print.
I've played a few sessions of the One Ring with a fairly novice GM and skimmed the rule book. All sessions have been online.
Its OK., there's your summary.
I'll layout my sandbox, then give the negatives and end with the positives in case anyone reads this wanting to justify their purchase, or future purchase.
I have a wargamer mindset. This does not mean I think every game should have a CRT or crunchy minis rules for combat, quite the opposite, but it does mean I expect there to be a strategy game in an RPG book, and one that a GM of modest ability can bring out. My view is that the vast majority of RPG products completely fail to achieve what Gygax and Arneson did in 1974 and present a complete game that can be easily assembled based on the instructions given. Most RPG products give you a lot of 'lore' and setting blerb for those who find that interesting, then give some character generation rules, a single system dice resolution mechanic and then call it a day. The assumption being that either the GM will do whatever they like anyway or that they are already a skilled story teller and game designer. Most GMs are neither. A good table top RPG helps the GM and the players play well in spite of a dearth of natural gifts.
What does the One Ring give you? Mostly what I described above. The game concept is that a party of adventurer players will have one or more sponsors (characters such as Bilbo from the fiction) who provide them with fetch or info collecting quests. The GM looks at the very pretty map and either scripts or improvises a linear or forking narrative mission for the game play session. They assemble, scenes or plot or obstacles from the usual fair of combat, and negotiation with some travel in between. Depending on the mission outcome a faction, such as the town of Bree, or the Elves or whoever may like your party more or less and your wealth may increase. So its kind of a sandbox at the macro level, kind of a faction game and its really upto the GM to do the heavy lifting rather than the system.
It is really down to the GM to just make this work, no real structure is given. You could do a dungeon crawl, or a detective game but there are no systems for this. The rules do provide a much lauded travel mechanic for abstracting journeys. It boils down to assigning characters to roles, such as the scout, and making a series of consecutive die rolls to get a result. This is fine as a narrative aid but doesn't give the players especially interesting decisions. Similar could be said for the group negotiation mechanic.
A route out of this is to buy prewritten modules / adventures and see what example they provide for a game. Of what I have seen they can be grouped in to either rail road narrative adventures or additional lore and plot hooks for sandbox play. The later giving ideas but not necessarily real consequential decisions with investment to present to the players.
However the biggest limitation is the IP itself. An inherent feature of established fictions is that the players cannot change the world without breaking the fiction. As such the party quests are always kill some minor ork or bandit or go to some forgotten village and resolve its sheep counting problem, or find some old book etc. The game is set in Eriador but under no circumstances can the players make Eriador great again!
Lets suppose you don't give a hoot about the above. You play the way you play and don't need any game system to tell you otherwise. You want your Lord of the Rings TM RPG, is this it? What about the character generation and the dice rolling system?
The characters do a good job of capturing the Tolkienian ethos. They have skills like song and riddle which could be used as much as craft or battle. For players who know and buy into the fiction it is an easy in if they are natural story tellers. Choosing a culture, variations on human, hobbit, elf, dwarf etc to the Eriador area, a calling (class), and a smattering of skills is quick and intuitive. Characters are either combat, blaggers, or explorers of one type or another. Magic is fairly limited. The system rewards some specialisation and uses simple single values for handling wealth and relations with other factions.
The die roll system is a riff on fairly common dice pool systems. Roll one d12, and additional d6s for each hope point you burn or level in skills, count the total and exceed a difficult affected by your base attribute. It works, but like all dice pool systems obfuscates the odds.
The hope system is mechanically the best part of the One Ring. You can burn these points to get extra dice in a push your luck game. Once hope runs out, you get depressed and may turn to the shadow. It provides a much needed thematic edge and strategic dimension to what is otherwise a competent but perhaps vacuous story telling system.
p.s.
The combat system fails to be either quick and simple or especially interesting.
& Freeleague do make good quality books.
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