Middle-earth comes to D&D 5e

[Double Deuce]

Cubicle 7 Entertainment has finally released the D&D 5e Player's Guide for Adventures in Middle-earth.

Adventures in Middle-earth: Players Guide contains:

• 11 Middle-earth specific playable Cultures
• 6 New and unique Classes
• 13 New Backgrounds custom-made for Middle-earth
• Middle-earth appropriate arms and armour
• Unique Journey rules
• New rules for Corruption
• New Audience rules
• Rules for The Fellowship Phase
• Middle-earth maps (as the end papers) for Players and Loremasters

[Bison]

Hmm...interesting.

[Double Deuce]

I'm not a big Middle-earth fan but I'm interested in how close they were able to keep the feeling of that setting. I'm guessing the cultures, classes and backgrounds they worked up are the key.

[Nefaro]

I picked up their One Ring core book awhile back, after reading a lot of glowing reviews.




From my incomplete reading thus far, I can tell it was custom made for an LotR inspired setting.  That's been listed as a big pro for it, since all the others are just Middle Earth crammed into other systems, missing some of the feel.  Pretty easy mechanics, but different enough emphases to have it's own special flavor and specially crafted for the setting.  Obviously tailored more towards RP than crunch, but not so much as something like the Fate system.

Plus.. the quality One Ring books are f'ing beautiful.  I stick my nose in the crack, and sniff the corebook's pages, before performing some light petting on it.  :))


My only complaint is that they each only come with a few stat blocks for monsters/adversaries.  Despite having numerous different varieties of orcs, bats, and such.  Made me want to dig out my old MERP Bestiary book (and that amazing old Dol Guldur splatbook for same) to see how much more I could possibly write up myself if need be.   IIRC, the core book comes with something like four different orc types, giant bats & vampire, werewolf (maybe?), warg, couple trolls.. I think that's about it.


EDIT:  I've not read that far into the rules, but it has mechanical systems for travelling Middle Earth, hex crawl style.  With fatigue, supplies, happiness, roles (ex. scout/point-man), etc used in that part.  Seasons and generational play, vaguely similar to Pendragon. 

[Double Deuce]

Made me want to dig out my old MERP Bestiary book (and that amazing old Dol Guldur splatbook for same) to see how much more I could possibly write up myself if need be. 

I have a stack of the old MERP sourcebooks packed away somewhere. I might have to pull them out and see which ones I have.