I've played The One Ring (1st edition) and really enjoyed the game when run by someone who knew their Tolkien lore. When run by someone only familiar with the movies or D&D, you get a pale imitation of D&D, mainly focusing on the combat, but not on exploring the world.
What's cool about The One Ring is travelling through Middle-earth and experiencing its lore: defending a bridge from Trolls and Orc hordes, catching a ride from Eagles, learning insect repelling spells from Radagast, fighting and talking to giant spiders in the forest, making deals with Barrow Wights. I greatly enjoyed this game.
So, I backed the 2nd edition KickStarter (KS) and got the Starter Set and the Core book.
Core book
The hardcover Core book (248 pages) has a good heft and a nice cloth exterior feel. Chapter headings are two-page full color illustrations, but the other interior illustrations are monochromatic line drawings, some more photorealistic than others. The interior pages mimic parchment. My complaint is that the full color art pages is on matte paper and would look a lot better on glossy paper. The dark images come out muddy and too dark with not enough contrast. The thumbnails at the top of the Table of Contents are indistinct dark splotches (they look much better on the pdf). I have the same issue with their Tales from the Loop books. Alien which is printed on glossy paper looks a lot better.
The number of typos and errata is pretty minor. You can find them here: https://forum.frialigan.se/viewtopic.php?f=129&t=8806
The One Ring writers are scholars of Middle-earth, everything is researched in detail.
There are 9 chapters:
- Prologue (10 pages). Overview of the game and system.
- Action Resolution (12 pages). Rules for die rolling.
- Adventurers (32 pages). Character creation for various Cultures: Bardings, Dwarves of Durin's Folk, Hobbits of the Shire, Elves of Lindon, Bree-landers, Rangers of the North.
- Characteristics (18 pages). Skill, Stats, and Equipment.
- Valour and Wisdom (14 pages). Items and Skills specific to a Culture. These are gained when PCs increase their Valour or Wisdom.
- Adventuring Phases (26 pages). How to on Combat, Council, Journey.
- Fellowship Phases (8 pages). How to for the Fellowship Phase.
- The Loremaster (50 pages). GM tips, creatures, treasure.
- The World (36 pages). Eriador. Several paragraphs on each location.
- Appendix (30 pages). Patrons (including Balin, Bilbo, Gandalf, and Tom Bombadil), Landmarks (what a landmark is), The Star of the Mist (a short adventure location), Nameless Things (a random creature generator).
Adventuring consists of a number of scenes from these three types: Combat, Council, and Journey. Combat is physical combat. Council is social combat. Journey is travel through unknown or hostile territory for long distances. Generally, you Journey somewhere for Combat or Council, or in some instances your Council turns into Combat. But a series of these in various combinations makes an adventure.
Between adventures is the Fellowship Phase, basically what your character does between adventures away from your Fellowship. This is similar to King Arthur Pendragon where you have a Wintering Phase. You rest up, train, learn new skills, write songs, holiday, meet a patron, etc.
The 2nd edition is more streamlined and cleaner than the 1st edition. The 1st edition was published by Cubicle7. Free League published the 2nd edition without any rights to the previous edition. So, everything had to be redone, but Free League retained the Lead Writer and Game Designers from the 1st edition. The main complaint about the 1st edition was that it was hard to find anything. Information was buried in random places. The 2nd edition is better organized, but it still suffers from making up terms for everything, making it hard to understand. And some details are still buried in various paragraphs, requiring careful reading, but at least they're where you expect the information to be.
Definitely a good upgrade to the previous edition (though I miss some of the color illustrations from the earlier edition).
Starter Set
Because the Starter Set was launched during a KS, it's a combination of Shire-heavy content and a hodgepodge of support material for the overall game. Cards, dice, and maps, some designed for the Core book and not the Starter Set, makes it more like the junk drawer for everything that isn't a book.
Shire focused content:
- Large map of the Shire (the back of the Shire map is a map of Eriador).
- 8 pre-gens. 6 starter Hobbits, 1 experienced Hobbit, 1 experienced Dwarf. Players start with the starter Hobbits and may later play the experienced PCs, so they get a flavor of what a more powerful PC is like.
The pre-gens use the optional Target Number (p.18 Core book, Target Numbers & Tweaking the Target Numbers). But the Starter Set Rules (p.9) incorrectly states that it uses the non-optional Target Number. I got confused when I looked over the pre-gens, thinking I had missed a rule somewhere, until I found the correction in the Errata. - The Shire (56 pages) with detailed information about the Shire, its people, and random encounter tables useful as adventure seeds if you want to make your own series of adventures or campaign in the Shire.
- The Adventures book (36 pages) with 5 scenarios set in the Shire. Each scenario clocks in at about 5 pages. These scenarios are very short and simple. I ran two of them in one game session, taking about 3 hours, not including going over the rules and character sheets. The scenarios are more like tutorials with lots of guidance for the GM. I would have preferred longer scenarios with more depth to them.
Star Trek Adventures Starter Set has 3 scenarios of 12 pages each. Alien Starter Set has 1 scenario, 47 pages. Runequest Starter Set has SoloQuest of 57 pages (a choose your own adventure tutorial), and 3 scenarios of about 20 pages each. These other Starter Sets give you a better feel for the game.
Unfortunately, The One Ring Starter Set is Shire-centric. So, if you wanted to play a Barding, Dwarf of Durin's Folk, Elf of Lindon, Bree-lander, or Ranger of the North you're out of luck (these though are in the Core book in addition to Hobbits, though no Riders of Rohan nor High Elves of Rivendell).
General content:
- The Rules (28 pages) with almost enough information to run games in the Shire. The rules are incomplete because they are more Player focused than GM focused. It is missing vital information about Adversaries that you'd need to run the Adventures with. The issue is that I started to run The Adventures and found that no information is given on how the use the stat blocks for Adversaries (creatures). I had to read several pages in the Core book to figure this out. This is a big oversight.
Here are Dwarven Scoundrels from the Shire book:
Attribute Level is basically a Challenge level, but it generally is equal to the Hate or Resolve of the monster. So, why list it again? Well, all monsters have the Heavy Blow special damage option. Which means they can spend Success icons (6 on a d6) to add damage equal to the Attribute Level.
Might is how many attacks they get per round and the number of Wounds they can take before being taken out.
Hate or Resolve is spent to power Fell Abilities and/or add 1d6 to Attack or Protection rolls acting just like Hope. If the Adversary starts a round with 0 Hate or Resolve, they are Weary. PCs may always attack creatures who have Hate, but unprovoked attacks against creatures with Resolve may be considered a Misdeed and cause Shadow.
The Combat Proficiencies line is cryptic:
Bow 2 (3/14, Pierce)
I would have preferred the following (clarity vs brevity):
Bow: Rating 2; Damage 3; Injury 14; Special Damage: Heavy Blow (Damage +5), Pierce
I've also had to consult the Core book to clarify various rules. Questions came up, such as can you use a weapon if you don't have Combat Proficiency in it? The answer is yes, but you only roll a single Feat die (1d12) and nothing else.
- Dice set. The d12 (Feat dice) are incorrect, but are being corrected. The 11 should be a 1. Sort of incredible that this slipped through QA. The cost of retooling the injection molds, manufacturing, shipping, and redistributing the dice will cost the company multiples of the salary of a thorough QA person. A KS stretch goal was two cloth bookmarks for the Core book, but the book showed up with only one. Not a big deal, but yet another QA issue.
- 6 Stance / Journey cards, one for each Player. On the Stance cards are printed Combat Tasks (Intimidate Foe, Rally Comrades, Protect Companion, Prepare Shot) which are only available in the Core book; this is useful, but would be puzzling to someone with just the Starter Set. The Journey cards, printed on the back of the Stance cards, are not used in the Starter Set nor are the rules for them in the Starter Set Rulebook, but a taste of what a Journey is is in some of the tests in the Adventures book.
- 23 Weapon and Armor cards of generally available items, but only one of each type. Not that useful in the Shire as it's not combat centric, but more useful in a larger campaign. The issue is that you can't hand out the cards because you only have one of each item. This can only be used as reference cards unless for some odd reason the PCs don't have duplicate items. Hey buddy, I'll trade you my sword for your shield.
The Starter Set is great if you're happy with staying in the Shire or if you want support material for your larger campaign. As is, the Starter Set is incomplete and not usable for someone completely new to the system.
Retail price $29.99. I never use a GM screen. I was tempted to get this as a KS addon for the Rivendell book. I'm glad I didn't. The Rivendell book (16 pages) contains 7 pages on Rivendell and 3 pages on creating a character for a High Elf of Rivendell. Thankfully, the pdf version of this came with the KS.
Overall
The revised system is more streamlined. The KS was rushed and the Starter Set shows it. Definitely get the Core book. Your mileage may vary for the Starter Set.
The One Ring 2nd Edition won a Gold ENnie 2022 for Best Interior Art.
The One Ring 2e Core Rules Errata: pdf here.
