The Lord of the Rings RPG Core Book

Overall score:

It saddens me to say this, but the Lord of the Rings RPG is kind of disappointing. The presentation of the book is, of course, beautiful, but without a helpful GM section, even experienced role-players are likely to be completely lost.

Let me go over the basic stuff first. LotR uses Decipher's CODA rules, debuted in their Star Trek RPG, which are heavily based on Wizard's d20 rules. LotR, by returning to the fantasy genre, bring the CODA rules even closer to Dungeons & Dragons by eliminating the innovative development system of Star Trek and replacing it with a standard list of classes (they call them Orders, but let's be honest here - they're classes). There are plenty of cosmetic changes here and there, but the only significant difference between d20 and CODA is the experience system: d20 uses experience points and levels, while CODA uses character points and spot advancement.

That said, I have to admit that originality is not a requirement for a good game - as long as it's fun, I like it, and by basing itself on a proven system CODA manages to be quite fun and very playable. Just don't expect anything ground-breaking.

The physical aspects of the book are marvelous - it's hard bound, crammed with color photos from the movie, and dripping with Tolkien atmosphere. Quotes from the novels fill every available chunk of white space, and the pages themselves are edged with stone textures and flowing elven script. No one will ever say that they didn't put a lot of thought into their art design, and the resulting product is really quite beautiful. Despite this, the book falls into the trap that plagues 90% of big-name RPG books today: the layout is unfriendly and the organization is poor. Chapter headings, while flavorful, give very little idea of what lies within; font, size, color, and placing serve to make most other headings a bit confusing. Worst of all, the book is organized so haphazardly that a lot of key information gets lost in random sidebars and seemingly unrelated chapters. It's not as bad as Star Trek was, but you may have to read the book two or three times before you feel like you know how it works.

The one thing the book gets right is the setting, which it nails dead on. Without Tolkien's setting, after all, there's no real reason to play this game - just grab any old fantasy RPG and have your way with it. If you choose this game, it will be because you want to play in Tolkien's world with Tolkien's races and places, and the designers obviously knew that. I particularly like how the list of character classes include such mundane things as craftsmen and minstrels - in the world of Tolkien these classes are just as important as fighters and rangers, and it's good to see them given their due. Also impressive is the pervading sense of world-based magic - Middle Earth is a place where magic happens simply because it should, and the game reflects that with a number of nice touches. (For example: if a tailor rolls really well while making a shirt, it will be such a fine shirt that it actually takes on magic properties. Even better than that, the magic properties are simple and undefined, leaving most of the detail work to the players and avoiding such ridiculous scenarios as a shirt that lets you shoot fireballs.)

The magic system is one I'm not entirely sold on, but I'm going to give it good marks simply because it's different and fits in with the overall vision of Tolkienesque magic. Some very silly decisions were made, but I'm willing to overlook them - just because Gandalf calls himself a "servant of the secret fire" every now and then doesn't mean that there is (or should be) a "secret fire" school of spells. What I do like is the elegant dichotomy between good "wizardry" and evil "sorcery," and the smooth system of weariness as a balance to magic use. Even more interesting are the alternate spellcasting methods: runes, songs of power, and abilities. The first two, oddly enough, don't really affect the utility of a spell - you cast it by singing instead of by talking, and in Middle Earth that difference is important enough by itself. There's no need for extra rules. The third alternate method, that of natural ability, simply means that if you study a certain spell hard enough and use it often enough, it becomes inherent. I don't know if any other RPGs have used this idea, but it's very intriguing and fits quite snugly into the feel and flow of Middle Earth.

So let's review my review: I like the look of the book, but I think they spent too much time on graphics at the expense of readability and organization. I think the system plays fast and is easy to use. I think the magic system, the classes, and the races all blend seamlessly into a flavorful reproduction of Tolkien's work. So what could I possibly be disappointed in? The Gamemaster section is short, inappropriate to the setting, and gives no useful information on how to run a Lord of the Rings game.

I'm not arguing that a Middle Earth RPG is inherently flawed, because it is possible to do such a game well, but Decipher gives no hint of what your adventures might be like and what your characters might want to do. Do you want to kill some orcs? Okay, then: which ones? And where? And how do you explain how they got there, and why they're still there when the official story calls for them to be? Tolkien's own detail undermines the playability of any game based on his work, because the history and major events of the world are already written. It's a game that calls for epic stories, but simultaneously prevents them because anything epic would interfere with the existing history.

If you want to ignore this history and just play D&D adventures in a Middle Earth setting, that's certainly possible but seems a little silly. If you want to follow his history and use his setting to its fullest, what part of the history do you use? You can't set it before the events of The Hobbit, because Decipher doesn't have legal access to it and thus didn't include any information about what the world was like (though you could, with a lot of tweaking, come up with your own version). If you want to set your game in a time after the destruction of the ring, you're on your own because the book gives absolutely no hint of what the world might be like. And if you want to set your game during the events of The Lord of the Rings, you have to either recreate the story he already told or manage to come up with something epic that doesn't step on the existing epic's toes.

In the end, it looks like Decipher spent so much time focusing on how to play that they sidestepped the question of what to play. More accurately, they spent too much time on graphic design and then pasted in Star Trek's GM section with a few minor word changes. Star Trek's GM section was successful because it was deeply and passionately Star Trek - it broke campaigns down into series, seasons, episodes, and scenes. It emulated the feel of Star Trek by recreating a TV show. When the same information is applied to Middle Earth, trading out words like "series" and "episode" for fantasy-friendly ones like "chronicle" and "chapter," it feels jarring. It breaks the flavor the book has created and brings you back into the real world, which is a bad thing for a game to do.

What this game needs, and desperately, is a new GM book and a collection of sample adventures. As it is, there's no suggestion of what to do in an adventure aside from the vague and unstated idea of "do what they do in the movie." How does a GM create an adventure that feels like Tolkien and uses his places and myths, but is original enough for the players to feel at ease? As a player I like to make my mark on the world. I like to defeat evil kings and win giant wars, and I think most people want the same thing - that's why a Lord of the Rings game sounds so appealing, because everything about the books drips with epic grandeur. But how can the players have their epic adventures without altering an established history? You can only do so many "behind the scenes of the REAL story" adventures before you want something more.

Like I said, I'm not arguing that such a feat is impossible. What I am arguing is that it's very difficult to pull off, and that Decipher loses major points for ignoring the effort completely. Without a practical discussion of how to run a game in Middle Earth, this RPG is only half-formed and half-playable. Look at it this way: the core rulebook costs forty dollars, and most of what you're paying for is a hard cover, a property license, and a bunch of color pictures. I'd trade every last page of it for a black and white paperback and a complete game.

Written by Fellfrosch on October 28th, 2002