Give Mongoose d20 Conan a shot (I used the 1.5 "Atlantean" edition but 2nd edition has enough nice fixes to be worth getting, I'd recommend the core book and the Scrolls of Skelos magic book)

A bit off-topic since I haven't used it for Middle Earth but I did use it with great success for an Icelandic Sagas game which worked with some of the source material of Middle Earth. It's based on 3.5ed so it has a lot of that system's warts intact (fucking skill points etc.) but it's meant for low magic and it's far far far and away the best version of 3.5ed.

The magic system is especially good and it includes a lot of subtle and small scale magic that'd fit in well for Middle Earth and the way characters are set up you can take a level or two as a scholar to be able to do some divination without borking your character's fighting ability. The core book + Scrolls of Skelos gives you enough magical schools that you can pick out the ones that fit Middle Earth, nix the too Conany ones and end up with a good magical system. One nice thing the second edition did is replace the stupid "defensive blast" magic that mages get with school-specific emergency magic that burns through ALL of your MPs but allows wizards to try to cheat death (the divination one lets you automatically pass a saving throw, others do other things often cool and flavorful) which makes the scholar class interesting and fun despite having much much less raw casting power than a standard D&D wizard.

Also taking an axe to everything magic in 3.5ed and rebuilding it from the ground up makes the system lighter and less complicated even after adding in stuff like armor giving DR. Having virtually no magical items or magical buffs really reduces a lot of headaches.

Just keep level advancement fairly slow unless you want to go full Silmarillion.

Balance is pretty good (vastly better than 3.5ed core) except for the barbarian class being a touch overpowered and strength being a bit of a god stat, but hey it's a Conan book. The scholar class (the one that uses magic) is perfectly balanced and the best part of the system, especially if you want to run a low magic world.

Just the other day I got my copy of Tales & Legends. A retroclone of Lord of the Rings Adventure Game from ICE. It is quite neat. And several MERP modules got dual stats and conversion notes for the LotRAG system. And it is very easy to convert stats from MERP. Like MERP it is not closely adapted per se for ME, but the power level is far lower. It is more of a rules light generic fantasy system useing two d6. It was originally used as system for the ICE solo-adventure books (Tolkien Quest).

There has been another iteration of this system floating about the nets for years. Middle-Earth Adventure Game.

I have never played or read it, but I have seen several people swearing by Burning Wheel as the ultimate Middle-Earth game. No idea about the truth of it. Seems quite dense with a core rules book of 600+ pages. And as I have understood, very story-gamey.

Quote from: Teodrik;1026903I have never played or read it, but I have seen several people swearing by Burning Wheel as the ultimate Middle-Earth game. No idea about the truth of it. Seems quite dense with a core rules book of 600+ pages. And as I have understood, very story-gamey.

Burning Wheel has a lot of middle earth flavor, and pulls it off with a lot of distinctive flair in the treatment of the various racial archetypes. It doesn't provide any explicit support for the setting, of course, so it is basically a system you could use to game in middle earth provided you are putting together all the maps and adventures and so forth (which I'm cool with - that's the premise of this thread, after all). I tried to get a BW middle earth campaign going, but my players hated it. In my experience, it is one of those systems that is cool to read, and DM's love it when they are preparing stuff, but when you sit down at the table it falls apart because the core mechanics are full of bullshit. But YMMV, etc.,

Quote from: Larsdangly;1026909In my experience, it is one of those systems that is cool to read, and DM's love it when they are preparing stuff, but when you sit down at the table it falls apart because the core mechanics are full of bullshit. But YMMV, etc.,

I have the same impression but I put it down to not being sufficiently aquainted with the rules. It just seemed WAY overly complex. Fiddly even. So that is why I was so pleased to pick up Torchbearer thinking that it was a slimmed down version of the game with an Old School feel. Unfortunately a lot of the ideas that sold me on the game in the first place are embedded in a system that I just can't really see working with my group.

I guess all the players of these lines prove that it does indeed work effectively as a system but codifying my characters' motivations to such a degree and the combat system that seems to be abstract to the degree that it feels like a mini-game in a game, well, it is not for me.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1026954I have the same impression but I put it down to not being sufficiently aquainted with the rules. It just seemed WAY overly complex. Fiddly even. So that is why I was so pleased to pick up Torchbearer thinking that it was a slimmed down version of the game with an Old School feel. Unfortunately a lot of the ideas that sold me on the game in the first place are embedded in a system that I just can't really see working with my group.

I guess all the players of these lines prove that it does indeed work effectively as a system but codifying my characters' motivations to such a degree and the combat system that seems to be abstract to the degree that it feels like a mini-game in a game, well, it is not for me.

BW is one of the best examples of the hobby's worst habits: wasting its creative energy on filling the world with an endless stream of core rules systems, all engineered to do things that are perfectly well dealt with by rules we've had for 30 years. This isn't nostalgia, it is just common sense: how many years do you think it takes for a community of millions of players and dozens of companies to figure out a couple of good core mechanics for resolving sword fights and stuff like that? Maybe 5 years at the outside? There is nothing you are going to dream up that wasn't dreamt up, play tested and either included in some widely available game or rejected as too stupid to survive at the table by the early 1980's. BW is just a particularly lovingly crafted version of what you get when someone insists on making a group learn 85 new mechanical sub systems that have nothing to do with any game they've seen before but basically replicate core game-table activities that have been covered literally hundreds of times at this point. It is all so stupid. The greatest insight of the OSR community is to leave your rules engineering to a bit of house-rule scale fiddling at the margins, and focus your energy on the things that matter, like cool settings, fun dungeons, spells, gooey monsters, etc.

I've tried running games in Middle Earth with a number of systems over the years. The only one that is really memorable was the the time in 1976 or 1977 when a group of players activated a random teleport trap in my Pyramid dungeon and I rolled a 00 which sent them to another dimension. Thinking fast, I picked Middle Earth and had the group appear in Bree just hours before Frodo and company arrived. The parent ended up going with the fellowship. Much fun was had by all until the group realized (when they were in Minas Tirith) that they had not seen any sign of Gollum since they took at arrow shot at him in Moria. Yes, they had killed Gollum and had to race to Mount Doom to prevent Frodo from putting on the ring and then being captured by Nazgul (as Gollum would not be there to take it from him).

Yes, this was run with the original brown box D&D and the players were allowed to use their knowledge of the books -- which made it more interesting for everyone.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1026909Burning Wheel has a lot of middle earth flavor, and pulls it off with a lot of distinctive flair in the treatment of the various racial archetypes. It doesn't provide any explicit support for the setting, of course, so it is basically a system you could use to game in middle earth provided you are putting together all the maps and adventures and so forth (which I'm cool with - that's the premise of this thread, after all). I tried to get a BW middle earth campaign going, but my players hated it. In my experience, it is one of those systems that is cool to read, and DM's love it when they are preparing stuff, but when you sit down at the table it falls apart because the core mechanics are full of bullshit. But YMMV, etc.,

Burning Wheel is very clever but clever doesn't mean well designed, aside from having a lot of indie/metagame mechanics that aren't to everyone's taste it has a few issues:
1. Failure by its author to kill his darlings. There are just way to many ideas in the book, many of which are fine by themselves, but there are just so many things to get used to that it can overwhelm the game's focus.
2. It's a bit of a weird hybrid between a fantasy heartbreaker crunchfest and an foofy indie game. This clashes sometimes.
3. It's much more the kind of game that GMs want to play then the kind of game that the actual typical player wants to play.
4. So much of the flavor is wrapped around the rules that you really need to the whole group to be gung-ho about understanding how the game works for the game to be fun. It doesn't work well for "I'll tell you what my guy's doing and you tell me what to roll" players.
5. Some of the people who really love Burning Wheel love it because the rules make it basically impossible to railroad the players, but it's just a lot easier to not railroad the players in the first place then to play a game that prevents you from railroading players.

I find that BW works best for convention one-shots with pregens that are in conflict with each other. It can be fun for that.

I've used the following for actual play in Middle Earth:

• MERP: It worked okay, but I had some problems with the magic system for Middle Earth. As a licensed game, I think it could've done a better job, there.
• Rolemaster (RM1/RM2): This was just the "full version" of the system from which MERP was derived. Unsurprisingly, it shared the issues I had with MERP. However, I prefer RM over MERP. You have to tweak it for Middle Earth, of course. But tweaking Rolemaster is part of the charm of Rolemaster.
• AD&D (1e): Standard D&D isn't a perfect fit for Middle Earth, but there are a lot of elements that work well if you spend some time tweaking the rules. Again, the magic system is one area of concern.

At one time or another I've also considered (or even started working up) Middle Earth games using Chaosium BRP and Harnmaster. Neither of those saw actual play. In the case of BRP, it's because I ultimately thought that a class/level system fit what I was going for better than a grittier skill based system. In the case of Harnmaster, my thinking was similar, but also influenced by my relative unfamiliarity with Harnmaster compared to other possible systems.

If I were picking a Middle Earth system to run, today, I think I'd use house-ruled TSR D&D (either original D&D or 1e AD&D, in my case). I think the basic structure of the game fits the kind of adventuring I'd look for in Middle Earth. Also, I'm very comfortable with the system and confident in tweaking it to fit my vision of Middle Earth and gaming in Middle Earth. (I've heard good things about the 5e Middle Earth stuff, so I might look at that for inspiration or for stuff to steal, but I'd prefer running TSR D&D instead of 5e.)

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1027014If I were picking a Middle Earth system to run, today, I think I'd use house-ruled TSR D&D (either original D&D or 1e AD&D, in my case). I think the basic structure of the game fits the kind of adventuring I'd look for in Middle Earth. Also, I'm very comfortable with the system and confident in tweaking it to fit my vision of Middle Earth and gaming in Middle Earth. (I've heard good things about the 5e Middle Earth stuff, so I might look at that for inspiration or for stuff to steal, but I'd prefer running TSR D&D instead of 5e.)

I have to ask why AD&D over Adventures in Middle Earth? I could understand if you were using OD&D + selected elements from the supplements but AD&D?

After playing a few sessions with AiME I doodled around with making a OD&D variant modeled after it (axing the magic user and cleric for a scholar class, culture as race, etc). But I found it didn't save much in terms of complexity or ease of running. Most of my opinion was formed from the writing I been doing on my own clone.

For example I took various OD&D monsters and wrote them 'as is' but in stat block form. The result is not unlike later edition equivalents. It just as originally presented they look more compact due to be written in a explanatory paragraph. It gets particularly bad for those creatures with per day spell abilities.

This got started a few years ago when I grew tired of trying to pick out everything certain creatures did from reading a paragraph or two of text. I started writing it down as a bullet list. Obviously for skeletons, orcs, and similar creatures this is not an issue. But one of the campaigns I was running had high level PC that were dealing with some of the more powerful and complex OD&D monsters.

AiME is not perfect (Slayer class I am looking at you), but out of the galaxy of D&D editions, and clones; it is by far the best presentation of Middle Earth as a roleplaying game for that family of game. And for RPGs in general, it far better than the MERPS rules, and far easier to run than Decipher's take or The One Ring RPG also by Cubicle.

You could get something close with GURPS, or Fate. But would be a bit of work using the toolikits of those system get what Cublicle has already done the work for.

Sorry if I come off strongly with my opinion, but in my view AiME is that good. And because of substantial changes to how classes and other elements work plays very different than D&D 5e RAW.

AiME is a good game, but I would prefer 1E or BD&D for a middle earth campaign for two reasons: 1) I think the elevated ratio of HP to typical damage slows combat in 5E way too much (at all time scales, but particularly HP per day or week, which is out of control). And 2) All editions of D&D benefit from having an excellent representation of relative power across a wide range of power. But the OSR generation editions do so without blowing your doors off with fiddly details as power level rises. A very powerful 1E character might be 10th or 12th level, and their character sheet isn't really that much harder to parse than a 1st or 2nd level version of that character. A very powerful 5E character is 15th-20th level, and has a character sheet that reads like the Alternative Minimum Tax rules. Same but double it for monsters: A scary 1E monster has a HD rating, an AC, and one or two or three relevant special powers you should remember (most of which operate without any fiddly mechanics). A scary 5E monster has a wordy quarter-page stat block with a dozen interlocking powers you are supposed to adjudicate. Both of these things slow combat. Slow combat is awesome when you are playing a board game about combat, but this has never been D&D's strong point. D&D is at its best when any given conflict can be resolved in 10-15 minutes, absolute maximum.

To crystal clear my point in debating you is that AiME, a 5th edition variant, saves a ton work in running a Middle Earth campaign for a referee that otherwise a fan of classic edition. AiME not just 5e with flavor text but a reworking of all the "stuff" classes, items, and monsters to fully support a Middle Earth campaign. The core combat rules remain the same and how you do ability/skill checks remain the same.

The changes in conjunction with makes for a very different experience from 5e RAW with surprisingly little overhead over a classic D&D set of rules. More importantly all the heavy lifting mechanic wise (like axing magic users) have done.

Again I found my thinking "How can I make OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry work like this." Then I realize it was a lot of work for little gain  given how AiME used the 5th edition rules.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1027057AiME is a good game, but I would prefer 1E or BD&D for a middle earth campaign for two reasons: 1) I think the elevated ratio of HP to typical damage slows combat in 5E way too much (at all time scales, but particularly HP per day or week, which is out of control).

I am not seeing this. Mainly because of the restrictions when you can take short/long rests and lethality of AiME creatures. This is over two campaigns and a half dozen one-shots.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1027057And 2) All editions of D&D benefit from having an excellent representation of relative power across a wide range of power. But the OSR generation editions do so without blowing your doors off with fiddly details as power level rises. A very powerful 1E character might be 10th or 12th level, and their character sheet isn't really that much harder to parse than a 1st or 2nd level version of that character. A very powerful 5E character is 15th-20th level, and has a character sheet that reads like the Alternative Minimum Tax rules.

It disagree, 5e is more, and AiME does share that to an extent. But keep in mind that AiME is less sophisticated than 5e RAW. The classes have two alternate paths and the virtue system plays out different than 5e feats.

I done the lists of 5e stuff versus OD&D versus AD&D. And frankly I am not seeing enough of a different to warrant calling even 5e RAW a form of Alternative Minimum Tax rules.

What is a problem is the dense text of the core book and the supplements. So for my campaign I do stuff like this I did for the Halfling Shadow a Monk class variant.

Or this I did for the Basic four classes to use not only as an aide but to get a handle on how things progressed. Much of the extra stuff is just stacking more times per days on abilities gained at lower level.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1027057Same but double it for monsters: A scary 1E monster has a HD rating, an AC, and one or two or three relevant special powers you should remember (most of which operate without any fiddly mechanics).

This is overblown. For my own project I went through the list of monster and OD&D and selected supplements. I kept the abilities pretty much 'as is' and rewrote them in a stat block. Why? Because at it turns out that for the higher end monsters the paragraph of text style of explaining this proved to be cumbersome in actual play.

Sure if you played umpteen years and memorized things. But I was coming off of two decades of GURPS so needed a better reference so started making bullet lists. The stat block are just a nicely formatted version of that list.

Now while I say it overblown, it is more so you are not wrong in that respect. And there are several examples in 5e RAW of a monster like a Red Dragon occupying a page or two of text. However that not the case so far in AiME. Even Ringwraiths with two alternative forms are not much more complex ability wise than a AD&D Demon Lord and occupy a similiar "niche" in the overal scheme of the campaign.

The more ordinary monsters of orcs, trolls, the dead, and wargs are much more simpler. And you are forgetting that stat block in AiME (and 5e) are largely complete. In that they have all the rules for running the monster inside of them. The only thing that isn't are the basic combat rules and the what the keywords mean.

The one line stat block format is not complete especially for characters. It relies on memorization. For the most part OD&D that rarely an issue but, for AD&D it omits a lot of information. And if you flesh it out, you have a 3e/4e/5e style statblock on your hands.

For example this is a 12th level Lich from Swords & Wizardry written up in the stat block I been using for the past couple of years.

12th Level Lich
Init +6; Note this is my own addition AC 0[20]; HD 12; HP 42; Save 3;
Move 60'; CL/XP 15/2,900;
Attacks (x1)
Fist; HTB +12, DMG 1d10 (Paralytic Touch);
Special
Horrifying Appearance: The horrific appearance of a lich causes any being of 4 HD or lower to become paralyzed with fear.
Magical Immunities: Immune to disease and poison.
Spellcasting: A lich cast spells as if it is a 12th level Magic User. It memorize the following number of spells; 4 1st level, 4 2nd level, 4 3rd level, 4 4th level, 4 5th level, and 1 6th level.
Paralytic Touch: The chaos of the necromantic energies inhabiting the Lich causing any target that is hit with the Lich's hand to become paralyzed (no saving throw).
Harvest Note: this is my own addition
Lich Dust 1,000d;
Magic-User Spells (12th Level)
1st Level: Charm Person, Magic Missile x2, Sleep
2nd Level: Detect Evil, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Web
3rd Level: Fireball, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Protection from Missiles
4th Level: Confusion, Dimension Door, Polymorph Other, Wall of Fire
5th Level: Cloudkill, Conjuration of Fire Elemental, Telekinesis, Teleport
6th Level: Disintegrate

Nicely formatted and laid out it is as you criticize a quarter page stat block with a dozen interlocking powers.

This is the information found in the Greyhawk supplement
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2254[/ATTACH]

This seemly simple "stat block" actually packs a lot behind it that when spelled like in later edition causes the result to be a lot larger.

Of course the same lich in AD&D? Well

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2255[/ATTACH]

Now lets look at AiME

First the biggest and baddest monster. Note I don't feel comfortable with making a legible image.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2256[/ATTACH]

Looks bad even with the stats block alone occupying a single page. (There is a previous page with the flavor text). However when I read it makes sense in terms of the importance of the Ringwraith and the what Tolkien written about it. There are two stat block because it has two distinct forms it can take. Together there are about a dozen distinct abilities several of which are shared between the two forms. Outside of some skills that it.

Now compare to the lich with 17 spells and three special abilities. Yeah the 5e style block has more. But in terms of the mechanics being defined I am buying that 5e in the form of AiME is being overblown. Different sure.

As for slowing down combat. The shit right there in front of me. I don't need to refer back to Men & Magic or the PHB to remember what Dimension Door exactly does. It spelled out right in the stat block itself.

Now to be fair this was a problem in 3rd edition D&D and Pathfinder. Those two edition not only had much longer lists of abilities but also like the spell lists made you go back and look stuff up. One of the few thing 4e did right was stop doing that. Instead in 4e everything spelled in the stat block itself and 5e wisely continued this.

So enough about the lich/ringwraith, what AiME going to jam down a old school referee throat with a just a simple orc?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2257[/ATTACH]

While it is indeed a quarter page. But it only has four abilities of note plus a skill and attributes. Grant OD&D entry is very terse, and AD&D version has mostly flavor text that balloon's to a quarter page. But overblown in comparison? I don't agree. Especially when you look over all the different orcs, goblins, and other creatures they have and how well they translated it from Tolkien's writings.

Where I clearly agree with you is that if someone wants to roleplay in middle earth without making up any of their own house rules or other stuff, then AiME is the way to go. I'd say it's no contest, given that MERP has awesome setting materials but is out of print and has a system that hasn't aged well, Decipher is out of print (and unplayable), and TOR has awesome setting material, is in print, and there are a bunch of fans, but the system bugs the crap out of me.

I'm not on board with the rest of your arguments. I'm not going to get tangled up in a detailed clash of world views about stat blocks, but comparing the full monster manual write up of a lich to a ghost or orc or whatever doesn't really get across the flavor of the thing. Here's an orc captain in 1E format: "3 HD; AC 4; 1 attack for 1d8 damage". It would take a half page of text to present him in AiME.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1027067Here's an orc captain in 1E format: "3 HD; AC 4; 1 attack for 1d8 damage". It would take a half page of text to present him in AiME.

Yes the Great Orc on page 97 does take up a half page. However the above is not same type of creature as the Great Orc in AiME. It comparing apples to oranges.

If I was to write this for OD&D/Swords & Wizardry I would go

Great Orc
AC 4[15]; HD 7; HP 35; Save 7;
Move 30' (slowed by bulky armor); CL/XP 8/800;
Attacks (x2)
Scimitar; HTB +7, DMG 1d8+1; or
Axe; HTB +7, DMG 1d8+1; or
Spear; HTB +7, DMG 1d6+1; Range:20 feet
Special
Fell Speed: Once per round the Orc can move out of combat without provoking an attack.
Commanding Voice: The Great Orc can inspire it's allies with barked commands and horrible threat. All allies within 30 feet are effected by the equivalent of a bless spell (+1 to hit).
Sunlight Sensitivity: While in Sunlight the Great Orc suffer -2 to attack rolls and -1 to surprise checks.

One line it would be

QuoteGreat Orc AC 4;  MV 3"; HD 7; hp 37; #AT 2; D 1d8+1; SA Fell Speed, Commanding Voice; Sunlight Sensitive

But then again we could do a one line AiME stat line

Great Orc AC 20 (chain, hide shield); SPD: 30 ft.; HP 75; nAtk 2; Scimitar (2d4+4); S 18(+4); D 14 (+2); C 17 (+3); I 10 (+0); W 14 (+0); Ch 14 (+2); Save: S (+7); C(+6); W (+5); Skill: Intimid +4; Sense: Darkvision 30 ft; AB: Bulky Armor, Fell Speed, Sunlight Sensitivity; Actions: Multiattack, Scimitar; React: Commanding Voice; CL: 4/1,100 XP

Which is equivalent in length to this guy from module UK1 Into the Crystal Cave

QuoteHamish (AC 0; F5; hp 35; #AT 1; D by weapon type; AL NG; S 18,19.W10, D16, C15, Ch 10). He wears chain mall armour+2 and uses an ordinary shield which rests beside his bed. He is armed with a longsword +1 (NSA) and a non-magical dagger. There is a set of teleport keys in his belt pouch.

Yes 5e has more bulk but it not as radical difference. Mostly it is matter of presentation. The default is to list the stat block once and any time it referred too it is highlighted in bold. For example

Gorbag, a Great Orc,  is in commanded of the orcs at Fenbridge.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1027067I'm not going to get tangled up in a detailed clash of world views about stat blocks,.

Not asking you to like later edition style stat block. Only that in this case it not as dramatically different as it being made out to be.

Quote from: estar;1027047...I doodled around with making a OD&D variant... (axing the magic user and cleric for a scholar class, culture as race, etc)..

What did the scholar class look like?