Quote from: Claudius;356686...
Believe me, I own and have played it, and it impressed me how faithful to Tolkien it was. No, the problem with LotR Coda is that it was in dire need of some playtesting. A well done second edition would have done wonders for this game. Alas, we'll never see that. I hope the Cubicle 7 people will do an even better work.

The main reason why I abandoned Decipher's game was that I found it to be poorly edited (at least the first printing).  I spent too much time simply trying to figure out how to create a player character.  It clearly was a system that needed more playtesting and more editing.

I'm hopeful that Cubicle 7 will put out a better product.

I know speculation is favorite pastime of the internet, but I am just going to wait and see what the end product looks like.

Quote from: jdurall;356738Could you explain which sourcebook that was?

Two published sourcebooks were named for the 1st and 2nd books, and had sections on "how the film diverges from from the book," with the default source material being the book.

I stand corrected I had bad info.  The two source books both contained divergence information between book and film.  It just happened to be that the covers I saw for Two Towers were from the movie at the time and that's what stuck in my head.  The other covers I saw weren't movie ones.

Intrigued, but pessimistic.

Aside from the general fate of licensed games, design of a new system just for the genre generally strikes me as cause for alarm. Much like software, game systems are best with some measure of maturity.

As much as I'm not a big fan of BRP, if they took the right cues from previous BRP fantasy games, I think it would have a better chance of being a good, playable game than a game from scratch.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;356682Naysayer!  Get thee behind me!

!i!

Hey I have hopes, but lets be honest. Big name licenses are a HUGE gamble, especially without a lot of "current" media interest in the material.

You have to boil it down to "are enough current gamers interested in LOTR to get a licensed game out and making enough money to pay for the license.."

It isn't that the first part is small. It is the second part that worries me.

Quote from: Silverlion;356785Hey I have hopes, but lets be honest. Big name licenses are a HUGE gamble, especially without a lot of "current" media interest in the material.

You have to boil it down to "are enough current gamers interested in LOTR to get a licensed game out and making enough money to pay for the license.."

It isn't that the first part is small. It is the second part that worries me.

Of course, time it just right and here comes The Hobbit...

Accessibility will be a big draw for the system.  It will need to target fans of LotR who aren't willing to learn a complex game system.

My observation is that LotR fan-fickers and mechanic-free Livejournal roleplayers are far more numerous than people who want to play a traditional RPG in the LotR setting, so it will need to be light and easily grokked if it's not to be another MERP.

Quote from: Hairfoot;356810Accessibility will be a big draw for the system.  It will need to target fans of LotR who aren't willing to learn a complex game system.

My observation is that LotR fan-fickers and mechanic-free Livejournal roleplayers are far more numerous than people who want to play a traditional RPG in the LotR setting, so it will need to be light and easily grokked if it's not to be another MERP.

Oddly, I consider that MERP was less crunchy than LotR Coda.

Quote from: Akrasia;356743The main reason why I abandoned Decipher's game was that I found it to be poorly edited (at least the first printing).  I spent too much time simply trying to figure out how to create a player character.  It clearly was a system that needed more playtesting and more editing.

I'm hopeful that Cubicle 7 will put out a better product.

I can't say I disagree, our GM used the collected rulings file, a document with the errata.

Quote from: Claudius;356817Oddly, I consider that MERP was less crunchy than LotR Coda.

Actual crunchiness will be less important than the presentation.  It may gain more traction if it's promoted as a mild, formalised way to portray Middle Earth characters than as a rules-based RPG which caters to Middle Earth characters.

Quote from: Claudius;356681Very often, those MERP supplements didn't feel like Middle Earth at all. Like I said about the corebook, those supplements were great if you wanted a generic fantasy setting, but if what you wanted was the real Middle Earth, then those supplements weren't that great.

Quote from: estar;356662I agree about MERP. It was Rolemaster lite and it never felt right for Middle Earth.

It is the sourcebooks that set ICE's version apart from Decipher.  I know they are not all of the highest quality. But in combination it gave the Middle Earth a ton stuff to use.  I never got that impression from the Decipher material.

I agree with you both, on all accounts.

When I bought MERP the system felt so Un-Tolkien to me that I discarded the idea of playing in Middle-earth. I used it as a generic system.

And I couldn't make any use of the very few MERP modules I bought. But for me this was basically a presentation problem because when the German edition came around I bought almost all of the modules (even ones I already had in English). The layout was much clearer, and all the building and dungeon maps had been redone in a very "you are here" kind of way (textures, furniture, dirt), lending believability to ICE's sometimes strange sense of architecture (with all those triangular rooms).

Of course, one thing they didn't touch was Pete Fenlon's maps. They were already perfect.

Quote from: Hairfoot;356810Accessibility will be a big draw for the system.  It will need to target fans of LotR who aren't willing to learn a complex game system.

My observation is that LotR fan-fickers and mechanic-free Livejournal roleplayers are far more numerous than people who want to play a traditional RPG in the LotR setting, so it will need to be light and easily grokked if it's not to be another MERP.

This is key.

To make this license make money, they need to reach non-gamers.  They will be able to get some traction out of the Hobbit movie, but the LotR movie fanfare is long gone.  

The problem with reaching the fan-fickers (Spock on Frodo?  Hermoine does Legolas?) is that LotR already has plenty of descriptive text books and map books that detail areas of the world, often with great art.  C7 will be treading over very well-worn territory.

Reaching non-roleplayers is the Holy Grail of game companies these days.

However, you need Plan B, which is relying on roleplayers.

How Cubicle-7 can succesfully do LotR to bring in roleplayers.

Don'ts
1.) Don't make the mistakes Decipher did.
a.) Don't look like a cheap movie tie-in.
b.) Don't put out an un-edited game that's broken.

2.) Don't make the mistakes ICE did.
a.) Don't go outside the bounds of the license.
b.) Don't include high levels of magic for players.
c.) Don't use a system on the level of MERP/RM complexity.

Do's
1.) Make it look like Middle-Earth, beautiful maps and artwork.
2.) Tone down the magic.
3.) Find a way to republish the Pete Fenlon maps.
4.) Detail things that aren't in the books.  People have the books, the Silmarillion and 12 volumes of Middle-Earth history to go on, straight from the horses mouth.  What they need is maps, locations and npcs.  Does anyone live outside Bree in all the lands between the Shire and the Misty Mountains?  What about all the people in Gondor who don't live in Dol Amroth or Minas Tirith?
5.) Tone down the magic.
6.) Look to Lords of the Rings Online as a guide for an example of how to "fill in the blanks".
7.) Moria. A boxed set of Moria that makes all those "world's biggest dungeon" boxes bemoan their inadequacy.
8.) Tone down the magic.

Quote from: CRKrueger;3569767.) Moria. A boxed set of Moria that makes all those "world's biggest dungeon" boxes bemoan their inadequacy.

Gimli - "Yes!"

Quote from: CRKrueger;3569763.) Find a way to republish the Pete Fenlon maps.

Does anyone know the rights situation on the MERP line?  I assume it's effed up since pretty much the whole damn line has been on scribd.com for a while now without anyone smacking it down.