A new LotR 5E RPG by Cubicle 7 is a done deal, thanks to WotC’s D&D OGL.
…Sorry, let me translate that into English. There’s a British roleplaying game (RPG) company called Cubicle 7.* It has the existing right to adapt JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LotR) as an RPG: and since Wizards of the Coast (WotC), who owns Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has already issued an Open Gaming License (OGL) for its Fifth Edition ruleset (5E), Cubicle 7 is going to do a 5E version of LotR. Which is frankly the snake eating its own tail, here, given how much D&D depends on LotR for its very existence, really.
Nonetheless, cool news. Although the Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP)/Rolemaster LotR will always be the true LotR series for me. I still have all of my old supplements…
(Via D&D Memes)
Moe Lane
*They also do a RPG based on Charlie Stross’s Cthulhu meets spy novels series The Laundry.
I have a lot of the old ICE materials also.
Never really played them, I just found them fascinating to read. They really fleshed out Middle Earth in a way that made perfect sense and stuck close to the books.
Call me a contrarian, but I never thought D&D really worked for Tolkien style epic fantasy.
IMO, it works much better with Robert E. Howard or Fritz Lieber episodic sword & sorcery style.
That’s the thing. LOTR is an epic, but a lot is going on in the three thousand years of the Third Age of middle-earth. And all of those three thousand years are ripe for a party of adventurers to wander through Eriador or Rohvanion, or the western areas of Gondor – places that were never treated with more than a passing reference.
.
Look at the map, look at Andrast. It is so rugged, so remote, a part of Gondor, but a perfect place for smugglers to get in, or corsairs to set up a base to raid shipping between Pelargir and Tharbad.
.
And those clans in Dunland? Got to be lots of places to poke around there, maybe bring in some items for sale that the Royal government isn’t all too keen about being sold to the Dunmen.
The old MERP/Rolemaster stuff (which I still have most of, actually) deliberately picked a time period that WASN’T the War of the Ring for precisely that reason. Plenty of places to adventure in, but far enough in the past that it wouldn’t affect later events too much.