LOOKS LIKE CHARGEN'S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!
The Game: Lord of the Rings
The Publisher: Decipher
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
There have been a few RPGs based on Tolkien's work over the years. The one that's probably more immediately recognizable these days is The One Ring, but there are a few more kicking around, including the one from Decipher that came out in 2002 in the wake of the Peter Jackson films. RPGs created as movie tie-ins aren't always exactly the bees' knees, but I think this one is probably fine.
To expand, I have no idea if the system is anything special (I suspect not), but one thing I did find as I read it was that it felt accessible, which for a Tolkien-based game is a big deal. I like The One Ring and I'm interested in playing it, but I often feel when reading it that the lore is leaving me behind. The terminology is thick and dense in this game, too, but somehow I didn't feel lost and there was enough context for me to follow the history.
It was also interesting to read a game that was quite clearly going through the corporate vetting common to licensed games while at the same time trying not to be another D&D clone, because despite the fact that D&D is and always has cribbed from Tolkien, it doesn't work as a way to represent Middle Earth. The characters aren't the kinds of people you find in D&D games (that is, murderhobos) and everything from the magic to the underlying social paradigms are very, very different. Lord of the Rings manages to put that across without saying "this is hella different in other RPGs, by which we mean D&D," too much (though they do say it a lot).
Anyway, a character. I just rewatched The Fellowship of the Ring the other night, which is why this game wound up on the list this week. Let's do it!
As in The One Ring, picking a race also requires picking a culture. Let's see. I made a man for 1st ed and a hobbit for second, so maybe this time we do a dwarf? That sounds fun.
Dwarves, more so than other races in Middle Earth, feel pretty one-note. You're not gonna see a lot of dwarf minstrels. But maybe that's OK, because pushing dwarves outside that zone gives us that weird love story in the Hobbit trilogy. So I'm gonna say my dude is a dwarf smith from the Iron Hills, the child of refugees from Erebor (they were driven out of the Lonely Mountain when Smaug rocked up and was like "mmm, dwarf snacks!").
My dwarf, Djili, learned smithcrafting from a young age, and wasn't the sort of dwarf to consider himself an adventurer. I think, though, that his father arranged for him to apprentice with his uncle, who was a dwarven runecrafter and artist, and Djili got sucked into adventure along the way somewhere (this would be where other PCs would come in handy).
That's a decent enough start. Let's see how chargen proper works. Attributes! I can roll or arrange; I think I shall roll. I roll 2d6 nine times and drop the three lowest rolls. Cool! I get: 11, 10, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 8, 7. Not bad, all told. I drop the 5, 6, and one of the 7s and then I assign them to my stats!
Bearing has nothing to do with bears, it's more like noble presence and charisma. I feel like this doesn't need to be high for my dwarf, so I'll put a 7 here.
Nimbleness needs to be higher, though, because it plays into Craft and combat skills. I'll put my 11 here.
Perception - likewise, probably shouldn't be low. I'll put 9 here. I'll put my other 7 into Strength, my 8 into Vitality, and the 10 into Wits.
The scores don't actually matter, though, they translate to modifiers. Why have the scores, then? WHO KNOWS. My modifiers are, at the moment:
Bearing 0
Nimbleness +2
Perception +1
Strength 0
Vitality +1
Wits +2
And now we have some secondary traits, which is unwise because I'm pretty sure we get racial mods later, but whatevs. Stamina is the higher of my Strength or Vitality mods, so +1. Swiftness is the higher of Perception and Nimbleness, so +2. Willpower is the higher of Bearing or Wits, so +2. Wisdom is the higher of Bearing or Perception (+1). Defense is 10 + Nimbleness mod (12). Health is...ooh, I stand corrected, you do use the ratings. Health is your Strength modifier plus your Vitality rating, so in Djili's case it's 8.
I start with 3 Courage, Renown 0, and Size is Small. Moving on to racial mods, I get +2 Strength and Vitality, taking those to 9 and 10, respectively, changing their mods to +1 and +2. I get six picks from a list for skills and traits, but I have to take two levels in a Craft skill (which is fine, I was gonna do that anyway). Let's see.
Oh, man, there are some layout issues here, not least of which is that chargen is spread throughout multiple chapters and there's no one page that goes through the whole schmegoigle. It's OK, I figured it out!
First, I get 30 ranks to put into languages and lore skills. I'll put 4 into Khuzdul (dwarf-language), 3 into Westron, 2 into Lore: Moria, 3 into Lore: Iron Hills, 4 into Lore: Dwarvish History, 1 into Sindarin...good grief, I get a lot of these, and there's nowhere to write them. Screw it. Moving on.
OK, back to racial picks. See, what's weird is that I pick skills, which are ranked (so I could use 2 picks to take two levels of Armed Combat), but traits are divided into edges and flaws, and it looks like I can use these picks to take edges, and then pick a flaw to take an extra edge? It's not well-explained and although there are examples of chargen, neither of them do anything but skills here.
Anyway, I assume that Stonecraft counts as a "craft" skill for purposes of my requirement, even though it's a separate skill from Craft (good lord). Let's take 3 levels of Smithcraft, because I want that to be Djili's bread 'n butter. I'll put 1 into Armed Combat, 1 into Observe, and 1 into Survival.
And now we pick an order! This is effectively character class. Hmm. I could be a dwarf minstrel if I really felt like it. But nah, I think Craftsman makes the most sense.
Now I can either take a package (lol) or I can pick Skills myself, but honestly the Smith package seems like it hits what I want it to. So after combining those skills and the ones from the racial picks, I get:
Armed Combat 1
Observe 3
Smithcraft 6
Appraise 3
Craft (Silversmith) 2
Debate (Bargain) 2
Persuade 2
Stonecraft 1
And now I can add 1 to any 5 order skills, so I'll put one each in Observe, Appraise, Craft, Persuade, and Stonecraft.
And then I pick one edge from Craftmaster, Doughty, Hardy, Friends, or Hoard. Let's check those out.
Hmm. I really don't see a good reason not to take Craftmaster and just lean in, so let's do that. I also get an order ability, but the good ones all have prereqs so I'll just take Speedy Work and call it a day.
And that's actually everything. Djili is a young dwarf, about 50, and still growing out his beard. It's singed a bit at the ends, but his dad said that's how you know a good smith. Djili's father, Djor, suspects that Djili will be a skilled runecrafter someday, but he lacks the skill to teach him, which is why he sent Djili to study with his uncle Delin. I picture Djili as getting swept up in some hobbit nonsense along the way, and maybe have going to see Delin as being part of a story arc, but of course that's just speculation.
Anyway, roads go ever on, etc.
