Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if it was a long time ago. I had to step away from KZfaq for a bit and got a little frustrated by that, so I wasn't answering comments like I should have. Apologies for that! If you do find said channel please let me know, that sounds insane(ly fun)!

​@@killtenratsrpgNo trouble at all, I appreciate your TOR content. I just found this system and have been playing it a bit, and getting insight into the system has been invaluable.

The rules say as much, too. I wasn't really aware of the character but I've only read the Lord of the Rings and struggled through the Silmarillion once when I was fifteen so I may be missing large swathes of Tolkien lore!

Hey, thanks for the kind words! I feel like I should add that there were a number of people with not quite as favorable impressions as myself because they expected a more fully fledged product upon seeing Shawn Tomkin's name on there and figured it'd be some sort of LOTR flavored Ironsworn variant with tons of custom oracles, different rules, etc. etc.. So there was a sense of being underwhelmed in backer circles depending on which forums you frequent. I didn't address it in the video since my expectations weren't the same and I was quite pleased with the supplement as it met what I expected from it. In a way I was surprised by how good it was and how quickly we received it, considering Starforged was also in production parallel to this. Just adding it for the sake of giving you the complete picture, considering you're looking to get it for yourself!

For GMing it's a really nice, slim, on-brand version of a "Book of Random Tables" for Middle Earth stuff. Pretty neat!

@@killtenratsrpg Very cool! Looking forward to these being released to the wider audience!

Honestly sounds like a good way to take the system for a test drive. The only downside I could think of is if you really don't like Hobbits because the starter box is a bit mono-thematic. There's a fair bit of crunch in the big red book though, so easing into it by adding complexity over time is generally the way I play a lot of "higher crunch" games in group play, too. It gets a bit overwhelming otherwise, especially if a product has been out for a while.

For group play I'm very on the fence for PbtA systems but they do the trick for me in solo. They just facilitate giving me what I want out of the experience. However, they're also missing something on a more fundamental level that makes me back away from things like Blades in the Dark and such for groups even though I love them as pieces of design. I've not really done much with YZE and was honestly only vaguely aware it was a thing until recently (didn't realize how many Free League games share the same systems) but it looks pretty solid and adaptable at least. Doesn't get in the way of making the One Ring game feel like a distinct, unique thing. I think there's a part of me that will always expect a system to have me roll a d20 vs a THAC0 to hit a thing and have that feel like the most "natural" way to play but I'm trying to get over it persistently lol.

@@killtenratsrpg It actually happens the opposite to me with PbtA games; I think I'd be okay playing them with a group (and I mean as a player, not a GM) mainly because I'd play anything, but when it comes to solo gaming or GMing I feel they severely lack the tools to help with improvisation. Any game that forces me to stop the flow of things to "don the GM hat" and think about things is not good for me, and that happened a lot when I played Ironsworn or attempted to play Wicked Ones solo. By their nature, moves are vague and force you to come up with how they apply to your current situation, as opposed to skills, which are generally more specific. In any case, as I said I recognize that this is my problem, haha. I've been hopping from one system to another since the early 90s so I'm used to trying whatever comes my way. YZE varies a bit with each incarnation, and so far the most solid one seems to be the Twilight:2000 version (by the way, it has official solo rules in the book, albeit very basic ones), but overall I feel like it's frustrating for the players due to the low success rate of chugging a million dice and counting only sixes as successes. My players got frustrated fast... I did enjoy my time soloing Forbidden Lands, though!

Interesting! It's certainly true, the level of abstraction in PbtA forces you to rather frequently disengage with the narrative and examine what type of move now fits best with what the fiction just described. In a weird way there never seem to be enough but at the same time too many moves to consider if you just want to get on with it. I do spend a rather significant amount of time in my Ironsworn series on that "GM" level going over options and running through my thought process, which is fine for a recorded playthrough as it's part of what I want to show off and thus it doesn't bother me, but as far as playing off-screen goes that's definitely the part that most gets in the way.

@@killtenratsrpg I never thought of it that way, it's probably great when you're showcasing a game to have to stop a second and considerate your options out loud. But yeah, me alone in my living room, I prefer if the flow is not interrupted, haha. In any case, keep doing what you're doing, I love the channel!

TOR doesn't use the Year Zero Engine, nor PbtA. That may not change your view of the TOR system, but thought I should mention it anyway.

It's certainly a weakness of Middle Earth TTRPGs if you're not looking to roam around those areas in that certain time frame (or put major work into customization). One Ring 2E does an excellent job transporting the themes, moods, atmospheres and stylings of Tolkien's original narrative and doesn't pretend to be more than a vehicle for exactly that, trying to stay as faithful to the original as possible. I'm running it in a group game right now and it's fairly effortless to write adventures that hit the right tone. It just sort of falls apart if that's not what you're looking for and want the freedom of a blank slate world instead. It's just not the setting or system for that. The old MERP supplements went off the beaten path into other areas and with a lot of conjecture and, well... "lore expansion" - basically fan fiction - tried to make the world bigger but to me it always felt off.

According to my Kickstarter overview those dice are stretch goal 21, "sauronic dice". Definitely stylish! That Kickstarter was pretty loaded in terms of additional rewards. The book is the Collector's Edition print that was also a Kickstarter exclusive and isn't likely to ever be reprinted. It's pretty neat!

@@killtenratsrpg oh right yes! They just looked different on camera I think

That's a tough one for me to predict. It doesn't appear to be the main use case for the rule-set, playing through established adventure books, but having said that it certainly provides enough to make it work. I just can't really gauge how much tweaking would be required. The main focus of the ruleset seems to be more free-form "roll with the oracles" to weave your own story, so fitting it to a pre-established narrative might occasionally clash, in which case you'd probably be best advised to just make liberal use of ignoring the random results and re-rolling them (in case they're too contradictive) and making use of the "20 second rule" (if you can't think of a good answer to a prompt in 20 seconds, roll a different one).

It ties into the official rules as published and just adds Loremaster emulations (in a way more similar to Mythic than Ironsworn, despite the authors' credentials), so it'll probably cover a few things that won't have much bearing on the starter set content but it'll work, yeah.

@@killtenratsrpg thanks for the advice. Very much appreciated buddy!

Good eye! Never tried it solo, I am too impatient to paint minis myself so I don't have any, that activity is like pulling teeth for me. I've been playing on and off since the 1980s Rogue Trader ruleset with a friend of mine. He's the army collector / painter and I'm more the "show up and pick what I wanna play today" kinda guy. We don't play near often enough and mostly Kill Team these days but any solo efforts would require me to actually start painting, which I just can't get over!

WFRP is really fun to play solo 😉