My friends and I talk about playing The One Ring in detail here:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?592009-The-One-Ring-Up-the-Reeking-River

Nutshell: The One Ring does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of Tolkien's very particular kind of fantasy story. Hope is more crucial to characters than hit points. The game encourages and rewards roleplay that highlights the characters' relationships with each other and with their cultures. And the action system is tactically interesting without requiring miniatures and detailed calculations.

I can't wait to see what Francesco and company do next in Tolkien's world.

Excellent books and rules that convey the feel of the Tolkien stories. Covering social interactions, influence of the shadow over the character, traveling rules, combat, and a post adventure system that is reminiscent of mouse guard, it is clearly an RPG that focuses on the character rather than only combat.

Highly recommended.

This is a great game. The mechanics are simple and elegant, the writing excellent, and the art amazing.

I particularly love how much story there is behind this game, as it should be in anything based on such a powerful, timeless story.

I highly encourage anyone and everyone to give this one a try.

Cheers, Erik Scott de Bie

Excellent product. Well written, nice pics and the rules really take the setting into account.

If you were looking for a system that best represented that hard to describe, Tolkienesque feel of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, you've found it.

The One Ring is a brilliantly composed, wonderfully illustrated and rich system in which to immerse yourself as a player or as a GM. The mechanics are as close to elegant as I've seen in a system that I would not consider rules-lite and the wealth of story from which many fantasy fans can draw in the context of Tolkien's world means there will be much to do in this game. If this is your kind of setting, you will truly enjoy The One Ring.

Here is a system that actually emphasizes such things as courage, loyalty and friendship - themes that are very strongly present in Tolkien's works.

It uses an interesting die mechanic - with a 12 sided die being the basis for any skill roll. This die (the "Feat" die) represents an unskilled roll, with a chance at automatic success or failure. Each skill level gives the player an additional six sided die to roll along with their Feat die. The more sixes you roll, the better you succeed.

Characters only have three attributes: Body, Heart and Wits. There are 18 skills (three sets of six) that are divided between these stats. Characters also have Valor and Wisdom which helps the player and GM to understand how that character is regarded by others. There's also Hope points, which can be used to gain extra dice for rolls, or otherwise influence the game.

Every party is called a Fellowship, and the entire party shares a pool of Fellowship points which can be used to replenish individual Hope points. That right there is a very neat mechanic, and goes a long way towards making this game feel like an extension of Tolkien's world.

There is also Corruption. Gain too much corruption, and you're character goes over to the shadow.

Combat is handled quite well and also has that Middle Earth feel to it, with called shots and different combat stances that can be taken, which are quite representative of the characters we all know from the Lord of the Rings. Defensive stances, for instance invoke in me thoughts of Dwarves. The Rearward stance makes me think of Elven archers.

What I really took away from these books are two things. First, that it is an interesting and easily playable system that brings a lot to the gaming table. Second, that it really does bring that Middle Earth feel to the game - it's a quality that's hard to define, but the creators of this game have really nailed it. Even the mechanics, the usually dry and statistical part of any RPG, are grounded firmly in Tolkien's characters.

If you enjoy the world of Middle Earth, you will very much enjoy these books. Well put together, illustrations that evoke that instant recognition of Middle Earth and just damned fun to read and play.

I've been looking for ages for a set of rules to run a campaign in Middle Earth, considering everything from PDQ and FATE to Burning Wheel. With TOR I've got what I'm looking for. Obviously that is what it's designed for, but setting that aside, these rules are perfect for me. The skill and combat systems have enough complexity to be interesting to play, while remaining simple enough to learn quickly. The feel of the game is right too, e.g. hope versus hate, the downplaying of magic. On top of that the artwork is superb.

I bought the advanced shipping of The One Ring against my usual instincts of not buying something unseen. I then saw the videos about making the game by the writer and was convinced that it was a labor of love. And I was not disappointed. This is a very nice set of books. The illustrations are gorgeous, the system is simple and amazingly good at getting people to roleplay and in this case to tell a great story through roleplaying. If you have a bunch of hack and slash players that have been playing D&D since the little white books treat them to The One Ring and find how rewarding roleplaying instead of "roll playing, can be. It is the best set of rules I have seen since Spirit of the Century.

Put simply, in my opinion this is the first RPG to actually capture the feel of Tolkien's world. The game focuses on the sort of values found in Tolkien's writing, such as Hope, Valor, and Wisdom, and gives these concepts mechanical weight to reinforce the feel of playing in Tolkien's world. Another area that gets a formalized mechanical treatment is travel, giving the GM (or Lore Master in this case) a method of making traveling around Middle Earth interesting and exciting. If you've read any Tolkien,you know how much time and description he invests in the journeys his characters undertake and the landscapes they traverse, and The One Ring handles this very well.

The combat system in innovative and manages to give a tactical feel without needing to track details of location, distance, etc. Its a nice change of pace from games that rely on miniatures and a grid. Even though the player characters are "adventurers", and therefore outside the normal social structures, the game emphasizes culture and community, and focuses on the bonds of fellowship among the PCs.

Finally, and possibly the element of the game that I appreciate the most, is the fact that your characters are assumed to be actual heroes, people willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The game is set up to support stories that deal with exploration, diplomacy, and relationships (as well as epic fights!), rather than just killing things and taking their stuff.

A fantastic portrayal of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, the One Ring is a gorgeous book with fantastic rules that are reminiscent of Mouse Guard.

I highly recommend it. It's the most accurate portrayal of LOTR in any RPG.

This is a wonderful product. The books are well-edited, friendly, and pay homage to the source material. Overall, I think the creators did a great job of interweaving rules and setting information. Highly recommended.

Awesome! This RPG captures the essence of the Tolkien world. The system uses some asymmetrical rules, but at the same time is elegant, simple, balanced and easy for the Loremaster to run. The rules makes sense with the theme, just imagine the books and the movies when reading the rules and you will know what I mean. This set of books covers a limited number of years, regions and cultures, with other books coming to expand the setting to other years, regions and cultures of Middle-Earth.

It has some nice little systems for social encounters, journeys, money and treasure management. The art is pretty nice and it has an awesome fatigue, encumbrance, endurance and wound system that I think is a huge plus to this game.

The only downside(and this happens with a lot of RPGs) is the organization, some rules are written on both books(the same rule split with paragraphs for the Loremaster in one book and paragraphs for the Adventurer on the other book), making it harder to find some clarifications you thought it was in one book, but it was on the other. Also, there are some other little things that in my opinion are in the wrong place(like the Equipments table is in the character creation session, but the equipments description and rules explanations are in another chapter, without the table).

But aside from this small flaw(which doesn't impact the theme and how the game works together), this book is a must buy if you want a well designed Tolkien RPG! Already played it with my group and everybody loved it!

The best thing since sliced AD&D :). TOR is put together nicely. The layout is easy on the eyes. The game system falls into the "simple yet sophisticated" realm. You can tell alot of thought and effort went into the design of this game. There are already a few fantastic reviews of this game so I will not repeat the obvious. Get this game. I am certain the physical product will sell out in no time at all. Fortunately for me, I already have a copy pre ordered.

This is what I have been waiting for! This is a treasure. It is beautiful, informative and well laid out. However, you will not be able to download this and play 30 minutes later. It is to be read and digested. It actually feels like you are reading Tolkiens work. The rules are rich with detail on each page. The setting and rules compliment each other almost perfectly. The Characters are deep and definitely not "cookie cutter" pc's. Magic is present, but mysterious and subtle, you wont be playing a wizard out of the gate.

Good: Art. Setting. Rules. Depth. The deep flavor of Tolkien.

Bad: This may take a few readings to get every nuance of the setting. But, then again, I enjoy that.

If you are a Tolkien fan, this is a must!

This is the one you have been waiting for. Forget MERP, forget Decipher. This is it.

This is it. If your're a fan of the works of JRR Tolkien, you you'd be very hard pressed to find a better way of bringing Middle Earth to the role playing table!