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Just now, ESP77 said:

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Fixed it.

Just saw that you updated this and gave it a read through. I'm not certain how much of the additions might have been inspired by Realms of Terrinoth (haven't read that one yet), but regardless all the new parts are very nice additions to an already very good resource.

In particular, I think the Trek/Hunger system and inclusion of Oaths were very nice. I know I've seen at least one other RPG for LotR make a big emphasis for the travel aspect, and it's indeed a very important part of Tolkien's stories (even in the First Age, to a degree)--the way you set it up feels very natural to the flow of Genesys, and seems like it would be rather comfortable to drive into the game. Also the Oaths are great, just for the inclusion of a central theme of Middle Earth as well as a nice way to slip in a sort of Obligation to the game. Of these parts, I did notice they both seemed just a tad generic and open to interpretation (e.g. How many checks for a journey, what constitutes a Curse, etc.), but these are relatively easy for the GM to figure out and I think you definitely succeed at setting the groundwork for the GM to build on.

I think the Hope/Shadow rules are still throwing me a bit, but looking at how slowly they're likely to progress I think they'll probably work better than I expect (I'm probably thinking too much about Morality and how quickly it moves compared to how this only moves with choices and checks and such--I'm interested to see how that all plays out).

Other than that, I have a couple nitpicky things I noticed (GM spelt Gm on pg40, 5th paragraph about mounted combat; a note about adding Black Death ability to the Nazgul on pg59, end of their Ability block), as well as a really pedantic correction (pg38, under Vehicles, you say there aren't really any carriages or the like, but technically there was an invasion of wainriders, i.e. charioteers, from the east into what is now Rohan, wherein the Rohirrim rode down from the north and saved Gondor, thus being granted the land of Rohan to live in--though of course that's a little thing and chariots would be specific enough to Rhun that I'm certain a GM interested in that region could write his/her own), but overall the resource retains remarkably good layout and craftsmanship. Bravo and many thanks once again.

The Morgul Blade should have a price? I don't think so...

You've obviously put a lot of work into this, but you also have entire sections lifted directly from the Terrinoth sourcebook. I don't think that's generally considered ok. I usually refer the readers to the appropriate section of the core rulebook or sourcebook, and only flesh out additions to or changes from what's in the official books. If we want to ensure a long and mutually happy history of user created material for Genesys, I think we should be careful to respect FFG's copyright.

3 hours ago, Khoram said:

You've obviously put a lot of work into this, but you also have entire sections lifted directly from the Terrinoth sourcebook. I don't think that's generally considered ok. I usually refer the readers to the appropriate section of the core rulebook or sourcebook, and only flesh out additions to or changes from what's in the official books. If we want to ensure a long and mutually happy history of user created material for Genesys, I think we should be careful to respect FFG's copyright.

I do what I can to respect FFG’s copyright, but this pdf is intended for players to only need this and the Core Rulebook to play in Middle Earth. A lot of my players are new to Genesys and aren’t ready to pay the money for both the Core Rulebook and the Terrinoth book. I have been trying to think of a way to credit FFG in those sections of the pdf, but unless FFG tells me to change it, I see no real reason to take those sections out.

I recommend putting a disclaimer at the start of the document to cover your legal stance. Here's what I used for my hack.

Quote

This is a fan work and not intended for publication or sale.

Any use of trademarks or copyright material in this document should not be viewed as a challenge to those trademarks/copyrights, and are used without authorization, endorsement, or specific permission. Under no circumstances will any of this material be made available for profit or compensation in any form.

49 minutes ago, dougansf said:

I recommend putting a disclaimer at the start of the document to cover your legal stance. Here's what I used for my hack.

Thanks for the idea, I’ll have to add that into the next draft.

Fantastic update! I would love to run this.

11 hours ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

I do what I can to respect FFG’s copyright, but this pdf is intended for players to only need this and the Core Rulebook to play in Middle Earth. A lot of my players are new to Genesys and aren’t ready to pay the money for both the Core Rulebook and the Terrinoth book. I have been trying to think of a way to credit FFG in those sections of the pdf, but unless FFG tells me to change it, I see no real reason to take those sections out.

I hardly call quoting entire multi-page sections of a barely-two-week old supplement "doing what you can to respect FFG's copyright". The fact that your players aren't ready to pay money doesn't give you the right to publish huge sections of copyrighted material and make it freely available to the world. If you want to provide it to your players at your table, that's different than putting it in a pdf and making it available for download on the web.

Great work, Johan! I absolutely love it! I would recommend lowering Soak and Defense values of Armor though. They seem very high and will get you all kind of trouble with power players. I already see this super heavy dwarf tank player with highest Brawn possible "Hard to Kill" Heroic Ability "Armor Master" and "Coordination Dodge" Talents. In Star Wars FFG there's hardly any armor with Soak and Defense values above 2. Also I would go with Mithril as an Item Quality - similar to Cortosis in SWFFG.

@Johan Marek Phoenix Knight Thanks for putting this together and sharing it. This is an excellent conversion for Middle Earth into Genesys. I'm currently using it to GM a game with some friends and we are thoroughly enjoying it. I did have some changes I made before we started and wanted to share them with everyone. I agree with your system trying to limit use of magic, but felt it would be more up to the GM's discretion on certain instances. Having a PC or two in the group that can use magic, even if only in lesser forms, definitely helps give a deeper level of immersion to the game. I added the Genesys Magic rules back in with some changes to it. See the attached for our House Rules. And thanks again for sharing this.

Middle Earth House Rules.docx

On 6/26/2018 at 8:11 PM, Nevermind said:

@Johan Marek Phoenix Knight Thanks for putting this together and sharing it. This is an excellent conversion for Middle Earth into Genesys. I'm currently using it to GM a game with some friends and we are thoroughly enjoying it. I did have some changes I made before we started and wanted to share them with everyone. I agree with your system trying to limit use of magic, but felt it would be more up to the GM's discretion on certain instances. Having a PC or two in the group that can use magic, even if only in lesser forms, definitely helps give a deeper level of immersion to the game. I added the Genesys Magic rules back in with some changes to it. See the attached for our House Rules. And thanks again for sharing this.

Middle Earth House Rules.docx

I’ll have to check this out when I get some more time. I gave it a brief look over and it looks like you have some pretty cool stuff in here.

I will definitely stick to what I have though when it comes to magic, as spellcasters are INCREDIBLY rare in Middle-Earth. As in, the only non-Ainur magic users in the LotR trilogy are Ringbearers, with the possible exception of Aragorn, though whether or not his healing is magical in nature is up for debate. I debated for a while if I should even put magic rules in there at all. I would have to say spellcasting PCs would more likely ruin the immersion than enhance it. Gandalf was always more of a sometimes-helpful NPC than an actual player character, and Tolkien always made sure magic was used as a solution to problems as infrequently as humanly possible.

What's the popular LotR RPG now, is it The Ring? Or something like that? Anyways, I wonder how they deal with magic in their version of Middle Earth? Are PCs allowed to be wizards? I would imagine the developers have worked something out that is balanced for the RPG to be popular.

1 hour ago, GrumpyBatman said:

What's the popular LotR RPG now, is it The Ring? Or something like that? Anyways, I wonder how they deal with magic in their version of Middle Earth? Are PCs allowed to be wizards? I would imagine the developers have worked something out that is balanced for the RPG to be popular.

The One Ring RPG has no option for players to be spellcasters, or at least not that I can remember from when I read through their Adventurer and GM guides while looking for inspiration for my setting.

But even if some small amount of magic was allowed, they DEFINITELY wouldn’t be allowed to be wizards. There are only five of them, and they are literally just gods/angels given mortal forms.

Edit: I looked over it again, and all they have magic-wise are some very small (almost cantrip) style semi-magical race-specific “virtues,” most of which already have a more impressive Heroic Ability equivalent. A Barding could choose to have “woeful foresight” (Foresight Heroic Ability), a Beorning could talk to bears (Sixth Sense), or become more durable (Hard to Kill), dwarves could know some rudimentary spells via runes (I have runes among my magic items), and elves could make people sleep. That’s it. If anything, my pdf has too much magic if you compare it to the One Ring rpg.

Well their approach makes total sense then from a canonical view. I was trying to remember how the Rolemaster rules dealt with magic in ME back in the 80s, but I just cannot recall and I am sure I did away with all my RM stuff from that time period. All I remember for sure is how cool all the Crit tables were at that time. I even converted them to WFRP when it became my RPG of choice.

1 hour ago, GrumpyBatman said:

Well their approach makes total sense then from a canonical view. I was trying to remember how the Rolemaster rules dealt with magic in ME back in the 80s, but I just cannot recall and I am sure I did away with all my RM stuff from that time period. All I remember for sure is how cool all the Crit tables were at that time. I even converted them to WFRP when it became my RPG of choice.

Their approach does make sense, that’s why I like it. While I did add magic rules to my pdf for those who want them, the campaign I am running is more like the One Ring rpg when it comes to magic. We have a Beorning PC, a dwarf PC who loves runes, and an elf PC who can speak to certain objects, but that is pretty much all the magic my PCs can do.

3 hours ago, GrumpyBatman said:

I was trying to remember how the Rolemaster rules dealt with magic in ME back in the 80s, but I just cannot recall and I am sure I did away with all my RM stuff from that time period.

You could call MERP spellcasters pretty standard fantasy, except with the corruption of the shadow looming over them.

(a special result table that determined how corrupt you became using magic, and how the servants of morgoth and sauron become aware of you)

@Johan Marek Phoenix Knight

On magic, I completely agree it should be very rarely used, but some GMs might want to include characters that can use magic in a way that doesn’t require a character's Hope to be so high before it’s accessible. Without magic rules that are readily accessible by the players, that might push them to other fantasy settings where it is an easier option. The One Ring doesn’t include much magic, and instead focuses a lot on the traveling system, kind of like your Trek and Hunger rules, which are great and I will continue to use them heavily. But the system before that was Decipher’s LOTR RPG D6 version, which included a lot of stuff about magic and even how to have a character work towards becoming a wizard (after investing a very large amount of XP). But magic was still a lot more restrictive than other fantasy systems that I’ve seen in order to stay true to the setting. That’s where I was drawing more of my inspiration for the magic rules I included. I noticed there were no spells in the D6 version that were equivalent to an Attack or Conjure action, but there were some instances that could apply to the other actions as well as the two new actions I added to the list (Commune and Manipulate, which replaced Utility). I could have made Commune a Knowledge or even General skill itself, but thought it would be more interesting as a magic action that required Connection (Primal) skill. I also doubled the Strain cost for magic actions to reflect how much more taxing magic can be in this setting.

Several elves from the genre use magic too (I can’t recall all of the ones who used it, but I believe Elrond, Galadriel, and Glorfindel used it), and even Frodo used some form of magic at Weathertop to defend himself from the Nazgul (in the books, not the movie). Honestly, it’s not as if groups would be including loads of magic users in the first place. In fact if only 1 or 2 PCs in a group have access to magic, that’s only 1 or 2 more magical characters in a world that likely has several dozen at least. I mean, I could see a GM even allowing a player to play as one of the Blue Wizards from the Far East. Maybe he grew so out of touch with magic over the many years not needing to use it that he has essentially reverted back to the equivalent of a starting level character’s amount of XP (or Knight Level if that’s where the GM is starting the group at). Or maybe a PC wants to be some other weak Maiar that is not part of canon that has decided to join the group, but is not as experienced as the other Maiar in the ways of Middle Earth. A race could be made just for them (though I probably won’t do one since it sounds like more work than it’s worth to try and balance it).

All I’m saying is, magic is a part of the Tolkien world, so why cut it out in a way that a group likely won’t get to see it used. I could see it taking a very long time for a group to get to a level of Hope to be able to use magic in, what I feel, is kind of an awkward way compared to the rest of the system. And even if Hope is gained quickly, that’s still a long time for some groups who may only meet once a month. That’s a lot of work for those few lore masters trying to get to where they can use magic and they are essentially less powerful PCs than the rest of the group until then. On the flip side of that, the characters that perform more good deeds are going to get access to magic faster, possibly faster than the lore master in some cases. There are no restrictions on what careers have access to magic from what I can tell of these rules, which means a Dwarf warrior or Hobbit burglar could become strong in magic, especially with a high Discipline, which is not very in keeping with the setting.

Going back over it, I did leave out that the magic skills have to be career skills to use AND to buy ranks in them, and only certain classes can include them in their list of career skills. I’ll need to add that in. I also adapted the Hope rules to fit with the Genesys Magic Rules and now they can apply not just to spell casters, but all of the PCs in the group. They are more aligned with the Morality rules from F&D, but apply certain affects to non-spell casters as well (i.e. Boost or Setback to Discipline, extra Strain or Wounds, etc.).

The other changes that I made were mainly to weapons and armor. I had to add Hard Points in to the Weapons because they were missing on the table you have in the pdf. I also added some more equipment to the tables and tried to balance them as best I could based on what I saw in the D6 version­­. I reduced their prices across the board to try and reflect the setting a little better, but not even sure that was necessary. I also touched a bit on the Craftsmanship piece and used someone else’s recommendation for doing a Mithril craftsmanship. I left the Barrow Blade and Morgul Blade descriptions as is, but felt those were more like features than actual Weapon Qualities, which I replaced with a couple ranks of Vicious.

Still enjoying the rest of the setting though and taking a look at your other settings as well, lots of good work. Thank you for the contributions to the community. Keep up the good work.

11 hours ago, Nevermind said:

which   included a lot of stuff about magic and eve  n how to have a character work towards becoming a wizard  

See, that is a problem. No one should be able to “become” a wizard, as the Five Wizards are actually just Maiar in mortal form. Also, having a Maiar in your party wouldn’t be like having a retired Jedi, it would be having a literal god tag along. Sauron is a Maiar (who also happens to be weakened from putting most of his power into that Ring) and he is the Big Bad . The only reason the wizards are as weak as they are is a mixture of them being placed in the frail mortal shells and divine mandate to not use their full power. And even then, Gandalf the Grey could take four Nazgul at once by himself, when one Nazgul should be more than enough threat for an entire party.

If GMs REALLY want magic in their game from the get-go, I did say in the Epic Play rules that they can have players start with enough Hope to start off with magic. Also, magic in Tolkien’s world (the non-sorcery kind that elves and wizards use) is just using the power of your feä, or spirit. Few ever have spirits strong enough to be able to use this power, with elves (especially the Noldor) having the strongest spirits of the races, but theoretically anyone could use “magic” if their feä grew strong enough. So a Hobbit or Dwarf could theoretically use magic, we just don’t have any examples of any with strong enough feä.

My Hope system is the closest to representing the nature of feä that I could reach. Despite being the origin of most other fantasy, magic in Tolkien’s world is very different from most other magic systems. Making it something someone could easily pick at character creation just by putting some ranks in a skill is very contradictory to how Tolkien structured his world.

If you want to fudge the rules that Tolkien made, go ahead. But I personally have a lot of respect for how Tolkien structured his world and intend to remain as accurate as I possibly can.

Don’t get me wrong though. I like some of the changes you have made in other places and I will likely use some of those changes in the next version. You also point out some places where I just flat-out forgot to write something down (I didn’t realize I forgot to list Operating among the setting skills and changed it immediately after I read your pdf). You have good stuff here, but I simply cannot budge when it comes to magic. I will not compromise Tolkien’s lore for the sake of convenience.

@Johan Marek Phoenix Knight

Oh, I wasn’t implying you change your system to match mine. I agree that yours is more accurate to the setting. In fact, if anything I think there should be even more restrictions on it than you have, such as requiring ranks in Knowledge (Lore) or Knowledge (Forbidden) to use magic. I honestly didn’t look into the other source that you quoted for defining spell actions, so I don’t know how well those match up with spells from the Middle Earth setting. I didn’t see anything from other Tolkien sources that really matched the Attack action, and I’m not familiar with Divination or Illusion. I might try modifying the spell actions list more after some play testing.

I was more trying to provide an alternative set of magic rules for a more casual gaming group that wants to enjoy the Tolkien setting, albeit with a bit more magic than would be feasible in a strictly canon Tolkien setting (though running an RPG inherently breaks canon anyway). I also didn’t like that the Decipher D6 version included rules for wizards, but that’s just one of many reasons I didn’t like that rule system. I missed the part in Epic Play describing starting off with higher or lower Hope. That is likely a more accurate way to have characters start with magic than having something specific for starting level characters. Unfortunately, some players are going to want to start with some small magic ability but might not be ready to start at the Epic Play level, which is how I felt with the group I’m GMing for now.

One thing that might be missing is more details on crafting with magical powers, such as how to increase the price of items and what effects advantage/triumph and threat/despair have on the Knowledge (Lore) and Crafting checks.

3 hours ago, Nevermind said:

@Johan Marek Phoenix Knight

Oh, I wasn’t implying you change your system to match mine. I agree that yours is more accurate to the setting. In fact, if anything I think there should be even more restrictions on it than you have, such as requiring ranks in Knowledge (Lore) or Knowledge (Forbidden) to use magic. I honestly didn’t look into the other source that you quoted for defining spell actions, so I don’t know how well those match up with spells from the Middle Earth setting. I didn’t see anything from other Tolkien sources that really matched the Attack action, and I’m not familiar with Divination or Illusion. I might try modifying the spell actions list more after some play testing.

I was more trying to provide an alternative set of magic rules for a more casual gaming group that wants to enjoy the Tolkien setting, albeit with a bit more magic than would be feasible in a strictly canon Tolkien setting (though running an RPG inherently breaks canon anyway). I also didn’t like that the Decipher D6 version included rules for wizards, but that’s just one of many reasons I didn’t like that rule system. I missed the part in Epic Play describing starting off with higher or lower Hope. That is likely a more accurate way to have characters start with magic than having something specific for starting level characters. Unfortunately, some players are going to want to start with some small magic ability but might not be ready to start at the Epic Play level, which is how I felt with the group I’m GMing for now.

One thing that might be missing is more details on crafting with magical powers, such as how to increase the price of items and what effects advantage/triumph and threat/despair have on the Knowledge (Lore) and Crafting checks.

That makes sense. I guess I’m just too much of a Tolkien purist for some groups. I’m lucky enough that I was able to get a group who are almost as much of purists as I am and were fine with less magic. Our elf lady is almost at the Morality threshold to gain magic and she is super excited about it, so it seems the system can also work to give people a feeling of accomplishment.

I understand that not everyone is a purist like I am, and so I can see why you made the changes you did for your group. I hope you guys have some really fun adventures in Middle-Earth!

I'm having trouble finding a link to the document. Google Drive one doesn't seem to work.