The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® RPG
20 Jan 2010 • Category: Latest News • Tags: Cubicle 7, Lord of the Rings, Sophisticated Games, The One Ring
Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisticated Games are proud to announce that they are jointly developing The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game.
“We’re tremendously excited about The One Ring,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Cubicle 7 Director. “Our aim is to give our audience an authentic Middle-earth gaming experience, one that really captures the feel of Tolkien’s world.”
The designer and lead writer of this project, Francesco Nepitello, is a games industry veteran, best known for the hugely successful and critically acclaimed War of the Ring strategy board game, which he designed with The One Ring co-designer Marco Maggi and Roberto di Meglio. A recipient of the International Gamers Award, War of the Ring is recognised by many ‘Lord of the Rings’ enthusiasts and hobby gamers alike as one of the most engaging recreations of the world-renowned fantasy saga by J.R.R. Tolkien. Francesco and Marco are the designers of other immersive board game titles like Marvel Super Heroes and Age of Conan, but started their game-designing careers creating Lex Arcana, the most successful and popular fantasy role-playing game published in Italy.
Francesco has designed the new LOTR RPG game system to make sure that players are completely immersed in Middle-earth from the moment they begin creating their characters. As an experienced designer of games based on JRR Tolkien, as well as being a lifelong devotee of the Tolkien works, Francesco brings a dimension -and a depth- to this RPG which has probably never been seen before in a LOTR game.
Robert Hyde, head of Cambridge (UK) based Sophisticated Games said, “When we first acquired the rights from Tolkien Enterprises to publish this RPG – as part of our wider LOTR book based board game license- we had no hesitation in approaching Francesco to conceive a completely fresh LOTR and The Hobbit RPG, and for him to be the writer. We knew that he possessed both these skills and that the game would be in very safe hands. His presentation of Middle-earth, along with stunning artwork from John Howe and others, brings this incredibly evocative and exciting world to life.”
“We also approached Cubicle 7 to be our publishing partners on the new The One Ring RPG because we loved the quality of their previous publications and felt that Dominic and Angus (Abranson) had both the experience, and with the creation of Cubicle 7, the role playing game resources, to bring LOTR and The Hobbit to a very wide audience.”
For more information on The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game please contact Cubicle 7 on info@cubicle7.co.uk
The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game will be published in the second half of 2010.
About Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited
Cubicle 7 Entertainment is a British-based publisher and events company, specialising in the games industry. Founded in 2006, by Angus Abranson and Dominic McDowall-Thomas, the company has published role-playing games from a list of licensed and home-grown properties including Victoriana, Starblazer Adventure (based on DC Thomson’s 80’s Starblazer comic series), SLA Industries, Qin: The Warring States and the recent Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space (licensed from the BBC). In June 2009 Cubicle 7 announced it had joined the Rebellion Group.
Cubicle 7 Entertainment: cubicle7.co.uk
About Sophisticated Games
Sophisticated Games is an international board game publisher, specialising in book based Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit games. It is also the publisher of Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious and Callisto, and has recently done Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, Shakespeare and a Horrible Histories game. Sophisticated Games is based in Cambridge UK.
Sophisticated Games: sophisticated-games.com
The One Ring, Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises f/k/a Tolkien Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their licensees.
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Dave McAlister is a dedicated geek, combining his enjoyment of roleplaying games with website design and runs Modus Operandi and UK Role Players. Dave has been roleplaying for over 25 years now, having played and/or run most mainstream systems. His current favourite though is Savage Worlds. Dave also likes talking about himself in the third person!
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Håkan Olin, UK Role Players. UK Role Players said: The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® RPG: Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisticated Games are proud to announce th… http://bit.ly/6fbOI2 [...]
I am also a fan of the Savage Worlds system … very intuitive. This is great news if a workable Middle Earth RPG is going to be published. Decipher was a real let down. I hope their version can be as intuitive as Savage Worlds but immerse the players in the setting right from the start.
Hard to do though … as not everyone is a rabid fan of Tolkien’s work and if it is written just for fans it will alienate the casual Tolkien-enthusiast … if it’s written just for casual fans it may alienate the enthusiast. Very tricky. Likely a two-stream character creation method will be necessary. One with a lot of hand-holding for casual fans or newbies to RPG’s and another perhaps running in close parallel or tandem would be more detailed and immersive for the enthusiast.
They could be both posted on the same pages of the book but the basic rules at the top separated by a line, with the advanced below. So you can use the basic rules by just following along with the top of the book, perhaps right through the entire book. With more advanced rules below the line … could take some finagling to get it to work but could be very intuitive. Brain in heavy stream-of-consciousness mode. I hope that makes sense?!
Late at night, posted in response to wrong post, accidentally posted this reply to: http://www.ukroleplayers.com/latest-news/playtest-open-call-new-licensed-fantasy-rpg/comment-page-1/#comment-694
Takeda
If the Webmaster wants to delete the other miss-post please go ahead.