Check Out This Preview of the ADVENTURES IN MIDDLE EARTH Loremaster's Guide

The (PDF version of) the Adventures in Middle Earth Loremaster's Guide is about to drop - it releases tomorrow, and will be available at the usual places. Cubicle 7 has sent along a preview of the contents page from the book. The Loremaster's Guide is the "DMG" to the Player's Guide's "PHB". "The quest that began with the Player’s Guide continues in this lavishly illustrated, hardcover. The Loremaster’s Guide presents inspiration, guidance and additional new rules to help you create and run encounters, adventures and campaigns in the world of The Hobbit ™ and The Lord of the Rings ™, using the 5th Edition OGL ruleset. Packed with information, this volume is an invaluable resource for your games."

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Adventures in Middle-earth Loremaster’s Guide contains:

• Extensive setting information for Wilderland
• A comprehensive guide to Lake-town
• Advice on theme and building your character group before the game begins
• Notes on the Adventuring phase, inspiration, rests and more!
• Expanded journey rules, including guidance on narrating Middle-earth journeys
• Information to help you create your own journey tables
• A guide to creating and playing NPCs, and a gallery of NPCs for your games
• A Wilderland bestiary of adversaries
• New rules for customising monsters and using scenery in battle
• Notes on treasure in Middle-earth, magic items and weapons
• A guide to offering expanded magic options
• Advice on running the Fellowship phase, patrons, sanctuaries and undertakings

You'll find it on C7's page at DTRPG tomorrow, or on C7's own webstore.

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[Sacrosanct]

I'm on the pre order list for this. This past Saturday I ran an AiME session, converting a TOR adventure to 5e. I think having this guide would have helped a lot in that process. There were a few sticky bits in converting.

 

[lyle.spade]

According to C7's site it's the same price as the first book, despite being almost 70 pages shorter. That's frustrating.

 

[AverageCitizen]

I'm on the pre order list for this. This past Saturday I ran an AiME session, converting a TOR adventure to 5e. I think having this guide would have helped a lot in that process. There were a few sticky bits in converting.

I have some balance concerns with AiME, I am curious if you or your players noticed any potential exploits or concerns during character generation?

 

[Sacrosanct]

I have some balance concerns with AiME, I am curious if you or your players noticed any potential exploits or concerns during character generation?

We never noticed anything that was problematic, even though one of the players thought there would be with the warrior great weapon fighting trait (when wielding a 2 handed weapon, gain advantage against targets your size or smaller). on the surface, that looks very powerful.

What the players did learn, and very quickly, is that Wisdom should never be a dump stat lol. Shadow points accrued fast. After just one adventure, one PC had 10 of them, and you only can get rid of 2 (maybe up to 4 if you roll really well) during the recovery phase of the game (in between adventures). So she's looking at being miserable during the next adventure (disadvantage on pretty much everything). To make matters worse, there are several instances where the person with the highest shadow score is the one to suffer nightmares, which give even more shadow points if they fail WIS saves.

So yeah, Wisdom is the most important stat in AiME

 

[Charles Rampant]

Interesting. Maybe you should do an Actual Play thread here in the forum after a few weeks of play, let us all know how it goes! I'm pretty curious about this, but not sure yet whether I'm wanting to invest in it.

 

[Dire Bare]

According to C7's site it's the same price as the first book, despite being almost 70 pages shorter. That's frustrating.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. Hardcovers are expensive to produce, and the Loremaster's Guide will not move as many copies as the Player's Guide.

I have enough faith in C7 to trust they are not deviously making an unfair "extra" profit on the Loremaster's Guide after reeling us in with the excellent Player's Guide.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Interesting. Maybe you should do an Actual Play thread here in the forum after a few weeks of play, let us all know how it goes! I'm pretty curious about this, but not sure yet whether I'm wanting to invest in it.

I've thought about it. So far I've converted one TOR adventure into AiME. Some of the biggest things I noticed is that there are A LOT more persuasion/intimidation checks to be made, and many ways in which you get disadvantage to your rolls (embarkation rolls, miserable status, etc).

It's really hard to come up with an impression, as we only gamed for about 7 hours and we all were learning the new system. So far it seems you roll a lot more to drive the story than you would with a typical 5e adventure. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. It takes some getting used to for grognards like us though In our last session, it was split pretty evenly time-wise between each of the three pillars. The game very clearly breaks up adventuring vs resting phases more than traditional 5e does.

 

[lyle.spade]

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. Hardcovers are expensive to produce, and the Loremaster's Guide will not move as many copies as the Player's Guide.

I have enough faith in C7 to trust they are not deviously making an unfair "extra" profit on the Loremaster's Guide after reeling us in with the excellent Player's Guide.

Good points. I'm sure it will be a high-quality product. I'm impressed with the PG throughout - content, formatting, physical quality. And they won't sell as many, I'd agree. Still, it is a considerably thinner book. Just pointing it out.

 

[darjr]

I'll bet that their prices per book will be the same, or very close