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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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I've ran a few of the starter set adventures set in the Shire. Overall opinion is that it wasn't cup of tea to run. The system felt like it was in a odd place, too crunchy for a light system and not crunchy enough enough for a medium crunch system. It just felt... weird. A bit off. As for crunch level it is way below 5e, almost more akin to an OSR system. But it so hard tried to lean into narrative mechanics.
Now I have to admit that my experience of the system is based on playing starter set adventures, leaning into the idyllic country life. We never used the fellowship rules which does look interesting and instead just hand waved recovery between adventures. I think longer more gruelling adventures would allow the system to shine better. Primarily through the fellowship phase, the downtime and recovery phase. But instead I had a bunch of hobbits doing stuff for Bilbo.
Bilbo. Here we come to my second issue with the system. Tolkien's world and the works based off it. For many this is the selling point but I felt a bit too restrained. We do know what happens in the world, things that already were set in motion at the time of the starter set. And I'm one of those who doesn't really want to mess with canon stories so having Bilbo there, right in front of me, restrained me. I should really stop running games in well known established settings.
To summarise. It is a well crafted system that I found sitting in a weird place crunch-wise. The direct presence of lore-essential characters and events did restrain me in what I felt I could do with it.
This is a really good response, thank you!
I see what you mean with the lore essential characters and tend to agree. I think I'll use the starter set for inspiration but discard a bunch of it including characters like Bilbo (outside of being an NPC if players insist on visiting bag end).
Thank you for the heads up on mechanics, I think (with admittedly no experience) that relative to systems like dnd5e it's still light enough to be manageable for a short-shot. I'll keep an eye out on how the crunch handled (and ask players how they feel about it as they play).