Lord of the Rings with RuneQuest rules

[The King]

The title says it all. I suppose it's possible now that Decipher don't own the licence anymore.

 

[Knight of ne]

Sadly the Lord of the Rings license costs tons and have a ton of restrictions. It would be great to see but cost wise a license is probably not practical.

My honest opinion.
Ne

 

[The King]

It shouldn't cost more say Star Wars or even Babylon 5.

 

[Poi]

Lord of the Rings would cost way more than B5, as it is a much bigger property. Always has been, and always will be.

B5 was and is a niche property, whilst Lord of the Rings took fantasy nito the mainstream (ably assisted by Harry Potter)

 

[SnowDog]

Interestingly enough ICE managed to hold the license for quite a while. Granted it went belly up (to my knowledge) and got somehow resurrected and that was way before the movies that really must have put the price tag a bit higher

 

[Swampy]

ICE went belly up after the licence was pulled IIRC and deciepher was more interested in the CCG side of it. Once they found out that RPGs don't make the profit of CCGs they dropped it. It was the same with their Star Trek games.

Also don't forget that a film version of the Hobbit is due to be made soon last I heard. That will bump up the price as well.

Edit: ICE was brought by another company so that they could rerelease rolemaster and spacemaster I believe. Just goes to prove that there are sadists out there.

 

[The King]

The thing is that ICE defined its gaming period in ca. 1640 TA. Now with the movies, it would be easier to set the game during "the Hobbit" because they is way much to do (Sauron as the Necromancer in Dol Guldur being forced to leave, battle of the five armies, etc.).
Indeed there is much activity due to the events to come.

And, well, with Runequest rules, the characters would be both frail and heroic at the same time.

 

[Greg Smith]

One of the things that Decipher ran into problems with is that anything not in Lord of the Rings is excluded from the licence - so much of the huge history of ME from the Simarillion is not allowed.

Oh, and if you the the old time RQers and Traveller grognards were vocal, you ain't seen nothing compared to the Tolkein fanatics who get annoyed over game interpretations of their beloved work. "Magician PCs - heresy!"

 

[The King]

"Magician PCs - heresy!"

:?:

There are no magicians in Middle-Earth, only wizards and sorcerers and necromancers.

 

[AKAramis]

The real problem for Decipher is that their license was NOT from Tolkein Ent directly, but through New Line Cinemas... And so were limited to what NLC had been licensed for.

ICE was direct from TE... and so had much broader scope.

the Dune Boardgame suffers from similar issues: The Herbert estate licensed all rights to the producers of the Miniseries... so it can't be reprinted, since Sci-Fi doesn't want it out there (as it's a slow but steady seller). (The game itself is now scheduled for retheme.)

 

[SnowDog]

ICE went belly up after the licence was pulled IIRC and deciepher was more interested in the CCG side of it. Once they found out that RPGs don't make the profit of CCGs they dropped it. It was the same with their Star Trek games.

Also don't forget that a film version of the Hobbit is due to be made soon last I heard. That will bump up the price as well.

Edit: ICE was brought by another company so that they could rerelease rolemaster and spacemaster I believe. Just goes to prove that there are sadists out there.

Ah, yes I forgot all about the upcoming Hobbit film.

I didn't know about the specifics how ICE got resurrected so thanks for the info. Still there has been new versions of Space Master and Rolemaster almost continuously and now ICE is publishing "classic" Rolemaster books again. But hey, I happen to like the system although I have not played or run it for ages...

 

[Swampy]

I didn't know about the specifics how ICE got resurrected so thanks for the info. Still there has been new versions of Space Master and Rolemaster almost continuously and now ICE is publishing "classic" Rolemaster books again. But hey, I happen to like the system although I have not played or run it for ages...

I played it once and found it far to complex to pick up. At the time I was 12 and had only played D&D. But a year later I did get into MERP. Just went at it the wrong way round.

 

[SnowDog]

I played it once and found it far to complex to pick up. At the time I was 12 and had only played D&D. But a year later I did get into MERP. Just went at it the wrong way round.

The concept was a bit difficult for me, too at first (and I was a bit older than you when I first tried even MERP). After being a player in couple of games the system run pretty well. I am sure the same would have happened to d20 system games as well.