“You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Adventures in Middle Earth by Cubicle 7 is an RPG built using the 5th edition Open Gaming License from DnD. Sort of.
In 2011 Cubicle 7 published The One Ring RPG using a proprietary d6 system. (TOR is a popular game in it’s own right and has a 2nd edition coming up soon.) Five years later, Wizards of the Coast released the OGL for 5th edition. Seizing this chance to use the well established d20 system, C7 released Adventures in Middle Earth the same year. AiME is a direct port of TOR’s content into 5e’s toolset.
Although this could be seen as 5e in Middle Earth, the two games are very different. I’ll be diving into more of the nuances in later parts of this review, but here are some of the basics:
AiME says yes to 5e combat and says no to magic (but not completely.)
AiME greatly expands on traveling. There are whole supplements around journeys and there is even an optional Journey Phase added to the game.
Goodbye alignment. AiME is about heroes. A corruption system is even present to possibly turn your hero PCs into evil NPCs.
There is definitely more to cover over the coming weeks. Adventures in Middle Earth is a real gem in the dragon hoard of 5e expansions.
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