The Lord of the Rings arrives for D&D’s 5th edition next month, make a save vs. irony
The Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, a series which directly inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, will be formally adapted for the iconic role-playing game’s 5th edition. But it’s not D&D’s current publisher, Wizards of the Coast, that will bring that product to market. Instead, it’s the hugely successful team at Free League Publishing which has two brand-new books up for sale starting May 9.
We’re big fans of The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of the Lord of the Rings. The reboot of Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi’s tabletop RPG, originally published in 2011, was released by Free League in 2022 after a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign. At the time, reviewer Linda Codega called its homespun setting a “microcosm of a massive, familiar world” that “pushes the narrative beyond the traditional hero’s journey.” We found the boxed starter set in particular to be charming, with extraordinary art and more historical hobbits inside than you can shake a stick at. A 5th edition port of the setting and its many adventures sounds like just the thing to open the setting up to a wider audience at the table.
But let’s linger just a moment on the the many ironies of this current licensing situation.
When D&D was young and bold and run out of a two-story residential home in rural Wisconsin, the team at TSR — the game’s original publisher — was working on a new board game titled The Battle of Five Armies. It was named, of course, after the famous battle first mentioned in The Hobbit which took place between five factions from Middle-earth on the slope of the Lonely Mountain. But the game ended up being an albatross, and the controversy surrounding it would ultimately change the course of D&D forever.
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