Very good coverage of some of the later founding Chapters whose champions serve in the Deathwatch. Faithfully captured in print. A bit more fun than First Founding.

Great artwork. Good product. Have fun with this adventure.

If you like space marines and like role-playing then this is absolutely great. Full of great detail and comprehendable rules which work. Blast you way through the enemies of mankind with very big guns.

This short placeholder review is for the updated version vs. the original version. The layout is better and some rules have been tweaked for what I believe is the better. It is generally easier to find what you are looking for and the contradictions and ambiguities in the old book seem to be mostly ironed out.

The most egregious misstep is the removal of vehicle and voidship rules, especially considering there are still vehicle focused skills and traits (White Scars and Evil Sunz for example).

EDIT: Threatening Tasks also seem to have been removed, but that system wasn't very well designed anyhow. It was basically an overly complicated and cumbersome skill challenge system that can be done much more elegently with a simple skill challenge homebrew.

A major improvement from the previous printing in terms of layout, and kudos must go to Cubicle 7 for releasing this update free of charge to previous purchases.

The game could still be expanded upon, but it lays a pretty good foundation with a D6 dicepool rules system that functions a little closer to miniatures game than the previous percentile systems did. It lacks a 'high concept', as occured with Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and instead adopts a fully inclusive, 'choose your own framewirk' regarding campaign design. While some might find this lacks focus, others will be enthused by the opportunity of playing previously unavalable options, like Ork Clans for example.

Its a good product, although I do miss aspects of the percentile system, which creates a certain gritty tone, and for me, the main interest still lies with the fantasy version of Warhammer roleplay.

The editing is clearly not finished yet and several mechanics are just plain bad. This is akin to a beta product.

Here are some examples of these problems.

Mechanical editing issues examples:

First of all the influence test system for acquiring stuff is very vague and poorly explained with no proper example, they also have no solution on how to get multiple of the same thing in one acquisition roll. Secondly they contradict themselves in the explanation of how it actually works. They are both claiming that "Wealth is spent after the initial Infl uence test, not before." and have the steps "3. Spend Assets or Wealth" and "4. Make the Infl uence Test and apply Shifts", this may seem like a minute difference but in practice one of the statements means you may lose your wealth and get nothing.

They also type specifically at the ascension psyker class that they only get one psychic discipline (while they on the proper psykers type they get access to everything), but at another point in the book they fully contradict that by stating you only need the Psyker keyword to be a psyker. This not only makes that ascension path useless but effectively makes the best way to play a psyker not to pick any psyker archetype and just grab the keyword as you go along, since those archetypes are very overcosted.

Some other fun ones are that the minimum long jump distance for an average human (without rolling for it which can yield more distance) is 6m which is female Olympian tier, while a maxed out human without any augmentations can jump 16m before rolling. The flamer can target the ground under people and hit automatically if it hits the ground (not hard), then requires an action by the enemies to put the flames out or they will take constant damage no matter their armour, basically making it the best CC weapon in the game.

General editing issues examples:

For instance the Heretek archetype is listed as tier 3 in their table but as tier 2 on its page, on every single skill they have written examples that follow a different set of proposed difficulties than the book proposes in its introduction to the rules. The wildcard keyword is written in some places where it should be the any keyword (or the other way around hard to be sure what they want to go with). The PDF also has several issues for example the word "influence" where about half the instances need to be searched for as "infl uence" in order to be found, which can also be seen earlier in this post where I quote the book.

Mechanical rules issues examples:

1. The game has both a static DR pool and a static(ish) damage system. This means for example that a regular Ork Boy is almost impervious to las gun fire, for example a regular hit can never do damage without any special abilities or glory being used. There is a reason that most games either roll for damage (DnD) or roll for Damage Reduction (Shadowrun).
2. Sustaining any psyhic power increases the thresholds you need to succeed of everything by 2 (which is a lot in this game), while sometimes also dealing damage to you and having you roll if others damage you in order to lose concentration. Now this would all be well and good if the powers actually justified this but barely any of them do and in those cases the difficulty change has no impact on the spell anyways. The most ridiculous example of this is the sustained minor powers which absolutely do not justify this cost. It is also a problem for self buffs for example spells like "Living Lightning" that is similar to DnD:s haste (but here you only can cast it on yourself and does a lot of damage to you per round) making them completely useless.
3. Awful balancing between different player archetypes and lack of basic starting gear, some classes flat out start without armour even on tier 2 or 3 with no ability to get any type of armour from anything else in character creation. Due to the previously mentioned problem with the damage system the players who start with weak guns and weak armour may find themselves in situations where the other players severely outclass them, even though both players made combat focused characters and picked combat focused archetypes.

There are however some good points to the book and some good improvements compared to other 40k rpg:s. But I don't think it is ever appropriate to recommend such a poorly edited product until they fix at least some of it.

Edit: There was an update, but don't worry they fixed none of the issues I listed here.

The default 5e setting is pretty far from Middle-Earth, but this book bridge the gap beautifully. There are some underused mechanics in 5e that are put to good use here (e.g., exhaustion), some underexplored sources of adventure that are highlighted here (e.g., travel and diplomacy), some interesting meshing of gameplay and story-telling (e.g., pacing and the adventure-phase/fellowship-phase system), etc. All in all, it gots a very good atmosphere that hits pretty close to the book.

The campaigns (other books by the same publisher) require some preparation from the DM: they are presented as a framework for adventures with story points and suggestions, not fully fleshed step-by-step adventures. It's good if you have experience DMing, but otherwise you should probably try their short adventures first (other books by the same publisher), or build-up experience with a more hands-on game.

Pefect maps for any WFRP campaign that help to give the right level of details and atmosphere for an adventure. They have an almost 1st edition look and feel to them, including a profile as well as a top down view of each building.

Great job, and a must have for any GM!

The guide to Laketown is really fun to read. I love the new options and the extra lore about this place which was rather important in the Hobbit story.

The Loremaster screen is also extremely useful. I just printed it out to keep in a display folder, so there is still a bit of flipping back and forth, but I find some of these rules hard to remember so it's great.

I did get this pretty cheap as part of a deal, so I'm not entirely it's worth paying full price for this digital-only version, but the Laketown guide is still extremely valuable.

This game is pretty fun. I believe it does well to capture the feel of the LotR universe, though some of the supernatural elements in some of the adventures (e.g. monstrous plant thing) don't seem to quite fit. As a GM running this for two players, I've enjoyed reading the background information included and the adventure seeds.

I do think that some parts of the game require a little bit too much dice rolling, though. I think the combat system is elegant, but in the base game your available actions are little lacking. Travelling seems cool, but as the GM I found it a little tedious. I built a flowchart to help and it has 15 elements to it. Cool, but a little too much. Also, the rules for extended encounters are a little funny and I found it very difficult to do anything except what was made explicit in the adventure text.

It's sad that the new edition has been halted, but there is a still a lot of content for this game. If the players and GM love LotR, I think you'll enjoy this, but if not, give it a pass.

The Road Goes Ever On is a great product for a Loremaster who wants his campaign to range over a large area of Middle-earth. It does differ in several ways from the previous Journeys & Maps for The One Ring. For one thing, the new booklet lacks a section on boats and ships (with expanded rules for river and sea Journeys); perhaps these rules for Adventures in Middle-earth were intended to be included in a future Gondor Region Guide. The previous sections on "Boats and Ships" and "Regional Hazard Episodes" have been replaced with "Events Expanded" (suggestions for expanding on Journey Events), "Encounters on the Road" (rules for NPC encounters), "Dangers Along the Way" (pre-generated enemy troops), "Battle Maps" (a pair of maps for camps along the road), "Avoiding Battle" (an optional system for awarding Experience for avoiding battle) and "Sights None Yet Have Seen" (options for awarding Experience on Journeys).

I was happy to discover that the PDFs for the included maps had been updated from the ones for J&M. Specifically, I see that the Mines of the Dwarves in the southern Blue Mountains are present on the PDFs, where they are missing from the ones for the older set. These maps seem to be otherwise identical to those in the TOR product.

The One Ring is a gem. I love it to bits. It's the best, most faithful adaptation of the source material I've ever seen in a game. The authors managed to capture the spirit of the Professor's works, translate them to custom mechanics (!), then present it in a truly immersive way. It's a Middle-Earth game I've always wanted: Beautiful on the surface, yet hiding a bleak post-apocalyptic world right beneath the surface. It's a story of a world that falls to Darkness and the heroes figthing an uneven battle to preserve it, presented with underlying melancholy instead of crude, in-your-face grim-dark imagery.

Also, I struggle to call it an RPG game.

It's slick, easy and extremely fun, yet very faithful to the Middle-Earth. The rules concentrate on things integral to Tolkien's books, treating everything that does not come with the territory as redundant. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it makes The One Ring something of a tunnel vision game. It replicates the experience of a Hobbit-like adventure to a Z, and bars any other kind of gameplay. As a result, it feels more like a paragraph board game, only with a gamemaster in place of a paragraph book. Don't get me wrong, it's terrific. However, if you come to the game with classic RPG expectations, you may find yourself disappointed. There's not much of RPG freedom to be had here.

The game follows a pretty strict narrative structure. Each adventure is a self-contained story, with clear-set objectives. There is an exposition, a mandatory (!) travel phase interrupted with combat and encouter (NPC) phases, a resolution and Fellowship phase where the characters return home. As a rule, the characters may undertake one adventure per year - the Fellowship phase describes everything the characters do in the following months. Each phase is scripted and carried out according to the same exact rules. Dice rolls, random events and refer-the-table resolutions are rife, and executed with polished brilliance.

As an example, the travel phase takes place on a literal board: The players move on a map, which the GM resolves with a hexagonic, colour-coded version they can't see. During combat, there's a surprise / initiative phase, then all enemies are placed so that each PC is fighting at least one of them - there's no tactical movement. The players have to assume one of four stances (which determines both their attack and defence values), then either attack or take a single action ascribed to their stance. Tactical options boil down to the prescribed game mechanics. The Fellowship phase allows the characters to spend experience and recover from some of the ailing effects; there is no character advancement or reducing Corruption during the adventure.

Speaking of Corruption: The One Ring embraces Tolkien's views of sin and human nature in all their puritan, black-and-white, zero-one glory. The game contains a Corruption mechanics similar to Ravenloft's Powers Checks. The characters' trangressions decay their integrity, ultimately making them fall to shadow. I adore the concept, but the standards are set impossibly high. Any voluntary misdeed results in an automatic Corruption gain: For example, lying or deceiving gives automatic 2 points. That's true to the source material but, in my opinion, it undermines the role-playing aspect of the game. It throws moral ambiguity and character development right out of the window, punishing the players for playing anything but the carbon copies of Tolkien's goody-two-shoes. Characterisation is often quoted as the biggest flaw of the Professor's books, and for a good reason.

As you can see, the game really captures the spirit of a Hobbit narrative. As you can also see, it doesn't allow you to do any other kind of narrative in Middle-Earth. It's polished, full of heart and absolutely marvellous at what it does. Do come prepared, however. It's not quite an RPG game in the sense you might be used to. It doesn't make it any less of a terrific game, though.

Going back to the roots! I kinda liked the card system of the 3rd edition, but 2nd ed gave more flexibility. With 4th ed, it just brings back a better system and makes the careers more open to either the chage between or specializing in what the Chaos Gods gave you. Great work!

This review contains minor spoilers, though no specifics, for elements of this adventure.

An excellent one shot adventure or one-off segment of a sandbox game, or any urban crawl with a focus on Ubersreik. There are elements I have minor issues with -- namely, the lack of a player map -- but a little bit of photoshop, a blunt MS Paint retexturing, or a copy of the GM map without the Key alleviates this easily enough, and this is still my favorite of the Ubersreik Adventures despite that failure.

The NPCs are an absolute joy to play with well enough defined backgrounds and motivations to inspire a good night of game with threads that might bleed out into a larger game if you'd want without much GM input. The lack of combat, save for the final confrontation, also helps inspire the closed room mystery element and remind players that the Old World shouldn't all be bloodshed and violence on a PC level. The confrontation is malleable enough due to the Warhammer world's inclusion of mutants and wild methods of mutation that you could, as I did, turn her into something more harmless and blind in her hunger rather than the actual villain at hand if your players truly despise combat as a whole.

This is a must-have adventure for any GM running WFRP 4th Edition!

From Fandomentals reviewer Molly: As supplements go, this is a very good one. There is, admittedly, nothing especially, well, special about it, but a good amount of effort was clearly applied into making a region not much thought about outside of the hardcore fans into something interesting, alive, and worth exploring. The effort that went into connecting all six adventures, and into the illustrations, are especially noteworthy, and deserving of praise. If you’re interested in Lord of the Rings, but don’t feel like going to anywhere from the trilogy in your game, this is well worth a look and the time you’ll spend with it.

Full review here: https://www.thefandomentals.com/go-beyond-the-hobbit-with-cubicle-7s-erebor-adventures/