Middle Earth 5E

[inawkwardscience]

So this was just announced Adventures in Middle-earth (https://cubicle7.co.uk/ogl-omg-adventures-in-middle-earth-coming-soon/).

I'm wondering if this will come to Fantasy Grounds? I'm guessing the chances are pretty slim, since it's a Middle Earth license on top of D&D 5e.

Either way, I'm looking forward to this book! The One Ring is a really well done RPG.

[LordEntrails]

Contact the publishers and express your interest in them licensing a FG version. Like most companies, I suspect that if they believe their customers are interested in an FG version of their product, they can reach out to Doug to talk about licensing and converting.

[gqwebb]

Contact the publishers and express your interest in them licensing a FG version. Like most companies, I suspect that if they believe their customers are interested in an FG version of their product, they can reach out to Doug to talk about licensing and converting.

I would like to see that also. The Hobbit led me to D&D in the first place. Yes my first D&D character was Frodo a half-ling thief.

[inawkwardscience]

It's hard to speak with publishers about Fantasy Grounds. I've been a part of a handful of Kickstarters and requested Fantasy Grounds support. With the exception of Primeval Thule, most seem to ignore the request.

It seems many tabletop devs are slow to embrace VTT. What is a good way to get a publisher's attention? I believe that software like FG is the future. How do you impress upon others? How do you show that the numbers supporting virtual gaming seems to grow by leaps and bounds every year?

[Varsuuk]

I would like to see that also. The Hobbit led me to D&D in the first place. Yes my first D&D character was Frodo a half-ling thief.

Mine was equally derivative ;p... Aragorn a Human Ranger in '79. still have his sheet although not at 2st level :)

[Valarian]

Unlikely as the license Sophisticated Games have with Middle-earth Enterprises doesn't include the ability to sell an electronic version of things that don't have a physical product. The PDF is just about possible under the license. Cubicle 7 are the UK publisher for the game. I tried to get permission for a full version of The One Ring, basically the modules I use for my own game rather than the template version. Though I didn't get a definitive answer as to why, I got the impression that the license use would conflict in some way with the Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG.

I'm interested in what the 5e edition includes. I'm hoping that the magic isn't as overt and flashy as the D&D versions, and that they have managed to resist having the "Wizard" class. The One Ring is an excellent system for Middle-earth and I'm hoping that they've brought the best of that system to the 5e rules. It'll open up the setting to those who are wedded to the 5e system. I will be sticking to The One Ring as the system of choice for the setting though.

[sjard]

Add in the fight between Tolkein Estate and Warner Bros. with regards to digital media license rights... (I'm not entirely up to date on this whole situation), but I'd imagine that really muddies the waters.

[Valarian]

Add in the fight between Tolkein Estate and Warner Bros. with regards to digital media license rights... (I'm not entirely up to date on this whole situation), but I'd imagine that really muddies the waters.
Not sure why Warner Brothers are in on this. They bought the film rights from Middle-earth Enterprises. Saul Zaentz has the rights to produce films on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, obtained in 1976. The argument of the Tolkien Estate only bears fruit if they manage to convince a judge that Warner Brothers and New Line went beyond the licensed rights, and dipped in to the Silmarillian lore. Even then, they should be suing Middle-earth Enterprises as the license holder, who would then have to sue Warner Brothers and New Line for exceeding the terms of the license.

The same goes for the digital rights on the books, these are owned by Middle-earth Enterprises not the Tolkien Estate. The Tolkien Estate owns the rights to the Silmarillian and further books set in Middle-earth. Middle-earth Enterprises owns the rights to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. They're allowed to make games based on these two books only.

[sjard]

Probably because right now, WB seems to have the license for all video games based on LotR. See Turbine subsidiary with Lord of the Rings Online, and WB logos showing up on all of the various Lego LotR/Hobbit games, Shadows of Mordor, etc. I've seen the fights between lawyers and tabletop game companies over the definition of video game when it comes to something as simple as PDF copies. If their (Cubicle 7) license doesn't include the ability to create PDFs (which it seems to, since they're for sale that way), it would almost certainly not include something like FG. Even with it... well, I'm not a lawyer (yet), but it's still iffy territory.


As for the Tolkein Estate/ Middle-Earth Enterprises, fair enough, as I mentioned, I'm not fully up on all of this.

[Valarian]

The Warner Brother and New Line logos show up on the video games as they use imagery from the films, which are the intellectual property and copyright of the film companies. The video companies are then able to use scenery like that in the films and make Aragorn look like Viggo Mortensen, Gandalf like Ian McKellen, etc.

[sjard]

That is not entirely correct. LotRO for example, is only licensed for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, no aspect of films, or other books. And yet it is owned by WB. If it weren't for that one sticky bit, I'd agree with you and would never have brought it up.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the license come through.

Until then, and until I can afford even a copy of The One Ring, I'll have to deal with my Decipher CODA version.

[BlueDrake]

Just throwing my 2 cents in. Although it doesn't seem likely to happen, I'd be all over the 5E version of the One Ring if was released for FG.

[Captcorajus]

Well, I have the PDF for the Adventures in middle Earth for 5E, and as it turns out the ruleset on FG is pretty robust.

Adding the classes, races, backgrounds, virtues and the like is pretty easy, though a bit time consuming. Its going to be a few months
before I can play anyway, so I'll just copy and paste the rules, and create my own module.

[The_Andinator]

Well, I have the PDF for the Adventures in middle Earth for 5E, and as it turns out the ruleset on FG is pretty robust.

Adding the classes, races, backgrounds, virtues and the like is pretty easy, though a bit time consuming. Its going to be a few months
before I can play anyway, so I'll just copy and paste the rules, and create my own module.

Have you completed your module? I'm new and I want to use these rules. But the thought of doing a complete conversion myself is rather daunting. If you've finished, is there any way I could get it from you for a reasonable price?

[Trenloe]

Have you completed your module? I'm new and I want to use these rules. But the thought of doing a complete conversion myself is rather daunting. If you've finished, is there any way I could get it from you for a reasonable price?
Welcome to the forums!

The Adventures in Middle Earth material is copyright protected. It can't be legally distributed, for free or otherwise, without permission of the copyright holder (Cubicle 7).

[NotRussellCrowe]

Have you completed your module? I'm new and I want to use these rules. But the thought of doing a complete conversion myself is rather daunting. If you've finished, is there any way I could get it from you for a reasonable price?

Hi, The_Andinator!

I started creating the Player's Guide into Fantasy Grounds by copying from the PDF and while it's a lot of work, it's really not that difficult. I totally recommend watching some YouTube videos by Zacchaeus on creating backgrounds, races, and classes:

Backgrounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTtaC2Tz79U
Races: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYdl0sUYbUw
Classes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV0vH1eeUZM

I also recommend that you only add in what you need. If you don't have a Warden player, then no point in adding in the Warden class. Same for the races (sorry, cultures) and everything else. You would only need to add abilities for the levels that they are at or going to get to in the next session, no need to code it all up to level 20 until you need it.

Also look at the 5e basic rules that come with Fantasy Grounds for examples as well as watching the videos. Sometimes seeing how other things are written is great because the videos only give one or two examples and there might be something you just don't understand but maybe another class in the rules covers it.

Good luck and happy gaming!

[hawkwind]

I have gone down the same route and as you say its not to hard to get the character gen stuff like classes etc. into fantasy grounds and the NPC engineer application makes importing NPC's from the adventures pretty straight forward. The only thing I ran into trouble with is the equipment, you can enter individual items but I can't see anyway of creating tables without delving onto code. I'm been planning to alter basic 5e equipment list as its fairly similar with the help of the old Par5e application, just got to find some time to have a play

[NotRussellCrowe]

I have gone down the same route and as you say its not to hard to get the character gen stuff like classes etc. into fantasy grounds and the NPC engineer application makes importing NPC's from the adventures pretty straight forward. The only thing I ran into trouble with is the equipment, you can enter individual items but I can't see anyway of creating tables without delving onto code. I'm been planning to alter basic 5e equipment list as its fairly similar with the help of the old Par5e application, just got to find some time to have a play

I was able to get weapons and armour to be listed in tables without going to the XML/Par5e, Fantasy Grounds just did it for me. Not so much luck with the rest of the equipment lists though.

[Trenloe]

I was able to get weapons and armour to be listed in tables without going to the XML/Par5e, Fantasy Grounds just did it for me. Not so much luck with the rest of the equipment lists though.
Yeah, there are buttons at the top of the Items campaign data list. Armor and Weapons (plus others for templates and the forge) are there as standard. The code behind these buttons (known as grouplists in FG terms) is in the 5E ruleset: scripts\data_library_5e.lua -> the aListViews LUA table. And earlier in that file, the aRecordOverrides table has details of the campaign data windows. "item" has aGMListButtons and aPlayerListButtons that define a XML windowclass that details how to present the data.

There is some comments on all of this at the top of the CoreRPG scripts\data_library.lua file.

So, whereas some coding is needed, a new grouplist to display adventuring gear (or whatever) could be setup in an extension once, then this would display a table of all of the adventuring gear currently available - in the campaign itself and in opened modules. You don't have to code the table in a library module each time. Once done, it's really flexible.

[NotRussellCrowe]

Yeah, there are buttons at the top of the Items campaign data list. Armor and Weapons (plus others for templates and the forge) are there as standard. The code behind these buttons (known as grouplists in FG terms) is in the 5E ruleset: scripts\data_library_5e.lua -> the aListViews LUA table. And earlier in that file, the aRecordOverrides table has details of the campaign data windows. "item" has aGMListButtons and aPlayerListButtons that define a XML windowclass that details how to present the data.

There is some comments on all of this at the top of the CoreRPG scripts\data_library.lua file.

So, whereas some coding is needed, a new grouplist to display adventuring gear (or whatever) could be setup in an extension once, then this would display a table of all of the adventuring gear currently available - in the campaign itself and in opened modules. You don't have to code the table in a library module each time. Once done, it's really flexible.

That doesn't sound too difficult, just need to find the time and desire to make these changes in the AiME extension.

Thanks, Trenloe!