The One Ring: Starter Set

Boxed Set

English language

Published Dec. 31, 2021 by Free League Publishing, Sophisticated Games.

ISBN:: 978-91-89143-48-7

(1 review)

The One Ring™ Starter Set contains all you need to take your first step into Middle-earth and experience the adventures Hobbits get up to. With streamlined rules and ready made characters, it is easy to quickly sit down and actually play the game. The One Ring is set between the time Bilbo went on his journey and the events in The Lord of the Rings™, allowing you to explore the Shire by taking on the roles of those same Hobbits whose children will go on to do extraordinary things, such as Drogo Baggins, Rory Brandybuck and Esmeralda Took. Besides the Rules and The Adventures, there’s a full compendium covering the four Farthings of the Shire, all the way from Greenholm and the White Downs in the west to Buckland and the Old Forest in the east.

1 edition

Fulminata reviewed The One Ring: Starter Set by Francesco Nepitello

Review of 'The One Ring: Starter Set' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Starter sets are an interesting beast. They have to teach you the basics of a system while simultaneously selling you on that system, and providing you with tools to continue further if you decide to buy the full rules.

This does some of that. It does teach you the basics of the core, travel, and combat systems, but leaves out some important parts. Among them are some of the more interesting details of the combat system, and the entirety of the shadow/corruption system that is a big part of the main game.

Thematically, leaving out the corruption system is understandable, as the included adventures all take place in or around the Shire, and pose little risk to the player characters.

These adventures feature pregenerated NPCs that are interesting from a cannon perspective, but are utterly useless as the jumping off point for a larger campaign. Most of the pre-gens are …

Starter sets are an interesting beast. They have to teach you the basics of a system while simultaneously selling you on that system, and providing you with tools to continue further if you decide to buy the full rules.

This does some of that. It does teach you the basics of the core, travel, and combat systems, but leaves out some important parts. Among them are some of the more interesting details of the combat system, and the entirety of the shadow/corruption system that is a big part of the main game.

Thematically, leaving out the corruption system is understandable, as the included adventures all take place in or around the Shire, and pose little risk to the player characters.

These adventures feature pregenerated NPCs that are interesting from a cannon perspective, but are utterly useless as the jumping off point for a larger campaign. Most of the pre-gens are parents of cannon characters from the Lord of the Rings before those characters are born. They can't exactly be going off to adventure in the wider world if the group decides to continue playing past the starter set.

So what is useful in this set if you are planning on running a standard campaign? Well, there are combat tracking cards that use the full rules, not just those presented in the set. The item cards could also be useful. The dice are nice, but misprinted, limiting their attraction (what should be a '1' is an '11'). The sourcebook on the Shire provides some interesting background information, but a regular group isn't going to be adventuring there. At most, they would be visiting Bilbo as a Patron, and wouldn't need most of the information provided.

It's not a terrible product, but it's not very useful either, let alone a necessity. Its core audience should be GMs who plan on running one-shots or short campaigns to introduce people to the system.