Rating: 
Summary: An excellent game system
Review: The game system was well though out and plays very nicely. I was expecting a lot less and was gladly suprised at the depth put into this game system.Even if you are not a gamer, and just a Tolken fan you will enjoy reading the book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent game system
Review: The game system was well though out and plays very nicely. I was expecting a lot less and was gladly suprised at the depth put into this game system. Even if you are not a gamer, and just a Tolken fan you will enjoy reading the book.
Rating:
Summary: Play your way through Middle-Earth
Review: This game is so awesome! It was the first RPG i ever played and i loved it. This game is so cool. It provides hours of entertainment and fun. You just choose your character and Play! It is so fun. (I've said that about a million times b/c it is.) So if you are bored this summer get this book!
Rating:
Summary: 'i anvanya ar ammara parma ilyave'
Review: This is a fabulous book. It is beautifuly laid out, the pages decored with wonderful photos from the movies. The rules are surprisingly easy to understand, largely due to their flexibility (e.g. you do not need to look up every modifier and TN [target number], you can just use the tables as sort of guidelines and trust your own judgement). I especially like the 'qualities of heroes' pages, and though it is quite difficult to get across all of these attributes they do add to the 'Tolkienesque' flavour of the game.
When I first read the Coda rules I thought that the combat would be quite tedious and dull before you memorised the rules, yet no, it flows quickly and furiously, leaving your heart pounding as if it were real! Yes, sometimes you have to look up rules, but it isn't a huge encumbrance to your enjoyment of the game. However, the most importent attribute to the game's level of fun is the pacing. My group made the mistake of letting our charcters converse and discuss every little thing, and though this was fine at first it soon became quite dull. You've got to find a balence between dialogue and and combat/tests, and once you do the game is amazing. We played for four solid hours and it merely felt like 1 1/2 - 2 hours at the most. I have read the book six times, and this is a must-buy for any Tolkien or game fan. [Oh, and by the way, my titles in Quenya (High Elven). 'The most beautiful and best book of all']
Rating:
Summary: The BEST RPG System has Arrived!
Review: When I opened this book and began to read the pages, I realized that I had found the most realistic yet simplist RPG system that has ever been made. The battle scenes flow like no other and the easy to read tables make it a simple system to create exciting adventures with characters that are limitless in scope. Your character can be anything from a mighty warrior, to a powerful wizard, a crafty rogue to a humble inn keeper, a daring sailor to a wealthy noble. And the best thing I have found is that the rules are so open, that the game focuses more on roleplaying characters than any other I have seen. The system has the good points of others while throwing out the bad ones. Your characters primary attributes and skills are simple to test using a similar system to that of the d20 system. However, using weapons are now skills like they should be instead of some sort of a feat or special ability determined by your class. A player has many options in combat while still keeping it simple, which lead to battles flowing very smoothly. The game also uses a unique advancement system which level up your characters quickly and steadily. This makes it so that the players enjoy the fun of leveling up with out drawing attention from the Roleplaying part of the game. The Orders, or classes, have a lot of depth, making it sort of hard to figure out with only one read, but by reading it a second time I was able to not only figure out how to use them, but how much flavor they add to the roleplaying aspect of the game. Also, the races that a player can choose are very realistic. Some may seem more powerful than others, but I have found this does not effect player's choices when choosing a race. In fact, I have found more diversity among PCs because each race is so unique. Because this is the first printing, it is not totally perfect, but it comes close. I found a contradiction in the money system over the ratio from Silver pices to Gold Pennies, but the Game Master can easily fix this problem with choosing one of the two ratios mentioned. Also I wish that they had put a larger choice of weapons and monsters in the book for players to use. For example, there are only three types of blades to choose from: longsword, scimitar, and shortsword. For monsters, they don't have some of my favorites that I like to use such as a Dragon; now that I was shocked about. Hopefully, future realeses will remeady this. I am looking forward to a Weapons & Equipment Handbook along with some sort of a Monster's Manual. All in all, this book is a giant step in the development of RPGs. A true epic of a book!
Rating: 
Summary: You Aren't Missing Anything....
Review: While the rulebook is very nicely presented, the game they are presenting lacks a great deal of substance. They have pledged to use only information available from the books and/or the movies in fleshing out their system, and this is where the true weakness of the system lies. This means that no material will ever cover any location not visited in the books or movie. No inns beyond the Prancing Pony or Green Dragon will be described, which means that it is entirely up to the gamemaster to invent things that happen beyond the path that the Fellowship themselves traveled. The book provides no real help in developing your own campaign settings and adventures. It is also assumed that the only magical spells available are ones actually used in the books, which is an unfortunate assumption that Gandalf never had anything else in his repertiore. While I assume the limitations on the game are the result of licensing restrictions, it causes the world to completely lack depth or any sense of wonder; everyone who read the books or saw the movie know what everyone else is capable of. My advice is to use the rule setting you prefer, find some old ICE/MERP campaign materials, and run your own Middle-Earth campaign. This book may have some value as an occasional inspiration or sourcebook, but I wouldn't count on it being very much.
Rating:
Summary: You Aren't Missing Anything....
Review: While the rulebook is very nicely presented, the game they are presenting lacks a great deal of substance. They have pledged to use only information available from the books and/or the movies in fleshing out their system, and this is where the true weakness of the system lies. This means that no material will ever cover any location not visited in the books or movie. No inns beyond the Prancing Pony or Green Dragon will be described, which means that it is entirely up to the gamemaster to invent things that happen beyond the path that the Fellowship themselves traveled. The book provides no real help in developing your own campaign settings and adventures. It is also assumed that the only magical spells available are ones actually used in the books, which is an unfortunate assumption that Gandalf never had anything else in his repertiore. While I assume the limitations on the game are the result of licensing restrictions, it causes the world to completely lack depth or any sense of wonder; everyone who read the books or saw the movie know what everyone else is capable of. My advice is to use the rule setting you prefer, find some old ICE/MERP campaign materials, and run your own Middle-Earth campaign. This book may have some value as an occasional inspiration or sourcebook, but I wouldn't count on it being very much.
| 
