Granted, living where I do (123 degrees west), pretty much the entire world is east but in this case the news comes from about 123 degrees of longitude away – the UK and Ireland.

Cubicle 7, who makes great roleplaying games, has apparently had a contract dispute with the company that owns the distribution rights for all Middle Earth tabletop games, (see their announcement here).  This means that Adventures in Middle Earth and The One Ring RPG will cease being produced.

Adventures in Middle Earth is the best version of D&D I’ve seen in years. It’s brought my group back to fantasy RPGs and has been fun to run. Cubicle 7’s adventures are well thought out and easy to use. I shall miss the lack of new material, especially Moria, that was due out shortly. I’ve written about it before (here and here and many other posts).

I haven’t mentioned The One Ring much, but that’s an oversight. I have never played it, but it keeps me up at night wanting to. It really captures Tolkien. The mechanics change the decision space, and a murder-hobo style of play will see you dead quickly. The action, task, and combat resolution system makes sense in a way that no other system has to me. Even if you strip down some of the hope/hate mechanics, the dice pool plus d12 just seems to work for the power levels I’m interested in. I’m in the process of adapting it for my own homebrew world and so have been digging through it thoroughly and am very impressed. I had recently pre-ordered the 2nd Edition of the game, and just received word from Cubicle 7 today that my payment would be refunded. The 2nd Edition was going to streamline some rules based on feedback, bring disparate pieces that were scattered across different books together, and the art looked great. I’m still pressing on adapting the existing rules to work within my own particular style of fantasy, but I’m sad that there will be no new products from Middle Earth coming.

All in all, black news indeed. I think I shall sacrifice some sleep and get the next Kampfgruppe Von Luck battle set-up so I can distract myself!