The One Ring or Adventures in Middle-earth Battle of Five Armies & The Third Age of Middle-Earth The current year for our Middle-Earth campaign is set during the year of 2946 of the Third Age. Inspired By J.R.R. Tolkien

I am such a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and his work with Middle-earth, I am currently reading the novels and have watched the extended versions of all six films more times that I can count. It's such a wonderful world, the people, the ambience, the lore, the history—all of which had me hooked from day one.

What really brought me in all the way was watching the films. I understand the films don't do the novels justice, I get that but the films are such works of art, especially the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit trilogy was also great but I'll admit, Peter Jackson went overboard on the amount of CGI that he used. So, I decided to sit down and start trying to read the TTRPG books from The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-earth "this is well before the new additions of each system were released by Free League".

As hard as I tried, I never could get a grasp of the One Ring Rules, maybe this is because all of my life (40+ years of playing Dungeons & Dragons) maybe my brained was just hard wired for traditional D&D rule systems. So, I gave up on trying to learn the One Ring system, but I did get all the books for it simply because they are still really good "reads".

After taking an extended break from TTRPG's "real life stuff and medical stuff", I returned to the TTRPG world in early 2024, I've jumped back on looking at the Middle-earth systems again, finding that The One Ring system is still above my paygrade haha, I decided to look at Adventures in Middle-earth "I know a newer edition hgas released but I prefer the classic". Mind you, I've never ran any 5th edition D&D games or even played the system, I have a strong hatred for Hasbro/Wotc, "that's a discussion for another day" but I do like how AiMe has taken that ssystem and made its own. I do think the 5e system for AiMe kinda takes away from the Middle-earth feel so I've decided to start looking into adding my own house rules to my AiMe system to see if I can bring it back to what Middle-earth should be.

I want to transform my own AiMe 5th edition system into something that will not feel like a standard 5th edition game/campaign for my players. Like I said, I refuse to touch anything from Wizards of the WOKE, but Cubicle 7 & Freeleague seem to have made the system their own so it gives me hope that I can mold it to suit my own needs. It's worth giving a try because Middle-earth has a special place in my heart.