SPOCK: On my planet, to rest is to rest — to cease using energy. To me, it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass, using energy, instead of saving it.
Star Trek, “Shore Leave”, stardate 3025.2
Unlike my 2024 post, I intend to really take time off this time.
The truth is, is that I am deeply burned out. My wife and discussed this recently, and the chaos of preparing our firstborn for college, and our second-born ready for middle school, plus work demands have left us deeply exhausted. When we described it to one another, we quickly concluded that we were not depressed, just burned out. As parents, we had been running at full speed for almost two years, and now that things have quieted down, the fatigue finally caught up to us.
So, for the rest of 2025, I want to just sit around and do nothing: no personal projects, blogging, etc. I do plan to do some light reading (including some new books I picked up), play more soloThe One Ring RPG, watch more Star Trek,1 maybe finally finish painting some figurines that have sat half-completed for a year. I have one more blog post in the works, but otherwise, I’m taking some much needed personal downtime.
Just some of my unfinished painted figurines…
Thank you all for your understanding, and I wish you both a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!
1 I also recently picked up the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game from Modiphius as well, but I haven’t progressed very far in learning the game yet.
A few months ago I wrote a review of a relatively new TTRPG (table-top role playing game) called The One Ring by Swedish company Free League Publishing.
Since that time, I’ve been having a fun time playing this game in “strider mode” or solo mode. This is named after the iconic character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragorn, who often went by the dubious nickname “Strider” despite his royal heritage.
I play a session of The One Ring, often at night when my son is asleep, for an hour or two, a couple times a week. I enjoy bookkeeping my own progress, deciding where to travel next in Middle-earth and so on.
This post is a guide on how to get started, tips for play, and so on.
How Does Strider Mode Work?
Strider Mode means that you are both the Loremaster and also the sole player. The idea is that your character has enough grit and resolve to go adventuring alone, and so for 95% of the game rules, everything stays the same. The other 5% is mostly slight alterations to character creation process to make a solo play more feasible:
The TN difficulty is 18 minus attribute (18 – Wits for example), instead of 20 minus attribute.
If you spend a hope point, it is automatically inspired, so you get two extra d6 dice, not just one.
Fellowship points are (iirc) fixed at 3.
Because you are your own Loremaster, the Strider Mode resources (listed below) give lots of really handy tables for helping set the scene, or deciding why something might turn out a certain way. These tables are your best friend in Strider mode. Once I realized what these tables did, I found my story-telling experience in Strider mode got a lot better.
How Do I Play Strider Mode?
Strider Mode only requires a two things:
The core rulebook for The One Ring, 2nd edition. There is a PDF version in DriveThruRPG, and also the physical book. Personally, the print quality of the book is really nice, so it is worth it if you can afford it. Also, if you order the physical books through Free League Publishing’s site, you get a voucher to get the PDF anyway.
The Strider Mode PDF available on DriveThruRPG. This is indispensible, but also very affordable.
D12s and D6 dice, or better yet, use the specially printed One Ring ones to make life easier.
Optional, but recommended:
The character sheet PDFs, downloadable from the publisher website.
Blank journey log sheets, also downloadable from the publisher. You will go through these fast, so print several, or keep a nice log book instead. I have an old engineering sketch book (the kind with grid paper), and it’s a great tool for recording travel.
Tips for Strider Mode Play
I have played a couple characters so far, a Dwarf (mentioned in my last review), and an Elf from Lindon, but so far I’ve noticed some play patterns that help your character succeed.
First, make sure you invest sufficient skill points in skills you’ll need for traveling. This includes Travel, but also Explore, Awareness, and Hunting. Since you are solely responsible for your own welfare in the wild lands, you need to know how to survive each challenge. I nearly lost Frar my dwarf after a nasty fall in the Blue Mountains. For my Elf, I spent too many points in Song and Lore, and not enough in Hunting.
Second, combat is extra difficult. My Elf, Belegon of Lindon, has had three combat encounters, and failed two of them. The first time he fell unconscious and was robbed by bandits. He also had to retreat from a battle with undead Marsh Dwellers. Since The One Ring doesn’t depend on combat like D&D, you should be more considerate about whether to engage in battle or not. Because one bad roll by one monster is enough to put you out. Just like real life, if you think about it. Also, make good use of the skirmish combat feature exclusive to Strider Mode, and make sure you have a ranged weapon.
Third, be frugal in how you travel. Without help from other party members, you have to be careful about how much load you carry, because fatigue can add up fast. This also means it’s a good idea, just in like in real life, to pace yourself in travel, travel smaller distances between towns if you can, etc.
Fourth, get to know the extra tables in the Strider Mode PDF. The Telling Table is a handy way of answering “yes or no” questions that the Loremaster would normally answer. The Oracle tables are a great way to answer “why” or “how” questions: how this elven cloak ended up in a hoard, why the bandits broke camp unexpectedly, and so on. These aren’t required, but they’re all handy narrating tools, so use them as you see fit.
Finally, treat your character the way you’d treat yourself: don’t hesitate to give them some much needed break during a Fellowship phase to research, socialize with characters, undo shadow points, etc.
Conclusion
Strider mode is a great way to experience The One Ring RPG at your own pace, play at as much or at little as you want. Having a fellowship with other players is a really great experience, and The One Ring emphasizes the importance of fellowship and kindred spirits (which is really nice), but even Strider mode lets you have a lot of fun too, especially in side quests or adventures where you get to explore, rather than hack and slash. The expansion books such as Realms of the Three Rings provide many nice, short, introduction adventures that are low-risk, but nicely suited for a lone adventurer.
Recently, I talked at length about the role-playing game called The One Ring, and I wanted to explore one aspect of it, and its origins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, namely “Shadow”.
Fan art of the Nazgûl, the dreaded Ringwraiths of Sauron
Because the Enemy, Sauron, is growing in strength in the Lord of the Rings setting, his dark influence can be felt (even if only a little) everywhere, even in happier, safer places like the Shire, the Grey Havens, Rivendell, etc. Sauron’s forces attack some places in Middle-Earth, in other places his spies infiltrate, and even in friendly places, the mere mention of his name fills others with dread. His “shadow” grew longer and longer across Middle Earth. There was no place in Middle Earth that doesn’t feel the influence of Shadow. Sound familiar?
In the role-playing game, when player characters experience negative events, despair, or trauma can accumulate “shadow points”. These points are long-term, hard to remove, and if too many accumulate, a character can become miserable (affecting many other aspects of the game), or worse can eventually have fits of madness, like when Boromir tried to take the One Ring from Frodo. Such player characters may be forced to leave the game, or a player may choose to retire the character before it is too late. The longer one uses a certain character in the game, the greater and greater risk for accumulating too many shadow points and thus meeting a bad end.
Further, when confronted with Shadow different player characters react differently. A treasure hunter may fall into “dragon sickness”, like Thorin in The Hobbit, a warden may fall into despair (“is anything I am doing making a difference?”), or a captain may crave power, etc.
Similarly, in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, the different peoples of Middle-Earth reacted to the growing Shadow differently. Elves withdrew, longed for the past, or fled across the sea. Dwarves became insular and greedy. Men became desperate and power-hungry.
Boromir thought he was helping his home of Gondor by trying to take the One Ring from Frodo. That’s how Shadow made him go mad: playing into his anxieties, making him feel hopeless and thus taking desperate measures. The Rohirrim nearly gave up too, as Gríma Wormtongue kept feeding lies and despair to their king, Théoden. Gollum’s mind was shattered by the ring and he could barely remember who he had been, and believed he was too wretched to be redeemable.
This is what Shadow does to people: it breaks people down.
But the reason that Sauron was defeated in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was that some people didn’t give up.
Rather than fighting alone, those who resisted Sauron worked together. Individually they were too weak to resist (even Elrond), but when they worked together, they could draw on each other’s strength, and help each other when discouraged. In the books we see Samwise Gamgee doing this countless times for Frodo, or Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn racing through Rohan to save Pippin and Merry. Not everyone in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a hero, but everyone did something, however small, to contribute to the effort.
Further, even in the darkest hour, people kept going. They didn’t quit, they took another step forward, and another, and another. The goal seemed miles away, literally, but each step brought them closer, even if only a little.
In The One Ring game, during a “fellowship phase” (downtime), you can spend part of your time healing the scars of shadow. According to the core rulebook, dwarves will spend time forging to “burn away frustration”, hobbits will engage in gardening or painting, humans and elves will play or recite songs and poetry. In the books, characters such as Sam and Frodo occasionally stop to enjoy lembas bread, or Pippin and Merry enjoy a good puff of pipeweed after a major battle. It may not seem like much, but taking those moments of downtime do much to lift the soul, especially when it is weighed down by Shadow.
There is much we can learn from this.
P.S. There’s a whole Reddit channel just for LoTR memes. It’s a treasure-trove of silliness.
As I wrote a short while ago, I have grown tired of Dungeons and Dragons, and alluded to a different RPG system called The One Ring. The One Ring (TOR), produced by Swedish company Free League Publishing, is a role-playing game (RPG) designed entirely for The Lord of Rings fantasy setting by J.R.R. Tolkien. Whereas D&D and Pathfinder are more generic rule systems that can be applied toward many fantasy environments, TOR is designed exclusively for the Lord of the Rings “Middle Earth” setting.
The core rulebook for The One Ring costs $60 in the US, but with it you get all the basics you need: how to make a character, how to run an adventure as a Loremaster (a “DM” or “GM” in other systems), and even the basic monster compendium. Compare this to D&D 5th edition, which requires $150 for three books. The D&D core books have a lot of content, to be fair, but if you want to get started in The One Ring, having a single book for a reasonable price is an easier start. Also, it is available as a PDF file on DriveThruRPG, I believe, for even cheaper.
The core rulebook is very well done, and the artwork is really amazing (some of it is on the page linked above), and bring out the “feel” of the game. There are other supplements available as well which are also available through DriveThruPRG as PDF files, or hardcover on the website above.
Let’s discuss the basics of The One Ring system…
The Basics
The focus of TOR is thus much more immersive into the “look and feel” of the Lord of the Rings setting. The emphasis is much less on combat and magic powers, but more on day-to-day adventuring in the Middle-Earth setting. This means you have to take into account things like:
Planning where you are going in Middle Earth
Tracking day to day travel from point A to point B
This sounds tedious, but it isn’t. The rules are pretty straightforward.
Your stuff: things like encumbrance (load) matter. You have to consider how much you are carrying, including treasure.
Downtime, who you will spend Yule with, dealing with mental wellbeing, etc.
Healing from injuries (you cannot just magic away injuries).
Death, and any heirs for a player character.
What you get is a really mood-driven, realistic feel for life in Middle Earth. The adventuring (including combat and exploration) is still a core part of the game, but now you really get to slow down and immerse yourself in that world. That’s no small feat.
I emphasize this because many years ago I played a different LoTR-based RPG system produced by ICE using the “Rolemaster” rule system. This was a generic role-playing system used at the time, but modified for the Middle-Earth setting. I read through the book many times, and while it looked cool, even back then it felt like this wasn’t really an authentic Lord of the Rings game. Since that time, other systems have tried the same thing with mixed results.
Thus, what I like about TOR is that it conveys the Middle-Earth “feel” better than any system I’ve seen so far. It’s really fun to make a character, and imagine how they fit into the setting, and to also go to places that have historical significance in Middle-Earth, and somehow it really feels like you are there.
But how does the game play compared to Dungeons and Dragons and such?
Gameplay
First, TOR relies on a different dice system relying on a combination of d12 “fate dice” and d6 “success dice”. Certain numbers have significance on the dice: for example the 12 on a d12 is something akin to a “natural 20” in D&D, while an 11 is the opposite. The 6 on d6’s also provide extra bonus successes if you get them. There are specialty TOR dice you can get, which replace the 12 and 11 with the Gandalf rune ᚠ, and the 11 with the Eye of Sauron. These are not strictly necessary to play the game; a standard set of d12’s and d6’s will suffice.
The system for handling challenge roles is pretty straightforward, but the vocabulary takes a bit of getting used to (e.g. “favored” vs. “inspired”). After a couple of solo play sessions I got the hang of it.
In fact, the overall stats system in TOR is much simpler than D&D. You can easily fit your character onto a single sheet, and still have plenty to keep you busy. For testing purposes (namely “Strider Mode”, which I’ll cover later), I made a test character, a Dwarf named Frár son of Nár, using the core rulebook naming suggestions.
This is the example character sheet I made for myself. I wrote this in haste late night after my son had gone to sleep, so my handwriting is even worse than usual. Still, I like how it all fits in one sheet and is very easy to manage.
As you can see, the basic stats are three, not six like D&D / Pathfinder: strength, heart and wit. Frár had good scores in strength and wit, but pretty low in heart (he is not a bold person). The core rulebook gives you a preselected list of stats for each heroic culture, and you choose the combination you want. Having only three stats means some skills fall into buckets that might not entirely make sense (awareness for strength), but I am not troubled by this. The streamlined mechanics are nice.
I also like the fact that the challenge ratings for most things is based on your own stats. If you have high strength, the challenge rating for strength-based challenges is thus easier. Similarly for heart and wit. This hurt Frár though, because even with good travel skills, he frequently failed basic travel checks and ran into a few issues on his first journey. On the other hand, as a treasure hunter, his wit skills (and low challenge rating) will definitely come in handy. Frár just isn’t a bold traveller, I guess.
Speaking of streamlined: your stuff. Money isn’t meticulously tracked in TOR, and so when you make your character, you can pretty much equip it with any basic items you want (with a few restrictions based on cultural wealth). Further, during Fellowship phase (i.e. downtime), you automatically manage basic maintenance of consumables, travel rations, etc. Treasure is abstracted as “treasure points”, apart from rare or magic items, so you don’t have to carry around 5,000 copper coins to and from a dungeon. In other words, day to day maintenance of your character is assumed, and you don’t have to put much effort into it. You do have to consider the overall bulk of what you’re carrying (including looted treasure) because fatigue and endurance are really important in TOR. Fatigued characters definitely start to have problems, and it is not so easy to recover from. So travel wisely.
Side note, horses are really helpful, and fun. Frár has a horse that I named “Old Nob” for some reason. Horses will shoulder some of the burden, and help limit long-term fatigue. Plus, the game doesn’t allow harm to come to the horses (animal cruelty is not OK), so it’s nice to own a pony or horse.
Similarly, endurance is a more short-term form of fatigue and is used both in combat (instead of hit-points), and outside of combat. If your endurance falls below your load + fatigue numbers, you take penalties as well. If your endurance falls to 0, you are unconscious. In combat, this will knock you out, but a grievous wound can potentially kill you, or permanently scar you. Again, this simple, but realistic focus really gives combat more consequence than D&D.
Combat itself is somewhat complicated in some ways, but simpler in others. Strategic battle maps are not needed in TOR, and issues around initiative are simpler. The mechanics of who hits who are somewhat “number crunchy”, and it’s mostly based on your own ability to parry, rather than armor class. Getting a grievous wound is bad though, and there’s a significant chance it will outright kill your character. Stronger armor helps avoid this, but at the cost of lugging it around all the time (fatigue). So, choose carefully. Anyhow, positioning is a simple “three tier” setup where you’re either upfront, in the middle, or back. Being upfront lets you hit more, but enemies can hit you more too. Being in the back let’s you be more defensive, but you’re less likely to hit the enemy, and so on. There are also strategic things you can do to increase certain terrain advantages, but the enemy can also do the same to you.
Growth and experience are different than D&D and Pathfinder, in that you build up adventure points per session, which once you’ve you built up enough you can then redeem for increased skills and combat skills using a simple “point buy” system. As you build up points, you can get some better, special equipment or develop some additional features intrinsic to your heroic culture.
Game Phases and Downtime
The flow of time is important in TOR, and there are season and phases that are important. Your game campaign usually starts in the year 2965 in the Third Age,1 and as you complete “adventure phases”, you’ll also undertake “fellowship phases” (downtime) to not only recover, but it helps provide the passage of seasons too. During year’s end is a special fellowship phased called “Yule” which is meant to express wintertime, when people are home and hunkered down for winter. Yule season lets characters return to their homes. do extra-special downtime stuff, including recovering from Shadow, training an heir (if you want to) who will inherit your stuff if you die, and building fellowship with teammates.
Let’s talk about Shadow. The Shadow mechanic expresses the fear and hopelessness that pervades Middle Earth as the Enemy grows stronger and stronger. During certain traumatic events, or direct confrontation with certain monsters, you can accumulate Shadow, and this can eventually affect your character’s wellbeing. You can think of this as the character growing older and wider, but also perhaps a little more bitter, after years of adventuring.
Fellowship phases let you undo Shadow up to a point, but if Shadow grows too much, your character can meet an unhappy ending: non-Elf characters might go mad, while Elf characters will be compelled to immediate head West beyond the sea never to return. This is another form of character death in a sense. Elves are particularly prone to Shadow due to their long memories, and cannot shake it off as easily as other heroic races.
Solo Play
Finally, let’s explore “Strider Mode”. The One Ring community is smaller than more well known RPG games, so you can’t always find people to play with, but it comes with a nice feature called “Strider Mode” which is solo playing. I wrote more about it here. The rules for Strider Mode are available on DriveThruRPG, and are very inexpensive. Most aspects of the game remain the same, but a few rules must be tweaked. Further, to help with solo decision making, Strider Mode provides some extra decision tables you can role. I found that Strider Mode is actually pretty fun compared to typical solo play, and my character above has started playing Strider Mode as I learn to navigate both the player rules, but also with designing adventures. Frár has already started his first journey from The Shire to the Blue Mountains to do some treasure-hunting, accumulated 2 points of Shadow, but also had a friendly encounter with a dwarf from the Blue Mountains who taught him a handy shortcut, cutting down on travel time.
Conclusion
All in all, I am enjoying The One Ring a lot more than I expected. I was skeptical at first, but I’ve been pleasantly impressed both by the quality of the materials, and also the depth of the setting, and how well Middle Earth culture is translated into this RPG, but also how many distracting aspects like money are streamlined. This means the game is both simple to pick up and learn, but also has lots of role-playing and setting “depth”.
If you are curious about it, I recommend checking out play-through videos such as this one, which I’ve found helpful:
Also, the official TOR discord channel has been helpful.
But for my money, I really found that the price-point versus the quality of materials has been worth it. I am also glad to support smaller gaming companies too. I truly enjoy this system, have read the core rulebook cover to cover already, and looking toward getting some of the expansion books.
P.S. Free League Publishing also has a D&D 5th edition port of The One Ring, which I also own. I will review this separately, because it differs from regular D&D, and from The One Ring, and is a fascinating topic by itself.
P.P.S. Featured photo is a shelf at my local gaming store, featuring some of The One Ring material.
1 This is meant to be a period of time between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.
I’ve been playing 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons since 2016 off and on, first with co-workers, then with friends and family. Later, I branched out into Adventurer’s League, and wrote some modules online for fun.1
But now, I can confidently say that I am thoroughly tired of the game.
My kids and I played weekly during the Pandemic and had some greatadventures together, and when the Pandemic finally subsided I was eager to resume Adventurer’s League with the local community.
But then starting in 2024 something happened: the game just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The 2024 revised rules made things briefly interesting again, but left me with a soulless, corporate aftertaste. But even the fun of revised and updated rules quickly lost its luster. The revised versions feel very polished, and fixed some issues, but also feel homogenized and bland, with no character left.2
PlayingD&D started feeling increasingly rote. My kids increasingly lost interest, especially my oldest who had one foot out the door towards college, and I didn’t have the drive to start up another group elsewhere. The final straw was returning to Adventurer’s League after a hiatus of 2-3 years. Adventurer’s League now feels hollowed out and running on fumes after WoTC stopped investing in it in favor of their new organized play setting. My local community is much smaller than before, with most of the old-timers having left, leaving only the die-hard players whom (speaking from experience) are hard to get along with.
Even the local gaming store I used to frequent has become so successful, that it is too crowded, too hard to find parking, and overpriced. Compared to five years ago, it is not fun to go there anymore.
I did briefly look into Pathfinder but quickly got tired of the rules-heavy and math-heavy gameplay. Plus, if you are an occasional player, you are forever chasing after new rules, classes and modules or will simply get left behind. The remaster didn’t help matters, because if you want to keep up you have to buy three new books at $60+ each, just to avoid some legal hassles with naming of spells and rules. In short, I did not find Pathfinder worth further investment.3
In spite of all this nay-saying, my son loves D&D, and reads the 2024 books avidly (I will probably give him the books at some point), and even enjoyed the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves (it is a pretty fun movie, tbh). So, I won’t discourage him. I have personally grown sick of D&D and have no desire to play it (or Pathfinder) anytime in the near future. For me, the spark is totally gone.
And yet, I am also realizing that the TTRPG world is a lot more vast than I first thought. I stumbled recently upon an RPG system called The One Ring: a gaming system designed entirely for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. I picked up a couple of the core rule books, including a Dungeons and Dragons-compatible version, and am reading through them now. The community, while not large as Dungeons and Dragons, is large enough that I can find the support I need to questions and people seem to be passionate without being obnoxious. As a lifelong Tolkien fan, the amount of love and attention put into the books is really impressive, and heart-warming. I probably will write a review of the core rules once I finish reading through the book.
There are many other RPG systems as well, by smaller publishers, who are passionate about their craft, and if you look enough, chances are you’ll find a system that’s right for you. My son loves D&D 2024 edition, so I am happy to let him continue reading, exploring, and designing adventures. For someone who enjoys Pathfinder, I hope they continue playing and exploring. I guess the point of all this is that if you are tired of the more corporate gaming systems, try exploring other smaller RPG systems, and see what’s there. You may find a hidden gem you didn’t know about.
For me, I am done with both D&D and Pathfinder systems, and instead enjoy exploring the rules of The One Ring. Whether I can find a local community to play with (the perennial challenge of TTRPG) is another matter entirely….
P.S. Featured photo is my bookshelf of TTRPG books: a mix of D&D 5th edition, 2nd edition (which I fondly remember from my teen years), and some The One Ring books. Most of the newer 5th edition books were sold off already, but I am keeping some older ones that I enjoyed.
1 Writing modules is fun, and I made a bit of money here and there, but nothing even remotely enough to raise a family with. I make enough per month to buy a cup of coffee or two. I gradually stopped as the effort per module exceeded what I felt I got out of it. I still have a few in draft I may finish someday, but in light of this post, I will likely keep them in draft for the foreseeable future. Also, the 50% cut that WoTC takes from my module sales is frankly kind of egregious.
2 The 2024 books have truly fantastic artwork, though.
3 I kept the remastered Player Core book (book 1, since now they’ve printed multiple versions) in case I ever join a group, but I admit it’s pretty unlikely at this point.
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 
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