Hello all,
After picking up some Saxons to play with my buddies in Viking-era battles, I became enamored with the SAGA game system. I picked up the Aetius & Arthur and Crescent & Cross books and loved the flexibility and adaptability of the system.
I decided that the game system would fit perfectly for the Lord of the Rings ("
LotR") setting, which I believe was the era (the early Middle Ages) that Tolkien drew on when crafting the Middle-Earth of the Third Age. In analyzing the Crescent & Cross and Aetius & Arthur books, I saw great potential in converting many of the factions therein into
LotR factions.
The fruit of my work, little though it was that I added to Studio Tomahawk's rules, can be found at this dropbox links [these .pdf files are large due to imbedded images]:
The Free Peoples
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5odqze6rbv7l5xt/AACVchuqZz6wr_AC6biv6y0Fa?dl=0
The Shadow
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yhcpkw2ufba4ljd/AACYmdNqELV8YZ-rkADqI4w6a?dl=0
I would greatly appreciate all of your thoughts on these "conversions" and the rules I created (found mostly in the Heroes and Legends files, as well as Noldor and Misty Mountain Orcs). Naturally, the weakest link in this are my original additions.
I was partly torn in crafting some of these factions.
I decided to represent Isengard as Jackson did in the movies, as opposed to Tolkien's depiction. I thought it helped to distinguish this faction from the lowly Orcs of the Misty Mountains and Sauron's Orcs. Yet, I am likely to create a variant that includes lesser Orcs and Dunlendings in the near future.
The Noldor were especially tough given their strength and ancient experiences. An all hearthguard force meant creating 2 new Saga abilities to replace activations for warriors and levies. Are these new abilities balanced? I am cannot say yet.
The Misty Mountain Orcs required sticking in Cave Trolls as regular troops. I am pleased with my solution, but playtesting is required.
I am quite concerned with the balancing of the Heroes abilities.
The greatest amount of creativity, for my part, is found the Legends files where I made rules for Ents, Olog-hai and Great Eagles. I fear these need more tweaking to be worthwhile inclusions.
Thanks for taking the time to look at this. Your feedback is welcome.