Bundle of Holding: The One Ring Starter Collection

Some time ago, Cubicle discontinued their successful The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-earth roleplaying games and the license transferred over to Free League. I feel that Cubicle 7 handled this license really well, but I was also quite curious to see what Free league would do with it because they are just incredibly consistent in producing fantastic books.

Sure enough, their new stuff for The One Ring is gorgeous. It’s beautiful and well-presented and, from what I hear, it works mechanically as well. Cannae ask fo much more, can you?

For those looking to start out with the game, there’s a wee Bundle of Holding on the go. Priced at $12.95, the set contains three items:

The starter set is the main item in this bundle, clearly. It contains the core rules, an adventure, cards, and a wee sourcebook for The Shire. This is where the included adventures take place, and there are also pregenerayed character to get you started. I’ll be honest, the idea of a Shire-focused story does not excite me, but then I’m not really a Tolkien fan.

As with previous bundles, the inclusion of a digital copy of a GM’s screen isn’t much of a value-add for me. There’s a slight bonus in the form of the Rivendell Compendium that comes with it, but that’s a pretty slim tome.

Finally, there’s Strider Mode, a short supplement that supports solo play. Again, I don’t see this as a big value-add. Simply put, I see roleplaying games as social experiences and the idea of playing by myself does not appeal. If you are someone for whom that’s an attractive prospect then I suppose this is a useful inclusion.

Overall, there’s only one item in this bundle that I really rate, and that is the starter set. It’s usually priced at around $20, so this bundlexwill see you save around $7. That’s not a bad discount if you were likely to buy the digital edition of the starter set anyway. As a bundle, it’s not particularly exciting, but at least there’s a decent saving on the main item.

You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Bundle of Holding.