The Lord of the Rings arrives for D&D’s 5th edition next month, make a save vs. irony
JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels, a series that directly inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, will be formally adapted for the 5th edition of the iconic role-playing game. But it’s not the current publisher of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, that will market that product. Instead, it’s the hugely successful team at Free League Publishing who have two brand new books on sale from May 9.
We’re big fans of it The One Ring: role playing in the world of the Lord of the Rings. Originally published in 2011, the reboot of Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi’s tabletop RPG was released in 2022 by Free League after a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign. At the time, reviewer Linda Codega called the domestic setting a “microcosm of a vast, familiar world” that “pushes the story beyond the traditional hero’s journey”. We found the starter set in the box particularly charming, with extraordinary art and more historic hobbits in it than you can shake a stick at. A 5th edition of the setting and its many adventures sounds like just what you need to open up the setting to a wider audience at the table.
But let’s take a moment to consider the many ironies of this current licensing situation.
When D&D was young and daring and out of a two-story home in rural Wisconsin, the team at TSR – the game’s original publisher – was working on a new board game titled The battle of five armies. It is of course named after the famous battle first mentioned in The Hobbit which took place between five Middle-earth factions on the slope of the Lonely Mountain. But the game ended up being an albatross, and the controversy surrounding it would eventually change the course of D&D forever.
The Tolkien estate naturally fell into contention, and according to a post on the EN World forums by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax himself, the resulting lawsuit was settled out of court. Here’s a quote from Gygax’s own 2002 message on the bulletin board about the situation:
TSR received papers threatening half a million in damages [sic]. The main objection was to the board game we were putting out, The battle of five armies. The author of that game had given us a letter from his lawyer claiming that the work was free-standing because it was published after the copyrights for [Tolkien]’s works had expired and before there were any extensions. The action also required us to remove Balrog, Dragon, Dwarf, Elf, Ent, Goblin, Hobbit, Orc, and Warg from the D&D game. Though only balrog and warg were unique names, we also agreed with hobbit, [and] kept the rest natural. The board game was dumped and so the lawsuit was settled out of court.
The great irony here, of course, is that Wizard’s recent attempts to change the Open Gaming license – otherwise known as the OGL – would have required Free League to pay back a hefty license fee to D&D’s owner based on the success of this project. . But after a weeks-long campaign of fans expressing their dissatisfaction online and canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, Wizards capitulated and moved the OGL and its rules to the public domain. That means Free League can release its adaptation of The one ring TTRPG for 5th Edition D&D without paying Wizards a dime.
As if to cement its victory, Free League has even been bold enough to change the name of the product to The Lord of the Rings role playing game.
To further add to the irony in this situation, Wizards itself is currently embroiled in another lawsuit, this time involving a newly resurrected version of TSR – also operating out of the same two-story house in rural Wisconsin. In that lawsuit, this new TSR alleges that Wizards let its own copyrights lapse and skipped the necessary renewals to keep several of its old brands alive. The case will go to court in October.
Specifically neither The one ring nor The Lord of the Rings role playing game are the first attempts at a TTRPG literally based on the world of Middle-earth. Middle-earth role-playing game — affectionately known as MERP to its fans — was published in 1984. Later Cubicle 7 adapted the setting to the 5th edition with its Adventures in Middle-earthpublished in 2016.
The Lord of the Rings role playing game will be published as a 236-page hardcover book, including six new classes and six new cultures – including the return of the hobbits to D&D. Shire Adventuresa 104-page collection of five lengthy encounters, also due out May 9.
Update: We modified our original story to account for two old tabletop role-playing games: Middle-earth role-playing game (1984) and Adventures in Middle-earth (2016).