Is Lord of the Rings Roleplaying game dead?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Well the third movie has been out for a while now and as you all know managed to clean up at the Oscars. Sadly the folks at decipher have been silent. I expected a ROTK sourcebook by now, heck long before now actually.
With all of the problems Deciper had in the original game does this mean that the game line is dead?

[Spriggan]

Well they haven't updated their LOTR rpg site for about 7 months.  But they're still releaseing books for it (the last one, riders of Rohan came out last month).  So who knows.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Really didn't even know there was a riders of Rohan book... is it any good?

[Spriggan]

This was on the decipher site's forum:

Since we announced the shift from L.A. to Norfolk we have been investigating all the possible solutions that would allow us to continue our RPG lines. We are still heavily involved in this process and thus we don't have much to say. I can say that we will announce our plan sometime around the end of March. In the meantime, beginning March 5 we will begin posting a series of unpublished adventures for both RPGs. They will be downloadable for free on decipher.com. I hope that helps our player base continue to enjoy the LOTR and Star Trek RPG systems we developed.

from this post and others it appears that Decipher has postponed all RPG productoins for the time being since they're moveing offices and probaly have to hire a lot of people.

Also starting tomorrow they're going to start posting free adventures for both ST and LOTR, there were ones that were going to be published but not becasue of the RPG production freeze.  fell if you see this you might want to post a link to the free adventures (which aren't up yet).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

hrm... if they're hiring in virginia, I could move southward....

[Spriggan]

hehe maybe you could work for that teeny-bop magazine of thiers.  "written for girls, by boys!"

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

hey, I AM  a boy.

[Spriggan]

http://www.boycrazy.com/

hehe they even have a CCG that linked to the magazine.  I wonder why Fell never asked for it?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

yeah, seems like that would be right up his alley

[Entsuropi]

Me and spriggan looked around, and i think that the 3 releases in feburary are a mistake on Amazons part. Neither Amazon.co.uk, an online RPG dealer or deciphers website had them listed.

Its a pity, since i now have the entire line barring the maps (bleh) and the moria supplement. Incidentially, which book is number 4? My collection has 1,2,3,5 and the lack of 4 makes it look bad. Its a great game, just the combat rules need work (people have too many hitpoints so that combat lasts forever) and decipher need to learn what pre-release Q&A is.

[Fellfrosch]

I got a press release including the details Sprig posted above, but as you've noticed I haven't had much time to post anything the past couple of days. The problems with the Decipher RPG are ongoing, and they haven't put out any books for it since the Moria boxed set (which was #4, I think, but that's from memory so don't be sad if I'm wrong). Basically, they have avoided for months any solid answer to the question "are you still going to produce the game?" which is kind of an ominous silence. Some of the books, such as the Helm's Deep set, have been announced for over a year without seeing any release. I honestly can't tell you what's going on with it, and I can't get any info out of the PR guy (though I've tried). I can assure you that they're keeping the CCG license for several more years, so presumably they'll have the RPG license as well...whether or not they'll do anything with it is still up in the air.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

It seems like a poor use of a liscense.

[Slant]

Okay, this is what I have found out about Decipher's RPG arm:

D20

Yep.  I have no solid proof in black and white, but I have heard from some people who follow the industry religiously that Star Trek and LotR are being revamped to mesh with D20.  

Be afraid.

Oh, and we are playing Lord of the Rings this coming Friday!  The first time in months!!  Woo-hoo!!

[Spriggan]

decipher employes have said on their message boards that by the end of the month (march) there will be a new RPG release scedule posted.  So I guss we'll know for sure then.

Also this was posted there only a few days ago:

As pointed out on the Trek board, there are no plans at this time to make a D20 version of any CODA game...

--Doug Burke
Decipher RPG Net Rep

[Mr_Pleasington]

There was a big to-do over at rpg.net when the layoffs ocurred.  It was mentioned then that there are going to be adventures released for LOTR in PDF form, most likely, in the near future.  As for the long term...I think it's dead, Jim.