For me the presence of the shadow and it's effect on PCs feels much more in line with the movies than the books, even though "outer" effects of it seem to be more present in the books.
Huh. I have to admit, I haven't seen the movies in so long that I'm not sure I can think of how it represents that differently from the books.
Although the big thing to me is how cinematic the fights are. The system is really great for capturing that feel of movies where start out with a shield and a helmet and then take them of when the battle intensifies (to reduce encumberance), as well as how fatigue functions where you can still hit as hard as before, your wild swings just become more hit or miss; either you hit really well, or not at all. What you loose are those "kind of hits" in between. Again, to me that speaks much more of the movies than of the books, though it of course depens a lot on what you yourself bring to the books, they are after all a much more interactive medium than movies.
My first instinct was to disagree with this, and say that TOR combat is highly
un-cinematic.
But I guess what I really mean is that it's not very
tactical, in the sense of not very many choices to make, which isn't the same thing.
But it's also abstract, in that it leaves a lot to narration and imagination. More than most RPGs. For example, bonus combat dice can be used to represent whatever you want them to. Want to make a sneak attack in TOR? Use your bonus dice to represent that.
So although I don't personally think of TOR combat as cinematic, and I don't narrate the combat mechanics as cinematic, because of this malleability it can be whatever you want it to be.
Which is nice, right?
But mostly, like I said before: I really don't see any reason to exclude the movies. From your table, if you don't like them, sure. Exclude away =) But in generall discussion... there are alot of people today who only approach LoTR from the movie side of things. And I see no point in sticking too closely to any source matieral when it comes to RPGs. After all, pretty much the whole point of an RPG is to _not_ stick to the source material. Otherwise one might as well read the book =D
This confused me. Maybe we're not talking about the same thing? I'm thinking about the
feel of the rules, and the tone of the game, which can't really be "excluded" on an item-by-item basis. It's not a matter of which specific lore items get included or excluded, but what aesthetic the rules evoke.
That said, I can also see how depictions of people and places could evoke one or the other. Arwen would be a great example, because she's so different from books to movie.