Entitled: "The One Ring: Role Playing Game"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.935851-Lord-of-the-Rings-Is-Finally-Getting-a-D-D-Game#23562425&gid=gallery_5971&pid=5

Now my questions is:

1. Is it compatible with 2nd, 3rd, and 3.5 editions of D&D?

2. When will the video game adaptions get picked up, I would totally want to see these campaigns get the Infinity Engine treatment :D

The tabletop publisher will team up with Sophisticated Games to produce an official Middle-earth game which is fully compatible with D&D's Fifth Edition.

Is 5th edition a huge improvement from the heavily controversial 4th?

(I have been told many times of how much 4th dumbed down the whole games)

Can't really say. I haven't tried it yet.

Too bad i don't know anyone who plays Tabletop rpgs. There are some people I know to play boardgames, but they are a pretty closed group and tabletop rpgs i know nobody.

That is excellent news!! Like the article says I always wondered why there is not a TLOTR game for D&D. I cant wait to play it with my friends and teach it to my nephew.

Saying that 4th edition "dumbed down" the game is a vast oversimplification of the issue. If you want to be succinct, I'd say the problem was it over-specialized itself by focusing on some areas of the rules to the exclusion of others. 4E shines best in combat-heavy dungeon-crawlers, where its impeccable class balance and streamlined tactical combat are at their finest. However, it did so by gutting options and rules in other places. Many of those problems would eventually be filled in by later sourcebook releases, but the damage had already been done by then.

However, one of the huge fallouts of 4E was the change in how it licensed third party products. In 3E it was an open license, anyone could just write a product with no permission required and a few lightweight rules to abide by. This meant that a whole secondary market of products and authors hopped into 3E almost immediately and greatly accelerated uptake of that system. With 4E wizards of the coast had a change of heart and required third party publishers to agree to some pretty draconian terms, with the unsurprising result that most of them stayed with 3.5. However, WotC made a fatal miscalculation here; they'd just given every third party publisher a vitriolic reason to hate 4E and to publicly proclaim that they wouldn't support the system. It was a viral anti-marketing nightmare that basically doomed 4E from day one no matter how good it was.

What's happened here is that 5E has returned to an open gaming license, meaning third parties can once again publish more-or-less freely without having to agree to heavy-handed terms with wizards of the coast. This has opened the doors to products such as this Middle Earth RPG. It remains to be seen whether they'll be able to heal the damage done to their market clout by their misstep in 4E, but in the meantime fans will definitely benefit from the existence of these products.

So I'm a bit confused - is this a tabletop game (when I think "D&D Tabletop game" I think of a board game adaptation of D&D - say like a Descent, or the actual branded D&D boardgame - I think it's based off Ravenloft?).

Or is this a Pen and Paper Middle Earth RPG based on D&D rules ("Pathfinder, Hobbit Edition")?

It's not only an improvement, it is thankfully a whole different game. The so-called 4th edition was a complete flop, one of the worst rulesets I've (and most people) ever seen in an PnP RPG. The 5th edition is rather good, but I still prefer 3.5. Well I actually prefer the 1st and 2nd, but 3.5 was very good. What I'm trying to say is the 5th editon is alright, I guess...

Looks pretty cool. I would be tempted as long as it is actually new content, not "you can play as a Hobbit! Note: use the halfling race in the PHB." Which makes me wonder if it will be standalone or will require the core rule books as well. Really? In our current D&D group we have a player who owns every 4th edition book. And we regularly laugh at his tales of insanely broken character combinations.

I've been enjoying 5th edition. It's really simple to understand and teach, and plays quickly. Granted, the things I'm comparing it to are 1st edition, and Shadowrun 5th (which is clunky as a bookcase going down stairs).

There is a "basic" version of the rules on WotC's website anyone can download for free, that has all the rules, but only four races (elf, dwarf, halfling, human), and four classes (fighter, cleric, rouge, wizard) with one class archetype each.
There even a free version of the DM's rules including a bunch of monsters. More than enough to start a campaign.

I was wondering how the 5th compares to the 4th (Shadowrun). I've never played 5th.

Since you played and Prefer 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Here is Spoony's review of it and he comes from the perspective of a veteran D&D player:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtaL5Bark54

It's one hour long!
EDIT: IT'S TWO HOURS LONG!

Good. Reviews like this SHOULD be long.

He covers nearly every detail (but at times he goes on rants because he's spoony)

And that is the same reaction people had with his Amazing Spiderman 2 review.

Anyhow, I was asking about the 5th of Shadowrun. I've tried the 5th of D&D.
Also... he's really doing a review on a game he hasn't ever played? He states in the first minutes that he hasn't played a session of it, and has owned the book for just a day (so he also fast-read it). This is not how a review should be...