Adventures in Middle-Earth is set in the 60-year period between the Battle of Five Armies at the end of The Hobbit and the second departure of Bilbo Baggins from The Shire that marks the beginning of The Lord of the Rings.

Five years later Cubicle 7 released a new Tolkien-related role-playing game, Adventures in Middle-earth, set to the east of the Misty Mountains that used D&D rules under the OGL.

The Player's Guide was the first Middle-earth property released, a 224-page hardcover book designed by James Brown, Paul Butler, Walt Ciechanowski, Steve Emmott, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, John Hodgson, Shane Ivey, Andrew Kenrick, T. S. Luikart, Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Francesco Nepitello, James Spahn, and Ken Spencer, with interior art by John Howe, Jon Hodgson, Jason Juta, Naomi Robinson, Sam Manley, Jan Pospisil, Andrew Hepworth, and Tomas Jedrusek, cartography by Paul Bourne, and cover art by John Howe.

[4] John Farrell of Gaming Trend called Adventures in Middle-earth the "reunion of two franchises [Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings] that in many ways directly created the modern conception of fantasy wholecloth."

Farrell liked Cubicle 7's changes to the rules to make a low-magic system more in line with Tolkien's world, but noted that "none of it can completely escape being an adaptation of a game that was never made with Middle-earth in mind."