The game is set in the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, but may be run at any time from the First to Fourth Age and contains many examples of how to do so.

Sourcebooks cover the events of The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation.

The system for LOTR is called CODA, and involves rolling two six-sided dice to resolve actions.

A third role-playing game set in Middle-earth was published (2011-2019) by Cubicle 7 under the title The One Ring Roleplaying Game, which has since been acquired, revised, and is now published by Free League Publishing, alongside a 5th Edition OGL game titled The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying.

Decipher published a PDF version of corrections to the Core Rulebook and several sourcebooks.