LotR Roleplaying: Best Systems and Required Knowledge?

[Amaril]

From the research I've just now done on it online, it sounds like it would indeed be a reasonable alternative. I don't think it would be to my taste as a system, personally; I've never yet met a dice pool/point levelling system I've liked, and I tend to feel that -- regardless of atmosphere or feeling -- a system needs to have more robust combat rules and that social rules tend to get in the way of roleplaying more than they aid it. From what I've read, I don't really like the idea of the Traits system, but that could actually work better than it sounds like from the articles I've found. I do appreciate that it seems to take the feel of the setting seriously, though.

Sounds like you've found a lot more detailed info on it than I've managed to turn up--my Google-fu must be lacking. What kind of stuff have you read about it? Any idea how character creation or some of the specific mechanics work?