Play Experiment #3
Play Experiment - The Lord of the Rings
Kellee Santiago, Eric Spoerner, and John Lund
Dramatic Elements:
The game follows the hobbits (anywhere from 1-5) as they make their way from Hobbiton to Mordor to destroy the ring. While making their way through various parts of the quest, they must cooperate to resist Sauron's corruption and the urge to use the ring.
Formal Elements:
The game consists of several boards: the main board which tracks overall progress across Middle-Earth, and 4 smaller boards representing Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Moria. The main board has markers for major locations in the game to track the party's progress, as well as a "corruption line".
Each player's hobbit starts on the board at point 1, and the marker for Sauron is placed at 12 (or, for an easier variant of the game, at 15). Events can occur within the game that cause a hobbit or Sauron down the corruption line. When a hobbit reaches Sauron's spot on the line, the player is eliminated. If the eliminated player is the ringbearer, the game is over.
The smaller boards consist of four different paths, each relating to an aspect of the fellowship's quest - friendship, hiding, walking, and fighting. Fighting is the main path, and this is the one the players must finish to escape the area. Along the left column of the board are events that are triggered by drawing an 'event card' during the card-draw phase. The results of these events can cause a player to become corrupted.
During a turn, players will first draw a tile from a stack which will either tell them which of the four paths to move on, or trigger an event, such as a corruption roll. Oftentimes these events require all of the players to contribute their resources, or have Sauron move another step closer on the corruption line. After drawing the tile, a player can choose to play one or two of their "hobbit cards" (which, depending on the card, allows them to move one or two spaces down one of the paths), or they can choose to end their turn and draw another two Hobbit cards.
If the team decides that they needed to quickly escape from the dungeon, the ringbearer could choose to put on the ring, and advance four spaces down the main path. This will cause Sauron to move two spaces closer to the players, and thus is a very difficult decision to make.
Dynamic Elements:
The primary dynamic element was the extreme sense of cooperation that was absolutely necessary to win the game. Because the ring bearer absolutely cannot die, players have to often sacrifice themselves or their items and take a hit for the team. It was very common for Hobbits who weren't the ringbearer to give their resources to support the ringbearer, by using their event cards or using their "shield" currency to summon Gandalf to help save the ringbearer.
Another dynamic element that developed related to the choice each player had to make regarding the pathway to move through in each area. While it seems the optimal strategy is to get out of
each area as soon as possible, this wound up not being the case. The other paths often contained items that were pivotal to the progress of the fellowship (such as "life tokens", which the player must acquire to not move one step down the corruption line at the end of the area). This made escaping each area far more difficult than it originally seemed.
Our Gameplay Experience:
This game is HARD. And COMPLEX. The rules initially seemed extremely daunting, but we eventually got the hang of it by the time we reached the second level. John started out as the ringbearer as we progressed through the first two areas.
Quickly, Sauron pulled closer to us, and we moved closer to him, and we were in danger of losing very quickly. We were tempted on several occasions to use the ring, but decided it was too risky. The second to last area, Shelob's Lair, we were already on the brink.
Thanks to a couple of key sacrifices by John to save Eric (the new ringbearer), the party was just barely able to make it to Mordor. By that time though, we had exhausted all of our resources and barely took two steps in Mordor before losing.