The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 28

deploy the term in our everyday lives as if we all agree on its deinition—we
know it when we see it. Salen and Zimmerman deine play as “free movement
within a more rigid structure,” 11 and this deinition is nicely broad enough to
apply to playing games, watching cult media, experiencing paratextuality, and
using digital technology. 12 hat is to say, play is what happens when there are
structures in place, but we have the lexibility to push against those structures.
All play, as Johan Huizinga noted, “means something.” 13 In this chapter, I argue
that the play in paratextual board games means players can both inhabit a cult
world and cocreate narratives within that world.
Both Lord of the Rings games relect paratextuality diferently, begging the
question of what is “play” in a game that unveils a narrative with already-set
parameters. Both Lord of the Rings games attempt to place players within the
narrative structure of the original texts, but by integrating the mediating inluence
of cooperation, the games develop a more subtle paratextual mechanic. By
harnessing gaps within the cult narrative texts, both games present opportunities
for players to become involved with the story. Indeed, because both games demand
knowledge of the original texts, there is a complex interaction built into these games'
reliance on “texts and activities [that] may refer to the same ictional 'world' despite
presenting themselves as diferent media.” 14 Each game is neither pure extension
nor pure adaptation; rather, each plays in and with the cult world it begets.
In both games, players must develop strategies, share resources, and enable
social connectivity in order to vanquish the enemy. However, the difering
manifestations of that enemy in both games relect diferent concerns of the
cinematic versus the literate versions of the Lord of the Rings tale. In the game
based on the ilm, one player controls Sauron while the others control members
of the Fellowship, creating an explicit hierarchy among the game players and
forcing competition to develop in spite of the cooperative mechanic. In addition,
the victory condition of he Complete Trilogy ultimately forces one player to
be the winner. Even if everyone collaborates throughout the game, only one
person emerges victorious. In Knizia's LOTR, the game only becomes winnable
if everyone cooperates. Sauron is instead controlled by the game rules and the
team wins or loses together.
his cooperative mechanic relects the third principle of paratextual board
games:
Principle 3: Paratextual board games create meaning from the tension between
an authorial presence and audience play; this meaning is created between player,
designer, and original text.