The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 39

and relects a larger cultural paradigm shit. Board games by their very nature
represent a convergence of player-generated meaning and authorial meaning.
Paratextual board games take this convergence even further, uniting player,
author, and cult texts as one. Perhaps the rise in the popularity of complex
paratextual board games lies in the fact that they represent, at least in part,
aspects of the convergence culture that we see around us.
Playing LOTR and he Complete Trilogy
his paratextual convergence manifests in two diferent ways within the games
based on the Lord of the Rings franchise elements. First, we see this convergence
evident in the feeling of community generated by both games. In Knizia's
LOTR , the Hobbits can move individually on the corruption board, but they
work together on the conlict board. While it is possible for a Hobbit to become
“corrupted” and have to leave the game, rarely do the Hobbits work on their own.
Conversely, in the cinematic he Complete Trilogy , the players all take turns,
including the Hobbits, and the characters can ind their own routes through the
game board to defeat Sauron. While this is not like the ilm, the mechanic does
ofer players the freedom to either follow the ilm's narrative or not follow the
ilm's narrative. Second, we see this convergence evident in the diferent styles
of gameplay progression within each of the games. Knizia's LOTR game features
deinitive stages: there are four main conlict boards (Moria, Helm's Deep,
Shelob's Lair, and Mordor), each of which references particular adventures in
the original book series. he stages are represented in the instructions as well,
which ofer short synopses of these important narrative events. In contrast, he
Complete Trilogy game play is broken into diferent turns between Sauron and
the diferent characters. Both these breaks contradict the feelings of community
that undergird both texts.
Community
Perhaps because of its popularity, Tolkien's original Lord of the Rings trilogy
(1954-55, actually a sextet of topics, two of which are contained in each of
three volumes) has been read as an allegory from virtually every conceivable
angle, with discussions of religion and racism coupled with connections to the
Second World War (as well as the First World War) peppering many of them. 44