The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 41

of digital play and video games, their assessment largely ignores the underlying
paratextual connections between the game and the topic series upon which it is
based. At times, however, their discussion does hint at such relationships. For
instance, in a narrative description of their own game play, they note how:
the game was won; every player rejoiced. Pippin sacriiced his life to save
Middle-earth. If such a moment of self-sacriice is interesting as a story, it is even
more engaging when you are the one to make the decision (in the game). 48
By relating the ending of the game to the ending of a story, Zagal, Rick, and Hsi
explicitly reveal the paratextual connection to the underlying novel, and also
implicitly articulate the importance of this connection: that it reveals one of the
reasons why cooperation may work so well for this game but fail in others.
Furthermore, for Zagal, Rick, and Hsi, a particular pitfall of collaborative
games is allowing one player the ability to make all the decisions for the team.
his can become “boring” as one player can dominate and not allow other players
to interact, participate, or even inluence the outcome of the game. LOTR , they
argue, undercuts this pitfall by giving the characters:
diferent roles and abilities so that optimal game-play depends on good
coordination and decision making on the part of the players. Lord of the Rings
gives diferent abilities to each of the hobbits so that each hobbit has a useful role
to play at various points in the game. 49
While “making a better gameplay experience” is certainly one result of this
emphasis on difering abilities, the game's antecedent of Tolkien's topics may
reveal its impetus. his connection is something designer Knizia reveals as
well: he writes that “more important [than the detail of the world] was the
feeling of the world. he true focus of the topic was not the ighting, but
more personal themes—the development of each character's sense of self as
they attempt to overcome adversity.” 50 Indeed, although it is not laid out as
succinctly in the topics as done by Knizia in the game, all the main Hobbit
characters do have diferent attributes that portend their eventual character
arcs. Samwise Gamgee in the game has the attribute of being able to withstand
Sauron's inluence more readily than the other Hobbits: he is less vulnerable to
corruption. In the topics, it is Sam's stalwart, dogged determination that allows
Frodo to throw the Ring into Mount Doom—without Sam's ability to withstand
the inluence of the Ring, Frodo would not have been able to succeed. In the
game, Frodo is particularly good at using resource cards—he can convert any
brown resource card into a “wild” card, which can be played at any time. here