The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 42

is an analogue for this in the topics as well, as Frodo's ability to make use of
resources like his sword Sting, the Mithril vest, and the light of Eärendil reveals
a similar resourcefulness. And it is not just the surface abilities that match the
original: each ability encourages players to make decisions that mirror those of
the narrative too—Sam can protect Frodo from Sauron's corruption because he
is more doggedly resistant.
Other characteristics, however, are less speciically relevant to the original
book: Merry needs only two of three types of “life tokens” to complete a round,
while all the other Hobbits require three each. he life tokens—“evidence that
[the Hobbit's] heart is in the right place (Heart Life token), that darkness is not
overtaking him (Sun Life token), and that he is resisting the corrupting inluence
of the Ring (Ring Life token)”—are more speciic to the game world than they
are to the original world of the novels, in which Merry has no special talents
equivalent to them. 51
his tension between the direct tie of diferent characteristics for each
character within the game and each character's unique gameplay mechanic
reveals themes from the topic; and Zagal, Rick, and Hsi describe how Knizia
used the progression of the villain, Sauron, to demonstrate how competitiveness
in the Hobbits leads to ruin. he Hobbits are more than the sum of their parts,
and “notably, Sauron achieves his best result (5 steps) when a Hobbit is corrupted
to behave in a selish, competitive manner.” 52 At the same time, however, the fact
that players take turns within the game but the characters of the Hobbits “play”
in a pack contradicts the trajectory of the novels. hat the game deviates from
the novels is a design choice, and may not be as interesting as the fact that this
deviation actually augments the convergence of book and game. For instance,
the corruption board and the conlict board each relect aspects of the narratives.
Each Hobbit can move independently on the corruption board, but they all move
as one uniied group on the conlict board. his actually difers from the narrative
of the topics, in which the Hobbits are of doing their own things at diferent
times. Merry and Pippin are absent from the scenes with Shelob the spider, for
instance, although in Knizia's LOTR game they (as well as Fatty, a character who
appears only briely at the start and end of the topics) may be part of the unit
that tries to defeat the giant arachnid. But in terms of the convergence of the top-
down corporate authority of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings topics and the bottom-up
consumer gameplay mechanics of the paratextual board game, the inclusion of
these characters into a new scene can serve to augment and deepen the player
investment in the narrative. If Merry and Pippin had to leave the game at Shelob's