The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 44

and Gandalf 's transformation from the Grey Wizard to the mighty White. At the
same time, however, it is also possible to play the game completely diferently
from what the original ilm trilogy ofers: players can chart their own paths and
journeys through the multi-stage game board, using the game play to write their
own stories of the cult world. Such play between the top-down authority of the
cinematic narrative and the bottom-up freedom to enact consumer-created
narratives drives the convergence within these two games.
Gameplay progression
One element of the Lord of the Rings topics and ilms that is diicult, if not
impossible, to replicate within the conines of a board game is the expansive
world and long-form narrative enacted by each original text. Tolkien's trilogy
is, collectively, over a thousand pages long, and that is not including he Hobbit ,
he Silmarillion , or any of the other works that take place in the lands of Middle-
earth. he Peter Jackson ilm series comprises three ilms which, when originally
released, formed a block over nine hours long, and when re-released on special
edition Blu-Ray, formed an extended version over 12 hours long. Pat Harrigan
and Noah Wardrip-Fruin describe the Lord of the Rings narrative as “vastly
deep” with emphasis placed on the world's extent, character continuity, and
multicharacter interaction. 54 Both versions feature a similar “overarching shape
and sense of the story,” but the dialogues, details, and even transitions between
scenes are diferent, as, according to Jim Smith and J. Clive Matthews, “the
demands of the [cinematic] medium have occasioned every departure” from the
original book. 55 When designing a game that will last for less than a quarter of
that time, game designers must navigate the key plot elements necessary to keep
the narrative on trajectory with character simpliication in order to expedite the
stor y.
In each of the Lord of the Rings paratextual board games, the tension between
the games' structure and the original text's structure reveals a dissonance within
the progression of the narrative. Ludic narrative is a complicated issue, just as
adaptation of a narrative from one medium to another is. 56 his complication
forces Britta Stöckmann and Jens Jahnke to ask:
How can a ixed story, which develops in a linear, unrepeatable way from a
certain beginning to a certain ending, be transferred into a medium which, by
deinition, has to be not only repeatable, but at the same time changeable and
open to decision-making, so as to ofer a new experience every time the game
is played?