The Lord of the Rings as Convergent Game Play - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 45

Such a narrative adaptation is possible, although “turning a board game into a
novel means transferring a story from a changeable medium into a ixed one and
vice versa, a board game representing a novel has to assimilate the essence of the
book's story.” 57 Assimilation requires a play with structure.
In Knizia's LOTR game, speciic and deinitive stages in the game play match
similarly structured stages within the narrative trajectory of the novels. here
are seven separate stages in the game, each one depicted as a ringed icon on
the corruption board. At three of these locations, good things happen to the
Hobbits: at Bag End, they get cards to help them on their quest; at Rivendell
(home of the Elves), the Hobbits receive more cards; and at Lothlórian (home
of Galadriel, mightiest Elf in Middle-earth), the Hobbits earn more cards and
have the option of recovering from Sauron's corrupting inluence. hese three
locations match similar locations in the topics, as the Hobbits make their way
through Middle-earth toward Mordor to destroy the Ring.
However, there are four stages in the game where bad things happen to the
Hobbits, and these are represented by the four separate conlict boards, each of
which corresponds to a particular series of events in the topics: he Mines of
Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Mordor. At each stage, the Hobbits must
complete tracks like the Battle of Balrog in the Mines of Moria and the Fight
Against Shelob in Shelob's Lair. hey can also claim friends and help through
other tracks, like the Friendship track on each conlict board. he point here
is not just that the game matches scenes and chapters from the topics, but also
that ater each of these seven stages, there is a deliberate break in the action.
Each conlict stage is diicult to complete and the Hobbits do not all necessarily
emerge out of it unscathed. Oten, one or more of the Hobbits will have become
slightly more corrupted and closer to dying, and many times making it through
a stage will require sacriicing cards or will depend simply on the roll of a die.
Making it through a stage in the LOTR game, therefore, becomes a stressful
event. his kind of “eustress,” or positive stress event, mirrors the feelings of
excitement generated by reading stimulating chapters of the topic, and the
emotional reaction of readers at a particularly harrowing experience in a book
may ind a counterpart in the game's play. 58 Only by delineating the diferent
stages so concretely—literally switching game boards to indicate a shit in the
story, in the same way that one might close one book and open another—does the
game realize such a break, matching in tone the emotional highs of the novel.
In contrast, there are fewer gameplay breaks within he Complete Trilogy ,
and it is harder to anticipate the structure of the game: is one complete turn a
stage? Is it when the Sauron player moves? Sauron's turn would seem to indicate