The Design and Testing of the Board Game- Lord of the Rings
The design of the Lord of the Rings Board Game was a great opportunity but also an extraordinary challenge. Tolkien's powerful epic of more than a thousand pages is loved by millions. This game would reach a large audience, but they would have high and very specific expectations. My brief from the publisher was to design a sophisticated family game of about one hour playing time. Even though I couldn't cover the entire story line, my aim was to stay within the spirit of the book so that the players would experience something similar to the readers of the book. These design goals would have many consequences for the game design.