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Scripted Game System
Considering the challenge of distilling an epic story into a game, I started to develop a general approach that I call the "scripted game system." Essentially, this is a method of distilling the key parts of a story and presenting them in game form. It enables episodes to be linked together in a storyline that compresses some parts, but expands the key adventures that the players will play in detail. Applying this approach to the Lord of the Rings Board Game, I imagined a "summary board," showing the overall progress of the players' journey, and a corruption line to visualize the growing power of Sauron. Below would be a number of more detailed and beautifully illustrated "adventure boards" on which the key episodes would be played in sequential order. These boards would reflect the flavor of particular episodes through thematic events and play would take place on activity tracks representing fighting, movement, hiding, or friendship. Each scenario board would have a primary track that provided the main route through the scenario and measured the players' overall progress. Shields, representing victory points, would generally be acquired on the primary track.
In order to avoid players merely concentrating on the main track and moving swiftly through the scenario, valuable life tokens, resources, and allies would appear on the minor tracks. A scenario could be finished in two ways, either by completing the primary track, or because the events had run their course and had overtaken the players -usually with serious consequences. To create more predicaments, players would be required to complete the scenarios with three life tokens (one of each kind), or they were pushed along the corruption line on the summary board toward Sauron. The corruption line was designed as the primary pressure being applied to the players. Their hobbit figures would start at the "light end," with Sauron beginning at the "dark end." As the game progressed, events would draw the hobbits toward the dark, while Sauron moved toward them. If Sauron met a hobbit, that player would be eliminated from the game and all his resources would be lost. Even worse, if the hobbit who possessed the One Ring was caught by Sauron, the game would end in defeat for all players. Although players could sacrifice time and resources to move back toward the light, Sauron would never retreat. So over the course of the game the players would gradually slip toward the dark, creating a sense of claustrophobia and impending doom- just as in the book. Tolkien's hobbits were rarely in control of their situation. To reflect, this I introduced a general tile deck with a series of events that affected the players directly, creating a significant time pressure in the individual adventure scenarios. The event deck would simply trigger the next event, but the events themselves would be different in each scenario, reflecting the specific flavor of the episode. Although the players would know which events could happen in each scenario, they would not know how soon they would occur. The interplay of all of these game systems would create many threats, operating differently each time the game was played, and creating opportunities for discussion and planning. Many tactical choices would present themselves and hopefully lead to a rich interaction between the players. The players, bringing different personalities and playing styles to the table, would have to pull together and truly collaborate. This would create a similar feel to the book-the game would not just re-tell Tolkien's plot, but more importantly it would make the players feel the emotional circumstances of the story.
