Ravensburger Lord of the Rings Adventure Book - Immersive Family Strategy Board Games for Kids and Adults Age 10 Years Up - 1 to 4 Players

Product Information

I wrote a lengthy game spec document highlighting what I felt were the key, pivotal, most dramatic moments of the full story, whether it was Gandalf warning Frodo of The One Ring's power at the very beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring or Frodo carrying The One Ring to Mount Doom while the final battle rages in Mordor in Return of the King. My first draft listed more than thirty events. I started combining some to see how much could fit together into one chapter's worth of gameplay. This got me down to about twelve events. To get into the right mindset, first I re-watched the entire extended edition movie trilogy — nearly twelve hours — pausing to jot down quotes, mark the time stamp for a memorable moment, or note a significant plot point I hoped to include in the game. It was fun telling the kids, "Want to help dad do some research right now? Grab the popcorn."

The use of chapter-specific tokens are nice touches, and I’m guessing this also helped keep the price reasonable. So have your second breakfast and strap on your dagger as we see how The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game holds up. Gameplay Overview: While we didn't initially know what we could do, Shanon's experience helped define what we couldn't do. She calculated the actual production costs and developed realistic combinations of possible components; if we want X number of cards, we need to cut out Y pieces of cardboard. Settling on components was one of the hardest challenges and was something constantly being tweaked along the way as we understood what each Chapter needed versus what we wanted. On a scale of one to “I Dress Like Frodo at Work Holiday Parties”, I’m probably a two on the imaginary Hardcore Lord of the Rings Fan Club scale.Initially it was easier for me to start thinking about this as a product before thinking about this as a game. I had the benefit of seeing the previous Adventure Book Games and got a sense for what sort of gameplay they deliver — but more importantly for me at the time, I got to see what came in the box. I had run numbers and budgets for punchboard, cards, dice, and plastic from my time at Fantasy Flight Games, so I looked at all the bits and pieces from the other Adventure Book Games and tried to get a sense of the material costs and limitations.

For an adventure book game, you gave a fantastic amount of components that are made to a very high quality. Inside the box, you’ll find: During the game, everything is controlled by the group. So no one takes on the role of Frodo or Gandalf, but the active player gets to move the bits and make the decisions. On a player’s turn they have a few steps: Despite some quibbles, I enjoyed the Princess Bride Adventure Book Game. I never tried the Wizard of Oz one (not a huge fan of the IP), but I was really looking forward to trying out The Lord of the Rings one. While there is no shortage (at all) of games based on this IP, it’s always nice when a game embraces its source material instead of pasting on the theme to simply appeal to fans. Every time a ring card is used or discarded, your corruption rises. The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game is designed for 1-4 players from ages 1 and up. With play sessions lasting anywhere from 20-160 minutes each. Meaning this is the perfect family board game for a Sunday afternoon, filled with adventure and mystery. In the game, Sauron’s shadow has fallen across Middle-earth, and the One Ring must be destroyed. To complete their daunting quest, players will need to work together to help cherished Lord of the Rings characters journey from The Shire to the fires of Mordor, all while avoiding the Eye of Sauron.Storytelling: The main thing to do here is move a character additional spaces (by discarding cards) or complete challenges. These usually require having specific characters in specific locations and/or discarding cards of a certain suit. Players may also trade a card with another player one time during this phase. Spell casters can only learn a very limited number of spells. Some feel this is more in tune with the flavor of Tolkien's writings than other systems. It is important to realize that this is aimed at families as well as a younger audience. I felt the most joy working through the game with my nine-year-old, the adventure book facilitating a few evenings of shared storytelling and bonding. The strategic demands are not overly complex and it will not provide the rich gameplay hobbyists tend to seek out in adult game groups, but it accomplishes everything it intends and is worthy. Not a fan of Lord of the Rings? I think this game would be a hard pass. There’s nothing about the gameplay that shines in a way that would bring players in who aren’t pre-sold on the world of Middle-Earth.

This game plays over a series of rounds and tells the story of Frodo’s perilous journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. It’s a journey that has the Fellowship friends moving across the board to Mount Doom (hopefully before being destroyed by lots of lurking nasties!). The artwork, characters, and encounters will be familiar to those who know Lord Of The Rings but you don’t need to know the series (although having an in-house Lord Of The Rings super-fan gave me lots of bonus narrative content!). Double Dice!

Like Ravensburger’s other Adventure Book Games for The Princess Bride and Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings gameplay goes chapter-by-chapter. Eight total chapters will take you from the sleepy Shire to the fires of Mordor—as long as you don’t draw the Eye of Sauron. The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game‘s official synopsis states: Jay: Throughout the project, I was constantly impressed with the mechanisms and gameplay Marcus designed. We are very good friends with very different approaches to design and prototyping — one of the reasons we worked so well together — and I learned a lot watching Marcus's chapters come together. Since I talked about my approach earlier, Marcus shares his thoughts. There’s nothing outright innovative about this as a board game design, but it’s a clever distillation of the many narrative heavy campaign games currently dominating the board game market. It captures some of the spark of huge crowdfunding titles like Gloomhaven or Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood, utilizing narrative and story to drive a linked session of games. But it accomplishes this with an approachable ruleset that nearly anyone can immediately understand. It’s important to note here that the game is set up to be played cooperatively while also sharing the pieces in play. That means that no one is playing as Aragorn or Pippin. They are just miniatures on the board that can be manipulated by any of the players. I’m calling this out here because some kids—wink wink, MINE—will want to play as Legolas or Gimli as their character.