by Jefforama
Lord of the Rings, designed by Reiner Knizia and released in 2000, was among the first popular collaborative games in which players work together to defeat the game. Ten years ago, this was an unusual idea. The instructions go to great length to get this now-obvious concept across--players don't play against each other, they work together.
Ten years later, collaborative and semi-collaborative games are flourishing. Games like Pandemic, Ghost Stories, Arkham Horror, Shadows Over Camelot, and Space Alert ask players to work together and are well received by gamers.
Tolkien's epic provides a natural theme for a collaborative game. Each player plays one hobbit as the group works its way through Middle Earth and four key scenes from the books (Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Mordor,) in their attempt to reach Mordor and destroy the ring. The board art is remarkable. Coupled with the pace of the game and the hazards faced b the hobbits, players really start to get a sense that they are on the central quest of the Lord of the Rings epic. Naturally, the goal is to destroy the ring before Sauron overtakes the hobbits.
The basic mechanic of the game is one of drawing cards and playing them at appropriate times. For each scenario, players must complete a single task by playing a number of cards of a certain type. However, along the way, they must also collect heart, ring, and sun tokens, without which they will lose ground to Sauron at the end of each scenario. Additionally, before each player may take an action on their turn, they must turn over event tiles. Some of these move the hobbits along in positive ways, others cause hazardous events to occur. Each hazardous event that occurs is worse than the previous. This adds an element of urgency to the game. Players must complete the task required by the scenario, collect the resources they need, then move on to the next scenario as quickly as possible.
Lord of the Rings Compared to Pandemic:
Mechanically, LotR and Pandemic share some elements. Both involve collecting cards, at times trading cards so that the right player has the right cards, and playing cards to stop something bad before disaster strikes. Much of what you actually do during each game is look at your cards and potential actions and plan how to use those limited resources to fend off problems. Both games also establish urgency through a card-turning mechanism that could result in a hazard of some type. Both games also include a special card that allows players to look ahead to see how close a disaster is to striking.
Though the card play element is somewhat similar between the two games, they ultimately feel quite different. First, the themes are very different, though I find both appealing. Unlike LotR, Pandemic follows no established story. Instead, it begins simply with a setup in which players are attempting to stop disease from spreading across the world. To the extent that an individual game of Pandemic has a plot, it is driven by the luck of which cards are draw. These cards determine where disease takes root, and what tools you have to combat it. The luck of the draw in where disease is in the beginning of the game can make a large difference in how the game plays out.
In LotR, on the other hand, the setup and the plot of each game is basically the same. This is a tradeoff between the two games. In order to stick to the theme and follow the books, Knizia had to form the game to follow the same basic path each time. Though this may hurt replayability, it does make the game quite immersive.
Pandemic also introduces a spatial element not present in Lord of the Rings. Players must use actions to move about the board. At some points, it is useful for players to be close to each other on the map, for example to transfer cards. At other points, it is necessary to split up in order to allow players to combat disease in different areas of the world.
Both games allow a range of difficulty levels. While the easiest level of LotR is a bit harder than the easiest level of Pandemic, LotR has a steeper learning curve because each game presents the same hazards in the same order.
Lord of the Rings Compared to Ghost Stories:
I have not played as many games of Ghost Stories as I have of either LotR or Pandemic, so the comparisons here will be somewhat more cursory.
Ghost stories has some elements in common with both LotR and Pandemic. It shares the need to collect cards and use them appropriately to combat hazards that appear through the drawing of cards. All three games also allow each player to play as one role or character that has some special ability.
Generally, Ghost Stories is more like Pandemic than it is like LotR. It has no uniform story, and the action is determined by the hazards that come up. The spatial element is simpler than that in Pandemic. In Ghost Stories, players must simply move about a 3 x 3 grid. However, the actions available are more complex. In both LotR and Pandemic, players choose from a very limited set of actions. In LotR on your turn you can move your player away from Sauron, draw two cards, or play two cards. In Pandemic, with four actions, each player may treat disease, cure disease, give cards to another player, build a research station, or move about the board. In Ghost Stories, however, each of the squares comprising the village game board allows a player on that square to take a specific special action. There are also more of these powers than are used in a single game, so each game will have a slightly different set of village tiles that offer a slightly different set of possible actions.
Finally, Ghost Stories incorporates dice rolling as a combat mechanism (for fighting ghosts, of course). This introduces a relatively minor luck element that is different from the luck involved in the other games. All three involve luck in when players must confront a specific hazard, but once a hazard is confronted, Ghost Stories incorporates more luck into whether the players actually defeat that hazard.
Is Lord of the Rings worthwhile if you already own Pandemic and/or Ghost Stories?
Yes. If you are at all attracted to the Lord of the Rings theme, then yes. In terms of pure strategy, Pandemic and Ghost Stories represent progress in the collaborative genre over the past decade. But neither of those games capture (nor do they really aim to capture) the sense of an epic journey present in LotR. Of all the collaborative games I've played, LotR is the only one that lends itself to talking trash to the enemy:
YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN SAURON!
'You're goin' down syphilis' just doesn't have the same power to it, and in Ghost Stories you don't know which manifestation of the end-guy you'll face until you turn over that card.
I've considered LotR in light of Pandemic and Ghost Stories. How does it compare to other collaborative games that I have not discussed? Are there other very plot-based collaborative games?
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