Lord of the Rings, designed by <PERSON> 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.
<PERSON>'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 <PERSON> 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 <PERSON> 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. 937
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 items (here tokens, not cards) and use them appropriately to combat hazards (ghosts) 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. 699