“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.” As an ornament, The One Ring is a dangerous piece of precious metal. It is up to the little hairy-footed Hobbit, Frodo, heir to his uncle Bilbo who encountered the ring on one of his adventures, to bring the ring to the Mt. Doom to banish the evil of Sauron from Middle-earth once and for all. You no doubt know this story from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, the Lord of the Rings, or the film adaptations of this epic shot by Peter Jackson. In The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game by Ravensburger you will reenact this epic story and on each page you will find a new adventure with its own rules.
Background and goal
The Adventure Book Games are a series of cooperative games from Ravensburger based on book adaptations. For example, an earlier installment was The Princess Bride. Now it is The Lord of the Rings’ turn, and there are few stories perfectly suited to literally any form of media. There are multiple video games, board games, film adaptations, audiobooks, coloring pages, comic books – and think of it all – based on the epic world created by J.R.R. Tolkien.
In the Adventure Book Games, you reenact the famous story. In various adventures, you follow Frodo’s traveling companion as they try to overcome multiple setbacks and roadblocks. Each page of the Adventure Book is a different prominent event from the story with new game elements, missions and game rules. Once players have overcome all adventures without the ring falling into Sauron’s hands, they collectively win the game.
Setup & gameplay
The game is easy to set up. Place the adventure on the first page and take out all the described parts. Put the parts in the right places and shuffle the story cards. Distribute story cards to each player and players are ready to play.
Each adventure has its own rules described on the page. The adventure describes how players can win or lose the adventure. Usually, they will have to complete a series of missions by collecting their characters in the right places on the game board and discarding the right cards. By completing missions, players also receive bonuses that will help them further along the way later in the story.
Basically, the game play is quite simple. Players move characters around while keeping in mind the rules of the specific adventure. In addition, they perform a number of actions that often involve playing out to move further, trading and collecting cards to then complete missions. Players can also use the One Ring cards for special effects. At the end of a turn, players should always discard cards. However, when players use or discard One Ring cards, the ring moves one step closer to Sauron and dangerous things happen and players are one step closer to evil and its associated loss. The One Ring cards are strong, but you would rather not use them, which can create interesting dilemmas. These cards do “pollute” your hand at some point.
By the way, at the end of a turn, an event also takes place depending on the adventure and the cards drawn.
Verdict
The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game is a simple but interesting cooperative game. It is completely entry-level and the game takes you by the hand through the different game concepts. Each adventure is basically a puzzle, but because of the randomness of the cards, there are interesting twists in it, so not every solution is the same.
