by Bryan Bornmueller

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is a co-operative trick-taking game based on the first book of The Lord of the Rings.

Players journey through eighteen chapters covering the characters, events, and places in Middle-earth. Each chapter plays out as a series of tricks that must be won or lost to complete each character's specific goals.

Beginnings

The game started out small. Two questions swirled together in my head:

• Can you make a trick-taking game properly thematic? and
• What would a The Lord of the Rings trick-taking game look like?

Most trick-takers have a theme but often it is just a fun name and artwork with the gameplay more geared toward traditional clubs and diamonds than story and adventure. As a lifelong fan of both trick-taking games and Tolkien, I wanted to make a genuinely fun game in which players feel completely immersed in the epic masterpiece.

Waiting outside my kid's school one afternoon, I was struck with an idea: If the deck and suits formed the world, players could act as characters in Middle-earth and the gameplay would naturally follow the story structure of the book.


After building a prototype and testing it, the idea held up! The basic suits (hills, forests, mountains, shadows) lent the card play the texture of Middle-earth and the familiar characters made it easier for players to learn the character goals. The co-operative aspect of the game made thematic sense for the story of The Lord of the Rings. Each character has a goal to achieve in every hand, placing the memorable characters at the core of the game.


The Ring Sets Out

After sorting suits and characters, I designed the members of the Fellowship and we were off to Mount Doom...but something was missing. Working in the mechanism of passing cards between players before a hand allowed me to add more authentic detail to the characters. For example, it was obvious that Legolas and Gimli should interact with each other. The character selection process proved to be a fun strategic element, providing an opportunity to give hints about the strength of your hand and other clues to your fellow players.


Another benefit of the character selection and card exchange was that it provided enough information and luck mitigation that players didn't need other mechanisms to communicate. This kept the game flowing smoothly, like some of my favorite trick-takers.

However, the characters in The Lord of the Rings have anything but a smooth journey. Enter the Rings. If I included a Rings suit, then the 1 of Rings (or the One Ring) would be especially powerful. It was clear that the player who was randomly dealt the One Ring would have to play as Frodo.

With Frodo's role in the game now firmly in place, the game needed one more core rule to keep his goal challenging. Since he needs to win Rings cards and has the only trump card in the game in that same suit, I needed to slow him down a little bit so that he wouldn't finish his goal first every single time. For this, I was able to borrow a rule from classic trick-taking games (like Hearts and Spades) and not allow Rings to be lead until they are broken (played off suit). This created just the right obstacle for Frodo and also made the first appearance by a Rings card each round feel pivotal, further improving the thematic resonance of the Rings.


Many Meetings

I put together a new prototype and headed off to PAX Unplugged 2022. Two key realizations came out of the show. First, anyone not deep into trick-taking games was overwhelmed by simultaneously learning a new game and the goals of nine characters. Second, Taylor Reiner — a game designer you should know from his amazing games and foundational Youtube channel, Taylor's Trick-Taking Table — was the perfect developer for The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game.

The final steps of design and development were dedicated to achieving a delicate balance: the campaign needed to feel as though players were experiencing the full story with all the characters, but couldn't be a legacy-style campaign that simply re-enacted the book.

Buoyed by Taylor's enthusiasm and diligent testing, we refined the game to eighteen chapters and designed a couple of introductory modules to teach the game step-by-step. With the introduction and gameplay
established, we were able to build in some truly difficult challenges and surprising twists later on in the game. We also built in other modes of gameplay like rules that generate a random selection of characters ("The Road Goes Ever On" mode), rules to play a two-player game, and rules for solo play.


The Council

It's been an amazing journey to take a story that has been important to me for basically my whole life and combine it with a fascination with trick-taking card games. Even more amazing has been the support of the whole team here at Asmodee (Luke, Bree, Lupe, Jay, Randy, Preston, Kevin, Jorge, Krystal, and Mike) and all of the talented folks who made the game look so great (Elaine, Matt, Blaise, and Sam).

I am also so grateful to everyone who has played or playtested the game over the years and everyone who is excited to join me on my quest to combine Middle-earth and trick-taking for many years to come.

Bryan Bornmueller