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There have been a lot of good LotR games over the decades – anybody else remember playing the 1977 version of War of the Ring? – and we agreed that we needed to do something unique to what has come before or we shouldn't even attempt the effort. After a few times reminding each other about the high expectations and how we needed to take a fresh approach, I blurted out, "Nazgul. We could have the players be the Nazgul." Justin's immediate response was an enthusiastic YES! and there began the quest to try to bring this gaming experience to the public.
After knocking a few ideas around, we settled on a core idea that you were playing as Nazgul trying to stop the ring from reaching Mount Doom. The idea of having only one winner was a bit more complex. When looking at the Nazgul's behavior in the movie it was clear they had a leader (so a pecking order of some sort), felt pain and/or fear, and even trash-talked a little bit. ("Do not come between the Nazgul and his prey.") These were not just automatons, and in talking through the idea we thought there would be scheming to change your pecking order in the group, plus it just felt right that evil (especially former humans) would act this way.
What intrigued me most about marrying the concept with the idea of having a single winner was that at its heart the game is about working with others to achieve goals but at the same time you don't want the other players to do so well that they end up beating you. That is also where the trouble began, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself...
Let's continue in a somewhat chronological order. I settled early on with two phases: a bid phase in which the Nazgul would spend "favor" to obtain better resources from Sauron, and a Campaign phase in which they had to accomplish tasks, including killing heroes to gain more favor. Building out the design of the first phase went pretty well as it was easy to make small increments much more important to the players, and the players themselves would self-regulate as long as no one single bid was must win at any cost.
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Very early in the design process of what became The Lord of the Rings: Nazgul, I had been thinking a lot about the epic battles portrayed in the movie and also the little skirmishes. The evil side seemed pretty calculating in sending forces when they had a pretty good idea they could overwhelm the defenders, but there was always the chaos of the actual battle that threw a little randomness into the mix (as well as the appearance of key heroes, which I'll discuss quite a bit further below).
I wanted to capture how larger armies had a great chance of beating smaller armies (sometimes 100%) but that the chaos would scale when the two sides grew bigger and bigger. I spent many hours reviewing combat games and how they handled squad level and massive army combat.
I considered a die for each army you brought to the battle which is tough to scale for all the different combinations of battles; in addition, rolling twenty dice may be fun for the roller, but waiting for the final results is lackluster. I considered sorters that would allow certain cubes to fall through, but they didn't capture the feeling I wanted. I thought back to look-up tables for "odds of success" from my early gaming days, asked myself why this method didn't work, and realized it was the instant shared emotional reaction of seeing success or failure in an epic moment that was important to me. Also looking up a result for a set number of variables didn't allow for specific forces to express themselves as having a critical moment in a battle.
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CAUTION: If you like to explore the tradeoffs of core mechanisms in a game through play, do NOT read italicized text.
Let's pretend we're halfway through the game. The Nazgul are pretty powerful and have a lot of forces from which to choose, and there's a battle with more than one Nazgul.
Not only do you have to decide how many forces to bring to the battle but which types. For every army you bring (with armies being represented by cubes), you are decreasing the chances of pulling a Nazgul cube (the best result for you) – but if you don't bring any armies and your side pulls opposing forces, then you can't assign damage to those non-existent armies, so the Nazgul themselves are damaged, and they can gain only so much power each turn and are your best way to deal concentrated damage. While orcs are cheap and plentiful, they only deal and absorb 1 point of damage. The more orcs you bring, the more likely you are to pull them instead of concentrating your strength on the stronger forces.
More dark forces in general do lessen the chance of hero cubes being pulled – but overall you are the aggressor and time is ticking as the ring proceeds to Mount Doom and you want to maximize damage dealt while not losing too many resources in the battle. Getting this balance right took a lot of time and is one of the reasons the game includes three difficulty levels. At least one playtest group wanted to bring as many armies as they could to every battle (typically a fine idea early game, but many times a poor idea in the late game) and reported that the easy setting was really difficult while other groups were doing pretty well on the medium setting right away. Why? If you don't start concentrating your ability to deal damage with the limited pulls you get each battle, you won't make enough progress against the defenders. You must strike decisively at certain points, and these points change from game to game – and even within particular battles.
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More times than not you're going into a battle with another Nazgul and deciding which forces each person is bringing. Decisions on how many cubes each player pulls in each battle is one of the more interesting parts of the game. An additional cool twist is that when multiple Nazgul are at a battle, when a player pulls cubes of opposing forces the damage is dealt to a Nazgul of his choice. (i.e., the better able you are to deal damage and gain points for yourself while also forcing damage on to other players who are present). I was worried about analysis paralysis and while that may still be possible – given that each player decides how many cubes they are pulling and that decision impacts the next player's decision, and so on – there are so many combinations that I found that even the most analytical players would boil down decisions to a few key heuristics that worked for them in various situations.
I'd also like to point out an avenue I abandoned. Early on I felt I needed "accuracy" of leading armies and handling logistics of getting them into position. There was a lot of time spent having to plan your movements and keeping track of whose forces were where in relationship to the objectives. After some playtests, I jettisoned the whole aspect of distance/logistics on the map as it added a lot of time and fiddlyness without delivering on the relationships between the players. It was basically a mini-game that only you cared about instead of thinking about how to work together or at cross purposes for bigger objectives.
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I also added another layer of the Nazgul having control over which heroes were at a battle. Each Nazgul is dealt one Hero face up, representing the information they have gleaned of the enemy through agents and the all-seeing eye. If the campaign shown on a hero matches the campaign a player wants to try to conquer, he may decide to place that hero representing the cube at that location. (It's also useful to know which heroes are not in the deck.) This added a lot of strategy, and since all the players have an interest (and generally opinions) on how the heroes should be used it worked very well. The face-up hero also helped ensure Nazgul were incentivized to work together. (Two Nazgul working together can place two specific heroes into a combat – or even three heroes if one of them won the Saruman reward in the bid phase.)
Game icons and stats added digitally
in this pre-production image
Then I had a bit of a surprise. One of the playtest groups that was generally thinking the game was going to be a winner reported that the changes made the game worse. Luckily I had other groups saying the game was much improved, as well as firsthand experience with my own groups. When digging in, I learned that this group was prone to players who were behind tanking the game and justifying it by saying, "Hey, I'm evil, what do I care if the end of our world comes." In early discussions with other designers about the concept, they warned that this would happen. While one might set an expectation that game groups should be self-aware enough to know if this will be an issue in their group, it wasn't fun if you knew with certainty that you didn't have a shot at winning. My backup plan of making the game only full co-op was looking like a safer option (and was a much easier game to balance), but having worked so hard on it I reached out instead.
In chatting with a fellow designer I shared the problem of players tanking the game; he told me two pieces of advice that in retrospect seem obvious but at the time were eye-opening: 1) If the game is good, the audience for that game will find it, so don't kill an idea because it appeals only to a slice of who you thought was your target audience, and 2) If you can hide some of the player progress and reveal it at the end, that would alleviate some of the problems.
Given how "woven together" the game was to this point, I didn't want it to unravel with what would be some pretty major changes. I reached out to Charlie Tyson – Charlie and I had played early prototypes and had discussions over other prototype games and share general design philosophy and approaches – and he agreed to work with me. Together we implemented the final design elements:
1) Secret Quests. Each player has two secret quests that while difficult can earn them a lot of VPs at game end.
2) We increased the variance in hero VPs. Only the Nazgul who kills a hero gets the VP, and by adding a little more range in VP value, players can use these points to catch up, especially if the hero killed matches the value of a Secret Quest.
3) We made the Cards of Power much more versatile. While some had dual function early on, having more that can help or hurt other players allows players who are behind to work together to catch up. What's more, the leader can help specific players to ensure the overall goal is still obtained. (If one player has a particular nasty battle, others can and should want to help as all Nazgul being a force to be reckoned with is still critical to the overall goal.)
4) Refinement of the difficulty levels. You want lots of backstabbing in the open and less cooperation overall? Play the easy level (which might still be hard based on player dynamics). You want only a little selfishness during the game and maybe a final twist at the end? Go hard level.
I have played the game with many different groups in its final form, and I think one of its strengths (and perhaps weaknesses) is that the specific players at the table make a huge difference to everyone's play experience. A group that likes subtle moves, then dramatic twists at the end will have a completely different experience than a group that has a "get it done" approach of stopping the ring but not really getting in each other's way. I always find it interesting how the other players react when someone makes a particularly diabolic move; there were a lot more laughs than I expected, perhaps because of the expectation going in that it's just a matter of time before the evilness comes out. We did end up putting in a full co-op variant as it makes the game much easier to learn the first time through and some people just won't enjoy the backstabbing. I'm pleased to report that the full co-op game does offer numerous challenges and tense moments.
Lastly, I want to thank everyone named and unnamed and want to particularly call out the efforts of the many playtesters. There is no question in my mind the game is much better for everyone's involvement.
Thank you, and I hope you like the result!
Bryan Kinsella
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