In most games set in Middle-earth™, you choose a side. In The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict™, things are a little more complicated.
In this game, you’ll command both The Free Peoples and the forces of Shadow at the same time, balancing armies, hunting The Fellowship, recruiting legendary characters, and making decisions that could either save Middle-earth, or doom it. It’s a design that creates constant tension, where every roll of the dice presents new opportunities and dilemmas!
We sat down with designers Stephen Buonocore and Geoff Engelstein to learn more about how it all came together. In this interview, they dive deep into the origins of Circle of Conflict, the challenges of adapting Tolkien’s world into a strategic dice game, and the design decisions behind a system that asks players to think both like heroes and villains at the same time.
To start us off, can you tell us a little about your background in board game design, and how you first became involved with this project? Who came to who first, or was it a mutual “aha” moment?
Geoff: I have a long history in game design, going back to the 1980’s when I published two video games for the Apple computer. But my first love is board games, and I always continued to play them. Ultimately, I became a contributor to The Dice Tower podcast with my GameTek segment about math, science, and game design, and then the Ludology podcast. That inevitably made me want to design my own board games, which I was fortunate enough to do with my children. Many of our early titles, including Space Cadets and The Dragon & Flagon, were published with Stephen’s company, Stronghold Games. I now have over 20 games with a variety of publishers.
Stephen: Unlike Geoff, I am a complete *hack* in board game design. While Geoff literally wrote the book (multiple books) on board game design, I am firstly a board game player. Well, as founder, former owner, and President at Stronghold Games, I of course was responsible for some game development on the 100+ games that I published, but previous to this, I had never designed a complete board game from scratch. Interestingly, I am on record as saying “I am not smart enough to design board games. I publish well-designed board games, which I am smart enough to recognize”. Well, maybe I became smart enough over time…
Geoff: I originated the idea that evolved into Circle of Conflict. My gaming roots go back to wargames from companies like Avalon Hill and SPI, and those are almost all two player affairs. I was intrigued by the problem of turning a two-player game into one that could be enjoyed more, without resorting to team play or a cooperative experience.
I hit on the idea of having players play simultaneous games against their neighbors and then looked for a theme that would fit the experience I had in mind, and pretty quickly decided that Middle-earth would be a fantastic fit. It would allow for both the hidden information and epic scale I wanted to evoke.
But if I was going to design a game about Middle-earth, I would absolutely need a design partner that was deeply knowledgeable about that world, and also about game design. So, I reached out to Stephen and was delighted when he agreed to collaborate. I could not have done it without him.
Stephen: The original design concept was all Geoff for sure. The core construct, which Geoff describes above was solid, meaningful, and could stand as the basis for point-to-point movement of The Fellowship (and the hunting of The Fellowship by the Nazgûl) across Middle-earth, but there was a lot of work to be done after that. We needed to bring the richness of the Tolkien lore into this game, marry that to new mechanics for the political and battle structure of the game, and hopefully this is where I could contribute significantly.
You worked together as co-designers on this project. How did your collaboration work in practice, and how did your individual design styles complement each other?
Geoff: While Stephen assumed the role of “Loremaster” (as he insisted on being called), and I took the lead on implementing the prototype components, we worked hand in hand on the design of the game mechanics. Fortunately, we had a clear and shared vision of what we wanted the player experience to be, and the features of the story we wanted to represent. So, with that as our North Star we were able to riff on different ideas and build on each other’s work.
Stephen: As “Loremaster”, I envisioned telling the story of the War of the Ring, which includes both the journey of The Fellowship, as well as the battles being waged across Middle-earth. To me, one of the most amazing and thematic games ever designed is War of the Ring™, published by Ares Games. My personal initial design goal was to take that game, strip out the “dudes on a map” and the card-driven aspects, abstract it, and create a thematic roll-and-write version of this theme. Geoff agreed with this as a starting point, and we went from there.
Designing a board game set in Middle-earth comes with both incredible opportunities and high expectations. What aspects of Tolkien’s world most inspired your approach to the design?
Geoff: Tolkien’s stories – The Lord of the Rings™ in particular – are so epic in scope, and yet also deeply personal on a character level. We really wanted to make sure that we captured all of it and give the players the experience of narrowly escaping the Nazgûl, feeling dread as massive armies march towards your strongholds, and rallying powerful characters to your cause.
Stephen: Yes, Geoff states that perfectly. And I think that we captured that to the extent that we could in this game. Players are confronted with choices to motivate Nations to war, to raise their respective armies, to move The Fellowship on dangerous paths, or to send Nazgûl to hunt for The Fellowship… and you need to do it for both sides: The Free Peoples and The Shadow. This last part really sets this game apart from any other Middle-earth game. You are playing *both* The Free Peoples (against the opponent on your left) and The Shadow (against the opponent on your right), and you must balance the use of very limited resources between these plays, which come from the dice rolled.
When translating Middle-earth into a board game, how did you think about turning story and theme into mechanics? Were there particular ideas, past games, or systems that helped you bring the setting to life at the table?
Geoff: Whenever I start a new design, I like to pick one or two words describing how I want the players to feel. The two that guided this design were “desperation” and “hope”, which are core themes of the story. We wanted the players to feel that their backs were against the wall and that they would be hard-pressed to stop the enemy plans, while at the same time offering a path to victory no matter how narrow. Keeping information hidden feeds into both of these. You worry about what your opponent is up to, and then get unpleasantly surprised when, for example, they activate a Nation faster than you were expecting and quickly build up an army, but also get to craft plans in secret and spring them on your unsuspecting neighbor.
Stephen: And we quickly settled on making this a dice game, a very strategic roll-and-write. It would be very much unlike most of the short and simple roll-and-writes out there, but rather quite a thinky game, where you’d need to derive a strategy based on some of the early events that occur, and pivot later if your plans begin to go awry.
As with many board games, the design likely changed quite a bit during development. What were some of the biggest evolutions the game went through from early prototype to final version?
Geoff: By far, the biggest changes were around the battle systems. Originally there were actual army units that you moved around the map. This proved to be too complex, and were replaced with abstracted area systems, and other clever but ultimately unsatisfying mechanics. Eventually we distilled it down to simply adding strength into two specific battles, and that kept the tension and alternate strategies we wanted in a very simple package.
Stephen: We struggled with this quite a bit in early and middle design. As I mentioned, while my initial thought was to do this like the board game the War of the Ring, putting that much detail into the game made it a multi-hour marathon. We really wanted this game to come in at around 60-90 minute timeframe, so Geoff’s creation of the side boards, where the mustered armies could be deployed to only 2 battlefields, not the original 3, was a great solution. This also had the added benefit of keeping all public information in a place for neighboring players to see.
Playtesting is often where a board game really takes shape. Was there a playtest moment where you realized the game had truly “clicked”?
Geoff: Truly right from the start we realized we had something special. The Fellowship movement and hunting systems have been basically unchanged from the start, and those alone set the stage for a tense cat-and-mouse experience.
Stephen: Agreed. But also here is where Office Dog was a big “value add” to us. The game developer, Goody, worked very hard to punch holes in the design, and after we made some minor tweaks based on his feedback, he said “I think you have something really cool here!” That was my “Wow!” moment for the game. He likes it. He really likes it!
When players sit down and finish their first playthrough, what kind of experience or feeling do you hope they walk away with?
Geoff: In addition to desperation and hope, we want the players to start to see the other strategies and tactics that are available and be excited to try again. New players gravitate towards certain strategies, and while those are certainly viable and fun to use, it’s great when we see our players have those “aha!” moments during their first game when they realize how the characters in the game can synergize with each other and supercharge particular strategies.
Stephen: I would like to – one time – sit down, finish a game, and have beaten Geoff. I believe I am 0 wins, 20 losses at this game against him! Oh, I feel desperation alright! But I hope to be able to beat him… someday! And to more directly answer your question, it has been very satisfying to see players recently finishing a game, recounting the game in their minds (since the paths taken, characters utilized, and resources brought to bear are still shown on the player boards), and considering what they will do in their second play. That is very cool for me!
Finally, now that this adventure in Middle-earth is complete, can you tell us a little about what you’re working on next?
Geoff: I always have four or five new game designs I’m working on at any given moment, and now is no exception. Nothing specific to share at the moment though. However, I am also working with a team on a free, open-source virtual tabletop system that is specifically geared towards designers, making it easy to make changes to designs on the fly. It’s called Lizzie Studio, named after Lizzie Magee, designer of The Landlord Game, which became Monopoly. It is our hope that this will become a tool embraced by the community, and that people will continue to add new features and grow the platform. If people are interested in checking it out an early version, they can go to https://github.com/LizzieStudio/Lizzie.
Stephen: I am working on enjoying my retirement! I’ve told Geoff (not that he wants to work with me again) to go off and design alone! I need to plan my next vacation. However… gamers can find me doing my long-running audio and video podcast about the board game industry, Board Games Insider, wherever they like to get their audio podcasts, or watch Board Games Insider on Youtube on “The Podfather of Gaming” channel. I’m also the Chairman of the Board for “Play To Z”, a small game publisher that was started by about 15 people (including Geoff) that were already from inside the industry. The company is run by Zev Shlasinger, an icon of the hobby game industry. You can find out more at www.PlayToZgames.com. Oh, and Play To Z will have a Middle-earth game coming out in the future, so… stay tuned for that!
