The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game is a cooperative card game that plays out over eighteen chapters, taking players through the events of the novel The Fellowship of the Ring. The chapters can be played in any order, but ideally they are played in sequence.

In each chapter, each player takes a different character role — Frodo, Gandalf, Sam, Pippin, Farmer Maggot and so on — and each character has a condition that must be met in order to complete the chapter and move on in the story. Frodo, for example, has to capture ring cards, while Pippin wants to take as few tricks as possible. As you progress through the chapters, new characters, items and challenges are introduced to the game.

The deck consists of 37 cards, with one card set aside as "lost" in each hand. Whoever is dealt the One Ring becomes Frodo, after which the other players choose among the available characters based on their hand. The One Ring is the only trump card in the game, but at the start rings cannot be led until someone has played one on a different suit.

In the two-player game, one hand of cards is dealt to a dummy player, with some cards face up and others face down. This dummy player is assigned a character, and one of the players plays cards for it based on which cards are free.

In the solo game, one player plays four hands of face-up cards, with each hand assigned a character and only a few cards available at a time. After playing a trick, you deal a new card to each hand.