Episode 11

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Published on:

27th Feb 2025

Adapting The Lord of the Rings as Trick-Taking -- Bryan Bornmueller

Game designer Bryan Bornmueller joins me to discuss his new game The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick Taking Game. This game pushes narratology and ludology together in a way I had never seen before: an adaptation of a story in which trick-taking (the abstract mechanic from bridge, spades, and hearts) captures the soul of a literary work. Bryan and I discuss how he took these two incredibly popular yet disparate things and combined them into one narrative game.

As of publishing, I believe this game is in print. You can find it here: https://store.asmodee.com/products/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-trick-taking-game

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About the Podcast

Plumbing Game Studies
A Games and Philosophy Podcast
Philosophy is like plumbing for ideas - it makes connections and keeps everything flowing. In this podcast, Graham and his guests are doing some philosophical plumbing for game studies. We'll be asking questions like:

Why are philosophers always talking about games? Is philosophy itself a game? How can we use games to understand philosophy - and how can we use philosophy to understand games?

This podcast will use philosophy to study games and games to study philosophy. Anyone interested in philosophy, games, and how they interact should enjoy it!

Remember: the unexamined game is not worth playing

About your host

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Graham Culbertson

Graham Culbertson is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Games Studies Initiative of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC, Chapel Hill.

You may know him from such podcasts as Everyday Anarchism and Left on the Table.

You can reach him at graham.culbertson@unc.edu.