My supervisor gave me Trivial Pursuit: Lord of the Rings Edition this last Christmas. All the questions are specific to the movies, so knowledge of the books may help get you to the right answer, but if there is a discrepancy between the two, it will always go with the movies. It came out just after Two Towers Extended so there are answers in there that you wouldn’t know unless you’d seen it. This goes for the Fellowship Extended as well.
The game plays just the same as the original Trivial Pursuit but with a couple twists. First, when you answer a question correctly on a pie square (even if you already have that color pie) you get The One Ring. The game comes with a little ring with the engraving visible. It’s not great quality, but it’s pretty cool. Once the first person gets The Ring, the Ringwraith is activated. He starts in the middle of the board and after someone gets a question wrong, you roll for him to move towards the Ring Bearer. Once the Ringwraith hits the outer ring of the board he may not go back onto the spokes. If he lands on one who does not have The Ring, that player loses a piece of pie. If he lands on the Ring Bearer nothing happens.
Second, if you have The One Ring you may opt for a second question if you don’t like the one you are asked. If you get the second one wrong, you lose a piece of pie.
The original didn’t have the opportunity to lose pie at all. This game has two ways to do so. It makes for interesting games, especially for the Ring Bearer, as they can make the Ringwraith chase down the other players so they lose pie. More strategy, more fun… I mean there’s a friggin Ringwraith chasing you down, for Pete’s sake!!
The six categories are Places, Good Guys, Bad Guys, War/Battle, History, and Behind the Scenes. That last one will fuck with you if you haven’t watched the extra discs. Watching the movies with commentary wouldn’t hurt, either. I used to play Trivial Pursuit with some old high school buddies, and there was a standing joke that the Sports and Leisure answers were almost always Mike Ditka. The bad guys questions have a similar answer. Grima Wormtongue.
I am always Frodo. The other tokens are Galadriel, Gandalf, and Aragorn. I have played most everyone I know, and only one person has beaten me. Milca, who, might I add, makes fun of the way that I pronounce Galadriel, amongst other Elven words. We play often. It’s pretty close most times, usually the loser has four or five pieces of pie. I’ve been known to get two pieces on my first turn once in a while. I believe my record is four. I’ve watched the first two countless times. Milca has seen Fellowshipa few times, and Two Towers more times than me, likely, and that’s saying something. Her skills are scary, really, considering we only have Two Towers in the house. I want ot buy Fellowship, but I’m holding out for the super duper boxed set that has all 3 movies in Extended versions so that I can just have the one box looking all pretty on my shelf. I used to have Fellowhip in the house, but the owner and I no longer live together, so he took it with him, and rightly so.
The title is currently mine, but I just got it back last night. We’ll see how long I can hold on to it.