Sure, why not. Tarot decks have been used to play games for centuries. In fact, it's believed that the modern deck of playing cards is descended from the tarot. So designing a tarot deck with a particular game in mind is a natural enough idea. And if the deck is themed around J.R.R. Tolkein's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, there's a built-in audience. Hence, The Lord of the Rings Tarot Card Game.
Let me say up front that I'm not a tarot enthusiast. I know the basics— that the cards are divided into major and minor arcana, somewhat equivalent to face cards and non-face cards; the suits are cups, swords, coins, and wands; and there are 78 cards in the deck. Nor am I a fan of The Lord of the Rings. I've read and enjoyed The Hobbit, but never got more than about 50 pages into Fellowship of the Ring before succumbing to boredom. So my interest in this product is entirely as a gamer. That said, I would be remiss if I didn't make some cursory observations about the deck itself.
As a tarot deck, it certainly seems functional. All the traditional information is there, with artwork of a style consistent with other decks I've seen. Each card has flavor text linking it with The Lord of the Rings, describing the scene depicted on the card. The connections are often loose, the images abstract or surreal. Tolkein fans may be disappointed by these broad interpretations, or they may delight in them. Either way, I doubt they'd seem out of place when used for a reading.
With that out of the way, let's talk about the game. The short story is that it's a variation of crazy eights. The basic goal of each hand is to go out by getting rid of your cards, and the game consists of three hands. But even if you don't go out, there are other ways to score points. And it's points which win the game. You can play any card whose suit or rank matches the top card of the discard pile. You can also play any of the major arcana as wild cards, declaring a new suit. Even more importantly, the arcana can be used to nab the One Ring.
The Ring starts unowned, and anyone can play a major arcana to take it. Each major arcana has a roman numeral at the top, ranking them from 1 to 22. To swipe the Ring from another player, you must play a higher arcana than the one he used to do the same thing. The Fool (Gollum) has a rank of 0, but can be used to take the ring no matter what was last used to do so. Of course, any other major arcana can easily take it back. You must immediately draw another card whenever you steal the Ring, so going after the Ring doesn't help you go out.
Whoever owns the Ring when someone goes out gets five points. In addition, the Ringbearer has a special power he can use once per turn. The power of the Ring lets him add or remove a Dark point from any player.
Besides the traditional information found on tarot cards, each card has a symbol in the upper-left corner indicating whether that card is aligned with the forces of darkness, the forces of light, or neither. Whenever someone plays a card aligned with darkness, they get two Dark points. If it was played to steal the Ring, the player gets three Dark points. Any Dark card left in a player's hand when someone else goes out adds a Dark point to their total. When a neutral card is played, it can be declared as either light or dark.
When someone goes out, the player who earned the most Dark points in that round gets five points, as does the player who remained truest to the forces of Good by earning the least Dark points. The bonus is doubled for the champion of the side which matches the alignment of the card which took the Ring.
Dark point bonuses are cleared from hand to hand, but are written down for a final bonus at the end of the game. The players with the most total Dark points and the least total Dark points get an additional five points before the final tally.
The struggle for the Ring and the accumulation of Dark points are the two elements which differentiate this game from plain Crazy Eights. The Dark point bonus is particularly influencial. You must draw if you can't play a card, but you're allowed to draw even if you can play. In fact, you can even draw one after you've played one. Why would you do that? If you're seeking the Dark point bonus, you can go fishing for Dark cards. Or you can hope to find a minor arcana strong enough to take the Ring. There's a danger there, though— if you've got more than seven cards in your hand when someone goes out, you score nothing.
It's quite possible to get the Dark bonus in one hand, but get the Light bonus in the other two and wind up with the Light bonus at the end of the game— especially if you grab and hold the Ring long enough to play a little havoc with other players' Dark totals. It's easy to think that because of a high Dark count in the first hand, you're committed to the Dark side for the game. This doesn't have to be the case, and shrewd players will adapt their strategies based on opponents' actions.
There are two major flaws in The Lord of the Rings Tarot game. The first is in the design of the cards themselves. The name of the card ("Judgement", "Eight of Coins", etc) runs down the left side of the card. There are no corner symbols as in a regular deck. So to see what you have, you've got to hold your cards so the left edge is visible. But the light/ dark symbol is in the upper right corner, and the rank of the minor arcana is centered at the top— neither of which is visible if you hold the cards as described above. So although the cards look fine for a tarot deck, they're poorly designed for a game. When I spoke with the designers, they were looking into ways to redesign the cards for future printings.
The second problem, the scoring system, is more easily rectified. As it stands, it is far too easy to end up with a tie. There just aren't enough points spread around, and all of them are in units of 5 (so why not just drop them down to 1?). The designers already intend to double the bonus for going out, but we played with this fix and it doesn't go far enough. There needs to be greater variability in the scoring, perhaps by making the value of the Dark and Light bonuses depend on the distribution of Dark points among the players, or giving players penalties for cards left in their hands.
Even overlooking these problems, The Lord of the Rings Tarot Card Game will never set the world ablaze. It's a pleasant way to pass time (I seem to be saying that a lot lately), and better than crazy cights. Tolkein enthusiasts and card game completists may snap it up, but it's not compelling for the larger gaming community.