What the game is
The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth is a cooperative board game for one to five players, built around a group of heroes travelling through Tolkien's Middle-earth. The party explores forests, clearings and other locations, fights enemies, finds treasures and uncovers forgotten lore. Between adventures you shape your heroes by customizing skills to match the role each one fills in the Fellowship. Darkness, evil and corruption spread across the land, and the whole group works together against that threat rather than competing against each other.
How the group plays it together
Everyone sits around the same table with the physical board game, and one player runs the free Journeys in Middle-earth app on a compatible device. The app acts as the game's guide: it dictates how each encounter is set up, places tiles and tokens, decides how enemies behave, and resolves combat. It also keeps track of the party's inventory and skills, so nobody has to write things down by hand. Since the app handles the bookkeeping and the enemy side, the players can focus on talking through moves, splitting up the group's strengths and deciding together how to handle each challenge.
Before you start
You need the physical board game plus a compatible device with the app installed, and one person willing to drive the app for the session. The campaign can be saved, so a group can spread the journey across several gaming sessions instead of finishing it in one night. Remote Play Together is available, which lets friends join in remotely. Expect a game where planning matters as much as rolling: skills, equipment and positioning all feed into how an encounter plays out, and the app decides the content you meet along the way.