Here at GiN, we are not always just about video games. Like many of you, we also enjoy books, pen and paper roleplaying and all kinds of card and board games. As such, we get to play and review a lot of those kinds of games and activities too.
So, when Adams Media, which is a division of Simon and Schuster, sent us a great green brick of a card game package called League of the Lexicon to review, I was pretty intrigued.
The box is well-crafted and colorful, and it holds over 2,000 questions that have been written by experts in the fields of literature, etymology (the origin of words), definitions and general word-based trivia. You can kind of think of this new game as a kind of adult, upscale version of Trivial Pursuit, or more accurately, a trivia game for those who love literature, the history and definition of words and all things language. Being a writer, this is right up my alley.
In addition to the general structure of League of the Lexicon, which I will describe in a minute, there is also a small backstory to everything, which makes for a nice little touch and even opens things up to some very light roleplaying, just for fun, if the group playing the game is so inclined.
You see, the League of the Lexicon is comprised of six really interesting characters, all of which are represented on hand-drawn cards that each of the up to six players will take on. They range from the mysterious lady Xue Tao with her giant heron and ornamental fan to Doc Johnson who is represented wearing a nice suit and top hat with a monkey on his shoulder. Coulson looks like a pilot from the World War II era while Hester seems to be some kind of flapper, spy or both. There are even two animal characters, Webster who seems to be a literate cat, and the character that I got to enjoy playing most of the time, Roget, a badger (maybe) wearing a smart suit and holding a neat cocktail in an eclectic library. In terms of gameplay, none of the characters have any special powers or anything, but they made things a bit more fun for players while League of the Lexicon was being tested over many rounds of play.
The plot of League of the Lexicon is that each of the six members of the league are competing for a share of 45 rare historical artifacts, all of which are drawn from either history or literature (not all of them are real). They are things like Jules Verene’s jetpack and Mark Twain’s custom-made typewriter, so very valuable on their own, but probably more so for bragging rights for members of the league.
And the way that you win the artifacts is by answering questions correctly. On a player’s turn, they roll a die to determine which category (of the five) they will get their question from. They could also be given the chance to pick their category if they are lucky with their roll. All of the categories are based on words or literature, and they include Lexicon Master, Meanings and More, Usage and Abusage, Word Sauce and Wordy Wisdom. Sometimes the categories are multiple choice, like figuring out which set of sentences or phrases is grammatically correct, while other times players will need to recite a bunch of words in a list, such as naming ten words that start with honey, ten kinds of dances or some other wordy list. One thing to note is that there are no timers or really any rules for how long a player can think about their responses. This is a game for sophisticated adults (or animals) in the League of the Lexicon after all. Players will have to choose when to give up the ghost if they can’t think of, for example, honeybee or honeymoon to finish their list.
In another nod to player choice, there is also an easy deck of questions, and players can choose to draw from either the hard deck or the easy one without penalty. The easy deck is much smaller, however, with only about 10 percent of the amount of cards, but it’s nice that it was included. In our playtesting, I insisted that we move to the easy deck at one point to compare it with the difficult one, but players quickly switched back as nobody wanted to win on an “easy” question. In terms of difficulty, the so-called easy deck is still kind of challenging, just not nearly so much as the regular one.
You win League of the Lexicon when you have collected five artifacts and answered one final question (with the category for the ultimate final question being chosen by other players). Although you need to collect five artifacts, that does not mean that you only need to get five questions right. Each character’s card is unique in that there is a series of glyphs printed underneath them (although we couldn’t find out if they actually meant something or spelled anything). Artifacts you earn must have a matching symbol to count towards your score. You do have options, however, if they don’t. You can trade two non-matching artifacts in for a chance at a new artifact, or you can just collect three non-matching ones to equal one good one. Of the five times we played, the winner ended up collecting seven artifacts (four matching ones and three non-matches) most of the time.
In terms of fun, I have to say that League of the Lexicon is one of the most enjoyable card games that I have played in a very long time. Everyone who played and tested it out with me also agreed. I will say, however, that the group of players recruited for that task were all either writers, university professors or wordsmiths, so it was delightful to find a game that really spoke to them. Someone who, for example, only likes sports trivia or pop culture questions probably will feel a little bit left out. The trivia questions are all very specific, so note that before you jump in and decide to join the league.
For those who do enjoy that kind of trivia, League of the Lexicon will become a treasured artifact, just like Charlotte Bronte’s pet dodo (deceased), J.R.R. Tolkien’s pipe, Lord Byron’s dueling pistol or Oscar Wilde’s bowler hat.
Note that there are also quite a few special editions being published now that the core game has released to the public. If they are anywhere close in quality to the base game, I am sure that they’ll be a lot of fun for any group of literary-loving friends.