War of the Ring designers adapting magical book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell into a board game

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s spellbinding novel about British magic that was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and turned into a BBC TV series, is becoming a board game.

Behind Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Board Game of English Magic are Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello – two designers who are of course familiar with taking acclaimed works of fiction and bringing them to the tabletop as engrossing games, as two of the co-creators behind the Lord of the Rings epic War of the Ring and the Hobbit-based Battle of the Five Armies.

Joining the designers is another big name from the world of games: Ian O’Toole, the Vinhos and Lisboa illustrator who will lend his artwork to the alternate 19th-century, Napoleonic War-era world of Clarke’s book depicted in the game - the first images of the game show confirm that both the fictional John Childermass and real-life Jane Austen will pop up.

The game casts players as aspiring magicians trying to ascend to greatness, gathering the necessary magical texts, engaging with their fellow magicians and juggling studying and their social presence to become a world-renowned master of magic.

Opposing them will be the mysterious gentleman with the thistle-down hair, the dangerous magic-user from the novel.

Putting out the game will be Wildlands and The Lost Expedition publisher Osprey Games, with a release date currently set for June 2019.