I'm playing the OL currently in two different Shadow Rune campaigns (two different groups who don't know each other). All of my hero players are first time players (no experience prior to the campaign). My question is as follows. There are people interested in trying out several characters/classes, however the campaign format only gives room for one single combination for the next 20-ish hours. I was wondering how you guys could get the time and motivation to test a good chunk of these combinations?

Same goes for the OL btw. I'd like to try a different plot deck, etc. Does it mean we need to play this game in this exact setting for the next 20 hours?

I was thinking maybe once these campaigns are completed - and assuming people don't lose interest on the way - then all I have is the Labyrinth of Ruin campaign where players can decide to re-spec, but I mean that's it. I guess single quests is the way to go otherwise? There seems to be a limited amount of choices of good one-off quests you can run.

I somehow feel like there might be a problem with this game at least for players like me and my fellows, because even though it's definitely replayable, has tons of choices when you start, on the other hand you are really stuck with that choice all campaign long. Now guys running a full campaign with rumor quests does take several months for us. There are some very good other games out there as well that my playgroups want to try out at some point, but right now people are hooked up, so the question is for how long. Replayability is there, but do you really think re-shuffling up is worth the time and effort? How many Fat Goblins do you need to play until you feel you've done it back and forth?

I was considering making heroes choose 2 heroes each with two different classes with no overlap. Then they would bring one hero of their choice to the next quest (same hero for both encounter obviously). Heroes still share items and gold, and progression is mutual so every hero is at same level. I would probably pick two plot decks as the OL to grant me more choice as well.

With my group, I just play single scenarios. So, when we want to test new stuff out, we pick any scenario, give equal amounts of experience to the OL and the heroes, and then pick out any heroes and plot decks we want to try. It's a pretty good system for getting the basic feel of new additions to the game and it takes much less time than a campaign, of course. If you're really set on playing a campaign with interchangeable heroes and plot decks, then I would go with your 8 hero/ 2 plot deck system (I think it's a good idea).

Thanks for the reply.

Since we've just started (first quest of Act I done in both groups) I was thinking about implementing this, like seriously, because that would be a great way to diversify our campaigns and to keep our players interested given the time investment anyway. It's probably much better than the multi-classing idea I had in another thread since this could potentially break the balance of the game which would be sad. One-off quests is not our cup of tea, because it feels like there is no story behind them. We rather play Talisman if we want a build up hero game for one single session.

So yeah, I'll give my players another choice of Hero with the only limitation that the class is not taken by any of the 7 other heroes. Since we've done a few quests already, I'll grant them the missing XP so they can get in line with the rest of the heroes. As said earlier, hero players will pick one hero for each quest between the two they have available. I will grant 1XP to every hero (whether it has been used or not in the quest, so that's effectively 8XP) and double gold earnt during the quests. If I don't do that they will have to make choices as for which hero they want to upgrade in terms of gear, whereas with double gold there is plenty of room to keep both heroes up-to-date. Obviously this will not get rid of the issue of one player deciding to spend every gold on one hero but I guess I just have to pick on the weaker ones then. Not going to put additional restrictions, I'll just do that and have a feel about it. That's a heck of a deal for the heroes, my players will be happy.

As for me, I will indeed select a second plot deck, and get double threat tokens. This way I will be able to spec in both plot decks. Only one plot deck allowed per quest, though. I think this is a great way to go around this agent <>lieutenant limitation. The question is if I need another boost as well, since the heroes have this great capability of selecting heroes for the job. I can't really touch the monsters (like giving myself another open group) because I'm afraid of pushing the initiative in the wrong direction, but maybe I could also have access to more OL cards. Double XP sounds like it could be too much but that's what I would almost need in order to remain competitive. Actually scratch that, I will just get the normal XP but keep two XP pools separate and build two different OL decks this way. Keeping track of two XP accounts and just spending these XPs on cards tied to these "accounts". Then pick one deck. That's great as it means I too can pick my "tools" for the job. Basic I as the first deck base, Basic II for the second one. No overlap. Some quests grant me OL cards, I'll just assume they can be available for both decks.

I wouldn't double the gold. As you mentioned, it'd allow for an imbalance of heroes spending money, which may lead them towards favoring one of the classes over the other, and chances are that down the road, your players are likely to end up sticking with whichever of their two heroes they like better.

Unfortunately I don't have a perfect option for separating things at the moment. You could do separate hero party gold pools, but that would require that everything stays separate and the players choose Party A versus Party B instead of each player choosing which hero they want independently.

Perhaps you allow for full value when selling items back to the shop to accommodate for the changing of equipment.

You may also want to increase the number of shop item cards drawn (but not by too much or the heroes will basically get free choice from the deck, which isn't intended).

I think you might need a little buff more then the two plot decks.

I think, you should ahve 2 xp per quest, and 2 overlord decks. Each overlord deck gets the same amount of xp, so you can sqap between the 2 deck, just like with the plot cards.

I really like this idea of how to make more vasatility thorugh a campaign. Please report back with how it goes.

I just let my players play first blood a few times with epic rules and what combinations they like, easy and quick enough that they get a quick feel for what they want stuff to do.

Our group has ditched a few games to the scrap heap when a player no longer wanted to be overlord, the inexperiences heroes picked a dud group, or we just generally got board. After a few goes like this its a lot easier to choose hero/overlord trees and no one generally feels like restarting the campaign.

About doubling gold. I think we'll have to, otherwise it will amplify the risk for players picking their "best" hero and leaving the other one rotting aside with no gear at all. Because they cannot afford to gear up 8 heroes. But I like the idea to simply cut the budget (well, x2 the budget strictkly speaking) in half, one for the first pick heroes and one for the second choice heroes. Then sure, theoritically they could put all gold from the first pool to gear up one hero, and do the same with the second pool and play these two superheroes together with some random fillers. I don't think that's very likely though, since the loot is sort of random anyway. And to be frank, let them do it if they fancy that sort of strategy I don't care. At worst it will show the limitations with this model, and it's not like this gamke doesn't have flaws anyway in the strategic sense, but I believe it will work. So much depends on the kind of gear and the hero so I'm not going to draw a detailed break down and see potential balance issues cause I don't care as long as the high level picture makes sense.

One thing I did not touch at all until now is the campaign phase. I don't think we need to make this a big deal. The rules book say that the party travels safely back to Arrhyn (not sure I spelled that right) and then I would add that they must decide of a new team before travelling again. Obviously shopping and spending XP for abilities do not require players to select a hero.

Another question is how to handle the relics. I think they should be able to pass it on to another hero before a new quest commences.

About doubling up my XP as an overlord. That's what I meant, except instead of doubling the XP I was duplicating the XP pool with each budget dedicated to a specific deck. I guess that's semantics.

About doubling gold. I think we'll have to, otherwise it will amplify the risk for players picking their "best" hero and leaving the other one rotting aside with no gear at all.

Also remember that heroes can freely trade equipment in between quests, and if you have 8 heroes, there's bound to be some overlap for what gear will be good, so it'll be easy for them to move gear around to others. So unless you completely limit that (which would create a lot of other issues, including, but not limited to, the fact that you're going to burn through the equipment decks really fast and gear will be sitting on the sidelines that others may want access to), you're likely to end up with a number of balance issues.

Also note that one of the most common complaints about balance in 2nd Edition comes from Overlords with heroes that are good at acquiring gold and having way more gear than expected, or Heroes who have been unlucky on the draw and don't seem to have enough good gear, so the balance here is going to be really touchy.

Yeah that's a good point. The best way is probably to run the two budgets independant of each other, however no trading allowed between first pick and second choice heroes makes little sense. Even if I forbid it they can still exchange items on the quest map. I'll have to give it some more thoughts. And yes, that's a hell of a lot of item cards revealed during shopping phase and I don't like the sound of it.

My first playgroup said they were happy with their current hero and didn't want to choose a second one for now. That's okay, Im a bit disappointed asI really wanted to pilot these dual OL/plot decks. This said the initiative was primarly directed to the other playgroup, which I'll play with in no less than three weeks so that's a bit of time to think this through. I'll report on my findings afterwards.

Another option to consider is this: Are you actually worried about players needing the ability to swap back and forth for variety, or are you just worried that they might get stuck with something they don't like?

One thing I always allow is that any time before the 2nd session (regardless of how many quests were done in the first session, but usually not in the middle of an encounter), any completely new players can call a mulligan, at which point we'll start the campaign over and everyone can pick different heroes. After that, though, they aren't completely new players, so they can't mulligan again. No problems so far.

We had the problem that our Tresure hunter went way too OP. This was not fun for anybody, so we just allowed the Tresure hunter to swap for a different class.

The same happend when our mage didnt find his class fun to play (think it was the hexer i played) and then we agreed on him to swap to a different class.

The main objective is for everyone to have fun, and you should never forget that.