I've played Runebound now for about two months, say five or six times. I have a few market card and challenge expansions plus the Cataclysm adventure variant. I like the Dark Forest and Traps and Terrors--they both offer some good game variants so you're not repeating things too much.

Anyway, after playing now, I have a few house rule suggestions. I've play Advanced Squad Leader since the SL days (if you know what ASL is) but anyway, partly what makes that game enjoyable is the once-every-couple-games-something-happens kind of rules. With that, I thought of a few ideas that add a little flavor to Runebound that really won't shake it but add a little excitement. Perhaps other have thought of these, but here goes.

1) 1-1 on the dice is always a miss. Even if you have +10 range skill and are going for a green challenge of 12, heck, you still MIGHT miss.

2) Similarly, a 0-0 on the dice is a critical hit; does double damage. Again this happens so rarely but when it does it add excitement without complicating the rules.

3) If you visit a town, you can pay for quality healing at one gold per heart healed so there is time to make it to the market (i.e., normal rules). However, if you decide to rest in the street slums, you will heal one heart but as you are seen as unreliable to the sellers and aren't allowed in the market to buy or sell (i.e., if you start your turn in a city, you can heal one heart and do nothing else). This basically allows those who have no gold to slowly heal at the expense of wasting game turns. Again, an option, not a requirement for healing.

Overall, I like the game. I normally play FtF and have elected to use 4 experience to go up a level. Today we played with four folks and used 3 experience to go up a level--it was tough as there aren't enough adventures...but that's part of the challenge of the game. Perhaps that's where PvP comes in, when the challenges dry up you can beat up the other guy to get stuff. I don't for PvP as it slows the game down in my opinion, but the rules are just fine.

Comments?

Kijug

When we play, we usually want to end the game in under three hours so we use 2xp to advance and the Doom Track. This basicly makes every turn a chance to level up and you become powerfull by the endgame, but not overwhelmingly so. We also sometimes allow each player to start with a set amount of xp and gold to customize with. A random d10 roll is used to determine who gets to go through the items first.

Even with these rules the game will often go the full three hours if there are more than two of us playing.

If you want to check out some great fan made material, then I encourage you to visit the website Boardgame Geek. The community of gamers have put togethor some wonderful player aids and play variants which will greatly increase the replayability of the game... and maybe inspire you to make your own variants as well.

Here is the link to the Runebound page:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21523

Here is a link to a fun variant I made for the base game, called Cities of Adventure:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/24306

Cheers!

Judd

I've glanced over Cities of Adventure and am planning on using it next time I play. Whenever that is. I'm a frustrated Runebound player. My regular friends usually want to play RPG's instead of boardgames, and the kids I have in my house are more into miniatures like Star Wars. So I'm always looking forward to the next Runebound game.

If you mainly play Runebound solo, then I highly recommend that you check out Mr. Skeletor's solo, one of the most widely used and all time best variants around.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/122763

Enjoy!

Judd

Another house rule I like to use involves the market. I've bought several of the item expansions and my market deck has almost doubled from the basic sets size. These rules help us actually get through more of those cool items, rituals, allies, and familiars.

Start with 3 cards in each market, even Tamalir.

Whenever a player enters a market step two cards are added to that market instead of 1. If the market pile in any town is more than 7 at the end of any turn randomly remove cards from it until its at 7 again. These cards are shuffled back into the market deck.

This makes availability more of a factor and making it to a certain town in time to buy that item or ally you wanted can be a quest in itself.

I really like the rules for a critical hit, or automatic miss. I was just discussing this with one of my friends, your rules are a great way of implementing it.

I haven't bought the game just yet but my friends and I made a tabletop RPG of our own a while back (took us almost 10 years of play testing to finally get it good and it's still no where near being done lol) so I'm planning on using some of these rules I've seen here that kind of remind me of what we made. I especially like the critical miss and critical hit rule. Very nice.

Kijug said:

Meh. Green challenges are supposed to be easy, implementing a means of making it possible to miss seems to overcomplicate the process to me. Not that it's really that complicated, but it's more complicated than not using it and it could potentially make a Green challenge fight take longer than it should to roll out. If you want to have a clear and present risk of failure, press for Yellow as early as you dare.

The critical hit idea is nice. I might try it out once or twice to see how it goes.

Kijug said:

This rule does nothing but slow the game down. Considering that the only serious complaint I've heard leveled against this game is the downtime between player turns, then introducing a house rule that invites players to blow their whole turn on free healing is asking for trouble, IMHO. Guaranteed the first player who finds himself in a position to need to use this rule will say "I'm healing for free for the next 5 turns. I'm going to go play Xbox, let me know when I'm healed up." And that sort of attitude will certainly not contribute to people's enjoyment of the game.

If you have a problem with players running out of cash and needing healing, maybe allow heroes to heal wounds like they do fatigue by voluntarily dropping movement dice. At the very least, let them heal 2 or 3 wounds for free in this manner, so that they probably won't need to blow multiple turns in a row if they're badly injured. Also doesn't invite the temptation of going to do something else while still theoretically "playing" Runebound.

Kijug said:

I've never had trouble finding new challeneges. Are you remembering to refill starburst gems whenever an event is drawn? If so and you're still running dry, perhaps your heroes are wasting too much time on the green circuit. Try pressing for higher level challenges after you gain 3 or 4 levels.

Steve-O said:

If using one, the other should be used as well. A new advantage by luck of the roll should be balance by an equal risk. On the other hand, I wouldn't use "double" damage but just a +1 damage... if I were inclined to use this variation. And the probability of either is only 1%.

JCHendee said:

If this were a competitive game, I would agree. Since there is no one controlling the monsters, I see no need to show them any lenience. The critical hit rule will speed up gameplay (good) while the critical miss rule will slow it down (bad.) As I said above, the biggest problem with this game as is is the downtime between a player's turn and his next turn. Using the critical miss rule can only increase this downtime by making combat (especially against green challenges) take longer than they normally would.

Game balance doesn't mean everything has to be measured and countered by an equal and opposite rule. Only if two players are directly opposing each other does the field need to be level. If your group sees a fair amount of PvP hero on hero combat, then I would agree the miss rule should be used as well. At least for PvP. But against challenge cards I completely disagree. Of course, this is all house rules so which ones you and your group choose to use is entirely up to you and your group. That's why they're called "house rules" after all, it's how you choose to play in your house. I'll play my way, you play yours.

Besides, if you really want both sides to be "even" then there should be a method for monsters to score double damage, too. (Or +1 damage, whatever.) Maybe a natural 2 should mean that? That would certainly have the advantage of speeding up gameplay, and it might even help to keep one hero from getting a runaway lead if everyone else dies early, because a string of critical misses could take down a highly geared hero more easily than anything else.

Steve-O said:

Okay, this lost me entirely. All games are competitive.

Steve-O said:

UMM... did you even note the probabilities? The chances of either critical hit or failure are exceedingly slim. it will neither speed up nor slow down any turn but 1 out of a 100. In a three player game, that might be once in 30+ rounds. Don't try to exaggerate the effects of the proposed rule; it ain't gonna wash.

As to the "biggest problem," I'm certain that many agree with you. But some wouldn't. Me and mine like watching the other stories, and the so-called downtime isn't as much as people like claim... or make it seem like. Yes, the greater the number of players means a round (all turns) can be notably longer than other games. But again, let's not exaggerate actual (and calculable) effects of this proposed rule.

Steve-O said:

Only if we think the other players should be our only serious challenge. Obviously we don't all think that, but I respect your preference.

Steve-O said:

Yeah, we could do that. But since the player (character) is the only one rolling dice in this game, the effect is the same if it fails a roll on a 2. And as stated, I'm not for the double damage option on either side.

Since a roll of 2 or 20 is a 1% chance, its really just one of those rare occurences. Some groups prefer house rules that are less intrusive and only produce a rare twist. The 2&20 here would be in that category, and you are overestimating its influence.

TUNRING TO A NEW NOTION, has anyone else here tried out the City of Adventure or its expansion based counterparts? It's interesting and entertaining, though it has some glitches in play.

JCHendee said:

Perhaps we have different definitions of competitive. Arkham Horror is not a competitive game by my way of thinking - all the human players are cooperating to defeat the game. Runebound is very similar, at least the way we play it. We rarely if ever try to find and kill each other in PvP as we prefer the adventure aspect of the game. Yes, in the end there can be only one winner who collects the required runes or kills Margath (or whatever the end goals are if you're using an expansion/adventure variant) but we don't directly compete to see who wins. We all play to see what happens and we don't really care who comes out on top in the end. In that sense, I don't think of Runebound as competitive. That is, in fact, one of the reasons I like this game so much. =)

JCHendee said:

I wasn't talking probabilities at all. I was talking length of play. Admittedly the odds of rolling either a 2 or a 20 are low on 2d10, but the statement that the critical miss rule can do nothing but slow the game down is still true. It may not happen often, but any gameplay scenario will either be as fast or slower than it would've been without this house rule. I've also played enough games involving dice to know that sometimes - just sometimes - the improbable does occur and someone rolls 3 or 4 natural 2's in a single combat. Heck, I remember a D&D game we played with about 8 players plus the DM and on one combat round we went around the table, everyone rolling a critical hit in succession. 8 people all rolled natural 20s in a row in a single combat round. Improbable does not mean impossible.

Given that, I would prefer to leave this rule out and optimize game speed. I don't generally have more than 4 hours to dedicate to a single game session these days, and since we almost always play with 5-6 people when we play, time is a factor. That's just our group, of course, but I'm talking about my preferences here. You are not obligated to agree.

JCHendee said:

I have not, but I'd be interested to hear people's reviews of how they work.

There hasn't been a lot talk lately on CoA. I don't think you'd like it much, Steve. Even my group found it a bit hampering, time wise, the way it was put together, and we're probably less concerned with game time than you and your crew. I did make a long post on some issues my group ran into after a number of games. But if no one around here has tried it, guess I'll just have to wait and see if anyone notices at BGG.

You basically roll a terrain (story) die whenever you enter the city. The creator basically adapted the mechanic out the Sands expansion. The type(s) of terrain you roll are referenced on a short table of 7 standard events. So there are little ups and downs, and occasionally something bigger. The problem is that with that one die, you always have two or three events because that's how many terrain types are on each side of a die. A couple of my group have been discussing ways to cut it back to one event no more than 50% of the time, but what we've come up with has issues of its own. So we only do CoA when it's a really leisurely night of RB.