Where to begiin with ?

i had all runebound 2nd edition. that had 5 major expansion ( couting midnight in) plus endless card sets.

2nd edition had 2 downsides : the dice for traveling and nothing happened during travelling between the color chits and towns.

2nd edition had a couple of upsides : 4 levels, very good skill increasing, excellent combat system including followers, great trading system

3rd edition took over the downsides and changed the upsides to downsides too.

the same travelling dice, still nothing happens during travelling. plus travelling is much slower, 3 dice instead of 5.

no level upgrade, no skill increase, a puke combat with over-the-table throwed tokens yes throw it all over the table ! followers, what dollowers?

4 cities instead of 8, we are used to get smaller, arent we? 2nd edition had not one small card, all standard size, good to read and good to see the picture. thats the past.

A total failure are the green encounters. While the orange and purple encounter are dealed on the spot, the green gives you a "quest", so you dont explore the green chit, the green chit gives you the place you have to travel to (with your 3 dice) to solve it. regarding the small amount of time in the game it is nonsense to pickup green chits.

Clearly the green chit should have been solved on the spot like the other two chit types, and the quest to travel around are a 4rth, totally different thing. the questgivers for these quests should have been in the cities and, depending on the character type, in the villages, forts and shrines.

The three colored chits on the board could have been spared, the quests with an encounter at the end would do much better.

If that game would have been made by an unknown little game company with ho advertising name, this product would never been sold. it is sold only because it is ffg, it is runebound, there are trailers and treasing previews.

This edition will not make it to a single major expansion, no island of dread, no dessert of al kazim, no....

It's nice to see so much hatred towards a game. I'd be curious to see a game designed by you, if it turns out so much better. Just sayin'.

Saying "no level upgrade, no skill increase" makes me wonder if you've ever played 3rd edition. Sure, it's done differently than in 2nd, but in the end if you say that at the end of Act II characters have not evolved since the beginning, well, probably you missed some points of the general strategy. Same for green encounters. Nothing in 3rd edition has been made "by chance", there are specific designing reasons behind each and every component. You may not like them, of course, but sayin' they are non-existent implies again that your vision of the game is rather limited.

Also, I'd suggest to change your tones. No probs with your opinions, you're free to dislike any game as much as you want, but if you check the forum rules, troll-like behaviours are not, and never have been, welcome on these boards. So, relax. It's a game You don't like it? Then keep playing 2nd edition, or get Mage Knight or whatever game you like the most. One of the great things about our world is that there are other options.

It's no secret on this forum that I'm not a fan of 3rd edition, but even I'd have to disagree on a couple of points.

Travelling is not slower in 3rd edition, it's far too fast.

Dropping from 5 dice to 3 seems slower until you realise you get multiple actions per turn and actually get many more dice. The addition of the wild side of the movement dice means you are much more likely to get a matching symbol and move further, it's even possible to cross the entire 3rd edition map in one turn.

The movement dice were one of the greatest features of 2nd edition and there was an optional rule for random encounters between the adventure tokens.

The problem is that we both had big collections of 2nd edition, having a classic game to compare against will make 3rd edition seem much worse.

I suspect the same will be true of the new Ghostbusters movie, as in it will seem really bad to fans of the original but may attract new fans to the franchise.

Where to begiin with ?

i had all runebound 2nd edition. that had 5 major expansion ( couting midnight in) plus endless card sets.

2nd edition had 2 downsides : the dice for traveling and nothing happened during travelling between the color chits and towns.

2nd edition had a couple of upsides : 4 levels, very good skill increasing, excellent combat system including followers, great trading system

3rd edition took over the downsides and changed the upsides to downsides too.

the same travelling dice, still nothing happens during travelling. plus travelling is much slower, 3 dice instead of 5.

no level upgrade, no skill increase, a puke combat with over-the-table throwed tokens yes throw it all over the table ! followers, what dollowers?

4 cities instead of 8, we are used to get smaller, arent we? 2nd edition had not one small card, all standard size, good to read and good to see the picture. thats the past.

A total failure are the green encounters. While the orange and purple encounter are dealed on the spot, the green gives you a "quest", so you dont explore the green chit, the green chit gives you the place you have to travel to (with your 3 dice) to solve it. regarding the small amount of time in the game it is nonsense to pickup green chits.

Clearly the green chit should have been solved on the spot like the other two chit types, and the quest to travel around are a 4rth, totally different thing. the questgivers for these quests should have been in the cities and, depending on the character type, in the villages, forts and shrines.

The three colored chits on the board could have been spared, the quests with an encounter at the end would do much better.

If that game would have been made by an unknown little game company with ho advertising name, this product would never been sold. it is sold only because it is ffg, it is runebound, there are trailers and treasing previews.

This edition will not make it to a single major expansion, no island of dread, no dessert of al kazim, no....

Green encounters I feel provide some more strategy to the game. Some characters hate them, but Lyssa and Laurel do generally well.

Travel seems fast enought to me.

As for big expansions, yes I would agree with you, because Star Wars, except for the rumors that FFG is losing the GW liscense. They can't afford to drop any more games.

In Second Edition, you could only level up by selecting +mind, +body, +spirit, +health, or +stamina. All your XP, which is almost all from fights, is just converted to one of these five stat increases. The amount of non-combat encounters is quite small in comparison to the fights.

Third edition has THREE types of XP (combat, exploration, and social). So right off the bat, you have more to the game than just combat. You have combat XP for fighting, social XP for socializing, and exploration XP for exploring. Then, instead of just increasing your stats, you learn skills and abilities that require specific types of XP. Some skills require you to have fighting XP, other skills other types of XP. This means the skills you learn actually reflect the type of adventuring you have done, instead of just dumping generic XP into yet another stat-up. Just like Second Edition, there are skills that, say, add +2 mind, but there are so much more, which will be different every game.

If you think that the character development in third edition has been watered down, I would feel comfortable assuming you never even played third edition!

I disagree with the main post...

There is a lot of work and thinking behind this game. Before it got released, i admit that i was one of the first to be skeptical about the new token system ( no dice?!?) and different skills and leveling system. I quickly changed my point of view when i first put it on the table.

As a HUGE Runebound universe fan, it took me a while to actually like the new token casting system. At first i thought i did not like it (at all) but the amount of depth behind it is solid after a few plays. Lots of difficult decisions; especially when you use an agility token and asking yourself if you flip one of yours for a beneficial effect, or force your opponent to re-cast his for a potentially even more advantageous effect but he can obtain the same result in the end. My friends often overlook this token but used well at the proper time, it can make a difference.

The movement dice are great though i spent some time applying the stickers correctly so they don't go outside the borders. The weird thing is, i actually had fun doing that. Maybe it is because of the "new game excitement" i was feeling.

I also like the fact that resting brings you back to full health and ready for battle (if you are in a city, town, shrine or stronghold of course) and that resting is your mandatory first action at your next turn (you are beaten up and lick your wounds, no luck for you if you are stuck in the nasty dark mountains to the south). Though i LOVE Runebound 2nd edition, i found death to be extremely punishing and more than a minor setback. So many times i lost my favorite 10G worth ally and monsters that killed me were swimming in the hoard of gold i was carrying. Now, you get back in the fray quickly enough, means less frustration from players saying that they will abandon the game since they have no chance of winning anymore. They fixed that amazingly well, and it's fun.

Also, selling your stuff for the same value at the market allows you to "invest" your gold on items to get something better latter. It causes the weaker items to be worth the buy, otherwise players would feel that they'd rather keep their gold for a better item instead of losing half their gold selling a weaker one. Great decision. Makes you constantly think about questing or shopping. What can i say about the new "goods" cards: feel like i'm actually farming. The new ones in the expansions gives even more gold but at a price.

The questing system on the cards is my favorite part of the game. There is something i am wondering though if i could house rule: it is written in the reference guide that when you make a test (or dice roll) for a quest card, you can decide to not resolve any outcome that you can fulfill based on your dice roll or successes, and try again with another subsequent action. I find it odd that the worst outcome would never happen to you, like the beast previewed in one of FFG articles that deals 3 damage on zero successes. Would anyone go for that outcome? unless they are extremely pressed on moving forward because the end of the game is near (i guess this is the main reason behind). I tried playing that i have one chance (after exerting and other bonuses) and i live with the outcome. I find it to be more satisfying to succeed at a 2 successes outcome than just wait until i get it (once, i even yelled a big YES!!). I just feel like i will eventually get it anyway (like using the "take 20" rule in D&D.) so it is less of a surprise, more like an eventuality. Can i house rule this aspect of the game so it wouldn't break the balance too much? What was the main reason behind this decision?

The skills, you can actually create the type of character you want. I feel like using a talent tree, similar to the ones we often see in video games. My friend who is a huge fan of those actually had that feeling and he enjoyed his character a lot, building it as he saw fit and he is not a big fan of boardgames, i was surprised that he asked me for another game and wants to try different combos. Great decision by FFG. Time might go a little too fast though if you want to focus only on skills with a 4 or 5 trophy cost. I think they wanted to force players to select one strong skill, one or two medium a a bunch or low cost.

I also like that the PvP aspect is more controlled in the game (you have to have permission to initiate PvP, such as Corbin's bully ability), doesn't go overboard with someone that keeps pestering a weaker player just to loot a gold or two from his dead body. I actually lost one player for good at 2nd edition because of that. The player killer was extremely aggressive. We decided to disallow PvP in 2nd ed and remove all PvP related cards from the decks.

Otherwise, great game. Flawless art.

Good job and i am soon getting the 4 expansion packs. So much new adventure and excitement!

Red Scorpion fig is amazing btw.

Sorry for the wall of text, just trying to defend the game...

I disagree with the main post...

There is a lot of work and thinking behind this game. Before it got released, i admit that i was one of the first to be skeptical about the new token system ( no dice?!?) and different skills and leveling system. I quickly changed my point of view when i first put it on the table.

As a HUGE Runebound universe fan, it took me a while to actually like the new token casting system. At first i thought i did not like it (at all) but the amount of depth behind it is solid after a few plays. Lots of difficult decisions; especially when you use an agility token and asking yourself if you flip one of yours for a beneficial effect, or force your opponent to re-cast his for a potentially even more advantageous effect but he can obtain the same result in the end. My friends often overlook this token but used well at the proper time, it can make a difference.

The movement dice are great though i spent some time applying the stickers correctly so they don't go outside the borders. The weird thing is, i actually had fun doing that. Maybe it is because of the "new game excitement" i was feeling.

I also like the fact that resting brings you back to full health and ready for battle (if you are in a city, town, shrine or stronghold of course) and that resting is your mandatory first action at your next turn (you are beaten up and lick your wounds, no luck for you if you are stuck in the nasty dark mountains to the south). Though i LOVE Runebound 2nd edition, i found death to be extremely punishing and more than a minor setback. So many times i lost my favorite 10G worth ally and monsters that killed me were swimming in the hoard of gold i was carrying. Now, you get back in the fray quickly enough, means less frustration from players saying that they will abandon the game since they have no chance of winning anymore. They fixed that amazingly well, and it's fun.

Also, selling your stuff for the same value at the market allows you to "invest" your gold on items to get something better latter. It causes the weaker items to be worth the buy, otherwise players would feel that they'd rather keep their gold for a better item instead of losing half their gold selling a weaker one. Great decision. Makes you constantly think about questing or shopping. What can i say about the new "goods" cards: feel like i'm actually farming. The new ones in the expansions gives even more gold but at a price.

The questing system on the cards is my favorite part of the game. There is something i am wondering though if i could house rule: it is written in the reference guide that when you make a test (or dice roll) for a quest card, you can decide to not resolve any outcome that you can fulfill based on your dice roll or successes, and try again with another subsequent action. I find it odd that the worst outcome would never happen to you, like the beast previewed in one of FFG articles that deals 3 damage on zero successes. Would anyone go for that outcome? unless they are extremely pressed on moving forward because the end of the game is near (i guess this is the main reason behind). I tried playing that i have one chance (after exerting and other bonuses) and i live with the outcome. I find it to be more satisfying to succeed at a 2 successes outcome than just wait until i get it (once, i even yelled a big YES!!). I just feel like i will eventually get it anyway (like using the "take 20" rule in D&D.) so it is less of a surprise, more like an eventuality. Can i house rule this aspect of the game so it wouldn't break the balance too much? What was the main reason behind this decision?

The skills, you can actually create the type of character you want. I feel like using a talent tree, similar to the ones we often see in video games. My friend who is a huge fan of those actually had that feeling and he enjoyed his character a lot, building it as he saw fit and he is not a big fan of boardgames, i was surprised that he asked me for another game and wants to try different combos. Great decision by FFG. Time might go a little too fast though if you want to focus only on skills with a 4 or 5 trophy cost. I think they wanted to force players to select one strong skill, one or two medium a a bunch or low cost.

I also like that the PvP aspect is more controlled in the game (you have to have permission to initiate PvP, such as Corbin's bully ability), doesn't go overboard with someone that keeps pestering a weaker player just to loot a gold or two from his dead body. I actually lost one player for good at 2nd edition because of that. The player killer was extremely aggressive. We decided to disallow PvP in 2nd ed and remove all PvP related cards from the decks.

Otherwise, great game. Flawless art.

Good job and i am soon getting the 4 expansion packs. So much new adventure and excitement!

Red Scorpion fig is amazing btw.

Sorry for the wall of text, just trying to defend the game...

Like x10.

...

The questing system on the cards is my favorite part of the game. There is something i am wondering though if i could house rule: it is written in the reference guide that when you make a test (or dice roll) for a quest card, you can decide to not resolve any outcome that you can fulfill based on your dice roll or successes, and try again with another subsequent action. I find it odd that the worst outcome would never happen to you, like the beast previewed in one of FFG articles that deals 3 damage on zero successes. Would anyone go for that outcome? unless they are extremely pressed on moving forward because the end of the game is near (i guess this is the main reason behind). I tried playing that i have one chance (after exerting and other bonuses) and i live with the outcome. I find it to be more satisfying to succeed at a 2 successes outcome than just wait until i get it (once, i even yelled a big YES!!). I just feel like i will eventually get it anyway (like using the "take 20" rule in D&D.) so it is less of a surprise, more like an eventuality. Can i house rule this aspect of the game so it wouldn't break the balance too much? What was the main reason behind this decision?

...

great post!

I agree with your thoughts on the quest cards on being able to not accept any outcome and try again next action. Would like to know the reasoning behind it, as I think you should just lump the result -especially when you have the ability to exert to get a better result.

Also, it makes the exertion even more useful if you had only one chance at it (though exertion is already being useful for all aspects of the game). Otherwise, a player would wait until he gets a better roll with another action instead of spending cards.

I understand that it could end up in real disappointment having spent all your precious cards for nothing in return. Maybe that was the reason behind it, not sure.

I think this game is a superior design and blows 2nd edition out of the water.

There is much more planning, much more customization and a fantastic designed combat system. The whole game is about optimization and maximization. It does not feel like just wandering around and fighting bad guys. It is much more a competitive race that 2nd edition never really was.

The meaningful choices are that what makes this game the best adventure board game on the market.

The only thing I find myself agreeing with is Exploration tokens. We pick them up so rarely because the game has limited time and travelling around to get results isn't particularly efficient. In fact social gets ignored a lot too since Combat gives both money and a trophy. This is after 50 plays, it wasn't like that when we started.

I'm not quite sure how to sort that out. When the game is about beating up a strong monster and the best way to do that is get new items to beat them up it becomes sort of a circle of doing the same stuff.

Don't get me wrong I love runebound, I'm just saying.

The only thing I find myself agreeing with is Exploration tokens. We pick them up so rarely because the game has limited time and travelling around to get results isn't particularly efficient. In fact social gets ignored a lot too since Combat gives both money and a trophy. This is after 50 plays, it wasn't like that when we started.

I'm not quite sure how to sort that out. When the game is about beating up a strong monster and the best way to do that is get new items to beat them up it becomes sort of a circle of doing the same stuff.

Don't get me wrong I love runebound, I'm just saying.

We're having fun but wondering about the tokens/cards/trophies on Green and Purple. We seem to spend a lot of time on them and get no trophies in the end hence no skill ups. Perhaps we are missing something? Do you always get the green/purple card as a trophy when you finish it or only if it says so?

Ciao,

Old Man

You always get the orage and green adventure card as a throphy and the purple ones only if the card says you that. If an orange and green adventure card says something about a bounus, you will get that bounus besides the trophy.

You always get a trophy unless the adventure card tells you otherwise. There are three types of cards you can draw from the adventure decks.

The events quite often have a text "...discard this card." and you then get something else as a reward. But also the other choice in the event often is to succeed in a skill test and then gain the card as a trophy.

Quests , In some rare cases, usually give the card as a trophy but there are some rare cases that instruct you to discard the card in favor of another reward

Enemies . I don't remember any enemy that would make you not get it as a trophy after you beat it.

Ok. Certainly the orange cards don't say to keep them but perhaps we missed that in the main rulebook? Or was that just assumed?

Thanks,

Old Man

Yes, it's in the rules: enemies and quests are always taken as trophies, rumors are not, unless it's stated on the card

I love me some Runebound, but I will be the first to admit it does have flaws. Not what the OP mentioned really (Excluding expansions, they are always welcome to extend the life of the game).

The most glaring flaw is that the absolute best strategy for being able to deal with the major threat is the most boring one in the game. Ignore quests and instead do nothing but run supplies and get gold to buy items to make you more efficient at gaining gold to buy gear, weapons, armor, etc for extra combat discs. There are very, very few skills in the game that trump having extra discs in combat, to the point having a diverse skill set with great combat options but weak or no discs will still have you get creamed in the final encounter where as someone with no skills at all but good combat discs will almost always win the throw down because their combat damage and defense are superior. Using this play style, players who can manipulate travel dice or have higher speed right out the gate have a clear advantage. Is it fun to play this way? Not at all, but it is the playstyle that offers the maximum chance at victory and skill cards should be made that really are more worthwhile for combat choices. There is a skill, for example, that makes all your attacks unblockable. That is a great skill and is worth the time to gain, many others though offer only a small increase or new and not so powerful ability that makes spending the time gaining them instead of gold and gear a poor choice.

An option could possible be to increase physical damage by 1 for every strength skill, magic damage by 1 for every magic skill, and defense by 1 for every agility skill you have on your character for all combat that are added toward any similarly thrown discs making skills very valuable indeed, even the ones you wouldn't normal invest the time in gaining because of the increase in survivability and damage dealing aspects of your character. Make it so that you can only use the printed attribute total on the character card when using such a feature to keep it from being terribly broken and suddenly taking time to acquire skills places them on par with mid level equipment but better than poor equipment and not as good as high level equipment.

I would have to try a few games with this rule in effect to see how it plays out though. It might be terribly broken, but as it stands right now just running for gold and milling the store deck for the best items is already incredibly broken during most end game scenarios as is. At least this way it would make the game more fun for me and my group who have gotten hung up on gold gaining instead of questing for skills in games as of late.

Edit: As an example for the combat encounter using the optional rule I mentioned. Let's say I have 2 strength skills, 1 magic skill, and 2 agility skills. I toss my discs and the results are 2 axes, 1 wing, 1 shield, and 1 doubler. All added up I have 4 physical attack (2 axes +2 strength) and 3 defense (1 shield+2 agility), no magic attack (No disc face with magic attack so the bonus isn't applied from my skill cards). The doubler would only effect what is on the token and not the skill bonuses so I could jack the physical attack up to 6 (4 axes+2 skills) or the defense up to 4 (2 shields +2 skills).

Flamespeak's strategy post is correct. Trade runs for gold is the best strategy and has little variance.

I'm not sure I agree on the fix, but I don't know how to fix it.

Why not remove some of the goods from the asset deck? If you have the expansions, you can replace the goods with other types of assets.

Why not remove some of the goods from the asset deck? If you have the expansions, you can replace the goods with other types of assets.

Imo the problem lies in that there aren't enough ways to get gold in the beginning of the game. Only a few chars can fght from the get go and thus even non-fighting quests beecome quite risky and/or maybe don't entail an efficient way to get your first gold at that point in the game. Yet without gold, you don't get more tokens and the fights won't become easier or manageable.

A really good way against this would be some sort of machanism (maybe followers) you buy with trophies, gold and lore (1 trophy, 0 gold, or 2 trophy 1 gold, 1 lore) that also get you combat tokens and maybe other abilities corresponding to their cost. The combat tokens you gain by followers could count towards the token total (so that you can't get more tokens that way hence unbalancing the game).

I use a house rule in setup regarding stores. If the value of items is too high (average is above 5) I move the item to another town and put new items until the average cost is 0-6. Then the player who's last in turn order has a say if he's happy with the stores or not (balances the starting player's advantage a tiny bit) and if he is, we let the stores be and start the game. Any items that might have been discarded while doing the setup because they were too expensive are shuffled back into the item deck. So far, the item setup has been such that everyone has been happy with it there hasn't been a need to do the store setup all over again.

And it means that there's always been items to buy early in the game giving us better chances to start winning fights early in the game and get gold to buy more expensive items.