Has anyone linked the base game and the three expansions (leaving out Midnight, of course) into a single linked campaign in which heroes gain experience and develop over the course of playing all four adventures? If so, how did you do it and how did it work out? I'm interested in hosting a cooperative gaming experience for four other players moving through the base game, Isle of Dread, Sands, and Frozen Wastes.

Its an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it could ever be done without a mechanism for scaling the difficulty of the expansions. After all, once a hero is strong enough to defeat the Dragon Lords he is plenty powerful to tackle almost every other challenge in every other expansion, so I'm not sure how much fun the experience would be.

My honest opinion is that "campaign play" is best left to games like D&D and Descent. D&D, and other RPGs, allow for the type of game experience you are looking for and can provide a far more enjoyable gaming experience for extended play with the same characters. This is especially true if you have 4 other players which would be the perfect size for role playing.

Doubts aside, one possible way to scale the expansions would be to add a simple modifier to the monsters in each expansion. So when the heroes take on the first expansion, all monsters have +2 health, gain +4 to hit in all phases, and deal +1 damage in all phases. When you reach the second expansion this bonus could become +4 health, +8 hit, and +2 damage in all phases. When you reach the third expansion it could be +6 health, +12 to hit in all phases, and +3 damage in all phases.

If you give it a try, I would be curious to know how it worked.

Judd

Actually, that's a good idea, Judd.

One thing I was thinking about was to create a "Dream Park" kind of campaign, inspired by the Niven and Barnes books (they have a new one coming out this year, by the way, with Dream Park on the moon). In such a campaign, the players would be the one's who gained experience, not the characters. Added experience for the players might translate into some special one-time only game advantage, but each adventure/expansion, like a trip into one of the Dream Park adventure worlds, would have the player taking up a new characteror using a favorite, return character at his or her beginning level. This would work well if there were a meta-game for the players (like the Dream Park novels all have a meta-story which is usually some kind of murder mystery occurring outside the Park but affecting the adventure in some way), and their experience in the adventure had an effect in the metagame.

Thanks again for your suggestions!

Warbringers idea is very good. It seems that a simple modifer for each successive expansion's enemies/encounters is all it would take.

I hope someone tests and posts a good variant like this!

It would be a truly epic campaign to go through 4 boards like that!

Frog said:

Actually, this is not such a good idea. By the end of the first board you will have the best items. Even though the successive boards would scale up to be more difficult, items would be really boring and no need to search out better equipment...unless you level those too. And frankly, you might as well just keep the same characters and reset between boards like you are supposed to rather than all the stat-keeping that would be involved with this.

Yes, the more I think about it, the less attractive the campaign idea becomes unless ......

FFG produce a Runebound campaign game, like they did with Descent. it would need to have special item cards and adventure cards that link the expansions and allow for the kind of scaling and on-going development that the other posters have mentioned with both items and monsters. It could also have a linked set of adventures that use the various expansion boards and markers, etc., but not the adventures that come with those expansions. Thus there could be a meta-adventure that spans the world, taking the adventurers to islands, across deserts and frozen wastes, and to who knows where else to solve some vast threat to the world. Such a campaign expansion kit would have no boards of its own, just cards, maybe special counters or markers, and rules for linking whatever expansions and boards a player has. It could be scaled to the player. If he/she has just two expansions, then there's an adventure for that; it three expansions, an adventure for that, and if all four, an adventure for that.

This is just my 2 cents, but I've always felt that Runebound WAS a campaign in and of itself. Each board provides a new campaign. Even the small Adventure packs can change the story and gameplay in new and exciting ways using the base board. I will always welcome new material for this game, but I don't think it's necessary to join everything together. In fact, doing so would ultimately lower the replayability for me, since instead of having a new adventure each time, now I'm having the same (massive) adventure over and over again.

Now that's a very good point, Steve-O. I hadn't thought of it in that way.

Maybe a more loosely connected "saga" style would work well? You could have a series of games, and pass down a single item from generation to generation (i.e., game to game).

Or maybe you could go with a branching story, a bit like the character stories in Android or Innsmouth Horror? For example, you could start with the Rise of the Dragonlords game, and play it with a timer/doom track. If someone wins before the turn limit, then you go to outcome A (the better result), with some bonus in the next round for the player who won, otherwise you go to outcome B (the worse result). In either case, you'd lose your experience and items between games. Outcome A would have you play a game of Sands of Al-Kalim, and the game's winner would be the great hero of the land. Outcome B would be a game of Frozen Wastes with a timer/doom track, and the game's winner (if any) would be the leader of the fragmented remnants of civilization. You'd need some kind of narrative so the story would make sense, but it would probably work fine in game terms.

Actually, this is not such a good idea. By the end of the first board you will have the best items. Even though the successive boards would scale up to be more difficult, items would be really boring and no need to search out better equipment...unless you level those too.

Well why not level up equipment too? let people buy equipment for double the cost for double the bonus. double the damage increase or twice the uses, things like that.

I have to agree with Steve-O on this one. One game is equivalent to a DnD campaign IMHO.

However here's an idea. How about keeping track of the winning order from each game. Player standings I guess. At the start of the next game the player in first gets so much starting gold and xp, with the second ranked player getting a little less, etc... The goal would be to beat the other players by the end of the fourth game.

Just an idea...

Tony P. said:

It is an interesting idea, although given how easy it is for one player to "luck out" early in the game, either by getting lucky rolls himself or by his opponents getting unlucky rolls and dying more often, you might run into a situation where the first place player stays in first each time. It might then be frustrating to watch one player dominate each game. Of course, I suppose by the same token other players might as easily "luck out" next time.

I'd actually suggest giving the LAST ranked player the biggest bonus in the next game, and so on down to first. Sort of like racing where the car who came in last gets put up front next time (they do that in racing sometimes, right?) Gives the loser of the first game a little more incentive to keep playing. Might lead to some interesting shenanigans where people TRY to come in last, depending on how competitive your players are, but personally I don't think a little extra gold next time is worth that sort of nonsense.

Steve-O said:

I can see your point there. Maybe instead of a reward, the players get to keep a percentage of their allies and items at the end of the game. The winner would only get a slightly larger percentage then the rest. This would be more of an honorary prize to acknowledge a victory that wouldn't give a huge advantage. The victory points to count towards their overall ranking are the real prize, but won't effect the next game at all.