Back in the day, (1st & 2nd ed) we ran Team Play Games based on all kinds of allegiances Chaos, Empire ect. or just one group of Adventures Vs. others with one "Champion" from each Team going on to challange the finale Test (or one guy screwing the team and end running for them self when they thought they could make it) , is this still doable under 4th?

I ask as I just picked up 4th ed (still in the Plastic just got it home) and am recalling all the stuff we used to have fun with back in the day and this is the first one I recalled with any clarity.

If it worked in the early editions, there is no real reason that it should not work in Revised 4th Edition. It may need a little tweaking, but should still be possible.

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with.

Quick rundown on how we used to do Team Play, you form Teams of 2-4 with something in common (usually alignment), the Team then works cooperatively to aquiere Talismans and build up their abilities to change the End Game. depending on the Variant as the game draws to an end (usually by one Team or Player making a run for the end game) either the Teams "Champion" (Strongest Character) is loaded down with the most Choice Equipment and goes to the Inner Zone to try for the Crown, or in Party mode all Team members with Talismans (or the Strongest that can be given one) go to the inner Zone and then move as one with the most able facing each Challenge, all Party members sheer the same fate should they fail a Challenge. Game Ends when all Characters not in the one Team are eliminated.

Can you give some details on how the characters move together and what the combat looks like?

The Players don't move together till they reach the Inner Zone, so basicaly once a team enters the inner zone they move as a whole once per turn, when they get booted back to the rest of the board they take upo their old turn positions, but have to miss a turn unless one of them has the Crown.

my group and i instituted a party system in our games, characters could form parties so long as there was not a alignment conflict (no good and evil on the same side basically), and no more than 3 people to a party. once together the party would travel as one, and add their attributes in combat. to balances this when a party comes across a monster, they role dice to see whether it is in fact 1, 2, or 3 monsters( 1, 2 or 3 times the stated strength/craft). so it would end up that most of the time the party would find combat easier, but would have to divide up loot and trophy points. all in all it worked very well. one of the main advantages is that players interacted much more, also the turns went by faster (we usually played with quite a few players, so games could run many hours, like 9, and it was very boring inbetween turns, and whats more a lot could happen to you before it was your turn again.) but in the party system eveyrone in the party would take their turns at once, speeding things up considerably.

and now an anecdote!

as i said, most of the time the combat is easier, but not always. my party (me as the ghoul, and a couple friends as the wizard and the cultist) found ourselves on the hidden valley, and drew 2 dragons, and some other small monster, we rolled for each monster and found that in fact we were facing 5 dragons and 1 of whatever the other was. we almost won actually, but almost was not enough, and the cultist died, and the ghoul and wizard got away badly hurt. (i believe we were playing that if the number of monsters exceeds the number of party members the number of lives lost upon loss goes up. meaning we probably lost 3 lives per person