Hey, anyone have an idea of how long this game should last? 8 2-hour sessions? 10 hours total? 5 hours? 7 session of unknown length?

Well I think it’s kind of just stop when you want kind of a thing. The only real segmented parts are the 5 or so major quests themselves and they haven’t given an indication of their length. I’m just hoping they release a decent pool of quests to run through because replay ability doesn’t look high in this game.

7 hours ago, power500500 said:

Well I think it’s kind of just stop when you want kind of a thing. The only real segmented parts are the 5 or so major quests themselves and they haven’t given an indication of their length. I’m just hoping they release a decent pool of quests to run through because replay ability doesn’t look high in this game.

I have been so looking forward to this but I have held off ordering it right now after worrying that there is no rolling and its all just 'do you attack' or hide'? Well done you attacked and won, lose 2 stamina.

Surely it cant be as straight forward as that for combat?

It would imo give virtually no replay ability unless you went out of the way to choose the different option for each encounter????

4 hours ago, VAYASAN said:

I have been so looking forward to this but I have held off ordering it right now after worrying that there is no rolling and its all just 'do you attack' or hide'? Well done you attacked and won, lose 2 stamina.

Surely it cant be as straight forward as that for combat?

It would imo give virtually no replay ability unless you went out of the way to choose the different option for each encounter????

This is excactly what I’m thinking more and more every day this game is going to be like and it bums me the heck out. But I’m willing to give it a chance purely because I love the Runebound games and world. I have to admit though if it wasn’t for that then this would probably be a pass sadly. Again though, I’ll reserve full judgment until I have it in my hands but still I’m worried.

From the rules it does look exactly that shallow for combat. Hmmmmm.

The tracking sheets pretty much guarantee at least two distinct successful endings for the main story and the achievement list implies quite a lot of noteworthy replayability for a set of gamebooks, although I guess a "perfect run" might be possible if you know what you're doing or are exceptionally lucky, but that's more or less the nature of the beast. The only thing that actually potentially bothers me are the "two or more weddings" you can attend. A sudden wedding spree among the Dragonholt population seems unlikely, but if they are PCs marrying NPCs they know for less than a week (!), somebody seriously lacked restraint in their romance arc writing, so I'm hoping for some local tradition that may garner you multiple invitations, and since a single date is the only other romance-related achievement, I guess chances are good I'm worrying over nothing.

Edit: To be clear, I do know what attending a wedding means, so obviously if my worries prove true, this would be a multi-hero-only achievement, and the only one at that, which I suppose is another reason not to worry, but them writing at least three NPC-only weddings into the story still seems odd...

I have the books.

To New Roads = 50-80 mins.
Sliver of Silver = 50-80 mins.
Cyrpt of Kharthuun = 50-80 mins.
Whispering Leaves = 50-80 mins.
Terror on the Prairie = 50-80 mins.
Paper Faces = 75-120 mins.

Each quest is about 40 pages.

The Dragonholt Village Book says 30-50 mins per Chapter. At first glance, it doesn't appear to say how many chapters. But the page count is about 180.

17 hours ago, power500500 said:

This is excactly what I’m thinking more and more every day this game is going to be like and it bums me the heck out. But I’m willing to give it a chance purely because I love the Runebound games and world. I have to admit though if it wasn’t for that then this would probably be a pass sadly. Again though, I’ll reserve full judgment until I have it in my hands but still I’m worried.

Combat is exactly as you imagine. One thing that comes up however is that the person making the decision for how to act, is limited, by the skills they have chosen. So this helps insure that combat doesn't just default to always picking the "best" option.

After playing the introduction tonight, which took about 70mins as a group (I can see it taking 50mins when soloing), it quickly became apparent that this "game" is something to do when you just wish to sit around and talk after a long day of work. I suggests a few things. First, give the book to the "actor" of the group; the person that is not afraid to do voices and read with a strong narrator voice. The rules are written in a way that is similar to Legends of Andor; the person narrating for us had never even heard of the product until I brought it up tonight. Second, make sure you run with a group that can meet at least once a week. Otherwise you will need to make sure you have a great note taker that can provide future expositions - "On the last exciting episode of Legacy of Dragonholt our heroes...." And lastly, have fun discussing options. This last part is actually where we had the most fun. Each decision is important and the skills you may wish to use for an entry might not be available between the players with unexhausted activation tokens.

We played our game over Skype, and had a blast. Can't wait to explore Dragonholt tomorrow (in game).

I was happy to see the literary work was well written. Each character comes to life, especially with a good narrator, and you are given multiple opportunities to get to know them and ask them questions similar to a Bioware game. Scenes come to life in the mind thanks to simple yet vivid descriptions. It's funny to me however, as the scene playing out in my head is most likely different than what is playing out in the other players' imaginations. Combat is actually pretty intense. *spoiler* we had bandits hit one of us for 5 stamina loss.

Overall we had a lot of fun for such a simple system. Identifying entries is quick thanks to the entry ranges being listed at the bottom of each page.

I'll be curious to see if real life situations come up in the game. By that I mean, NPCs acting differently based on the race, class, and gender of the person they are interacting with. In the intro alone we marked off a few entries that never played a role in the story. So that leaves me to believe things you do early on can definitely affect the world at a later point. The way time is tracked is neat too.

I think the only negative that I have at this point, would be that you don't get to act out your characters like you do in traditional roleplaying. I mean I guess I can try to explain how your character acts based on the decision you make, but then the next entry is going to say something like "...gritting your teeth you charge at the enemy."

Which leads to my closing. This is not DnD. I have DnD every Tuesday night at the office so that doesn't bug me. This is something very fresh and new. But there are definitely days where DnD and traditional board games feel like a chore after a long day of work. I never see that being the case with this product. This was a great relaxation activity to do just before prepping for a busy holiday weekend.

Thank you Z, that's a great and really informative post. And despite my misgivings about the combat, you do make the game sound fun (if a tad short).

I wasn't counting the time we spent making characters and going over backstories. I should have noted that.

That is something we carried over from DnD. Group character creation. This helps insure that the people at the table are understanding of the decision that each character is making and also helping others make the best choice based on his or her character's personality that was defined during creation.

We wanted to continue further with exploring Dragonholt. But people needed to break to prep for the holiday. I can definitely see people wanting to binge this game like a good Netflix series. For now, Dragonholt shall remain a mystery. But I suspect in the future I will provide more time to both explore Dragonholt and complete a quest.

The town is pretty cool. As you probably get the map for it after the first encounter. Looking at the map in the box, each building has a 4 digit number. So I am guessing that you get free reign to explore the town until a timed event happens - meeting people, making purchases, and picking up rumors. In this way the game feels very similar to Dragon Age 2. Most of the politics and events will affect the town. I can see things like new elections and such having lasting effects. But we'll see.

Well personally im very disappointed to hear about the combat.

Sounds like a great fresh system with a massive let down to me...but time will tell.

4 hours ago, Zcurator said:

The Dragonholt Village Book says 30-50 mins per Chapter. At first glance, it doesn't appear to say how many chapters. But the page count is about 180.

I'd guess each day in-game constitutes a chapter? So, seven?

4 hours ago, Zcurator said:

Combat is exactly as you imagine. One thing that comes up however is that the person making the decision for how to act, is limited, by the skills they have chosen. So this helps insure that combat doesn't just default to always picking the "best" option.

After playing the introduction tonight, which took about 70mins as a group (I can see it taking 50mins when soloing), it quickly became apparent that this "game" is something to do when you just wish to sit around and talk after a long day of work. I suggests a few things. First, give the book to the "actor" of the group; the person that is not afraid to do voices and read with a strong narrator voice. The rules are written in a way that is similar to Legends of Andor; the person narrating for us had never even heard of the product until I brought it up tonight. Second, make sure you run with a group that can meet at least once a week. Otherwise you will need to make sure you have a great note taker that can provide future expositions - "On the last exciting episode of Legacy of Dragonholt our heroes...." And lastly, have fun discussing options. This last part is actually where we had the most fun. Each decision is important and the skills you may wish to use for an entry might not be available between the players with unexhausted activation tokens.

We played our game over Skype, and had a blast. Can't wait to explore Dragonholt tomorrow (in game).

I was happy to see the literary work was well written. Each character comes to life, especially with a good narrator, and you are given multiple opportunities to get to know them and ask them questions similar to a Bioware game. Scenes come to life in the mind thanks to simple yet vivid descriptions. It's funny to me however, as the scene playing out in my head is most likely different than what is playing out in the other players' imaginations. Combat is actually pretty intense. *spoiler* we had bandits hit one of us for 5 stamina loss.

Overall we had a lot of fun for such a simple system. Identifying entries is quick thanks to the entry ranges being listed at the bottom of each page.

I'll be curious to see if real life situations come up in the game. By that I mean, NPCs acting differently based on the race, class, and gender of the person they are interacting with. In the intro alone we marked off a few entries that never played a role in the story. So that leaves me to believe things you do early on can definitely affect the world at a later point. The way time is tracked is neat too.

I think the only negative that I have at this point, would be that you don't get to act out your characters like you do in traditional roleplaying. I mean I guess I can try to explain how your character acts based on the decision you make, but then the next entry is going to say something like "...gritting your teeth you charge at the enemy."

Which leads to my closing. This is not DnD. I have DnD every Tuesday night at the office so that doesn't bug me. This is something very fresh and new. But there are definitely days where DnD and traditional board games feel like a chore after a long day of work. I never see that being the case with this product. This was a great relaxation activity to do just before prepping for a busy holiday weekend.

Can I ask, how easy was it to pick up the box without any learning of the rules ahead of the event and play the game?

I am trying to decide if ill get it now or on xmas day. Got a week with some friends to play at Xmas and if it needs some reading first ill get it now.....even with my reservations about the simplistic combat.

You could download and read the rules now from the game's support page and then decide if you need to look at the box before actually playing.

There you will also find printable character and campaign sheets you might want to use in the game.

21 minutes ago, Samea said:

You could download and read the rules now from the game's support page and then decide if you need to look at the box before actually playing.

There you will also find printable character and campaign sheets you might want to use in the game.

Yes had a look last night, I find it quite hard to discern how to actually play...I have a feeling it will become much clearer when you pick up the first adventure book and start, it sounds like there are sidebar guides to ease you in and then over time you refer o the rules glossary hey posted up yesterday.

It's a highly elaborate gamebook a.k.a. CYOA; I don't really see how one would need a thick rulebook for one sole core mechanic and a couple of minor ones (namely drinking potions, using other items, tracking passage of time, acquiring experience points, losing/(re)gaining stamina and losing/(re)gaining skills)?

Great review, Z -- thanks!

8 hours ago, VAYASAN said:

Well personally im very disappointed to hear about the combat.

Sounds like a great fresh system with a massive let down to me...but time will tell.

It is not going to be for everyone, but for those looking for a great "campfire" game, it will do the trick.

I can understand the disappointment some people might have with combat being linear. I guess for my group we see this more for relaxing and having fun. As I noted above, sometimes we just don't have the ability to meet or the energy to put a game to the tabletop, such as week nights. When we do have time, that is when Descent: Road to Legend, Runewars the Board Game, and Runewars the minis game can hit the table. In the last month I had two Twilight Imperium 4th weekend events planned, where I hopped in a car and drove 5 hours to Salt Lake for two very epic struggles over Mecetol Rex.

I personally like the combat system in Dragonholt. It doesn't pause the adventure to have a combat - like every other RPG does. I love DnD and Pathfinder/Starfinder. But there are times when all we do is one or two combats without really progressing the story. When we meet for the next session we always need a refresher of what happened before those combat sessions. Sometimes we even need to be reminded of what our quests and goals were that lead us to the dungeon. I guess the hybrid middle ground between Dragonholt's system and Pathfinder/DnD would be Grimm.

This system reminds me of FIASCO; where the activation tokens working similar to the dice.

If I had to compare combat to another product. I would go with Dragon Lair and Space Ace games, or Kingsquest and Spacequest games, or Curse of Monkey Island.