Hello. Me and my friends want to start a fresh campaign next year. This time it will be the combined Mist of Bilehall and Chains that Rust campaign. From reading the quest description it sounds like it is a quite difficult campaign for the heroes and we would like to bring one Rumour-Quest into the game to give the heroes a bit of an edge. Also we haven't played around with the rumour deck yet and thought it will be fun.

This is of course a bit of a disadvantage for the OL as we all know (although he gets a few options to mess with the heroes shopping step as well).

So the question is about balancing. Would a single bonus mission (well 2; 1 per act) totally tip the balance or is this campaign difficult enough to avoid the snowball effect?

We are also thinking about removing the Rumour Quests from Lair of the Wyrm and Trollfens as the Rewards for the OL are rather 'meh' in these quests whereas the ones for the heroes are awesome.

(I own all boxed expansions and 2 H&M expansions.)

What is your experience with this campaign?

For starters, if you're looking to make things a little easier for the heroes, Lair and Trollfens rumors are EXACTLY the ones you want to include. Manor (and moreso the H&M) rumors actually tend to help the OL relatively more:

-they have fewer search tokens

-if the heroes lose, the OL gets a card.

-if the heroes don't play the quest by the interlude, the OL gets a card as if he won.

-(for H&M rumors) the heroes can't win relics

I am aware that lair and trollfens rumors favour the heroes much more than the OL, which is exactly my issue. The campaign we are playing right now (Heirs of Blood without rumours) is very well balanced. However, I played the OL once in a Shadowrune campaign with 2 rumors per act (1 Lair, 1 Trollfens) and felt pretty much steam rolled at the end.

Still, we'd like to add rumors to the new campaign for fun and new content. I was only a little bit concerned about their impact on the balancing, but I guess 1 rumor is fine. 2 are probably too much. Thanks for your input.