I'm trying really hard to like Runebound, but the down time between turns is killing me. There seems zero interaction, which would be alright if I wasn't waiting so long for my turn. Return of the Heroes has no player interaction, but each turn is only a few seconds. Players eventually leave the table, and have to be called back when their turn arrives. I've played about 4 times now, but I'm on the verge of trading my copy.

I've asked for tips on reducing game time before, but the problem isn't as much the total game time as it is the turn time.

Any tips or rules to make the game more engaging?

Downtime between turns is one of the drawbacks of this game, unfortunately. It's one of the major reasons why a lot of people don't like playing with more than 4 people.

Off the top of my head in terms of speeding things up:

- have the next player roll movement while the first player is still doing combat rolls. By the time he's found a challenge, he's not likely to do anything that will affect the next player's turn. He doesn't need the movement dice anymore and it gives the next player more time to think about his move.

- if you draw a non-challenge (an event or an encounter), don't read it right away. If it's an event, check the colour of the current event in play before doing anything else, if the new one won't supercede, don't waste time reading it. Most events (in my experience) can be put in front of you and read during downtime since they involve going somewhere or doing something. There may be a few that take effect immediately, but not many in my experience. Theoretically everyone is entitled to know what cards you drew, but unless someone in the group is anal about knowing everything, this can be a good time-saver and give you something to do while you wait for your next turn.

- push for the enxt colour level as soon as you feel you won't die outright. It's risky tactics, but it will move the game forward. It's very easy for less ambitious players to get stuck in a rut with green or yellow encounters long past when they should've moved on. This particular suggestion won't really reduce downtime between turns, but it will reduce the overall length of the game by keeping things on track.

- That's about all I can come up with on the spot, I'm sure others will contribute more. It won't completely eliminate wait times, but it should help out some.

Steve-O hit the main ways. Having player two roll the movement dice while player one completes his turn is the simplest and quickest fix to shorten the game.

Encouraging players to plan where they are aiming to move to before their turn comes around will help a bit also.

Playing up the RPG aspects of the cards would liven up the turn waiting as well, if you have players that can RPG their characters rather than just playing to "beat the game."

I was aware of the problem with the pace of the game before I got it. I play RB only with my son so there are not so many turns. Frankly speaking it is hard for me to imagine 4 players. For me the most important thing in a boardgame is the art and it is great in RB. I also like the roleplaying aspect, reading cards etc. The advise to start your turn before another player has finished his should be the official solution to speed RB up. If players are familiar with the cards and rules the tempo is a little bit faster I think.

I never play with more than three players unless EVERY player involved is experienced. Otherwise, there will always be a TON of drag. Also, look into getting some of the small expansion packs. They boost player interaction and give people things to do between turns (Can't remember the best for this, but I'm sure someone else should be able to).

A basic fix a friend and I came up with involves buying a few extra dice. Head to your local gaming store, buy two red d10, two green d10, and two blue d10. In combat, a player declares which phase their hero and allies are attacking in or whatever, then toss all six dice at once. Green dice are for Mind, red for Body, blue for Magic, there's a whole round said and done.

My regular group has also been playing with a couple basic house rules for a while:

1. All challenges award a number of gold pieces equal to their experience value in addition to whatever Reward is listed on the challenge itself. This seems like a lot of gold, especially combined with rule 3, but you appreciate it when the game moves faster 'cause your hero is all kitted-out.

2. You do not choose to gain Life level-ups, instead being awarded them for free whenever you gain three, six, or nine experience counters in your stats or exhaustion. Life level-ups limit which Encounter colors you can gain encounter, as normal. This helped counter the way our games were stalling out in the early stages while people hoarded all the stat-ups they could on greens and yellows.

3. In town, one gold coin heals all exhaustion on one hero or ally, one gold coin heals all damage on one hero or ally. On its face, this seems to make the game EZ-Mode, but it really just reduces the wait between turns with actual action and turns of downtime. Challenges are no less deadly.

Arkade said:

These sound like some really interesting house rules. Combined with scaling XP levels this could bring our games down to 2-3 hours even with more than 4 players (I admit we do tend to get stuck in a rut, as I referred to above.) I'm not 100% sold on #3, but I'll try it out and see how it goes. Thanks for sharing these! =)

Arkade said:

Great idea with extra dice, but would 3 d20 dice be a better option?

In my experience, the number of players drastically alters the games speed, and speeding up leveling drastically effects game speed,so we use a different leveling system dependant on the number players.

2 players: l(evel).1 : 1xp, l.2 : 1 xp, l.3: 2xp l.4 : 3xp, l.5+ : 4xp

3 players : 3 xp per level

4 players : 2 xp per level

5+ players : 1xp per level

Furthermore if a player draws an adventure or an event card he doesn't draw another card but receives a corresponding adventure counter, this rule tends to reduce the turn lag.

All players start with 5 gold.

Healing: for one gold you can discard all exhaustion or all wounds or all menace(if class decks are used) on hero or ally.

Knockouts: Hero loses that which has most value, be it gold, item or ally, but it is not discarded, instead it becomes a hoard of undefeated challenge wating for someone to liberate it

Movement : Physically placing rolled movement dice on board and thus constructing a path seems to speed up movement phase.

By using this rule combination, our average game length is about 2h.

I usually play with a total of 3 players. That seems to be a good sweet spot for the game.
I'll also sometimes reduce the experience required to level, which will help speed up the whole game.

Personally I don't at all mind the other players turns. I enjoying watching how they decide to face their encounters.

But like your comments I too have some buddies who just cannot wait and often end up walking away from the table.

xoxaxox said:

As long as your group is fine with modifying the percentages, that could work. 1d20 doesn't have the same spread as 2d10 in terms of what results are likely to come up. 1d20, for example, has a 1 in 20 chance of rolling an 11, whereas 2d10 have (off the top of my head) about 10 in 100 results - or 1 in 10 - of doing the same. 2d10 also can't roll a 1, although that's a minor edit to account for.

Wow, playing with a D20 would greatly reduce your chances of hitting and your characters would die more frequently. I really cannot see why you would switch from the D10's to D20's.

I think the most important part of playing RB successfully is having players that know the rules and enjoy watching what other players do. If the group isn't into watching what unfolds in front of other players they won't really enjoy the game as much IMO. Playing with a group of risk takers makes the game go faster as well. Most long games stem from people who aren't bold enough to move up on challenges. For my group one green is sufficient to move to the yellow stack and 2 yellows gets you into blues with a solid piece of gear. We even make Drakes and Dragonspawn a perm addition to the base game decks.

That being said we actually have a few HR's ourselves but nothing to over the top. Our most important is the purchase deck which we split into 3 seperate decks to pull from Items, Followers, Rituals/Runes. Never really made sense to us why you wouldn't have a more focused idea on what you are going to buy in a town. Still allows the random factor of drawing and doesn't effect any of the cards for drawing rewards. The effect is that everyone gets a solid pick quick and the race never slows to a crawl.

Have the player to one side draw the cards and read them for the active player in regards to events, basically relaying the enemy to the player. The player to the other side should be rolling an extra pair of movement dice and basically moving. Or if you really want it you can do cross table pairs, where one draws and reads while the other moves and fights, doing these items concurrently with the other. Does wonders to give hardly any downtime if you do it that way.

Baenre said:

I think this really sums it up. There's just not much planning to do during the other player's turns (not like wow the boardgame). Understanding that before hand will probably make for a more enjoyable experience. That being said, I've never played with more than 3 players. In fact the majority of my games are solo, so downtime isn't a factor for me. I do like what Arkade wrote about the different colored dice. Rolling an entire combat round at once is a good idea.