Dear community,

If my group starts a new adventure we regularly have an issue:

I'm playing the overlord most of the time. After an adventure ends and a new one is selected I put usually the unneeded tiles and stuff aside and build up the new encounter.

Meanwhile the hero players count their gold, spend their experience points and draw five cards from the market.

Afterwards I read the description of the quest and explain it to the players.

And now comes my issue. I spend my experience points, look into my overlord cards to build a deck and search the available monsters which suits my needs for this encounter. My friend sits there the whole time waiting for me to get finished.

I thought about the option that he as a hero builds up the tiles but then in order for him to have the booklet we would have to read the description before the dungeon is build.

How do you handle this delay? Are you comfortable with it as it drags out the already long preparations?

Thank you for your answers.

1) Let your hero players help 😛 There's no need for the Overlord to deal with everything... The hero players should be allowed to read the campaign book anyway, there's nothing secret in it.

I would certainly delegate the map tile storage stuff to someone else (put away the old ones and get out the new ones)... This is a useful resource for sorting tiles without needing the campaign book: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/150367/game-tiles-quest

2) Do some preparation in advance... As the Overlord, read the relevant quests in the campaign book before your group gets together, and give some thought to monster selection and any choices that you have to make...

That way you spend your xp and build your deck while the heroes are spending their xp and going shopping, then you can all build the map together (let the heroes do most of it) while you finalise monster choices etc...

There will inevitably be a bit of waiting around for the heroes, because you have so much more stuff to think about than they do, but you should be able to keep it to a minimum...

Excellent answer above. In my group, (we play each week but rarely do more than one encounter a session) we shop and spend XP after finishing a quest.

The overlord does not own the game (I do- we frequently rotate the OL role) but I text him photos of the available quests so he has them to review in anticipation of the next session.

When we set up the game, I have everything organized so we can all get it set up (the cards and small map tile bits are in Plano boxes with an index taped on each, map tiles are in numerical order and color coded by expansion, and tokens are in smaller containers sorted by type)

The miniatures are just kind of in a few plastic tubs. I’m in the process of finding a good solution.

When we tear down the game, I am the one who actually puts stuff in the plastic cases, but everyone consolidates components at the end of a session.

Edit: A big improvement in setup was shopping and XP after a session, and texting the quests to the OL. He uses the wiki to choose monsters, so that knocks off a lot of downtime

Thank you for your answers.

As we live far away we play a small expansion in one stroke or a half of a big one. So we couldn't copy your way lightningclaw.

I've already sorted my stuff like you did. To organize the tiles by number in folders helped a lot.

Maybe that's also my problem for your second suggestion, xyphistor. I can't see me preparing for a whole campaign in advance.

I have already made some lists to see the relevant part faster. For example which overlord deck or which plot deck are good in which situations. Which strengths has this or that monster.

For your first part of the first suggestion my friend wants me to read the booklet and explain it as he says he has difficulties to grasp all the stuff. It's not like I won't let him look at it.

But I do like the second part of your first suggestion. I'll try next time to have him break down the last encounter and build up the next one with a picture of the map. So I could read the description alongside.