We just played our first complete game, first quest of the base game with no expansion stuff. With three heroes and of course one overlord, it took us about six hours (though that included a smoke break). The overlord player was kind of bored, as the quest was very straightforward. He also had a hard time of it, as we had a ton of conquest tokens at the end (13, I think) and only lost any at all because of a stupid move early on when we heroes didn't know what was going on. One hero accumulated four or five armor and a shield and never took damage all game. With the Acrobat ability, I was able to run from town to a glyph, over two pits and two manticores, and shoot the boss three times in a row to kill him without the boss ever doing anything.

We all greatly enjoyed it and I've been eyeing second edition because I always wanted to own a copy of the game for myself. I know no one knows how second edition will compare, but just speaking in terms of first edition, how much will the experience of the base game vary from quest 1? Are there shorter quests, or can you expect game time to be reduced significantly with experience? Will the quests get more interesting for the keeper? And can I assume that it will get to be a more balanced game later on where the heroes will have a harder time of it?

None of these concerns are dealbreakers either way, but it would be nice to know. I don't mind the occasional six-hour game a couple times a year, but that game time is a bit prohibitive if we ever want to do a campaign with an expansion or second edition.

The first quest is probably the shortest (or one of), but if it's your first time playing you were probably moving more slowly anyway. They do get longer, but the heroes also learn to move faster (if they enjoy not getting killed, of course.) On average, I'd say 4-6 hours is a fair guesstimate of play time for a single quest.

Difficulty-wise, the first quest is tremendously easy for the heroes. The first three quests or so are deliberately easy to let the heroes get the hang of things, after that the difficulty ramps up. Expansion quests are exceptionally difficult and generally not recommended for less than 4 heroes, even if that means players are doubling up or sharing a communal hero figure.

It should be noted that although the quests in general get harder, the overall mechanic of "heroes in town/copper gear are easy to kill and heroes in gold gear are basically unstoppable" doesn't change. If the heroes get to the final boss in any quest, they've basically won. Barring exceptional luck on the OL's part or a very small number of remaining Conquest due to prior whittling, it's unlikely that the game will continue very much longer after that. This mechanic of "the OL must kill the heroes early or he probably won't kill them at all" is IMHO the greatest flaw with the game, and something I sincerely hope 2e addresses.

In general, the game plays best with 5 (4 heroes and 1 OL). After the first few "easy" quests, it is well balanced at that number, although that balance depends strongly on obeying the rules to the letter even when they don't make logical sense (which happens frequently.) Making house rules to keep things within logical expectations is not reccomended if you want to maintain a true competition between OL and heroes. Remember that the OL is just another player and has no inherent right to change the rules if he doesn't like them.

I would say another flaw includes the random hero draw mechanic. There are just way more heroes than the game needs and the hero party can wildly vary in balance and composition. To the extremes that some groups cannot win unless the overlord holds back or makes major errors , and some groups are unlikely to lose unless the heroes play poorly. While I believe set up should be important I don't believe it should be so far reaching when it's largely out of the player's hands.

I get the feeling that second edition will move away from this with class building. Hopefully it becomes a matter of making choices and dealing with the pros and cons of said challenges as the heroes, while taking advantage of and exploiting weaknesses of the heroes choices as the overlord.

I'm generally not a fan of random mechanics except where strictly necessary, such as with the dice.

Digitality said:

That's fair, although in my experience the popular house rule about drawing 3 heroes and picking 1 goes a long way toward rectifying that issue. The hero players will basically never get stuck with a crappy party once they know how to pick a group. This system will obviously favour the unstoppably awesome party, but those don't come up in the draw too often. In general, the party ends up being somewhat above average, but still manageable for an experienced Overlord.