Hunter / Bounty Hunter (Single and multiplayer mod)

Hello all!

I've been trying to think of a way to make a single player game of Rune Bound more interesting. I've read some good ideas about using the doom counter but I just didn't like the "timer" element. But at the same time with no time limit (or other threat) a single player could simply take their time leveling and waltz right through the game without much risk.

So how else to add 'threat' without adding a time limit?

I thought of Hunters (or Bounty Hunters) that are none playable characters that would pursue the player (Was there something like this in Midnight?).

Keep in mind I haven't fully thought this through. I'd like to put my idea out here for the community and to get a feel for interest and added ideas to tweak and make the idea Better and more practical
I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Basic Idea - You pull an adventure/encounter and the card and its flavor goes something like this:

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Green - Hunter:

Spirits, the Will of High Lord Margath

Your deeds have not gone unnoticed. High Lord Margath wishes to erase your fledging Heroism before your destiny is fulfilled.

Your weapons and armor have no effect unless they say Magic or Rune anywhere on the card.

11/1 12/1 14/2

Place a Hunter token on the closest red adventure marker to your Hero

Reward: Receive a +2 Magic experience counter.

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How it works

1) Once you have a Hunter after you the Hunter will move after your movement phase using the same movement dice you just rolled. That is, whatever movement dice you roll the Hunter has available to it as well.
First you plan your move and move. Make sure the movement dice are not changed (unless by abitily or a card). The Hunter will then use your roll. They can even use dice you did not use so long as the dice were rolled by you. The Hunter will always move towards the Hero they are hunting. If they land on the same space as the Hero the Hero must immediately resolve the Hunter encounter.

2) The hunter remains in play until either, the Hero defeats it, the Hunter defeats the Hero they are hunting or anything defeats the hero they are hunting, or until another Hero defeats this Hunter. Defeated Hunters are discarded.

3) If you draw a hunter card you place it next to you for refence, place the hunter token on the board where instructed to and continue to draw adventure cards until you draw an adventure as normal.

4) A Hero with no (zero) +2 experience tokens can have only 1 hunter after them at a time. A Hero with 1 +2 experience token can have 2 hunters after them at any given time... and so on. (Note: +2 experience token or experience tokens equal to the value of a +2 experience token)

5) Should two or more Hunters chasing the same Hero land on the same space (after fully completing their movement) they would immediately fight each other using PvP rules. The losing Hunter would be discarded and the winning Hunter would gain any +2 experience counters offered as a reward, if any.

6) Hunters will stop outside of Towns a Hero is visiting and wait for the Hero to leave.

Typically, it seems like Fantasy Flight like's to release desk expansions in 30 card packs. So for this idea I thought something like this would work well:

30 cards

Green 10
Yellow 10
Blue 8
Red 2 (or maybe no red and 10 blue/purple)

It would also have to contain numbered Hunter Tokens so you could keep track of the Hunters on the board.
**I would love an expansion like this to come with plastic figures like the Heroes to represent the Hunters!

Other Hunter/Encounter ideas:

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Green - Royal Guards

Persistent to a Fault. You will be their trophy.
The Royal Guard will first seek out all other hunters on your trail from before the placement of he Royal Guard. If they defeat other Hunters they remove all hearts before each of their movement phases. The Royal Guard ignore all hunter limits.

12/1 14/2 12/0

Reward: Receive a +2 Melee experience counter.

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Green - Merik the Mercenary

Years of bringing in the wanted has made this Hunter very efficient.

Merik may move an additional 'wildcard' movement space.

12/2 14/1 12/0

Reward: Receive 4 gold and a +2 Stamina experience counter.

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Yellow - Lord Heinerich

You're strength has not been over estimated by Lord Heinerich. Search the green adventure deck for the next hunter. This hunter is in league with Lord Heinerich and both are after you.
Reshuffle the desk. If the Royal Guards are drawn they are at odds and immeadiately defeat each other. Discard both.

17/1 16/2 15/1

Reward: Lord Heinerich is in awe. Gain a +2 ranged or melee experience counter of your choice and take this card. Discard this card to immeadately defeat the next Hunter to catch you.

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A Hunter card doesn't have to be the only way to draw a hunter. Regular Encounters could reward you with a Hunter:

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Lord Snooty (obviously a joke name )

Reward: Defeat this righteous Lord and receive 6 gold! and search the Hunters deck/adventure deck for the Royal Guard. The shameful death of their protected does not release them from their duty. They are immediately in pursuit of you starting from the Town of Vynelvale. If the Royal Guards are already in play they change their focus and you become their hunted!

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I want these Hunters to be very tough. I want a Hero to really be worried about having one of them after them. Keep in mind a Hero can run, hide in town and maybe even level up before a
Hunter catches up with them. Knock outs rarely happen in my games, this could help change that

I'm hoping this will catch the eye of Fantasy Flight. With some serious thought and play testing I think this could be a great add-on.

I just wanted to say happy anniversary to my very first FFG post

It's been just over a year since I made this post. I was reading it over again and I still think it's has potential.
But... maybe it does not since I'm the only one to reply in more than a year!

If anyone is really bored out there maybe you could give a few ideas as you why you think this idea might not work? Maybe it would make game play too long? Maybe it's just not that intersting? I'd love to hear any thoughts.

This is a similar idea to the "patrols" mechanic in the Midnight expansion. Having played that expansion a lot, I think it is a fun mechanic which adds tension to the game as the heroes must keep in mind where the patrols are in comparison to where they want tot get to next. Given the setting of Midnight, I use the ringwraith miniatures from the War of the Ring boardgame to represent the patrols on the board.

That said, I think your hunters mechanic could make for a fun small box expansion for the base game. There are ways to make your own cards for Runebound, and it would be pretty easy to use monster miniatures from Descent or even prepainted Dungeons and Dragons miniatures to represent the hunters. If you want to go this route, let me know as I've made quite a few of my own cards and would be glad to send you some templates and offer some suggestions.

Judd M. Jensen

Hi Warbringer25,

I would love to see your templates. I've played with the idea a lot of creating a few hunters and trying it out. I should get off my butt and give it a go.
Do your templates help with printing front and backs on the cards?

I'd be happy to hear all the advice you have to offer. Thanks!

Another way to go aside from the "draw" of hunters from the decks is to determine a trigger. Maybe even more than one. There might be any number of them to consider.

• number of certain terrain rolled for movement
• rolling only 1 terrain for the type that your finished and/or started on
• being tailed out of a City on certain types of rolls (this is the mostly realistic notion for a hunter picking up a trail).

There have to be others as well, perhaps more linked to what the adventurer actual does to attract attention.

Then the level of hunter, if more than one is activated, can be escalated in steps based on 1) the number of hunters already active, and 2) the level of threat (attribute bonus tokens possessed) that the adventurer poses to the endgame.

Hey JCHendee,

I had only considered drawing Adventure cards to obtain a hunter. It didn't dawn on me to consider other triggers. These are interesting ideas.
My only concern about this would be adding too much to remember... or adding too much time figuring out if you rolled those certain terrain types.
For flavor reasons I really do like the idea of hunters tailing Heroes coming from towns but I worry that this might place the hunter too close to the Hero right off the bat. This would mean the Hunter would definately be able to catch the Hero this turn. And since I wanted these hunters to be very tough and something for a Hero to really worry about; this might not work. This is why I was playing with the idea of a Hunters starting from the nearest red adventure marker. These red encounters are usually near the outer rim of the board and there wold be a reasonable chance that the Hero could not be reached, but still a chance that they could. And for flavor, since the red adventures are mostly close to the edges of the board it could feel like these Hunters are traveling to this region to find this new bounty.

Thank you for the feed back. You've opened my eyes to some good options. I'd love to hear more.

Maybe this mod would work well with an alternate ending condition in addition to drawning hunter?