Runebound lovers, step up

It's still a travesty that Runebound was defeated by the "pick up n' deliver" Return of the Heroes with its cubes and porn star halflings.

We need a support group for Runebound lovers.


Here is why Runebound is awesome:



1. You go from weenie to Dragon God killer in the span of a couple of hours (with two players.) Just the right length.

2. You have control over the encounters. Talisman's drawback is that they're from the same deck; here, you can control your difficulty by wading into more "dangerous" areas of the board.

3. The movement dice ROCK. They're brilliant. Fewer mountain icons? Because it's harder to move in the mountains, Mr. Barbarian. The variance in movement takes into account weather, roughness of terrain, all that jazz without getting bogged down in additional charts. Usually you know where you want to go; it's just a matter of finding out if your travels will get you there as you anticipated.

4. It's like an SNES RPG.

5. Shopping in that game for items...that's addictive. I play with the crazy broken cards in 1st edition, too. You make a beeline for that stuff when you see it. If you score it, you wander around swinging dick and sword into anything that moves. You get to satisfy that "Timmy Power Gamer" thirst in all of us.

6. It breaks up the monster encounters just enough with a few "go to this town and kill this guy" and other event stuff that keeps the game hot n' spicy.

7. Expansions. They're enough to make me finally get 2nd edition later this year. My god...the expansions.

8. Red Scorpion has big bosoms.

9. The combat system...takes into account being good at different skills, but having enemies that can take advantage of weaknesses. I don't know why people say it's such a long drawn-out thing, like that's bad. I love blowing up a Dwarven Powder Keg in some beasts face while the amazon steps up beside me to let an arrow fly, I dive my sword into the beast's hide, and the priest with us chants some arcane sounding shit to finish the job.

10. Martin Wallace--who's gone to the Euro side of the force--apparently disowns this game. That's right, folks--he created an AT monster that's too awesome for him to handle. It would destroy his cred. He got to pretend that it don't exist, but you know he's seein' baby mamma on the side.




There you have it.

Preach on, brother.

Ken B. wrote:

It's still a travesty that Runebound was defeated by the "pick up n' deliver" Return of the Heroes with its cubes and porn star halflings.

We need a support group for Runebound lovers.


Here is why Runebound is awesome:



1. You go from weenie to Dragon God killer in the span of a couple of hours (with two players.) Just the right length.

2. You have control over the encounters. Talisman's drawback is that they're from the same deck; here, you can control your difficulty by wading into more "dangerous" areas of the board.

3. The movement dice ROCK. They're brilliant. Fewer mountain icons? Because it's harder to move in the mountains, Mr. Barbarian. The variance in movement takes into account weather, roughness of terrain, all that jazz without getting bogged down in additional charts. Usually you know where you want to go; it's just a matter of finding out if your travels will get you there as you anticipated.

4. It's like an SNES RPG.

5. Shopping in that game for items...that's addictive. I play with the crazy broken cards in 1st edition, too. You make a beeline for that stuff when you see it. If you score it, you wander around swinging dick and sword into anything that moves. You get to satisfy that "Timmy Power Gamer" thirst in all of us.

6. It breaks up the monster encounters just enough with a few "go to this town and kill this guy" and other event stuff that keeps the game hot n' spicy.

7. Expansions. They're enough to make me finally get 2nd edition later this year. My god...the expansions.

8. Red Scorpion has big bosoms.

9. The combat system...takes into account being good at different skills, but having enemies that can take advantage of weaknesses. I don't know why people say it's such a long drawn-out thing, like that's bad. I love blowing up a Dwarven Powder Keg in some beasts face while the amazon steps up beside me to let an arrow fly, I dive my sword into the beast's hide, and the priest with us chants some arcane sounding shit to finish the job.

10. Martin Wallace--who's gone to the Euro side of the force--apparently disowns this game. That's right, folks--he created an AT monster that's too awesome for him to handle. It would destroy his cred. He got to pretend that it don't exist, but you know he's seein' baby mamma on the side.




There you have it.

Testify!

*swoons in Runebound religious rapture*

I MUST play this someday.

Christ YES.

Ken B. wrote:

1. You go from weenie to Dragon God killer in the span of a couple of hours (with two players.) Just the right length.

And you control how it happens.

2. You have control over the encounters. Talisman's drawback is that they're from the same deck; here, you can control your difficulty by wading into more "dangerous" areas of the board.

Puts the other, similar type of games to shame. And that chill you get when you decide to move up a level...what am I going to face now? Did I make a mistake doing this?

3. The movement dice ROCK. They're brilliant.

People who don't like Runebound: well, to each their own. People who don't like the movement dice: what the fuck is wrong with you? They're fantastic.

4. It's like an SNES RPG.

Yeah, I don't care. But still, woo!

5. Shopping in that game for items...that's addictive.

Once again, you get a measure of choice when you are looking to upgrade. Not just whatever junk you find.

6. It breaks up the monster encounters just enough with a few "go to this town and kill this guy" and other event stuff that keeps the game hot n' spicy.

Yes indeed.

7. Expansions. They're enough to make me finally get 2nd edition later this year. My god...the expansions.

Oh, baby. This...THIS...is my holy grail. Some just give more of what you want, some change the game entirely. I've spent more money on Runebound than any other game except for Magic. And I'm thrilled with all of it.

8. Red Scorpion has big bosoms.

And red hair!

9. The combat system...takes into account being good at different skills, but having enemies that can take advantage of weaknesses.

Best quasi-tactical combat system out there. And you need to be adaptable, too.

10. Martin Wallace--who's gone to the Euro side of the force--apparently disowns this game.

A lot of people lose their minds when they grow old. It's a thing to be pitied, not celebrated.

I think that there is so much that is great about Runebound. The big box expansions are awesome because they completely change the theme of the game. The little expansions are nice because they add some flavor -- it is almost endlessly replayable, like Arkham Horror, but in a more thematic manner. While AH just adds cards to give variability, RB actually changes the make-up of the worlds -- it is thematically replayable.

The movement dice are awesome. As Ken noted, it takes what terrain and weather charts due and distills them into a nice neat roll without all of the charts. If people get frustrated because they are "out of the action" then use the well-crafter wandering monster rules.

The story progresses nicely as well through the various plot cards. The monsters level up at a pace that is similar to an RPG. If you aren't hunkering down at the lower levels, then the monsters should always be beatable but challenging.

Probably the best solo and two player game of its genre.

Runebound has its moments, but it's certainly no Return of the Heroes. [wink-wink, nudge-nudge ... okay, easy, everyone ... just a bit of levity]

Space Ghost wrote:

Probably the best solo and two player game of its genre.

I'm too busy at work to give this thread the reply it deserves, but can I get a link to these solo rules everyone talks about? Thanks.

Mad Dog wrote:

I'm too busy at work to give this thread the reply it deserves, but can I get a link to these solo rules everyone talks about? Thanks.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/122763

I love Runebound. There is an endless supply of stories there with all the expansions of which I own every single one. The key for me is to just play with one or two other people and to take our time. Read the flavor text on every card out loud and immerse yourself. If you rush things and just see everything as a number, then it will just seem dry and boring. I think the movement dice are great and I like to puzzle out the best way to travel based on what I roll. Sure, it can get frustrating if you roll badly, but that's part of the adventure. Terrain difficulties are part of the story - snowy,impassable mountains, flooded wetlands, etc. Maybe I just have an overactive imagination.

I also love games like this that by their very nature invite people to tweak them to their liking. It's fun to read all the creative ideas that people come up with. Like Frank pointed out, just go to over to the Runebound forums at BGG and take a look. Great stuff there including Frank's.

And yeah, I like the shopping aspect

SusanR. wrote:

flavor text

I'm still, after a year, trying to figure out why World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game fell so flat. It is definitely a direct child of Runebound.

I think your mention of flavor is it. If you're not into the MMORPG--and believe me, I'm not--then the game comes with little built-in flavor. So you've got not much flavor in-game, AND the combat is just little one-off die rolls instead of anything involved. Two things Runebound does in spades. Of course, Runebound HAD to cook up its own flavor because it wasn't based on any established world already.

Flavor text is key -- our group reads the flavor text in everygame like this: Runebound, AH, Android. Highly anticipating ToTAN because the whole damn game is flavor text.

Hell, we read the flavor text when we play spells in MtG -- but usually that is our smart-assed way of announcing which card we are playing.

My favorite flavor text in Magic was always, "Expect my visit when the darkness comes. I think the night is best for hiding all." That was LOWER THE BOOM time.

Like Magic, Runebound tells a story via the flavor text of the cards. It's loose (it has to be, because there's no guarantee of chronlogy) but you get a picture of a land and a people living in fear of this Margath and his servants. Very nice.

The best was saying that I turn two with a dark ritual. There you go, just try and stop the 5/5 staring you in the face.

Of course, the reply you didn't want to hear was

"The so-called barbarians will not respect us for our military might—they will respect us for our honor."

Runebound was always a bit of stepchild in the FFG catalogue because no designer owned it. I use to think that was a drawback – FAQ rulings were a pain in the ass to get – but now I think it is a strength.

Runebound’s biggest strength is that it is (for the adventure game genre) a reasonably complex system which is really just a skeletal framework that you can hang other stuff off. And that framework has never been touched since 2nd edition.

Games like Talisman and WoW:TAG are less robust, so you can do less with them. You can’t do market deck expansions for talisman because you can’t manipulate the system in enough ways to come up with the variety you need. How many weapons can you come up with in talisman? A sword +1, an axe +2, that’s about it. But Runebound’s more complex combat system allows you to come up with a million combinations of weapons – the proof being that 26 expansions on and I can’t think of any 2 items that have duplicate effects. You can have a skilled sword that gives you a combat bonus, a fire sword that gives you a damage bonus, a throwing sword for use in the ranged phase, a sword of quickness that allows an attack in the pre-combat phase, a rapier that gives you defense bonuses but does less damage, a suicide bomber sword that explodes on impact (discard to use) and causes automatic damage – I could make up different runebound swords for an hours. The flexibility is there in the system to do that.

I know people like Tom V were disappointed that the expansions were modular (there is an article idea for you Ken – different styles of expansions) but I’m so glad the game went that way. Whereas most people seem to agree that Arkham is getting bloated and its time to call it quits on the expansions soon, Runebound feels even leaner these days than ever and the game can go for another 50 expansions – especially as the expansions have been getting BETTER and more creative each round. Runebound isn’t a SNES RPG – it is a SNES! And the expansions you plug in are like the game cartridges. Click click, island adventure game, click click cataclysim adventures. You can kind of do this with games like Arkham but you have to spend on hour sorting cards. In runebound it takes 5 mins, tops.