Players: 2-6*
Time: 2-4 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

* Starts to feel like a stretch over 4 players due to downtime issues.

The Components

Opening Runebound gets you:

• 1 map
• The Dice:
  • 5 movement dice
  • 1 20-sided die
• The Cards:
  • 12 hero cards
  • 72 adventure cards
  • 84 market cards
• The Cardboard:
  • 12 heroes (with 6 hero stands)
  • 60 wound counters
  • 50 exhaustion counters
  • 50 adventure counters
  • 60 experience counters
  • 50 gold counters
  • 6 undefeated adventure counters
• 1 rulebook

Map: The board is a four-panel map is printed on solid cardboard. The main section of the board shows a map of the Runebound world, from the Crimson Forest in the northwest to the city of Tamilar in the southeast. It's colorful, but it looks computer generated, and I personally don't find it that appealing. (Beyond that I found two area of the map a deteriment to play: first, on the map proper, the hills aren't that distinct, and I found it easy to confuse them with forests; second, the cities on the map each correspond to a "market card" area to the right of the map, and that correlation is shown by an icon. The icons are tiny and pretty hard to distinguish. Including the name of the city over in the market area would have been a big improvement.)

Around the map are spaces for cards of all sorts. To the right are those market spaces for the towns. To the left are spaces for the four decks of adventure cards, the market draw pile, and the current event cards. Across the top are spaces for undefeated adventure cards. It's nice to have specific areas for all of these cards, rather than having them scattered about a table.

Though it has its problems, the map is still probably an average design, and the utility of the rest of the components goes upward.

Dice: The 20-sided die is a fairly standard die, white with indented numbers inked in black. The movement dies are six-sided dice, each side of which shows the icons for two or three different types of terrain. The icons will be easy to figure out within the first 15 minutes of your first game, which means they're pretty nicely intuitive. The dice are inked black on white, but the icons aren't indented, which leaves me wondering about their eventually longevity (if the way the special combat dice for HeroQuest wore is any indication).

The Cards: All the cards are printed on fairly thick cardstock at regular card size. The cards all make use of five standard icons: health, exhaustion, mind, body, and spirit. In addition a lot of care has been taken making sure the various rules-phrases on the cards are relatively standardized. Overall, these make the cards easy to use. Besides various rules, each card also features artwork that fills about 40% of the face of each card. It's all color fantasy art and runs the gamut from average to quite nice, though some of it feels like it's reproduced just a bit small.

Each card type is also laid out a bit differently, which makes it quite easy to distinguish between them. I'll talk more about the various card types when I get to The Gameplay.

The Cardboard: All of the cardboard bits are printed full-color on fairly thick cardboard. They generally look nice.

The heroes are stand-up cardboard figures which slot into a plastic base. The cardboard is wide enough that you really have to stretch the plastic base to make it fit, which is mildly annoying.

The wound and exhaustion counters are big hearts and tears, in clearly distinct shapes and colors.

The adventure counters are shown in four colors for the four t ypes of adventures: basic green, intermediate yellow, advanced blue, and expert red. One side just shows a colored sphere, the other the value of the adventure (1, 2, 3, or 4). Two of the colors were indistinguishable to the colorblind member of our group, but we just flipped everything over to the numbered side, and they worked fine.

The experience counters use the normal icons for mind, body, and spirit to show gains in those stats.

The gold counters show 1, 5, and 10 gold piece bits in different sizes, and each with the appropriate roman number (I, V, X). However, because they're fairly similar colors (gold shades), I wished for a little more differentiation.

Finally, the undefeated adventure counters just let you link up the six spaces for undefeated adventure cards on the side of the board to six spaces on the map. They're numbered 1-6.

Rulebook: The rulebook is a 3-panel double-sided rulesheet. It has a fair number of illustration and icons and was OK to teach the game, though I had a number of different questions as I played, and sometimes rules were more implied than stated. However, when I referred to it during game I was usually able to find what I wanted without much trouble.

Box & Tray: The box is a medium-sized square box. There's a tray inside with two spaces for cards and two other compartments, one large and one small. Sadly, it's mostly worthless. The spaces for the cards aren't nearly deep enough, and so you'll have 20 or 25 cards overflowing. In addition the big tray spaces aren't adequate for sorting the hundreds of components. I've got some plastic bags in mine, as well as about 30 cards set to the side. I expect I'll abandon the tray entirely if I ever need space for supplements.

Overall, the quality of the components is perhaps slightly above average, and is a pretty good match for the price. However, the game shines on usability, because a lot of care has been taken with standard icons and good card layouts to make games run smoothly. Thus, Runebound earns "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Runebound is ultimately to be able to face the most difficult, "red" encounters in the game, but to get there you must build up a set of items and allies to help you out.

Setup: Each player starts out by taking one of the twelve character cards. He also takes three gold and places his hero counter in the town of Tamalir.

Meanwhile, the board is setup. The fifty adventure counters are placed on the board and one card is placed face-up in the market of each town other than Tamalir.

Characters. Each character is a unique and evocative fantasy character defined by a number of different elements. First, each character has a name, a picture, and a quote. They're nice color. Next, they have a health value and an exhaustion value, each of which will slowly be worn down during the game. Then, statistics define how well a character will do in challenges: mind, body, and spirit. Each of these statistics is also associated with a type of combat (ranged, melee, and magic) and also has an associated damage for that type of combat. A set of skills, such as Hide, Sneak, Tinker, and others, are listed as well; they can sometimes be used to modify task rolls. Finally, each character also has a special power, most of which require take exhaustion tokens to activate.

Health and exhaustion tokens are piled on a character during the game. Usually, health is done as damage in combat and exhaustion is voluntarily taken to use abilities.If a player has hit his exhaustion limit, additional exhaustion is taken as health damage. If a player has taken his health limit, he is knocked out (more on that in the adventure section).

Skill Tests. These are the task resolution system for the game. They generally list a stat (e.g., body), a skill (e.g., Swim), and a target number (e.g., 13). To make a skill test, you first look and see if you have the skill or not. If you do you can choose to get its bonus once for every exhaustion token you take (e.g., if I had "Swim +2" I could get a +2 for 1 exhaustion, a +4 for 2, etc.). Once you've determined when to use a skill, you then roll the d20, adding your stat and any skill bonus you decided to use. If the total is equal to the target or more, you succeed.

The Map. The map is a wilderness overview. It's made up of a number of terrain types including 9 towns.

Scattered throughout this map are 50 adventures, ranked as one of four difficulties: green (easy), yellow (intermediate), blue (tough), and red (terrifying). Each one is marked by an adventure counter, which you'll later take to mark that the adventure is done.

Each town, meanwhile, has a market associated with it. This is a pile of cards to the right of the board which highlights things you can buy in that town. It includes Allies and Items.

Allies. These are market cards which represent helpers. They have pretty much the same info as your main character: health value, exhaustion value, and the three stats, as well as some special abilities. They each also have a cost.

Items. These cards help your character out in various ways. Most modify one of the three types of combat, but others have more far-reaching powers, including the ability to remove health or exhaustion counters, reroll dice, etc. Items are labelled as Runes, Artifacts, Weapons, and Armor. What Runes and Artifacts are exactly, I don't know. You can only own one armor and two weapons at a time.

Some cards must be "activated" to be used, which means they're flipped upside down, and not available for use again until the next round.

As you'd expect, each item has a cost too.

Order of Play: Each player plays in turn, taking the following actions:

1. Refresh
2. Movement
3. Adventure
4. Market
5. Experience

Refresh: Reactivate any face-down cards by turning them face-up.

Movement: To move you roll the movement dice: 5 if you're in the city, 4 otherwise. Each movement die face shows either two or three terrain symbols. These define the moves you're allowed to take on your turn: for each space you move, you must use up a die displaying the icon for that terrain. Clearly this means you can never move more than 4 or 5 spaces in a turn, and often less because the dice don't cooperate. Some terrains are notably harder to move into than others (such as swamp and mountains).

There are a few exceptions to this general rule, including: you can use any die face to move into a town; you can choose to roll less than your allowed dice, removing one exhaustion for each die removed; and you can choose to move one space to any terrain rather than rolling.

Adventure: This is the heart of the game. If you end your turn on a space with an adventure counter, you can choose to face the adventure. (You'll want to face lower difficulty adventures at the start of the game, higher at the end.) Once you decide to face an adventure, you draw a card from the appropriately colored adventure deck. You might first meet encounters or events, but eventually you also face a challenge.

Encounters. Encounters are usually bits of good luck that happen to you. Sometimes you make an immediate skill test to gain some award. Sometimes you can gain an award later by visiting a specific space or a general type of terrain.

Events. Conversely, these are usually bad. Each event represents an ongoing occurrence which generally affects gameplay. They're also numbered "I", "II", and "III". Only bigger events can go down once a smaller event is in play, which means there will be a maximum of three events each game.

(Whenever an encounter or event is drawn for an adventure, the adventure is redrawn afterward; you always keep going until you find a challenge.)

Challenges. And these are the hearts of the adventures. Generally, you must fight stuff: each challenge has many of the same stats as any character, including: health rating, and stats for the three types of combat: mind, body, and spirit. In addition, challenges tend to have "before combat" info and "reward"s.

Every combat starts off with the before combat stage. First, you do anything required by the before combat section of the challenge (usually a skill test which may benefit you if you succeed or hurt you if you fail), and then you may choose to use any before combat sections for your own items or allies (most often, free attacks).

Next, combat is conducted in rounds, each with four phases: escape, ranged, melee, and magic.

Escape gives a player the chance to get his character out of Dodge, if he wants. He makes a Mind skill test and must equal or exceed the Mind of the challenge. If he fails he takes one wound. If he succeeds he gets away (and the unfinished adventure card is set to the side and marked on the board).

The next three phases are the main parts of combat: ranged, melee, and magic. Each phase a player chooses himself or one of his allies to attack or else himself to defend. Each character can only attack once per round and only one person (the main character or an ally) can attack in each phase. So, for example, a character on his own only gets to attack one phase during a round and must defend the other two, while a character with one ally will probably attack once, have his ally attack once, and defend during the third phase.

Once a decision has been made about who's attacking (or if the main character is defending), the player then has that character make a skill check against mind, body, or spirit, depending on the phase. If he fails, he takes damage from the challenge, as shown on the challenge card. If he succeeds, and he was attacking, he applies his own damage; if he succeeds, and he was defending, he just avoids damage.

Many items will list a certain phase of combat during which they can be used; these tend to increase damage or otherwise influence the skill tests. There are also many types of armor which can be used to reduce wounds taken.

Many challenges don't have damage ratings for all three phases; if a player chooses to have his main character defend during a phase where the challenge can't actually do damage, then that phase is just skipped that round.

For example, the "Nest of Bane Spiders" is "Mind: 10/0; Body: 11/1; Spirit: 11/0". The player must exceed 10 to win at Mind and 11 to win at Body or Spirit. The Spiders can only do damage (of 1) during the Body phase.

Whenever a player beats a challenge by doing a number of wounds equal to the challenge's Life, he wins. He takes any Reward listed on the challenge (usually gold, sometimes items or allies) and also removes the Adventure Counter from the board; it's worth 1-4 experience, depending on the level of challenge.

Conversely, if a player is beaten by having his main character reduced to 0 Life he's knocked out. He loses any unspent experience points, half his gold, and is relocated to the nearest town. Again, the adventure card is set to the side and marked on the board.

(Allies, apparently less hearty, are just killed if they are reduced to 0 Life.)

Attacking Other Heroes. If you move into a space with another hero you can alternatively decide to face them. This is conducted much like normal combat against a challenge, except that the other player gets to add a die roll to each of his stats before you roll your target number. I personally think there's holes in this system because the defending player doesn't have the option to use most allies and items, but we didn't manage to generate any hero-to-hero battles during out game, so that's partly conjectural.

Beating another hero lets you take one of their allies or items.

Market: Any player ending their turn in a town now goes to market. They flip over one new market card, add it to the market stack for that town, then may buy any items and allies in the market with their gold. It's worth noting that there are a huge number of market cards; you're only going to see a small fraction in any one game.

A player can also heal in a town, which costs 1 gold per hero or ally--to remove all their wound and exhaustion counters.

Experience: At the end of his turn a player may decide to spend his experience. The number of experience required to increase stats varies from 3-6, depending on the number of players. A player spends the appropriate number of points, discards the adventure counter/experience points, then takes a +1 in a stat of his choice (mind, body, or spirit). There's no limit to how much a player can add to his stats, though the experience counters just go up to +4.

Winning the Game: The adventure in the basic Runebound game requires you to either beat Margath or else collect three dragon runes. These are all related to red adventure cards; essentially you must either defeat the toughest red adventure card or else three of the others (or else wait till other players do and steal the very powerful dragon runes they win from them).

Just to offer a bit more explanation, High Lord Margath is a challenge with 7 Life and the following stats: "Mind: 18/2; Body: 16/3; Spirit: 18/4". Not nice.

Advanced Game: There are rules for an advanced game available at the Runebound website. I haven't played them, though I have read them over. They basically make the game more challenging, by putting a time limit on things, introuducing wandering monsters, and in general slightly change many of the other rules to make stuff harder. If you play this game casually, you won't need the rules, but if you really like it and want to make it harder to win, they should do that job well.

Relationships to Other Games

The phrase "adventure board game" is pretty good one for this category of game. They're board games that takes the trappings of roleplaying games. Most games in this category aren't terribly strategic or tactical, instead concentrating on "adventuring".

Runebound (2004) is most like one of the classics of the genre, Talisman (1985); they both center around improving your character against a broad landscape so that you can eventually defeat a final task. Dungeoneer (2003) is another recent example of this type of independent adventure game, though it's a card game restricted to a dungeon.

The aforementioned games are all fairly competitive; in contrast another classic of the genre, HeroQuest (1989), was fairly cooperative (and quite tactical as it happens).

Games from some other genres of speculative fiction have been released in the category of adventure games as well. These include Arkham Horror (1987), a cooperative adventure game of Lovecraftian horror, and Smugglers of the Galaxy (2004), a competitive science-fiction trading game with adventure overtones.

The Game Design

Runebound is a nice new entry to the gaming category. Here's some of the best features:

Great Color: The theming of the game is well-done, and really implies a strongly backgrounded and consistent world. This in turn makes the game colorful and more enjoyable to play.

Very Replayable: The 12 characters and 84 market cards each contribute to making the game quite replayable, as does the randomization of the adventure locations for any game. You're likely each time around to see things you've never seen before and that helps make the game worth trying again.

Some Strategy, Nice Tactics: Adventure games tend to be somewhat short on strategy and tactics, but this game does include some. The strategy is mainly centered around the advancement of your character, but you can also make some long term movement plans if you have a specific goal across the board. There are a lot of options for tactics, including deciding when to go to market, when to heal, when to take exhaustion counters, and when to attack other players. I found the interplay of exhaustion and wounds particularly satisfying as a tactical point.

There were a number of game design issues that made me think, but which I never resolved as good or bad. These include:

Item Balance: I did feel like some of the expensive items and allies were off-balancing, but generally they were all quite powerful at the higher levels, which I suppose is a balance in and of itself.

Interesting Movement System: I'm not entirely sure about the movement system. The idea of rolling dice to show what terrains you could move onto was overall pretty neat. it gave movement variance, but at the same time allowed some opportunity for tactical thought, as you tried to figure out alternatives for movement based on what you'd rolled. On the other side, it was a little complex constantly counting and recounting spaces to figure out where you could go, and was definitely one of the things that contributed to the downtime (more on that momentarily). In any case, a very interesting design.

High Variance Die: I was a bit uncomfortable with the high variance of the main die (1-20) as it made it impossible to ever assure victory (or defeat). This was actually very nicely controlled in combat, as even if you got a really lucky shot, you'd still need a number more to defeat a powerful foe, but it made me a little uncomfortable in other circumstances. Still, I can't point to it actually seeming troublesome during play, so maybe it's actually well controlled in the rest of the system too.

Here's some of the problems I had with the game:

Little Player Interaction: The player interaction was quite minimal, except in the case of attacking others, which was really most important only at the end of the game.

Long Downtimes: Turns took a while, thus you could expect quite a while to go by in between your turns (which interacts badly with the low player interaction, because it means you don't have a lot to do while you wait, other than watch). The downtime was long enough that I thought it made the game pretty undesirable to play at 5 or 6. It was somewhat OK at 4, and I suspect would have been best with 3.

I feel like the two biggest issues in the game (little player interaction & long downtimes) are fairly endemic to this category of games. When players are bouncing around, apart from each other, and engaging in their own little stories, then these issues are pretty likely to come up. So, I can't fault Runebound too much for them, though I still note them. Beyond that, Runebound is very cleanly designed, original, colorful, and a fair amount of fun. I thus give it an above average "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Runebound is a worthy new contender to carry on the banner of big-box adventure games. It does have issues with downtime and interactivity, but overall it's a clean and well-designed game that has a colorful background and is fun to play.