Weekly Trash - Return of the Heroes

I thought I'd try something different this time. Instead of gushing over a game I love, I'm going to do a game I'm not a big fan of and see how it goes. Once again I don't really put much forethought into this so I apologize if I ramble. Remember, the point is to discuss the game so I promise we won't pull out the torches and pitchforks over negative comments.

I've played the original twice and the first expansion once. I've since determined that I'd rather suggest a different adventure game to play. The bits for the game are a mixed bag for me. I like the artwork on the tiles and it always makes me think of the older Zelda games. I like that it comes with actual stones for the precious stones. The chits I don't feel are always informative enough as to what they do. Which is only a smaller part of a greater issue. The incredibly bad rulebook that despite being in perfectly good English pretty much still requires translation into something understandable. Its kind of too bad because once you figure out how to play the game it moves pretty smoothly and seems like the rulebook shouldn't be that complicated. But bits and the bad rulebook aren't really what keeps me from wanting to get this one back to the table. The fact the game is boring does that. At first I found the pick-up-and-deliver quests a nice change of pace, but ultimately they all feel too similar. Also I don't feel any strong connection to the theme as its pretty generic. Compared to some other adventure games I've played that have more detailed worlds I'd say RotH theme almost feels pasted on. I'll post more about it as my memory gets jogged over the course of this week.

So what do you think of Return of the Heroes and/or its expansions? Do you think the expansions are necessary? Do you play them stand-alone? What's your ideal number of players? Do you find the final boss(es) to be weak by the time you get there? Where exactly are the heroes returning from?

There's a new game by the same designer called "Midgard - Das Brettspiel (boardgame)", which I heard was "Return of the Heroes" with the designer given a free hand. Apparently "Pegasus Spiele" the original German publisher of RotH altered more than the designer wanted. Midgard is the first German RPG and "das Brettspiel" uses this setting, but the game is more or less self published and independent from the Midgard RPG publisher. It was released at Essen last year and wasn't translated to English yet. Maybe somebody should tell FFG.

I played only the base game of RotH. This was something of a gem we found at a con. We had someone else explain it to us.

I like the character advancement and the combat system, but the quests could be a little more exiting or interactive. I think the game is very good, a tad too simple for my tastes, but always worth a play.

As far as the bosses go - sure they are simple when you're fully powered up, but we always played the game more like a race challenging the boss when the odds were slightly favourable.

I thought the evil overlord dude was pretty weak the first time I played, too, but then I realized that that's like saying the inner region in Talisman is too easy. I just spent too much time getting stronger before going to fight the guy. After a couple games, people should figure out about how strong they have to be; those magic mice help.

The land tiles are nice, though the artists went a little crazy with the "copy/paste" feature in their graphic editor. The little tiles are not very flavorful or evocative. It would help the game's theme immensely if they were cards with flavor text describing the task, though that would require the land tiles to be very large. Maybe a list with flavor text for each mission that you can read when you pick up a task would work, but that sounds like too much work just to make tasks a little less abstract. I really wanted to do something about those abstract tasks last time I played, but I don't know what.

Back when F:AT was a blog, this subject came up somewhere within a thread. As I noted then, Return of the Heroes and Under the Shadow of the Dragon are among the least favorite games that I've played in the last two years. This is in spite of the fact that my 12 year old son liked playing this game---something that usually radically changes my opinion of a game and the likelihood of wanting to play the game. Unlike seemingly many people here (except Ubarose), my tastes and ratings are very much informed by how well games play with kids--this is an exception.

This is little more than a pick-up and deliver game with little interaction between players and weak combat experiences. Each game I'm left with the feeling--is that it? There's almost no opportunity for trash-talking or for real cooperation, for that matter. The quests do not "feel" like heroic or even exciting(compared to, say, Descent) Overall, the game's pace is slow with little pay-off in tension or strategy.

Don't get me wrong, a light game is not a problem with me, neither is a game that has slower pacing. In my opinion, the weakest game in the Ameritrash canon of recent years.


PS--The other thing about this game that I can't seem to push from my head is a comment back on BGG by Barnes, I believe, that noted that the female characters seemed to have the faces of porn actresses pasted onto bodies of hobbits and other fantasy creatures. Hard image to dispel from the brain!!!

I've played the base games 4-5 times and once with the Dragon expansion. What I didn't like about the game is the fact that it's a race game. It was also something I didn't enjoy about Runebound.

But unlike Runebound, Return offers more things to do, so I created a variant so that each accomplishment is worth a number of points (getting experience, gold, damaging monsters, etc...). Also, at the beginning of the game, each player secretly chooses 5vps to be distributed in the different areas (like in Magic Realm).

This way, the game changes a lot, and to me becomes more interesting. Problem is, as the game wasn't designed with this in mind, you cannot really concentrate in one aspect as they're usually related (you get xp when you kill a monster, etc...). Still, we've played this way and enjoyed the game quite a lot. It's great because the game doesn't end when someone kills the nameless one, as a new one is put into the bag and the game continues until the set number of turns pass.

But when we got the expansion we played the normal way using both sets, and the game was over pretty quickly when I finished the dragon quest in what seemed too little time. As it was, it seems the expansion is much quicker to solve than the original quest, so playing with both seems a bit pointless. But next time, we'll try our variant with both sets, and I think we'll enjoy it much more because it won't be over if someone completes the dragon quest first...

Also, I've read the cooperative rules that the designer posted on BGG. They seem to make the combat much more interesting (reminded me more of Runebound's combat) I think they're worth trying out.

Right now this is my choice when I want to play a light fantasy adventure game. I'll play Runebound from time to time (maybe once a year) because I like the combat system, but I generally enjoy the more varied gameplay of Return better. Of course, both games pale in comparison with the best fantasy adventure game ever created: Magic Realm, which unfortunately I don't get to play face to face often...

-Jorge

Yes, the porno hobbits...I'd bet dollars to dimes that the designers literally put porno actress faces on their characters on purpose. There's one or two that literally look like cracked out hookers. I believe the female cleric is one of them, WAY too much eyeshadow for a woman-of-the-cloth. Then there's the topless centaur and the one that has the tribal tattoos...then there's the one that has slightly different art that is almost certainly someone's wife, girlfriend, or sister. But the rest- total porno actresses, every one of 'em.

Anyway, I love the game. I think that it's just fine the way it is, but no, it's not really a big epic sweeping fantasy adventure game. It's much more like MERCHANT OF VENUS...in fact, it looks, feels, and acts _a lot_ like MERCHANT OF VENUS to me. Pick up an deliver, upgrade, navigate pathways, come up with routes to get to where you need to go...but I still think it's got ample theme. It feels like a fantasy quest, so that works for me. And there are things about it where you can see that MAGIC REALM was at least on the designer's mind, even if only to say "holy shit, that's a complex game".

I have all the expansions including the Holy Grail thing. I like them all, but ItSotD is pretty much a no-brainer- if you have and like the base game, you may as well get it...it feels more complete with it to me and it just gives you more of the game to play with. Plus I like that it gives you another option for the overall goal. HELDEN IN DER UNTERWELT changes things dramatically...suddenly, there's a whole dungeon thing going on and player corruption! PvP is more of an issue, players have to balance getting these black experience cubes with not going evil, and there's a whole other way to win there too- but it gets a little unwieldly playing with it and ItSotD...but like that expansion, you can also play it by itself and it's actually pretty good that way. The GRAALSUCHE thing replaces the main quest and rethemes the game slightly to be about the Holy Grail. It's good, it adds some neat mechanics like a hidden grail thing where you have to get clues by completing quests to find it.

Supposedly there's a fourth expansion in the works, something that transposes the game to the NIEBELUNGLIED. Whoa.

The rulebook is horrible and one of the worst ever published.

The bottom line is that it's a good "casual" fantasy game...it's not as hardcore as something like MAGIC REALM (obviously), DESCENT, or RUNEBOUND but it's not frivolous bullshit either...it's a great game to play while shooting the shit and if players don't sit and stare at the board all night it can be pretty quick...if your turn takes longer than 30 seconds, then something is probably wrong with you. More players makes it take a little too long, I'd say if you're not topping 4 you're good...and it's the kind of thing where players can thread their turns to make it even quicker.

There's not a ton of player interaction (UNTERWELT increases it quite a bit), but the game is fun enough to me that it's OK.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Supposedly there's a fourth expansion in the works, something that transposes the game to the NIEBELUNGLIED. Whoa.

Would you care for a glass of Pinot Noir to go with that word? Perhaps while you go play your fucking elegant pick-up and deliver game with your snooty Eurofriends that insist on using the original German titles of all their games. In other words, what is the NIEBELUNGLIED? I'd like to be excited about it too.

It is actually one of my favorite games ...therefore Barnes should hate it. It suffers from the same dilemna any questy game has that is on a map vs a circular board: Travel is a pain. On top of that the secret passages can make life a real bitch if you can't find them. Whenever I play, getting some sort increase to my travelling speed is priority #1.

And of course I'm all about the porno hobbits.

Underwelt is the best of the series though with the easy xp if you turn to the Dark side thing. If it was a star wars themed game it would have captured that aspect perfectly. Surprisingly, despite the increadibly easy xp and powerlevelling of bad guys, its hard for them to win. The "light Side" always manages to barely pull it off.

Steve"Dungeoncrawler"Avery

In other words, what is the NIEBELUNGLIED? I'd like to be excited about it too.

Harumph hmph...well, yes, you see...the NIEBELUNGENLIED is the High German poem from which Wagner's RING CYCLE came from...my good man. There it is then.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Harumph hmph...well, yes, you see...the NIEBELUNGENLIED is the High German poem from which Wagner's RING CYCLE came from...my good man. There it is then.

Yesss, quite.

Michael Barnes wrote:

In other words, what is the NIEBELUNGLIED? I'd like to be excited about it too.

Harumph hmph...well, yes, you see...the NIEBELUNGENLIED is the High German poem from which Wagner's RING CYCLE came from...my good man. There it is then.

Thank you, kind sir. Now I'm off to search for this hobbit porn I've heard so much about. Cheerio!

I was just think about RotH, about how unhappy I was with it.

I've been looking for an Adventure/DC game for quite some time and had seen RotH at GenCon several times. It looked good, so I bought it. And I was unhappy.

Fetch Quest. Fetch Quest. Fetch Quest. Ug! I hate fetch quests. And that was the whole game ... Fetch Quests. I went through the trouble of that god-awful rulebook, went through the setup, and then got to perform a bunch of fetch quests. Uncool!

It's still sitting on my shelf; I haven't traded it away yet so I'm still holding out some hope for it ... but I don't see a bright future for it. There are better examples of my Platonic Cave game, and I'd rather play DQ any day of the week rather than RotH.

Comparing this to MoV is interesting. It could be that with a different theme, more related to the fetch quest mechanism, I would be happier with it. But then again, I already own Lunar Rails ...

I don't know...I think RotH really kind of gets back to the promise that the Eurogame thing seemed to have in the mid-late 90s- cool mechanics, good themes, easy play, and shorter playtimes. It's not a "serious" fantasy game at all...and it's definitely a pickup and deliver game in disguise. But it makes sense to me, the stories it creates make sense, and it's fun to play.

Now, I do think that if you're playing this like a serious game then it's going to suck...it just doesn't support that kind of play.

But to compare it to DUNGEONQUEST- that's not fair! DQ is one of the absolute pinnacles of board game design, a total masterpiece that transcends the human condition and emerges as one of the defining statements of our time.

You make a good point: why play this if you can play DQ?


I was lied to. (Shocking! A box cover lied!) I was promised a cool adventure game and all I got was this lousy fetch quest. It's hard to give it a second chance when you went in thinking it was D&D-lite and instead got MoV. And let me point out that every time you pulled this out you would have the same problem: every n00b would think "D&D!" not "MoV!" Dungeon Twister may suffer from the same problem.

Ultimately this was yet another failed stop on my long and difficult road to find a decent Adventure/Dungeon game. (Which rather happily ended in DQ.)

Talisman: Sux.
Dungeoneer: Sux.
Descent: Sux.
Dungeon Bash: Sux.

RotH: Sux.
DQ: ROXOR!
Magic Realm: ?

[Oh, and the Weekly Trash idea rox!]