Markets and Taverns
ruleset for Runebound Second Edition
version 1
Contents
Markets and Taverns 1 value cannot be recovered.
Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Buying and selling, hiring and firing . 1
City trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Knockouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Endgame: Dragonrise . . . . . . . . . 2
Markets and Taverns
Markets are dynamic places, and you don’t hire
adventurers there. You find adventurers at
the local tavern or inn, hanging out until a job
comes through the doors.
These rules make the items available at mar-
kets and adventurers available for hire more dy-
namic.
Setup
Separate the item cards and ally cards to create
the market deck and tavern deck. Shuffle these
independently.
Deal out three market deck cards, face down,
to each market except Tamalir. Deal one tavern
deck card next to the market cards, again face
down.
If a deck runs out of cards, shuffle its discard
pile to create a new deck.
Buying and selling, hiring and firing
When a hero arrives in a town they can visit the
market and tavern during the Market step to flip
any cards there face-up.
Sort the market cards by value, lowest on top
(this will make things easier later).
• When a hero visits a market do not add a
card from the market deck.
1
• Items can always be sold for full face value.
Followers can only be “let go” - their hire
• When selling an item, add it to the cards in
the current market (i.e. do not discard item
cards when sold).
City trade
When an event card is drawn that causes quest
markers to be refreshed, trade occurs between
markets, and adventurers seek employment in
a new city. If multiple events are drawn on the
same turn perform these trade steps only once.
1. Discard any market and tavern cards from
Tamalir.
2. Move the lowest value face-up item from
each city to Tamalir. If a market has no
face-up market cards, skip that market.
3. Add market cards, face down, to each mar-
ket to bring the total number to three. If a
market already has three (or more) market
cards, skip that market.
4. Move any adventurers in Dawnsmoor and
Forge to Tamalir’s tavern. Don’t worry - it’s
big enough to accommodate more than one
adventurer.
5. Starting with the taverns closest to
Tamalir, move each adventurer towards
Tamalir until they occupy the empty tavern
closest to Tamalir.
6. Add new tavern cards, face down, to any
empty taverns. Newly arrived adventurers
are available for hire.
Tavern cards should not be flipped, and should
be moved whether or not they are face up.
Healing
Whenever a hero visits a city, full healing can be
obtained for half the current doom track value,
rounded up. This means healing costs scale ac-
cording to general threat in the world, as well
as the greater loot heroes are obtaining (darned
inflation…).
Doom level Healing cost
1-2 1 • The hero discards an experience counter,
3-4 2 representing the severe wounds sustained.
5-6 3 – If a life counter is discarded a hero
7-8 4 can attempt challenges of the respec-
A hero and any followers must be healed sep-
arately (fully healing a hero and two followers
in the endgame is expensive!).
Alternative rule: instead of fully healing one
party member, heal four wounds across
the party for the same cost.
Rest
In addition to standard resting rules, a hero in a
city may rest instead of visiting a city’s market.
As normal for resting, they can discard four ex-
haustion counters shared between themselves
and their followers.
Rest can also be extended in a city (represent-
ing a hearty meal, a massage, etc.) at the same
cost as healing.
Experience
To better scale leveling against challenge and
reward, experience counters can be bought for
a cost of the hero’s number of current tokens
plus one. So the first counter costs one XP, the
second costs two, and so on.
Training optional
Heroes need a period of study or training be-
fore their experiences are reflected in increased
skills or attributes. As such, heroes must rest in
order to exchange XP for experience counters.
Whether this can happen in the wilderness,
or needs to happen in the relative safety of a city,
is up to you.
In game terms, requiring a city visit to train
adds a certain “push your luck” element - how
far dare you go before spending the time to con-
vert XP to experience counters?
Knockouts
Treasure is never truly lost but defeat has con-
sequences.
• When a hero is knocked out, place an un-
defeated challenge counter as normal.
• Leave the hero’s most expensive item (or
items to the same or greater value) and
gold in the same location.
tive lower level again.
– If the hero has no experience counter
they discard all unspent XP.
• The hero retreats to the nearest town. The
hero and any followers fully heal and rest;
their turn ends immediately.
• The dropped loot can be recovered by any
hero who defeats the challenge.
This softens the blow of unexpected one-shot
knockouts and can allow a hero to save a cru-
cial item they spent time pursuing earlier in the
game. By losing a life counter it also means
the hero can return to attempt lower level chal-
lenges if, for example, they have overstretched
too early in the game.
Endgame: Dragonrise
Heroes undertake a final race between loca-
tions to be the first to defeat three dragon lords,
or Margath himself.
This allows a more equitable and interactive
endgame than the original Doom Track rules.
Using the Doom Track increments as per
the rulebook, once the eighth doom counter
has been placed remove all remaining green,
yellow, and blue adventure counters from the
board. The only available challenges are red -
the final battles to defeat the dragon lords.
Heroes should attempt these challenges in
the same way as earlier in the game; markets,
taverns, knockouts, and experience continue to
operate as normal.
Alternatively, use hardcore knockout rules
(defeat equals death) for a more brutal ending.