Ok, I'd to formally request we add A Hero Rises. I got it down to a little over 10 minutes but there's definitely room for improvement.

Timer Starts when Player hits "Start Game" Timer Ends when victory animations begins to play. Only one non-AI player allowed Must set ending to A Hero Rises (this also means the Firelands expansion must be enabled) Any other expansions or DLC characters are also allowed All House Rules must remain on default settings All Characters may be used

After some experiments, I think the most interesting one I've come across may be "A Hero Rises" - reach the Crown of Command with 13 or more fate. It doesn't seem to require a bunch of extra conditions as far as what else is active to make it interesting.

There doesn't seem to be a "cheesy" way to boost fate, so you genuinely have to play, and the Highland route isn't necessarily optimal any more if you also use Dungeon (since beating the Lord of Darkness by a sufficient amount would be an insta-win).

I'm not sure what you mean about the route being similar - there's a lot of endings that would be different, and I feel like they might make more interesting runs. Especially the "gathering" type runs like "Warlock Quests", "The Hunt" or "Sacred Pool".

I don't want to add any categories just yet, but I'll experiment around and see if I can find a "meatier" category to run. I really would like a category that feels like playing the game and not just hoping for a bunch of lucky rolls in a row. Like "Frostmarch only + Warlock Quests" might be good.