Are the DLCs worth buying?

[Longbow]

As the title says, I am currently wondering of buying GOTY edition, which includes all of them. But question appears, are they really that good? I must say that I absolutely loved vanilla. How long did it take you to finish them? Share your experiences.

[Sirius]

It really depends on what you like about the game.

If it's the gameplay itself, the "Tests of ..." challenges are absolutely for you.
These are story-stripped arcade-y gamemodes against the clock.
I *think* campaign progress directly affects your runes and skills / stats (so your campaign state matters for the trials), but I may have had a wrong thought there.

If it's the story and lore in general, the two story campaigns are pretty good as far as DLC go - especially the "Bright Lord" DLC feels sufficiently different from campaign play and has an interesting angle (IMO), wheras the "Lord of the Hunt" is more reskinned beasts (with extra features though) and interesting (sadly not available for the Forge*) orcs (different breed, known as "Beastmasters", they look pretty badass (again IMO)).
Here, story progress definitely doesn't matter - though they may (or most likely will) contain spoilers in case of you not having finished the main game.

The skins are obviously just flavor and offer nothing than a different view during gameplay - they do not seem to affect cutscenes and dialogue at all.

To me, the dirt-cheap GOTY (I think it's still running on sale over at www.Bundlestars.com) was really worth it, as I enjoyed all of it (except the skins because again, they add nothing worthwhile to the game - on the other hand, you don't exactly buy them (they are included), so who cares.)

*Oh yes, and there's also the "Forge" gamemode now - that's basically another mini-game in style of the "trials" DLC intended to create your follower and nemesis for the 2nd game.

But you can also just play it like a not time restricted trial, and you can in fact reset it at any time - and your campaign state (in effect, the captains and orcs you already have discovered) will be present. So you can play the campaign a abit, get to know different orcs, kill others, let the slots be filled again, and then go to the forge to reset it.

This one is free for all users though as far as I know.

That leaves the Rune DLC - those are just shortcuts, you basically get them all later in the game (or they do something a skill does), and they don't stack (as I think I remember), so they are "just" to have early access to one skill or other you do get later in the game anyway.

But again, personal opinion, it's dirt cheap at the moment and it's just so much worth it if you like the main game.

Edit: Derp, there are also "Warband" DLC, basically populating your main (and forge and trial) games with some more different types of orc.