Expansion Clarification...

By Glorious Strategist, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

I'm currently working my way through the Shadow Rune campaign with my gaming group, and I'm playing primarily as the overlord. My gaming group of 4 seems to be enjoying it, but 2 of them are relatively mew to board games so I'm trying to keep it simple so that they don't get overwhelmed with too many choices. That brings me to the expansions. I currently own Trollfens, LOR, and SON. I hope to soon purchase LOTW once it's reprinted. As for Trollfens and LOTW, the way I read the rules is that they can be incorporated into ANY campaign, correct? My thought is to play through Shadow Rune as if I didn't own any expansions, then once we move on to LOR, incorporate LOTW into it, and once we move on to SON, incorporate Trollfens into it. Am I understanding the use of expansions correctly, and does this seem like a logical progression?

You can incorporate them all into any campaign as you see fit, as long as you do so at the start of the campaign. Don't introduce materials part of the way through a campaign.

That said, the expansions don't really add to the complexity of the game at all, they mostly just add choices of classes and items to the shop decks for the players. They don't modify the quest rules at all, which is the important part. The small box expansions (Trollfens and Lair) add a little complexity with rumor cards and secret rooms, but not much. The overlord has a lot more options, but that's outside the hands of the players for the most part and it seems like you have a good grasp on games in general.

Personally, I don't feel there's any reason to add expansions slowly.

Uh...

Trollfens and Lair of the Wurm introduce Rumor cards, which introduce special quest options, which significantly impact the quest rules and campaign flow. Additionally, those expansions introduce secret room cards, which impact searching and the flow of encounters - they're interesting and fun, but they're definitely not for new player.

Those additions do tend to break in favor of the heroes, though - for your second campaign, it might be a good idea to buy one of the lieutenant packs as well, which tones down the value of the rumor quests and gives the OL some additional options.

One last thing, if you want my opinion - I think there's a lot of redundancy between Trollfens and LotW - if I were you I would stick with Trollfens and not bother adding LotW. Because there is so much overlap, though, there isn't really any reason (if you have both) to add one and not the other.

Well i have all the expansion currently and my players enjoy it alot. I am kinda intrested if they will make rumor cards for the regular campaign. So if im playing labyrinth of ruin i could pop them over to the original for a quest.

Well i have all the expansion currently and my players enjoy it alot. I am kinda intrested if they will make rumor cards for the regular campaign. So if im playing labyrinth of ruin i could pop them over to the original for a quest.

I highly doubt FFG will. (Many players will see it as "Lazy") but there may be someone out there who has. And if not, I imagine it wouldn't be difficult if you could snag some templates from somewhere.

true prob could find them i guess i was just hopeing they could slip them in with some of the Lt packs