we played another long draggy game of descent again. we even included the spawn token that prevents too many spawns and still the nasty summons kept coming to clog up the corridors.

sure the game is fun, but after what, 3 hours of hack and slash, the game really starts to drag. my brother summed it up for me eloquently, when he said that when we play it, after a few hours he just suddenly realizes "wait, are we still playing this?"

anybody got quests that they can suggest that are quick, around 2 hours, with maybe 2.5 hours really stretching it. and please don't say "the rescue" we must have played that one around 5 times already and it gets old fast.

and no to RtL either. cant commit to a really long campaign, we have lives after all.

The quickest vanilla Descent quest that I know of is the first one from the core game, and that one usually takes 3-4 hours in my experience. Alternatively, if you have Road to Legend, you could just play one or two dungeon levels alone, using vanilla rules instead of RtL rules. That way you can tailor the length of the game by checking the clock after each level.

I haven't really played around with fan-made quests yet, so I don't know what kind of time they have. From the ones I have looked at, though, they tend to go bigger than the official quests rather than smaller.

Yea Descent certainly takes a while to play, especially at first. My main group (that plays every other week) consists of four players who do not normally play games like this or rpgs and such so the time frame is certainly a factor for us also. Here are a few things that help it go a bit quicker.

First and formost is playing. The more you play the faster it gets for several reasons. The rules are more well known the more you play by everyone so there is less consideration in that regard. The players become more used to their options so their decisions come much quicker with time. The overlord on the same token also gets quicker at making decisions with cards and monsters. A big game delay is the time spent thinking and going over the options. The less time doing this the faster it goes. My group has finally really grasped the game and the heroes usually role through the vanilla quests in about 8-12 turns. So that is a big factor. (or if they lose it goes even faster!)

Second is organization. There are SOOOOO many freakin pieces and figures and tokens and cards and..... You may already have everything at easy access, but if you don't, spend some time organizing the stuff. A fishing tacklebox, or a box of screw and nail drawers, or something similar can make area set up a lot faster.

Thirdly, just set a time limit. If you hit a certain time, just stop. We have "saved" the game pretty easily once. We just took digital pics of the characters, I wrote down my overlord stuff, and marked the figures on the map. After that I could clean all up until the next time we played.

Getting the one shot quests down to 2 and a half hours will still be rare, but it could happen. We usually finish in anywhere from 3 to 4 hours now.

I know you said no RTL, but that is one of the many great things about RTL. Its easier to play in short intervals. Almost all dungeons/encounters are a bit smaller then any vanilla quest. Once everyone has the rules down pat, you can go through a typical dungeon floor in 45-90mins.

excellent ideas. i stumbled upon the using the RtL dungeons stand alone myself. seems like the best answer. hhaha. thanks guys. we've been playing descent for almost a year, on and off, maybe around once a month. fun game, but like i said, some days you just get horrible downers.

Quest 2 from Tomb of Ice shouldn't take more than 3 hours to play.

My group and I started playing after work on Fridays, ordering food and all. We always ended up finishng the quest around 2-3 AM, so we decided to play only during the weekend and start in the afternoon.

At some point, I was even considering playing with an hourglass, like blitz in chess, but it would take out the fun of elaborating complex strategies. Just don't believe what' they say about the average game lenght being 3-4 hours. It's a long game, but a fun one.

When I teach people with shorter scenarios, it's around three hours.

When I first put my regualr group together, they would take 3-4 hurs for a basic scenario.

Said basic scenarios they will now play in around two hours. IMNSHO, Descent's game time is significanly reduced once people have leared the game, although it is still a full evening/afternoon of play.

One thing that always seems to bog down Descent (and many other games too) is that each player is tried to do the "optimized" thing and going through every permutation of their possible actions to deterime the best method. While I do understand this, I think it is a good thing to limit turn times somehow- be it with hourglass or timer. An individual turn should NOT take more than 5 minutes to complete under most circumstances. It is up to everyone in the group (and in everyones' best interest) to encourage quick decision making/turn taking and help keep the flow of the game... well.... flowing It is VERY easy for time to just slip by with nothing going on... lulls in action.

Its just something to mention to the players and it WILL make for a more enjoyable (and shorter) gaming experiecnce!

We always shoot for 5 minute turns. Of course this got thrown in my face the other night playing Hold the Line, when I had 17 monsters to move.