I don't think this game is for my group. We are all new to the system, so I expected lots of questions and searching of the rulebook, but it has been ridiculous. Part of the problem is two of the players are heavy rpg players and they want to treat the overlord (me) as the Dungeon Master. It has taken them up to this point to start helping with board setup or to touch the campaign book (they somehow believe it is secret knowledge that they have to dig out of me by barraging me with questions) I cannot tell you how many times I have told them it is all open knowledge.

I no longer look up answers to questions for them because it has been so bad that I have given up my own strategy planning time to just keep the game moving. The problem with this is I have to trust their interpretation of the rules (we are all new) for the first few turns last night(maybe three or four) the heroes were insisting stone-skin applied to all heroes within three spaces and lasted the entire turn. After I read the card and walked them through how it really worked, one hero for one attack, they moved all the more cautiously and slowly (yuck) and grumbled about the overlord being over powered.

Last night we finally played interlude 1 of the shadow rune campaign.

From the first hero activation to final concession it took 4 hours.

4 HOURS, this does not include board setup and monster selection, which I had done ahead of time.

To make things worse a new player arrived and wanted to jump in. Fine. However the rpg players are too attached to their 2 heroes each, and would rather get out a new hero and put two of theirs back in the box and reset for a three hero game. (I would rather they just divide the current four heroes among them and get going, but they wouldn't hear of this.)This took 40 minutes, they added Grisbane (whoever the dwarf is), with the appropriate xp for purchasing abilities. I also thought it would be nice to let the new guy buy something from the shop for 150 gold.

I decided for the sake of time I would not re select monsters, but reduce down to their three hero strength. I am not complaining about this as I had a Shadow Dragon, an Etin and a Meriod.

at two and a half hours I was willing to concede because i was just not seeing how i was going to get the casket from Grisbane (whoever the dwarf is). They had an unused healing feat, and Grisbane had a healing poition. So If I was going to get the casket I was going to have to knock out Grisbane and pick up the casket and run in the same turn. The heroes said I could concede if I gave them every scrap of treasure on the board in addition to the victory conditions (up to this point they had been trying to jump down the river and waterfall, so they were going pass search points with their current strategy).

I was willing to give them victory and the shadow rune, which is a big deal, but all the treasure on the board, which was four more items was insulting. I decided to grind it out and be a mean angry overlord.

it took another hour and a half, mostly because the heroes were crapping their pants.

In the end Zacereth grabbed the casket and jumped down the waterfall. I thanked the dwarf for carrying the heavy casket most of the way and the heroes conceded.

I would feel bad, but this was my first victory as an overlord. (Yup they have won every single encounter up to this point.)

And of course the heroes feel cheated and say I am now overpowered.

All said and done 4 hours is just too long. I expected the interlude to take longer, but not 4 hours. Honestly I cannot see any reason why it could not have been as fast or faster than our typical encounters usually an encounter takes 2 hours for my group, (quests take 5-6 hours, roughly two hours of play and two hours of setup by an overlord who is trying to set up a map(s), help the heroes with their shopping, upgrading, and answer questions they have, let alone pick monsters and develop my own strategies.

I am not sure its worth the work. I am now starting to get a handle on the Overlord role ( I have my fair share of mistakes), but the work of hashing out what every hero can and cannot do is taking to long, the heroes take forever. I feel like I am willing to give up opportunities for strategy and better planing for the sake of getting the game moving, but its not going the other way with the heroes.

I suggested timed turns and they said that would not be fair.

I set up ahead of time whenever possible, but play still takes forever.

I can see the awesome potential of this game, it is beautiful. I have had more fun losing than in our marathon last night that resulted in a victory for the overlord.

I just don't think this is the right game for our group. I am open to suggestions on how to better conduct play, shorten the game, hash out rules questions and overall make this a better experience.

I fear this game may have to hit the shelf until a later time with perhaps some different players.

signed,

angry overlord who wants to love this game.

Nothing here is a fault of the game unfortunately. Aside the usual FFG complex and often haphazard approach to rules.

Descent is not an RPG in any real way.

its a board game with 2 teams who are both trying to win. Unfortunately, and i think most of us here have experience of this, those who think of it as an RPG have REAL difficulty in grasping this concept and expect things to have a flow that the game just dosent have (no, i am not telling a story, i am actively trying to grind you into the dust just dosent seem to get across so well it seems).

Complaints about hero OP and overlord OP are swings and roundabouts - heroes who get lots of treasure and gear are formidable, overlords get only 1 significant jump in ability for monsters but has the advantage of flexible picks,they can only really concentrate on 1 major deck, maybe splash a little of a second but can tailor it to the heroes they face.
Bitter complaining aside balance is surprisingly good.

Time is an issue, especially if you are all new players and need to learn the game from scratch - rules in FFG games are, unfortunately well deserving of the reputation of being "messy" but once you have them down its mostly ok.

Although it sounds that a few of your players could do with a basic lesson is literal reading as stoneskin doesn't really offer much room for interpretation in regards to how they appear to have read it.

Unfortunately you look to be in the unhappy boat of slogging on with the players you have or finding a new group and shelving the game in the meantime.

Dont lose hope though, the game is excellent once you get a group to click to the ideas and mechanics needed. And it can only takes a player group 1 session for the proverbial light-bulb to go off over their heads.

I want to love this game, I can certainly see its beauty. I do think it's fairly balanced. Most of the time when I have lost as overlord I chalked it up to me not doing something right. It took me a little while to really understand my goal is not killing the heros.

The questions this last session were mostly about hero abilities, class cards and combining them. It's harder to find answers in the rule book for those and the faq does not adress all questions.

Is there some sort of fan site or strategy site I can go to supliment and aide the group in wading through the rules? It would help if we could read a run down on for example the berserker class and get an idea of the intention of all its cards and strategies people have come up with.

This overlord is feeling better after his rant

Your two main players do sound a little insufferable. Timed turns are a point of contention with my group as well with much disagreement but those who are against it would never refuse to try something. Let me just say your narration of the interlude was really riveting and I was pretty excited you pulled a victory out. If your heroes are that hurt about losing ONE quest, just ONE, sounds like it will get worse as you transition into Act II and start rolling in with bigger stronger monsters. I mean, do they expect to win every single quest? as RPG players, probably... but that is a misunderstanding of the game that is on them.

I would suggest just hanging in there. For your current group, offer to mix it up and let one of them play OL for a session so they can start seeing the game from both sides, although they sound really attached to their heroes as if their heroes are some kind of on going project (more RPG misunderstandings). If that is the case, if you have other heroes (not if you have any expansions) just play with a different set.

But going forward, keep looking for other play groups, especially players new to table-top gaming who wont be coming to the game session thinking they already know everything due to their preconceived expectations. This has worked surprisingly well for me, I find these player are the most concerned with having fun instead of winning.

Boardgamegeek has a long running thread that has a lot of rules queries and interactions 'soft' ruled on by various designers of the game (some are direct form the horses mouth, others are slightly more consensus based if i recall).

For the most part once you have the core rules down and get your head around the variation in wording and meaning then you will solve 90% of problems there and then.

2 common issues that cropped up early for me where stun and immobilized (both addressed in the FAQ now i believe) as they demonstrate descents somewhat confusing wording and thematic clashes. For example, stun caused quite a few players to initially think that being stunned = lose a whole turn, that was an issue with the wording of the condition card .

Immobilized created a headache as thematically if you are immobilized you cant move, but the game has extremely distinct wording and criteria. Immobilized? Sure, not going to stop me using oath of honor to hop 3 spaces and smash the goblin in the face.

Im sure you have found these sort of issues crop up, they are best dealt with as a whole group so sit down and explain how the rules interact so that everyone is on the same page. The other one is to read the card and use the most literal interpretation you can. It seems that as the overlord you have become the defacto rules lawyer/expert (also happens a lot) so you have to make sure that the whole team understand from the get go as the game ha a lot of moving parts and you have to keep an eye on each others conditions and status.

For example - the stoneskin issue you mentioned.

'When you or a hero within 3 spaces of you is attacked, before dice are rolled, exhaust this card to add 1 gray die to the defense pool' cost 1 stamina.

Your group seem to think that this would allow 1 use to add 1 gray die to everyone within 3 spaces permanently from 1 use until you pointed it out.

Now i can understand players getting over excited with their hero and abilities and thats how this sort of problem occurs but this is one of those moments where you need to make sure that the group are reading the words and not just reading what they want to see. It will slow stuff down a little but when people go to pick skills or buy gear have the group go over it so that people know just what they are getting and what it can do.

Once you have them in that sort of habit i have found that issues like this tend to crop up less as the players know what to look for and how to interpret the template of the cards correctly.

Thanks for the tips. I like the idea of going over each hero card so we all know what they are doing. I will check boardgame geek for the thread. My game group is a good group of friends but this game brought out a new aspect i hadn't seen before. Unfortunately the new player is not wanting to play again. After a 4 hour session I don't blame him. Unfortunately I think this means he won't try the Star Wars game when it comes out.

Hopefully we can iron out our issues with descent, and get the new player to give it another shot.

I have my own issues to overcome, I have played warmachine for years, this makes me want to kill heros like a caster kill, and I typically have trouble remembering to move models after their first action as that is typically a no no in warmachine

I do appreciate the confirmation that the rule book is a bit difficult. I figure most rule books are fairly well written and 99% is user error. Descents book however covers most everything, but is worded oddly and is hard to reference quickly midgame. I am glad to find out that it is not just me.

Your group seems to be filled with a bunch of dicks. I have a few campaigns going currently and one is a hodge podge sort of deal where we play that one when we have more or less players than the main group. It also helps that my group of heroes only care about beating me so they all pretty much play together. Like was stated before, this isn't an rpg.

So do your players speak in their characters voices and such as well?

If you want to play the game as intended, I would suggest playing a series of one-shots and rotating the OL player each time. Let everyone see the game from both sides and maybe they'll stop thinking of it as an RPG.

Alternatively, you could play D&D and use the bits from Descent to build encounters in that system. Sounds like that's what the rest of your group actually wants, anyway.