Road to Legend 2nd edition with The Witcher elements --> your input required

By sdh007, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hello fellow gamers

A small intro:

I used to have Descent 1st edition aswell as Road to Legend. Now, for a reason I won't bother you with, I only have the Road to Legend expansion still. Ok, you earned it, with moving to a new places apparently I forgot/lost my Descent 1st edition stuff but somehow I still have the Road to Legend expansion. I always loved the idea of choosing where to go and fulfilling quests and side mission,....

Why it became a topic:

I have all Descent 2nd edition expansions so far and love every single time I play it. Recently I bought Star Wars Imperial Assault and really liked some mechanics, especially that when certain things happen at certain phases.

A friend of mine invited me to play The Witcher and...I kinda felt a certain Road to Legend flashback. Free traveling along the world, random encounters that happen, investigations for side missions, development of your character. When I came home I was into the game but...I still have a love for Descent and started thinking: what if we use the mechanics of the Witcher into Descent to create a Road to Legend? So I started thinking and started writing down some things that flashes through my mind.

Finally, the real topic:

So I would split the game up into 2 parts: first you have the world phase and second there is the encounter phase.

* The world phase would lean heavily on the rules in The Witcher regarding the actions you can take (travel, fast travel, develop, investigate, rest and the hero special ability). Your Guild (look below for more explanation) can take 2 actions. Travel, fast travel and investigate affect the whole Guild. Develop, rest and a hero special ability affect only 1 of your Guild members.

* The encounter phase would be when a monster of story mission is in the region or city. In this phase you would use the Descent rules and a small map would be used. Not more then 3/4 tiles.

Each player makes his own Guild. This means a player can pick up to 4 heroes in his Guild.

Off course I need to have some implementation of the heroes (special skills), monsters and overlord into this module.

* Heroes: each hero has a certain special skill he can do once per world turn. For instance, Widow Tarha her special ability will be "Undead Love ". This means she can put a Fatigue token on her Skeleton minion. The tokens indicate the actions a raised Skeleton can make during an encounter.

* Monsters: a random monster group can appear during the world phase and be present near a city. A Guild can engage the monster group if they are in the city. 1 Guild member and 1 monster fullfill one attack and defense before this battle goes into the encounter phase. For instance, a Guild consisting of Widow Tarha and Avric Albright faces a minion Elemental (a minion elemantal as the guild consists of 2 heroes) during the world phase. The player decides to let Widow Tarha attack. After this the Elemental attacks Widow Tarha. The Elemental wasn't killed so they will go in the encounter phase and try to kill the monster. As a reward they receive a Victory Point and some gold.

* Overlord: still working on this topic but thinking that before you start the game you have to

pick an Overlord like Baron Zacchareth, Valyndra,... At certain Victory Points your Guild acquires, certain effects will appear and certain story mission will become available on the map. For instance, you choose Alric Farrow as the Overlord. At a certain Victory Condition the Quest Castle Daerion will become playable and so on.

You can obtain Victory Points for completing encounters, side missions,...

Verdict:

Please I need your input about things like hero abilities, monster abilities,....during the world phase.

Also ideas, comments, critics (if constructive), are more then welcome!!!

PS: does anyone know how to post a document on this forum for when I finished my house rules?

Edited by sdh007

That sounds like it would be an epic (but really lengthy) way to play Descent. I am by no means sending you away from this forum, but boardgamegeek has a forum on their descent page just for variants- there would surely be people there with helpful input, and bgg also has a good file posting mechanism. You can link your file in this thread from there when you post it.