We'll try it as RAW in the next campaign again most likely and see if we have the same effect again. I might try to counter the loot with a suitable plot deck just in case!

Oh and I agree with your last post Indalecio, well written! We have the same view. What's sad is that this view (that many seem to share) makes these really cool quests not so attractive to play, which is a shame and somewhat of a design flaw in my (our?) eyes, is that fair to say?

I've always found Descent to be the most enjoyable for all involved when each side is willing to sacrifice a small degree of strategic brilliance for a good time. Yes, I could play Baron Zach'z deck evdry single campaign- but that would get stale, even for me. I could also refuse to play rumor quests voluntarily- but why did I buy them, then?

The hero and monster packs incentivize playing the card, even if the OL has no reason to choose the quest- it still encourages putting the card down, and the heroes have the chance to pick it.

I've always found Descent to be the most enjoyable for all involved when each side is willing to sacrifice a small degree of strategic brilliance for a good time. Yes, I could play Baron Zach'z deck evdry single campaign- but that would get stale, even for me. I could also refuse to play rumor quests voluntarily- but why did I buy them, then?

The hero and monster packs incentivize playing the card, even if the OL has no reason to choose the quest- it still encourages putting the card down, and the heroes have the chance to pick it.

I fully agree Zaltyre. I was focusing on the strategic aspect of playing rumor quests, but you could just ditch the reasoning completely and play these quests for fun alone, or because you "don't care who's winning" or are willing to give a gentle push to the heroes. That's called fair play and I highly encourage this mind set.

In my situation, if I put strategy aside for a moment, I find myself very willing to play the H&M quests since it's the only way for them to see play. Now it used to be - until Heirs of Blood was announced - that I wanted to avoid small boxes rumors completely as we decided we would play each of these mini-campaigns. We did a few (and didn't enjoy them as much as long campaigns, though), then this full-length campaign book was announced, plus the fact we´ll probably see a new big box this year - so another full campaign, which means we could stick to lnormal-length campaigns and therefore introduce access again to small box rumor quests.

Like I said earlier, I´m a sucker for using these rumor rewards just so they can see some play, playing the same cards and getting the same rewards over and over again has always felt repetitive to me, so Rumors in that sense is a remedy to that issue. The only thing though, is that even if I would be willing to sacrifice a % of my OL progression roadmap for fun or variety, being behind by a good shot is not a very fun situation to be in, especially as the OL (you´re completely alone in essence). I´ve experienced a few quests like this before, quests that were just perfect for the hero composition and monsters that were just the opposite of what I would have chosen. Poor card draw, horrible dice rolls, even with an open mind and a gang of happy hero players in front of you, you can sometimes regret some choices. My point being that if picking rumor quests (in general) breaks the tension during the campaign by putting one side ahead with no possibility of coming back (and winning the Finale despite the odds is a poor compensation imho) is not necessarly the right choice to make, regardless of strategy.

Good points- and if a rumor is really going to swing a campaign that hard against you, you'd probably do best to avoid it. That wouldn't be fair play- it'd be martyrdom.

When rumors first came on scene, OLs wondered why they should play them at all. With the arrival of plot decks, things got a little better, because now the OL could get a threat for playing the card, 1 or 2 threat at the end of the quest, and however much he could gather during. As you point out, though, that may not be enough reason. My point was that the H&M quests go one step further- offering a reward card to the OL if the quest card is played, but the rumor is not cbosen- so now the OL has one more reason to play a rumor card- even if it actually discourages HIM from picking the quest, it baits him into giving the heroes ths opportunity to do so. This ideally helps the rumors see daylight more often.

The general problem with rumor cards and quests, as designed, is that they are entirely in the hands of the overlord, which mean they need to be skewed in his favor to see regular play.

EIther they are balanced and you don't see them often, or they favor the overlord heavily and you see them all the time.

Imperial Assault fixed this with a cool solution that i'm rather pleased with, but there's not much that can be done about it in Descent.

The general problem with rumor cards and quests, as designed, is that they are entirely in the hands of the overlord, which mean they need to be skewed in his favor to see regular play.

EIther they are balanced and you don't see them often, or they favor the overlord heavily and you see them all the time.

Imperial Assault fixed this with a cool solution that i'm rather pleased with, but there's not much that can be done about it in Descent.

Our play group also feels this way. When the issue of adding Rumours and threat, and all the folderol came up, we pretty much all agreed that it was not balanced against the rest of the campaign. The added loot for the heroes made it possible to buy much better items (whether by not having to buy stuff because of relics, or just gold) and the heores disliked the Fortune, since it had to be used or lost while the OL player did not like using his threat, because it gave the heroes Fortune to use for more items so he saved it all for the Finale (where it no longer mattered, since the heroes were so buffed).

Imperial Assault fixed this with a cool solution that i'm rather pleased with, but there's not much that can be done about it in Descent.

I also like the Imperial Assault approach.

However, there are things that can be done about it in Descent as long as there is a willingness to experiment with rule variants that satisfy OL and players.

I meant that I think the implementation as it stands near the beginning was balanced. I believe the notion of forcing the heroes to play the quest or give the overlord the rewards for free and not getting loot to be outrageously imbalanced in favor of the overlord, and I think not having a reward for the heroes is in favor of the overlord anyway, given that the overlord has complete control over when they are played.

There is no way for them to be balanced and seen often while the overlord has the decision of when they hit the field.

I think it would make sense to have two sets of rumor cards. One set for the OL and one set for the Heroes. The OL could force the heroes to embark on a side quest because " **** happened on the road and now the heroes have to get themselves out of the cavern they´ve been trapped into ", likewise heroes could decide to help that old man sitting alone in the corner of the local tavern because they cannot refuse to help rescuing his grand daughter or whatever. This way both sides could gain control over their own deck of rumors. One.time rumor effects could also be available to heroes.

I think true rumor quests should have special rules, and should be dissociated from mini campaign quests. Or, keep mini campaign quests as if, but then state in the quest book that if one of them is played as a rumor, then set it up like this instead of like that.

I think there should be no search tokens in a rumor quest, BUT that the hero reward should be physically on the map. Alternatively, the reward is gained after re-uniting all pieces. That's regardless of who is the winner of the quest. Then two choices of OL reward, a lower quality one in case of loss, a better quality in case of win. Finally, the rumor quest card should feature a one-time reward to the heroes (not the OL).

So, the Overlord is certain to obtain a reward from the quest plus Threat, and heroes know that they have two objectives available: try and win the rumor reward, or/and try to get the relic.

I think it would make sense to have two sets of rumor cards. One set for the OL and one set for the Heroes. The OL could force the heroes to embark on a side quest because " **** happened on the road and now the heroes have to get themselves out of the cavern they´ve been trapped into ", likewise heroes could decide to help that old man sitting alone in the corner of the local tavern because they cannot refuse to help rescuing his grand daughter or whatever. This way both sides could gain control over their own deck of rumors. One.time rumor effects could also be available to heroes.

I think true rumor quests should have special rules, and should be dissociated from mini campaign quests. Or, keep mini campaign quests as if, but then state in the quest book that if one of them is played as a rumor, then set it up like this instead of like that.

I think there should be no search tokens in a rumor quest, BUT that the hero reward should be physically on the map. Alternatively, the reward is gained after re-uniting all pieces. That's regardless of who is the winner of the quest. Then two choices of OL reward, a lower quality one in case of loss, a better quality in case of win. Finally, the rumor quest card should feature a one-time reward to the heroes (not the OL).

So, the Overlord is certain to obtain a reward from the quest plus Threat, and heroes know that they have two objectives available: try and win the rumor reward, or/and try to get the relic.

I love your idea of two distinct Rumor decks. FFG could release a small expansion including cards only (game mechanics) similar to A Game of Thrones expansions.

I would also like that the side that selects the Rumor quest suffers a consequence in the following quest. For instance, if heroes came across a small fisherfolk village under assault by OL minions and decide to help the poor and hapless villagers. Heroes deviate from the main campaign and therefore give the OL more time to prepare for the next quest. OL picks either an extra card at the start of the next quest OR an extra threat token.

The assault on the village was already underway, therefore no adjustment were required on OL's part.

The opposite would also be true. A positive consequence for the hero could be an extra item card flip on the next Shop phase or something like that.

Maybe this would make players all the more reluctant to use Rumor cards given the new "penalty" received from selecting a quest or maybe it would fix the issue of only selecting strongly OL (or heroes) favored quest from Rumor cards.

The trade-off between stop and help for a possible reward, vs give the OL a reward already is present in the travel deck- there is even a travel card that can force the OL to play a rumor quest card on the spot.

Well, about this Jinn's Lamp of Doom...

It's a bad item, yes. Except it's not, it's the best item in the game in the following situation . That's what I was trying to say but lacked the actual fact to back me up. Now it's become true, lol (or not lol, depending how you see it)

As you may have experienced, there are some quests where Heroes can win an encounter and still benefit from as many turns as they want to take to do things like healing, looting and whatnot. Except all of said encounters I knew of until this time were encounter 1s. Which means even if victory is granted, heroes still have a ticking clock in terms of the OL drawing OL cards and potentitally building up for encounter 2. That's a viable strategy for the OL to give up on an encounter knowing that heroes will want to stick around for a while. Anyhow.

Well I managed to find the rare pearl in form of a quest like this, except it's an encounter 2. So yeah, discard the OL card draw completely. In Gathering Foretold I managed to pull out the worst possible dice results and overall play in my entire OL career, which was bound to happen anyway so no probs with that, and I had to save the day and give up on the captive woman token in order to get Splig out of harm and gain his rather good OL reward card as a consolation. That means instant win to the Heroes. Yes, but... heroes have virtually infinite turns from there on, with a map cleared of monsters (and no reinforcements). Looting? I hear ya, treasure room ahead. And then the Jinn's Lamp.

So what do you do, do you allow the guy toying with the lamp to take up the deck and choose whatever card he fancies, just for the reason that he can sit there and spend infinite turns before getting off the map with the token?

I really dislike these kinds of situations, they´re loopholes if you ask me and made the quest a virtual campaign winner to the heroes. I accept being punished for my bad play or bad luck, but witnessing the entire search deck being drawn, and the best possible weapon in Shop I for an already buffed up heroes team makes me rage about the game's few - but problematic and annoying - inbalance issues. Was planning on heading to a Rumor quest after that and now I´m feeling like I cannot afford it.

So yeah, the question is how do you handle these "speed up game" or "skip to the end part" situations? Jinn's Lamp might not be the only item or skill ending up being broken.

Ouch, sorry to hear that happened to you Indalecio. That is indeed a problem with that quest.. and any quest where the heroes can decide when exactly to end the quest, and the OL has a finite amount of reinforcements. I think every quest in the game should have a turn time limit irrespective of anything else, even if it triggers some kind of 'draw' situation where both OL and heroes get no rewards and the next quest choice is up to a coin toss. Might be worth a house ruling.

Imperial Assault solved this problem by giving the Imperials threat every turn they can always use to place additional reinforcements. If the rebels just **** around for half a dozen turns then the Imperials are able to plunk their entire army back onto the map and give them hell for it. It would be cool if the OL could gain 'reinforcement points' or something in the absence of an OL card draw..

But yeah, in a situation like that, the lamp is pretty darn sweet. And if it worked on the Act II shop deck the tears would be really flowing

Our group has always played with an additional "golden rule". We do not allow "impossible" situations to occur. Let me explain.

Usually, this comes up where there is a mechanic that occurs which if utilized/executed, would end up in a situation like a stalemate ... where neither side could win, move forward, etc. These are rare, but we have found them.

We have all agreed that if a player (OL or Hero) executes some kind of action, skill, heroic feat, etc. that would result in one of these situations, they are not allowed to do so.

Now, your issue is different, but somewhat the same. It doesn't result in an "impossible" situation, but it does result in something that we would clearly feel is against the designer's intentions. Having said that, this can be a slippery slope, trying to guess what the game/designer's intent was. That is why when these situations occur, we spend some time really discussing the situation, and coming to a mutually agreeable solution.

I personally agree with you that I do not like some of the things that can happen during what I call "end stage" points within certain encounters. Unfortunately, they usually occur because of new shop items or other features of the game that have been added on, and not quite fully tested as to their total, overall, potential impacts. Of course with a game as mature as this one, fully testing everything can be almost impossible to do.

Your particular situation occurs because there is no defined end point to the quest, and because the OL can no longer reinforce. When reinforcements are limited, or perhaps not allowed at all, the designers really need to pay attention to how the encounter could end, especially of all of the monsters are killed.

We have yet to run into this situation, but I will be interested to see how our discussions evolve around this point. I think I will spend some time thinking about this ahead of the issue, so that I can provide my point of view as concisely and focused as possible.

I actually dropped a question to FFG support about how to handle the lamp in situations like this, but got no answer after two weeks. Anyhow, I´m glad the lamp has returned to "the game box" now that it's been used, and I intend to maybe ban the card in future campaigns (card is bad anyway so it's no real loss for either side) just to prevent that situation from occuring again. I mean, since there is no official response as for how to handle infinite actions. Then we´ll see if I can comne back from that situation now, seems like these shenaningans set me far behind :-/

Sorry, but I have to ressurect this thread. After recently receiving my second H&M Set, I reevaluated the number of possbile rumors per campaign.

Note: The example I will give includes a very special order of things happening, which I guess are pretty unlikely to happen in a normal campaign. Nevertheless it seems to be theoretically possible, and I want to know if I overlook something.

My Scenario: The overlord wins the introduction quest and is in posession of the following 3 rumor cards: "Oath of the Outcast", "Burning Harvest" and one of the "Lair of the Wyrm" rumors.

In the campaign phase the overlord plays one of the H&M rumor (let´s say "Oath of the Outcast"), and he chooses this as the next quest. The overlord wins this quest, and as a result gets to draw another rumor card, which would be one of the "Trollfens" rumors.

In the next campaign phase the overlord plays the "Burning harvest" rumor. It is choosen as the next quest, and the overlord again manages to win it. He then draws another rumor card, which is one of the "Manor of Ravens" rumors.

in the course of act I the overlord continues to play and chooses the 3 remaining rumors (LotW, TF, MoR) from his hand. This would lead to being able to play 5 rumor quests during act I (or possibly even more, if all of the H&M rumor quests share the rule, that the overlord draws a rumor card after winning the respective quest.)

Afaik there is no rule, that would prevent such a situation from happening, or did I overlook something? I mainly ask because rumor quests are a PITA to track on a campaign tracking sheet, since they are never played at a defined point in time, but yield gold and possibly Threat tokens.

Some Rumor Quests like At the Forge even reward experience points to the winning party.

In the wiki at http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Rumor it is written that "Only one mini expansion's Rumor cards can be used for a major campaign" What exactly does this mean? I can't find any reference in the rulebook.

I think this rule is just to clarify what is written on the mini-expansion rumor cards itself. For example, if you play the LotW Rumor "Rude awakening" the card states that you must discard the rumors "Gold Digger" and "Whats yours is mine", if you currently have them.

Tracking things like experience, Overlord cards and relics is not such a big problem, as they are (usually) never taken away. Gold and Threat tokens on the other hand are constantly added and substracted.

Some Rumor Quests like At the Forge even reward experience points to the winning party.

In the wiki at http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Rumor it is written that "Only one mini expansion's Rumor cards can be used for a major campaign" What exactly does this mean? I can't find any reference in the rulebook.

I think DerDelphi is right, and the wiki implies an incorrect view. I believe it's been clarified (specifically because of the text on rumors about discarding others from the same expansion) that such text only applies to rumors from a single expansion, and you are free to play 1 rumor from "Lair of the Wyrm" and 1 from "Trollfens" and "Oath of the Outcast," etc.