Being a huge fan of both Descent and the Souls series of videogames (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2), I've been toying with the idea of creating a campaign based on the souls games.

Does anyone know if this has already been attempted? And if so, could they point me toward that?

If not, what does the community think about such a cross-over?

I've already created the first Quest, the intro to the campaign called "The Undead Asylum", which can be found here: http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/descent/htmlpreview/3254/

I'll be fleshing out rules for new features of the campaign, such as Bonfires, Overlord Tokens, and Souls here.

As always, all feedback, comments, etc, are welcome and greatly appreciated.

Thanks for sharing this, it looks very interesting! I read over the first quest and have two questions..

Under Special Rules you mention locked doors (plural) can only be opened once the heroes have obtained the Door Key. Locked doors are red and I only see one of those on the map. So I'm not clear on whether this special rule applies to just the one door by the exit, or to all the doors.

Second, does the Asylum Demon need to defeat ALL the heroes for the overlord to win?

After hearing back, I'll probably set it up and test it and get back to you.

Thanks for sharing this, it looks very interesting! I read over the first quest and have two questions..

Under Special Rules you mention locked doors (plural) can only be opened once the heroes have obtained the Door Key. Locked doors are red and I only see one of those on the map. So I'm not clear on whether this special rule applies to just the one door by the exit, or to all the doors.

Second, does the Asylum Demon need to defeat ALL the heroes for the overlord to win?

After hearing back, I'll probably set it up and test it and get back to you.

For this scenario, the yellow doors are the locked doors, while the red door can only be opened by defeating the Asylum Demon. And the Demon needs to defeat all of the heroes for the overlord to win.

I'm considering adding that instead of the normal rules for heroes losing all health, in this particular campaign, as a side-effect of being Marked by the Darksign, once they're defeated, they're out of the scenario and cannot re-appear until the next encounter/quest. That could be one special rule for the Souls they can collect too: one can be spent to return a defeated hero to play.

Really appreciate the feedback

Thanks for the quick reply. I like your idea of marked heroes being out of the encounter. It will be interesting to see how that works as a general rule. I've never played the video game. But the idea of spending a "Soul" to return a defeated hero to play also sounds intriguing. I'm going out of town for a couple of days but will plan to set this first quest up and try it when I get back, and will let you know how it goes.

Don't know if this is appropriate against the general backdrop of the video game, but one interesting mechanic (at least in one quest..) could be some effect which grants at least temporary relief from the side-effect of being Marked by the Darksign. Spending Souls is one thing (and I like it), but maybe the heroes could drink from a pool or something, or somehow find at least a temporary antidote that would mitigate the "mark" somehow.

There is actually a mechanic much like what you've described in the games. You can spend "Humanity" that you find for several effects, one of which is to remove the character's Undead Status until they are slain again. However, being human has a drawback- your game can be invaded by other players ("Red Phantoms") who can kill you to steal that humanity.

The invasion mechanic is something I'm working on, where a secret roll is made at the beginning of a quest, and on an "Invasion" result at some point during the quest one of the unused heroes invades to attack the party. Was thinking that the invader would get XP equal to the damage roll on a red and blue die, and would get gold to spend on equipment from the shop deck equal to the same x100.

Thank you for offering to playtest this Very interested to hear how it turns out.

I'm looking forward to trying it out.. It sounds interesting. Do all of the heroes need to be human then? (I guess for thematic purposes, at the least.) I'll use Redjak's auto-overlord system (which works quite well, generally).

I don't think that all of the heroes would have to be human- "Humanity" will just be a generalized thing, and when used it simply removes the character's Undead status until they die again.

Never tried any of the coop/auto overlord systems, might have to give it a look. So far it's been next to impossible to get a group together for Descent here.

That's frustrating, especially since (I think) Descent is such a spectacular game. It's the same way in Milwaukee although I have managed to find a group of three of us who get together about once a month, on average. But I would play a lot more often than that. I recommend Redjak's system, it's well designed and if not perfect, at least gives you the option to play. The only tweaks I make to it are to position the monsters in their "optimum" position on their move action (as opposed to moving simply into attack position and remaining there) and also giving the "overlord" one free pass per encounter to deviate from the auto-overlord directive (kind of an overlord "heroic feat"). For the most part, it's ended up pretty well balanced.

Ok, I set this up and have played 9 or 10 turns now.. Karnon (Beserker), Lyssa (Hexer), Ashrian (Disciple) and Lindel (Bounty Hunter) awoke in a cell and escaped into the asylum. So far, things have gone pretty well for them. What I like: The back story and the writing (flavor text in particular) are excellent. I'm intrigued by the feel of the quest and what seems like could potentially be coming down the road. And there are several very interesting ideas incorporated into this quest.

The critique: (This is intended to be constructive criticism, so I won't be holding back.) For an introductory quest, it's a pretty large map, by comparison to intro quests in the FFG campaigns anyway. That in itself doesn't have to pose a problem. However...what has happened so far is that in the first couple of turns, the hero party eliminated all of the zombie guards, with little difficulty. The skeletons began their trek from the Captain's Quarters toward the hero party, but by the time even one of them got in a long range attack, three of them had been killed. (Ashrian's Heroic Feat - select a minion monster within 3 spaces of you, all monsters in that group are stunned, helped out considerably with that.) The remaining two managed attacks and then were eliminated.

With no reinforcements in this quest, that left the hero party free to explore/ransack the Captains Quarters without any interference whatsoever. Between turns 5 and 9, approximately, the party moved between the Guard's Room and Captain's Quarters completely unimpeded. There was the brief incident in the Long Hall when a boulder was released. But since all quest information in Descent 2.0 is public knowledge...it was just a matter of sending the hero with the best Awareness attribute ahead to trip the boulder trap (Lyssa, in this case, with Awareness of 4, who passed the test) and having the rest of the party wait outside the Long Hall.

The flavor text for this trap referred to a skeleton pushing a boulder. But by this time, all of the skeletons had been eliminated.

For thematic purposes, I like the choice of Zombies and Skeleton Archers to represent Undead in this quest. But functionally, these are two of the weakest monsters in Descent 2.0, in my opinion. On top of that, with no reinforcements, they don't offer much of a threat at all. I don't know if you're trying to kind of fast forward to the confrontation with the Asylum Demon as the main substance of the quest, but so far most of the lead-up to that has been way too comfortable for the hero party. What about using Beastmen instead of Zombies in the Guard's Room? Skeletons are ok, but perhaps if you reinforced either a Zombie (or Beastman) - from the Guard's Room - OR a Skeleton Archer - from the Captain's Quarters, at the end of the overlord's turn, you'd create the atmosphere of an ongoing Undead threat/danger to the party in the lead-up to the Asylum Demon confrontation. With all monsters eliminated prior to that, the hero party is free to simply cruise around the board otherwise (which then also creates the feel that the board is too large).

As far as the boulder in the Long Hall, first, if you reinforced Skeleton Archers from the Captain's Quarters there would be a skeleton around to actually do that. Maybe the trigger should be AFTER the last member of the hero party has entered the Long Hall (or after two or three have entered it). The Awareness test is good for that challenge, but how about each hero who fails taking the damage rolled on one red die + Stunned?

I also have one question about what happens after the party enters The Way Out. The Asylum Demon is a melee attacker, but from where he is placed after he initially appears, he'd have to move first to get in an attack. I'm sure that's what you intended, but just wanted to clarify that.

So that's what I have so far.. A lot of promise here, but maybe some re-working would be helpful. I'll continue and let you know what happens from here on out.

Two more suggestions... Instead of what happens in the paragraph titled "The Stairs" replace with when the door leading either from the Guard's Room or the room next to that is opened, place the Open monster group on The Stairs. Otherwise it seems too easy to just set the heroes up to dispatch the Open group as soon as it appears on the stairs.

And, rather than searching Sir Oscar in the same manner as a search token (there's already four search tokens on the map plus the unique token), what about having a hero spend an action to receive the Estus Flask from him instead (and have that action activate the Estus Flask mechanic)?

And another question.. The Asylum Demon's health is 25. Is that for a four-hero game? Instead, what about the Asylum Demon has health of 9 + an additional 4 health per hero.

I think that's all I have, but I'll let you know how The Way Out confrontation turns out.