Xandria said:

I haven't yet myself, I just joined the club. But yeah, I know that the designer brings it into sessions. I just started playing Dominion myself, but the people at the club talk about the designer and the Seaside non-stop if you even mention Dominion.

I don't know how many areas have a group like CABS, but it's pretty much an awesome deal. For $35 I can go to around 40 meetings a year and play new or new to me games (they easily have 1000+ games) and check out games as well for in between sessions. If there are groups like these in anyone else's area I highly recommend them.

I was preparing to play Claustrophobia, and in thinking it over, found at least 1 glitch. When the heroes reveal the first area, it says to put an Ogre on the board. It shows where the Ogre goes. But it's highly likely that the Ogre would go straight down on where the hero opening the door was standing, unless the hero was diagonally adjacent only, and assuming no heroes were in any of the four squares in front of the door. At first, I thought, well, thematically, the thing to do is to wait until the last of the heroes enters Area 1 to put the thing down. But that would mean it goes down toward the end of the hero turns, allowing the OL to activate the thing right on their butts. Maybe that's intended, or maybe that's too strong? Also, it would mean you couldn't read the Area description when they open the door.

Based on your description, I would tend to place the ogre in the closest legal space. That's what I instructed the overlord to do in a quest I designed where monsters appear in spaces that might be blocked, at any rate.

Antistone said:

There is an example of this in RtL silver legendary dungeon. The final guardian of the secret pool is a Boss Giant with Grapple instead of Sweep. When he dies he comes back at full health at the start of the OL's next turn in the same spaces he died in, moving any heroes out of the way to the nearest empty spaces.

I thought about that, but the problem is that the OL could put the Ogre in a position that blocks the corridor, and I think that is definitely contrary to the intent. They want you in the hall, with the Ogre coming after you and kind of stalking you throughout the game. I don't think they could easily kill him with town weapons, and he's undying. So you almost have to wait until they are out in the corridor, which means you have no flavor text to read when they open the area, basically. Also, if you wait till they are in the corridor, as I said, their turn may be at an end, meaning the OL places the Ogre and gives them a hard smack. Can't tell if that's intended or not.

Aha! I realized that the Ogre mistake was my own! The corridor is NOT part Area 1, so you don't read it at that point. Problem solved. This makes me very happy.

Painter said:

Hi, I cannot find the described problem reading the quest... What it says in Area 1's description is to remove the Red rune-locked door from the board. So, when hero's open the door to Area 1, the Red rune door is removed. Ogre is visible after deployment, as it is also on start area, even if it is behind the red rune door. The heros are positioned on the corrider, where the glyph is. May of course be, that the room where the Ogre is positioned, isn't part of start area, in which case it just isn't visible when the game starts, but that still doesn't affect the game at all.

pinkymadigan said:

This is very much more an opinion than an actual error in the quest. Having two master Bane spider's on the map could be just as well reported as an error for a game having only one master bane spider figure. Combining the quest text and map leaves really little to be confused about.

kalle said:

No, that's not an opinion, it's a fact.

The quest says "If both Master Spider depicted on the map appear at the same time..." when the map only contains ONE Master Bane Spider. Not too mention the fact that even if the map contained two Master Bane Spiders, there wouldn't be an issue, as the base set contains THREE Master Bane Spider models, so replacement is not necessary for two.

Read and understand the issue I'm talking about fully.

The entire block of text either:

A: is completely unnecessary.

or B: means the intention was to have two Master Bane Spiders on the map, but some editor got confused by this text and changed the map, even though the text was unnecessary to begin with.

This thing is really poorly written and edited and it can't be written off as an opinion.

pinkymadigan said:

OK, as there actually are enough master spiders in the box, this is clearly a stupid mistake.

I should've checked it, of course, but if there are enough figures, it is really hard to understand that something like this can happen...

That is bad editing. Still, I think the quest can be played as intended with no bigger problems (assuming that those two spiders on the map are both intended to be masters, perhaps the faq clears this one day...).

What about pulling back the whole thing and issuing a corrected edition? One of the biggest game companies shouldn't have anything as flawed on the market. FAQ are welcome, but it seems to be poor form when they get as long as the rulebooks.

(Though, as an ex-warhammer player, I should be used to poor editing and full-out brokenness. Games Workshop issued so many flawed rules that you had to house-rule every single Warhammer game, and balance was so poor that in the end, I quit playing competitively. After that, I quit Warhammer altogether ) (so, FFG, don't make me quit Descent)

Xandria said:

I must be really bad consumer, as I don't see these errors being such a big thing. I'm quite happy to get more content for the game that I've paid a lot for. Some of the reported errors are such, that once recognized, they don't affect the game at all. Comparison to Warhammer has the problem, that it's difficult to fix an unbalanced army book which makes all other armies non-competetive (demons in fantasy). GW can fix unclear phrases in faqs, but they really can't alter the rules, as You have to able to play games with the published books.

What I would've hoped for in compendum is more shortish scenarios, as the Descent sessions tend to be too long. Happily, there are some, but could've been more to my liking.

Which quest numbers are considered flawed? Is there any consensus about house rules or the best way to address them? Thank you.

Schmiegel said:

I gave a pretty good detailed account in the first 4 or 5 posts. No general consensus has been reached, though some might seem obvious and your group can probably decide one way or the other on most of them. FFG has so far been completely unresponsive to my requests for rulings on the items detailed.

I'm of the opinion that the link for rules question for Descent actually doesn't send the requests to the right location. The only other option is that they have basically stopped caring about answering questions.

I considered that after two weeks and reposted my questions to general customer service, which has responded very quickly to me before, asking them to forward the questions to the appropriate parties. No answer.

So, is the quest compendium worth having at all? I love Descent and I was hoping to collect every product but this really seems like a waste of money. Are the quests completely broken beyond the point of even having an FAQ fix them? I was really looking forward to this but it seems I should just wait and spend my money on Sea of Blood.

I'll have a look this week and see if I can address at least some of the questions.

KevinW said:

Thank you sir. It does mean a lot to the players to see the designers take an active hand in resolving issues when they arise.

Big Remy said:

Ditto. That's the only realistic thing we can ask for.

It would be reassuring to have official fixes/rulings from Kevin regarding this book.

Quoting my favourite Stargate character: "Indeed."

I was looking forward to a product exactly like this one. If the issues get resolved, I'll be buying it. If not, then not.

What I really suggest to FFG is taking a hint from Blizzard entertainment, and run a beta version through a collective of players before release, like an extended playtest. I believe local gamers would be overjoyed if they were able to come over to FFG and play the game extensively before anyone else, essentially constituting a free playtest.

Xandria, you are correct. I live in NW Wisconsin about 3 hours from the Twin Cities. I would be happy to be involved in a playtest nearly any weekend!

Have you seen FFG's release schedule? Does it look like they're interested in playtests? The idea is great, and there's no reason not to implement it, but if FFG thinks they can release anything in just about any kind of condition and people will buy it, and they're right, they'll never do it. A real shame.

I played a few more quests this weekend. Claustrophobia was fun and seemed to be all there.

Demonic Possession was also fun and worked fairly well, but there are two issues to address: (1) there is no yellow rune key; my suggestion is give it to the Red Giant in the first room to the left.

Siege of Tamalir: We didn't play this one yet, but couldn't find ANY of the rune keys on the map or in the text for Part 1. Am I missing something? Also, I'd have to check, but are there two blue and two yellow rune doors among the various expansions?

Shadows Hide the Truth: Mixed reaction here. The first play was fun because the party didn't know what to do with the Executioner and were hurrying along at a nice pace. The second try revealed some real downsides. The glyphs are soooo far from the final room. Each time, there would be heroes detailed to town to attack the Executioner for conquest, while others tried to get in and finish the dungeon. It ended up as one big churning hamster wheel. The people in town were bored, and the people trying to get to the final room without dying were frustrated. Also, there was one actual flaw, and that was in the quest goals. It says in the OL text that Lisadar "must be carried away from the fight." What does that mean? Must she be carried out of the room or out of the dungeon or none of the above? Because if you kill the boss, you win. So it seems like you don't need to carry her out or pay any attention to her at all. In fact, if you pick her up, you start losing conquest even faster. That all didn't add up very well. There should be some clarification about what must or must not be done with the princess, I think.