Unofficial Campaign Tracker for Descent!

By Atom4geVampire, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Where can I find it?

You can find the campaign tracker at http://d2etracker.com .

What is it?

The Unofficial Campaign Tracker for Descent, does exactly what you can expect from it's name. It allows you to track the campaigns you are playing in Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Second Edition.

It also provides players with relevant information when needed. For example: when you've selected a quest to play, any known FAQ or Errata will be presented to the user, as well as a list of all monsters that can be used for that quest, and more! No more manually comparing the little icons on the quest page to every monster card.

On top of that it shows statistics for every aspect of descent. You can view the balance of a certain quest, find out which heroes are the most popular, which items are bought most often, ..

How do I use it?

- coming soon -

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you add functionality to save after the first encounter, for those of us who can't play a quest in one evening?

As much as I would like to, it is just too difficult to implement. Saving a quest is relatively easy, each quest has a very limited amount of data to save, and it's more or less the same data.

Saving between encounters adds too many extra variables and so many of those are different for each quest.

What platforms is the tracker available on?

At this point, it is just a website. There are no plans to develop this into an app at this point.

The site has been optimized for use on mobile devices as much as possible.

Is this an official Fantasy Flight Games website?

No, this website is in no way affiliated with FFG. They did give me permission to create this website as long as it stays not commercial and unofficial, and allowed the use of their artwork as long as it is used functionally, and has the FFG copyright visible.

Can I track multiple campaigns?

Yes! Every user can create multiple groups of people that play together, and each of those groups can track multiple campaigns.

Can multiple users edit the same campaign?

No! Each campaign is linked to one user.

Known issues

  • The rewards for the mini-campaigns (Lair of the Wyrm, The Trollfens, Manor of Ravens) are incomplete. The extra xp for the overlord, more xp in case of same relic, .. doesn't work.

Fixed issues

  • Hero overview page stats now correctly shows a speed that is lower than the max speed when it is forced by an item, also a small text was added to indicate this is still work in progress
  • Missing special objective added for SoN - The Incident
  • Missing special objective added for SoN - Respected Citizen
  • Missing special objective added for SoN - Prison of Khinn
  • Fixed incorrect follow-up quests to HoB - Prison of Khinn
  • Playing a rumor that is in play is no longer required before moving to the interlude (as ruled in official faq/errata).
  • Fixed a bug where Act 1 instead of Act 2 items were available for purchase when a rumor was played directly after the Interlude.
  • The 'Lone Knight' travel encounter can now be completed without selecting an item.
  • Universal cards that cost more than 1xp can now be purchased without having to purchase 1xp cards first.
  • Fixed an issue where the Finale selection of Labyrinth of Ruin was linked to Fire and Brimstone instead of Tipping the Scales.
  • Multiple theming and UX improvements.
  • Added the hero images for Bonds of the Wild.
  • Added a new banner.
  • Fixed an issue where the 'Start New..' button wasn't working on mobile.
  • Add a missing 'Open Group' to encounter 1 of the 'Hearts of the Wild' quest.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the removal of group members.
  • Fixed a bug where a defeated Plot Deck Agent was not returned to the player after the quest it was defeated in was deleted.
  • Fixed a bug where a rumor quest could not be selected again after it was deleted. (Message me if your campaign has this issue, I will fix it.)
  • Fixed a bug that prevented blocked monsters to become available again after a quest they were blocked in was deleted.
  • Fixed an issue which prevented selection of Serena's 'Silent Protector' as plot deck.
  • Made a separate tab for Heirs of Blood in the quest statistics.
  • Added Heroes, Monsters, Rumors and Cards for Bonds of the Wild (but hero images are still missing at the moment).
  • Added changelog to the website
  • Fixed a bug where an empty quest or rumor could be submitted.
  • Fixed a bug that occurred when an expansion was selected as story, and the same expansion was the only other expansion selected.
  • Fixed a bug that caused rumor cards featuring a quests not to be displayed in the 'Rumor Cards' box.
  • Improvements were made to the homepage.
  • Improvements were made to the mobile version of some pages (Homepage, Campaign overview, group overview, hero details,..).
  • Fixed a bug that caused 'First Blood' to not be shown in the statistics.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented submission of the edit skills/items form.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Corrupt Citizen cards to be return during the edit skills step.
  • Improvements to error reporting of the login page.
  • Added more hero and class statistics.
Edited by Atom4geVampire

That looks really nice!

What platforms will it be available on?

It's a website :) So everyone can use it (I have no app-development experience)

But I'll try to make sure it works on mobile as well as just desktop.

// 25-01-2016 - Moved the original post here to make the first post more up to date //

Edit: Open beta version is live: http://d2etracker.com
Please try it out!


----------------------

Hi everyone,

I would like to preview the Descent 2nd Edition Campaign tracker website I've been working on the past few months.
It's almost done, I'm just ironing out the bugs and adding all the exceptions to the standard rules to the system.
Keep in mind, this is all still work in progress, and some stuff is placeholder.

Here's how it looks:
overview.jpg

Adding a quest is easy, you press 'Add quest" and you will be presented with a dropdown where you can select from available quests (these are filtered based on the expansions you have selected when creating the campaign, the quests the heroes/overlord won in act 1 if thats a requirement,...)

Thats basically the first thing you do when you start your gaming session. Lets say, we are about to play 'The Overlord Revealed' from the shadow rune campaign

First we can add the travel steps (while we are drawing the cards in real life)
We get a list of travel icons, and one by one they will have a dropdown next to them with available events to choose from (these are again based on expansions selected and stuff)
When an event has a special action (like skipping a step or finding an item you can indicate it here and these will automatically get recorded)
travel1.jpg

Before saving it will look like this:
travel2.jpg

Next, you would play the actual quest and when you are done you can update the quest details step.
Here you can indicate who won, who received the relic, and any other special awards (for example if Splig lives or dies in 'Gathering Foretold' in LoR). Standard rewards (1xp for all, gold for heroes, ..) are automatically recorded.
You can also indicate which search cards were found by the heroes, for which gold is awarded and stats are kept. If the heroes found a 'treasure chest' they can indicate which item they found and who found it.
If playing with the lieutenant packs, you will also be able to indicate how many threat tokens the overlord spent/gained during this quest
quest.jpg

After that comes the skills step, where players can select skills/overlord cards/plot cards that are available (based on their selected class, the amount of xp they have and the selected expansions (in case of overlord))
skills.jpg

skills2.jpg

As last step, players can buy, sell and trade items
items.jpg


When all that is done, you get this:
progress.jpg

And you can start your next quest :)

Also, per hero there is an overview that shows all their current skills and items, which is handy if you're running multiple campaigns. This allows you to quickly get the necessary cards from the box for the campaign you want to play. It also shows how items and skills affect the stats of the hero, in this case Health and Stamina (but this part is pretty unfinished atm).
overview_hero.jpg

There is also a page that shows which quests are won most by heroes or the overlord, which heroes are selected the most, which items are bought the most,...

So, if you have any feedback based on these images, or ideas that you'd like to see included, let me know!

To Do List:

  • Create images for each Hero and Quest/Rumor: This is a bit of an issue. Some heroes have great images available online ( High Mage Quellen for example) while others don't (for example the best image of Shiver is this one ). i'd say about 60% have only crappy images available, I wish FFG would make all of them available like the Quellen example). Same goes for the quests, which also is a bit of an issue, I have the lieutenants now, but they aren't really the 'signature' of the quest. Any good artist that could draw something for each quest, based on its story? :)
  • Add the rules for Shadow of Nerekhall and its items (I don't have that expansion yet, so thats why i wasn't able to add it yet)
  • Add all special rules that override the basic campaign flow. For example item stuff like "Jinn's Lamp" from LoR, that lets you draw an item from the shop deck at any point in the campaign, or Overlord rewards for not playing rumor quests from Hero/monster packs before the interlude,...
  • Add some basic edit functionalit
  • Add more stats
  • Login functionality and group/player creation
  • ...

Current suggestion :

  • Adding the option of saving a quest after it's first encounter, for people with short play sessions
  • Add eligible monster groups to quest
  • Mobile friendly version

I'd also would like to thank Tundrra for his input and campaign tracker, which I used as example when creating this one.

Edited by Atom4geVampire

This look great. I've been working on use cases for a website or android app campaign tracker as there were no options that I really liked available (no offense to those who have previously created trackers). What you have covers a lot of what I was going to make, and it looks better too! haha.

The only comment I would have is the ability to save status between encounter 1 and encounter 2 of a quest. Many time my group of friends only has enough time for one encounter, so we have to take pictures to show how much damage our characters have, track who won the encounter, and track any counters from encounter 1 that affect encounter two. Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

Other than that it all looks great! I did a lot of web development in school, mainly Ruby on Rails and have been teaching myself Android App development. If you would like any help in the development process don't hesitate to reach out.

The only comment I would have is the ability to save status between encounter 1 and encounter 2 of a quest. Many time my group of friends only has enough time for one encounter, so we have to take pictures to show how much damage our characters have, track who won the encounter, and track any counters from encounter 1 that affect encounter two. Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

Good point actually. I'll think of a way to implement that in a way that it doesn't interfere with saving for people who do play a full quest in one go.

Wow, looks awesome!

One awesome think that could be added is that after choosing quest you get a complete list of the monsters availible to use as open groups.

It really look great, looking forward to trying it. How will it store my notes, do i log in or?

Yes, there will be a login system, which is also still a big to-do (making it secure and all that). You will be able to view other peoples campaigns, but only edit your own.

About the monster thing, I was thinking about adding a monster list to the 'quest details' saving part where you could select the open groups you used,

so this could be tracked and displayed as stats (most frequently selected monsters). I guess it would be possible to open the 'quest details' section without saving it, and taking a look at what options the dropdowns there give you.

Speaking about stats, here is a wip version, based on my test campaigns:

stats.jpg

Those stats are awesome, even more epic if there also is a totalt not only counting my games but global :)

This looks great, fantastic job!

Those stats are awesome, even more epic if there also is a totalt not only counting my games but global :)

The stats are global, i wasn't planning on personal stats.

Let's say you need to pick the next quest as a hero, and you think 'Castle Daerion' is a good idea, the stats might show you that 80% or whatever of all Castle Daerion quests were won by the overlord.. :)

This looks very nice. Keep up the good work !

This looks very promising!

The stat feature will turn useful in regard to the perennial quest balance debate.

It would be nice to track wether encounters/quests were played with house rules, and which.

Looks cool. Really look forward testing this. When is the tracker going to be released? Or will there be a beta phase?

This looks very promising!

The stat feature will turn useful in regard to the perennial quest balance debate.

It would be nice to track wether encounters/quests were played with house rules, and which.

What kind of house rules are we talking about here? The game itself has enough exceptions to its 'normal' rules as it is :P (items, or quest guidelines,..). It would be pretty hard to start implementing/tracking everyone's house rules as well.

Looks cool. Really look forward testing this. When is the tracker going to be released? Or will there be a beta phase?

Well, I'm working on this in my spare time. And it's not like I'm the best coder ever.. So I have no ETA for release yet.

I do plan on a beta testing phase, maybe in a week or two, where some people could try and set up a few test campaigns (or try and enter the campaign they are currently playing) and see if any issues pop up.

But for that I first need to make sure the login system and stuff works :P

Just leave a reply in this thread if you'd like to test it and I'll select some people when the time comes.

I'd be more than happy to beta test for you. 2 years of web development and 4 descent campaigns under my belt.

So I've added the monsters selection to the quest saving page. You can only select monsters based on traits corresponding to the quest, so you could use this to check what monsters you can choose in this quest as well, before playing the quest. It also shows the preselected ones from the quest books (but you cant change those)

monsters.jpg

And here is the one for Gryvorn Unleashed, which has special conditions, (I'm trying to program all of those in :) )

monsters2.jpg

Edited by Atom4geVampire

NICE!!!!!!

thats the only word to say. It looks so great

This looks so amazing! Keep up your awesome work!

Something I was just thinking about: I don't know much about copyright law or all that. Does anyone know if FFG allows their artwork (I'm talking about the hero images and stuff) to be used in things like this?

Are there any precedents where fan projects had issues with this? I'm assuming this would fall under fair use, since it's something non-commercial and I don't think it hurts their property in any way.

On the legal information page it says:

For questions about non-commercial, non-professional use of our intellectual properties for recreational and hobby community oriented purposes (fan creations), please contact [email protected]

So I guess I'd best send them an e-mail just to be sure.

Maybe they would even be willing to provide images of similar quality to that one of High Mage Quellen of the other heroes if I ask nicely? :)

Just sent a mail to legal, I guess I'll know soon enough.

I've also added all classes,cards,... of Shadow Of Nerekhall now as well. So as far as I know, everything that has been released is in the database (Although I do need to go over the conversion kit to make sure).

I was thinking about what would need to be saved if saving after 1 encounter like ND Jones suggested. First I thought its just damage and objective tokens, but then I realized you'd also need to save which cards the overlord discarded, which search cards were found and if they were used or not, ...

Seems like a lot of extra things to keep track of.

Just be aware that within the X-Wing world, both FFG and Disney have sent cease and desist letters to several individual's who created websites similar to yours which made use of content from the X-Wing game.

In this case, it may have occurred because Disney is ***EXTREMELY*** protective of their intellectual property rights, and may have actually forced FFG's hand, as FFG has no interest in losing their Star Wars licenses.

Perhaps FFG, the sole owner of this game and license will provide you permission to do so.

I can give you another real world example of which I am involved. I have been a long time player of both Descent First and Second Edition (since their respective creations). Descent First Edition had separate documents from the rules guides which contained their quest guides (the maps to all of the dungeons). While the rules guides were always provided on-line as PDFs, the quest guides were not.

Descent First Edition is out of print and pretty much no longer available. Because I wanted to protect my interests in this game, I sent FFG's legal department a request allowing me to generate PDFs of the quest guides, so that if anything ever happened to the physical copies I had, I would always have electronic backups. They provided me explicit permission to do so, so long as I did not make them available to others, and only had them for my own use.

Edited by any2cards

Alright, thanks a lot for the information! I guess it might not be as simple as it seems then.

Anyway, like I said, I have mailed them and linked to this topic. I hope I'll receive a positive answer then.

I understand they don't include the quest guide in their pdfs, since if they did, you could just play campaigns without having to pay for the expansion. This would especially be a problem for things like the new Heirs of Blood.

I personally don't see an issue with this, since it doesn't allow you to play the game without buying it, its just a record for what you do with the game. That, and the fact that I don't personally have any profit from the website or use their images in a negative way. + I only use images/data that is freely available on sites like the descent wikia

But I guess we will see what they say. :)

Looks fantastic! As a web developer I can see you've put a lot of work into it. It would be rather silly of FFG to block you from doing this (but you never know with lawyers involved).

Only just got into Descent, and playing the first campaign with my 8yr old son. Interested in testing it when you're ready.

Out of interest, what development platform are you using for it?

Well, it's all custom php. In hindsight it might have been better if I used some form of framework :)

For the front end, I'm now using making use of Bootstrap which makes work a bit faster (before it was also all custom).

I re-read through this entire thread, thinking I missed it, but ...

Have you actually shared the website link yet, so that I (and others interested) can play around with what you have so far?

Perhaps you are going to have some alpha/beta testers at some point?

Just curious.