I have a question which basically is the same as my Topic line. How do you speed up game play?

I love playing this game but it seems to take like four+ hours each time we pull it out. I have the Road to Legends and we save our characters in the boxes but we never seem to be able to play for less then like four hours.

I think the reason it takes so long is the set up. Any ideas on how to speed that up?

A cheap one minute egg-timer / hourglass type thing. (A handphone stopwatch is even better).

Give the Heroes 1 minute for discussions, and 1 minute each to do their moves. If you can use a stopwatch type then you could 'pause' it for Traps, combat dice rolling and calculating etc, which would be more than reasonable.

Then give the OL 1 minute only for all 'start of turn' effects (including drawing cards/threat. discarding, playing cards and spawning) and 4 minutes for moving monsters etc.

You'll probably find very quickly that everyone speeds up considerably and doesn't actually need that much time. I play a miniatures wargame at international tournament level that has a 'blitz' system in most tournament rules for very limited timed turns if players have not reached a certain number of turns played before a certain time limit. Its amazing when playing blitz how easy it is to finish everything well before the turn time limit is reached. What may take 10min to do before can often be easily finished in 30sec if you have a 2min limit and just do what needs to be done as fast as you can. You wonder why it was so hard to make decisions before.... (mind you, I tend to be a faster player 95% of the time anyway, except for those critical decisions that might take several minutes of deliberation because they are not IMO clear-cut).

Whoever is hosting should setup the Mapboard before the others arrive if possible.

Well, I found that 1 or 2 people playing the four heros makes gameplay a little faster. Other than that, the game just takes time (if u want to play it right). Using a timer sounds like a good idea if everyone is ok with it. Is there anyone here that uses a timing limit system? If so, I would like to hear your opinion on its effectiveness. Are there more mistakes such as abilities/ effect tokens being overlooked?

p.s. set up and take down of the game can take some time. We cut some time down by organizing the smaller items in bead art(jewelry making) storage bins. U can find them at any supply store. They have lots of small storage slots in them, and are easily secured and stored. One bin contains effect tokens, hero upgrade tokens, and gold. Another bin contains all the small map and dungeon items( pits, rubble, and stuff). The monsters have their own bins, separated by normals and masters. Keeping hero cards with their inventory in separate boxes is a great idea. I hope I could give u some new ideas. Thanx

With setup time, I recommend having everything sorted into craft boxes. With this to set up the tokens all you have to do is open the boxes.

This really helps with RTL

For actual game time, I recommend finding smaller quests or play heaps, because the more you play the quicker you will get (especially for the overlord).

Also think about your moves, etc, when it isn't your turn, although this is more of a perogative for the Overlord.

we don't use any timing methods, i just make fun of the heroes for taking so long, and then they make fun of me for taking so long ...but lets be honest, the heroes take FOREVER sometimes and they only have 1 guy to move, sometimes i have 15 to move and still dont take as long... , that might not be true....at all

I think my hero players have the "save and load" mindset where they dont take risks at face value and always want to rethink their actions after they have taken them. As OL there are alot more things to consider and to do yet normally we take faster than the heroes. I think the timing suggestion is good, and I will try it out on my next session and see how they react to it I'm thinking of getting another set of dice to speed up moving dice across the hero side and the OL side (that and because I like how they look

Maskmanjoe said:

Getting a 2nd set of dice will actually help quite a bit for battles. Using a timer should help. If the hero players are also complaining about the length of sessions, then you should chastise them for taking so much time with their turns. It really shouldn't take long for them to take their turns in a dungeon.

The biggest probably we have in one of our campaign games is that the Overlord does not pre-plan out his move while the players are doing their move. Then when it comes to the Overlord, he then starts thinking about his turn, and the players get bored because the overlord takes a while.

When I am the overlord, while the players are taking their turn, I grab the threat gained on my next turn, put it in a pile next to my items, draw the new cards and put them next to the threat (not looking of course, cause that is cheating) and know what cards I intend to play.

So my advise, is to have the players and overlord think about what they plan to do on their turn. It helps speed up games considerably.

How frustrating. I was just putting the finishing touches on my reply to this post, and the box flickered and everything was gone. Gust of Wind?

p.s. Taunting slow players works, too.

rose0043 said:

get a large board, big enough to play the whole game on. set board on top of your table before setting up the game. set up your game on top of the board, when your finished find someplace to store the board un till your next game.

good places to store the board,

under a bed (if you have no pets)

the guest room

high selfs

i have everything all divided out exactly how i want it. Since i am always the overlor, i am the only one that needs to know wherre things are and how they are stored, but i have about 20 sandwich bagies and other size baggies for all the stuff, and we use a Giant "puzzle" board (it is covered with felt so nothing slides) and we keep everything set up if we didnt finish a map and then store it somehwere safe from the...meow meow

Definitely well sorted storage will help. From my experience however with the stopwatch, it can make the game experience less enjoyable for certain player types. It really depends on the person though, but you have to make sure all players are enjoying the game. I have one friend who takes about 15 minutes on his hero turn micro managing and thinking if you don't stop him. Yet i have another friend who i used to play Star Wars Miniatures with and we would blitz through a big game in 10 minutes because we both knew the rules well and could predict what each other were going to do, so we really sped through it.

So really choosing who to play with is difficult becasue there isnt always alot of choice and there are friendship complications, but i believe after enough experience playing as the overlord AND the heroes, players will get a better feel for how the game goes and that should increase their speed. If a player has never played as overlord it is hard for them to know the exact limits of their enemie's power, and thus they might spend ages thinking of what they might do.

I really agree with Antjohnst. Personally, I would avoid the stopwatch, but then again, I come from a RPG background.

The game's speed does improve dramatically with experience. And, to me, the game is more enjoyable when it moves along at a brisk pace.

I would recommend using the spawn counter from RtL, even in vanilla Descent. Believe me, it makes the game go a lot quicker, especially when the OL is getting 4 threat per turn. Monsters take a turn or 2 for the heroes to handle, traps are instant pain.

sputang said:

How does the spawn counter work?

Jools said:

Also curious, I only have the Base and Well of Darkness

You spawn, the counter is turned over.

You cannot spawn again until it's turned back over.

To turn it back over, pay fifteen threat at any time.

It effectively increases spawn costs by fifteen.

Foxburr's got the right idea: organization of components can help A LOT. I might disagree a bit on the "taunting" part. I find physical abuse is much more encouraging. This is where the Mace of Kellos comes in handy...

TK

Assuming the slow down is not the players the best way to speed up Descent play is to have all the pieces well organized and everyone helps out in the building and tearing down of a dungeon.

In our group when a dungeon is pull the book is open and the hero players start building the map while the OL pulls out his creatures then helps with the setup. When a floor is done everyone pulls the map apart and starts build the new one. most game pieces like gold, treasure, portals, red door, pits ect. rarely leave the table as they are used on most of the floors.

With RtL maps being smaller the setup time for 3 people is rather quick. I would like to think we have gotten fairly effecient and have all the game pieces sorted in the way that we don't have to rummage for 20 minuets trying to find bone heaps.

I have my tokens in four large comprtmentalised boxes. I have my figures in two large compartmentlised boxes.

Two pf the players take care of the Monsters and hand them over at my request. One of the players handles the effect tokens. One player handles the money, heart, fategue and conquest tokens. A quick call for an item gives you the item so things can be dealth with quickly.

I also have four extra sets of dice which helps a lot.

Slev said:

It also turns face up every time a new area is revealed.

As the Overlord, I make every attempt to have 3 plans in mind when my turn is over and the heros are on turn. Offensive, Defensive, and a combination of the two. Based in the cards in my hand by the time the 3rd hero has acted I know which actions I will take. The game will, most of the time, pace itself. More than one set of dice is a plus. Knowing the quest as well as I can ahead of time doesn't hurt. If you, as I do, play somewhere other than your own home - resist taking more than you need for the quest.

I hope this helps...

I too bought some craft-hobby-boxes to store everything in neat little compartments. Helps the Overlords LOTS. I have one Overlord-box with all kinds off stuff for the Overlord to handle, One Hero box with all kindof hero stuff in it, like hearts and fatigue and all that silly do-good stuff, then I have one more box with random terrain-counters like pits and lava and sarcophagii and that kinda stuff. Works great for me as Overlord.

About the Heroes though, the open-turn-order begs for discussion of the upcoming turn and this is both a curse and a blessing. Blessing because its so cool to make a plan and work it out the way the players want to. Awesome!. A Curse because **** some players are just f-ing analyzing every little detail thirty times, ran trough every possible result that might possibly happen this turn in all 50 dimensions, only to return to that one idea they had at the beginning of their turn. Serious.

For those players I suggest the following. The Overlord takes a timer. 1 minute for discussion at the beginning of the turn for the entire party. On the 1 minute mark if a player did not yet start his turn, the Overlord gains 1 Threat and puts in a special place .(You are in a f-ing dungeon, you are hurt and weird stuff is out to kill you, why are you doing math right now!) For every thirty seconds thereafter the OL gains another threat, putting it again in his special place. As soon as a player takes his turn just ditch the timer, once they state their action it pretty much moves along at a de(s)cent pace. The OL has 4 minutes pre-turn. If he doesnt make it, he returns all threat he might in his special place back to the Heroes, says sorry and polishes their shoes. If he made to start his turn before the time he gains the threat. Again once the OL takes her/his turn it usually pretty much moves along. Only major speedbumps are those pre-turn brainfarts.

If you really cant get your players to take some risk tell them to go play chess. or hurt them.

One more tidbit to help out the speed of play - I have a sheet of plexiglass. I lay it over the map section of the playing area. Some of my players have slid their character cards under them with their skill cards. I then use dry erase markers to keep track of the life of my mobs. This comes in handy as I spawn more mobs of monsters and there are not enough heart tokens between my injured heroes and monsters to go around.