Hello,

My group and I are halfway through our first campaign and we've noticed 1 thing. The quests are taking much longer than expected. Some have taken 5-6 hours, and we feel they should only take 2-3 hours. The main issue is analysis paralysis and conflicting strategies amongst the heroes that take a long time to resolve. We've thought about adding a timer, but not quite sure how to best implement it.

One idea is to have a 15 minute timer for each turn, and if you go over you get a "token of procrastination". The token would negatively affect each side in some way. Maybe the heroes lose gold, or the OL discards a card. I dunno.

I'm trying to remind them we should be enjoying the adventure that this game takes us on and not treat it as a competitive strategy game, but it's difficult as we all want to win.

I'm curious if anyone else has implemented anything to help speed the game along. I would love to hear your ideas and experiences.

Thanks!

The thing that helped our group's analysis paralysis a bit was allowing a hero strategy session at the beginning of the encounter. After all the setup has been completed (just before the first hero turn) the heroes have the opportunity to just discuss what it is they want to do without the OL looking over their shoulder. We found that this allowed them to

1) Refresh in their minds the objectives of the encounter

2) Form a plan to completing the objectives

It might not help every group, and plans do sometimes have to change, but it at least helped us to retain perspective on who was supposed to be doing what. Honestly, though, experience helps a lot as well. Try letting others play as the overlord in standalone quests- it develops the mindset of tasking figures to do specific jobs.

I'm in the same boat, with the same time frames for the same reason. I'm in a slightly more difficult position because my brother loves to analyze ever faucet - on his turn. Not before or leading up to his turn. He enjoys if and we are having difficulty convincing him otherwise. My apologies for the quick vent there.

Back on topic. I have been thinking about using a timer, and use it per player turn. Each player gets 5 min to start moving. My group takes forever on the front end. Once they start moving it is at a reasonable pace. Although I do like your 15 per turn. Do you mean per turn (hero's turn, then 15 for OL), or 15 for the entire hero/ol turn?

I haven't come up with a suitable punishment tho. I'm curious if others face the same. FFG's 2-3 hours seems so off the mark. I am very curious to see what the average play time statistics are over time on the decent 2e tracker website that atom made (use it if you haven't! It's amazing).

After all the setup has been completed (just before the first hero turn) the heroes have the opportunity to just discuss what it is they want to do without the OL looking over their shoulder.

Of course, being able to overhear the players strategize is something the overlord is entitled to.

My playgroup normally clears a whole quest in one play session of 2-3 hours, being two small encounters or one big one (although usually rounding up after 2 hours in that case), including the campaign phase. Some encounters take even less time to complete. These sessions are still full of discussions between the heroes for addresing both the heroes' overall strategy to win the quest, and the decisions required to cope with a particular event. My players are all experienced, they can evaluate a sequence of plays based on their sole knowledge of the game, and that surely makes up for faster games. We sometimes have to stop for 5 minutes to address rules discussions, otherwise the game flows pretty well. Obviously you have a few critical situations potentially determining the winner, where you would want to take a bit more time before deciding, but even these are quite short breaks.

Overthinking your moves is highly overrated in my opinion. Even on the Overlord side. It has to be simple or it is doomed to failure. You can't rely on a complex chain of events where both dices and card draw are involved. You should still be able to evaluate whether your next sequence of actions would be optimal or not, this is a mental exercice you need to carry out every time you take your turn, but past that point you surely wouldn't know.

My second playgroup for instance used to think so much ahead so that our encounters were taking forever. Counting spaces between the heroes and their destination, and predicting each move 4 rounds ahead... Hero A runs to objective, heroes B and C take on the monsters, hero D does some searching etc. Thing is, the heroes were forced to start from scratch every round because hero B died in combat, leaving hero A alone, hero D got trapped, and hero A was so fatigued up that she couldn't fulfill her objective in time. The answer is flexibility. You identify the primary task for the round and decide who is going to do it, with a backup plan (typically "you try first, and if you fail I try after you"). The rest of your actions depend on what's close to you or not. When in doubt, just kill a monster. You need healing, then you heal. No need to take 15 minutes to decide on that. D2E proposes a vast array of possible actions especially after you´ve skilled up a little bit, but if you know what each of these actions do then it shouldn't take much time to identify which of these are actual for the round.

2-3 hours for a full quest is all it should take you, assuming you don't have to go through all rules or setting up the game for too long.

My advice to you is not to despair Keep your heroes well informed and things will come naturally.

My group also takes 4 to 6 hours per quest, but I must say I don't mind. When I am overlord, I love watching heroes squabble over their strategy, and when I am hero, I relish seeing the OL agonize over his decisions. Besides, I am not the fastest player of the bunch either.

It also helps that they are an enjoyable company.

If someone thinks for too long and you get bored, my advice would be: start talking about other topics than the current game like you'd do at a dinner table ("Have you seen the latest Star Wars" or whatever). That way, you don't get bored and you might even throw your opponent's concentration off.

If someone thinks for too long and you get bored, my advice would be: start talking about other topics than the current game like you'd do at a dinner table ("Have you seen the latest Star Wars" or whatever). That way, you don't get bored and you might even throw your opponent's concentration off.

That's the radical opposite of what I would be suggesting You need your players focused on the game at all times otherwise going off to some unrelated topics all the time will inevitably drag your games by a fair deal. I´m not saying you should slap a player for making a short break to mention about the Star Wars movie (this said do it if you´re the overlord, and do it twice because it's SW), but you need to move on at some point. I mean, 4-6 hours is incredibly long. For a campaign-based game you need to be able to chain the quests faster otherwise your campaigns will take many months to complete. If you complete a campaign sooner then it means you can play a new one faster and explore new combinations. Being stuck on a neverending campaign doens't give you the same experience.

Then sure, if you can aford these 6-hours long sessions and can play many times a week then why not, I can respect that. But I don't think D2E was designed to be one of these long dungeon crawl games like D1E was. The shortness of the encounters is part of the blueprint for D2e.

Do you mean per turn (hero's turn, then 15 for OL), or 15 for the entire hero/ol turn?

I was thinking 15 min per turn, so 15 for heroes and 15 for OL.

I appreciate everyone's input and sharing of their experiences. I agree that if we all stayed focused on the game and realize that we can't control what might happen in subsequent turns as well as recognize that almost all actions come down to dice rolls, that should help and we'd be able to finish in 2-3 hours.

I'm just trying to think of a creative way to "ensure" quick, focused play.

If someone thinks for too long and you get bored, my advice would be: start talking about other topics than the current game like you'd do at a dinner table ("Have you seen the latest Star Wars" or whatever). That way, you don't get bored and you might even throw your opponent's concentration off.

That's the radical opposite of what I would be suggesting You need your players focused on the game at all times otherwise going off to some unrelated topics all the time will inevitably drag your games by a fair deal. I´m not saying you should slap a player for making a short break to mention about the Star Wars movie (this said do it if you´re the overlord, and do it twice because it's SW), but you need to move on at some point. I mean, 4-6 hours is incredibly long. For a campaign-based game you need to be able to chain the quests faster otherwise your campaigns will take many months to complete. If you complete a campaign sooner then it means you can play a new one faster and explore new combinations. Being stuck on a neverending campaign doens't give you the same experience.

Then sure, if you can aford these 6-hours long sessions and can play many times a week then why not, I can respect that. But I don't think D2E was designed to be one of these long dungeon crawl games like D1E was. The shortness of the encounters is part of the blueprint for D2e.

Unfortunately not. We play Descent in campaign mode since 2009, but only once a month. And since Descent 2e, we play no more than one single quest each session, no matter how long it takes: if it takes only 3 hours, we go home after 3 hours. If it takes 6 hours, we play 6 hours (which, admittedly, sometimes includes a break for eating).

When we meet, it is a little like the kids in Narnia: we go through a wardrobe to live our lives as heroes in another world. So we might as well make the fun last.