hi,

first of all: it's a shame, that there are so many errors in this book. i got it yesterday and during the first reading i saw the first errors. today i downloaded the FAQ and i was shocked! 10 pages of errata....that's huge...

so, it's about the quest "blood feud". in the errata there is the following paragraph:

Additional Rules
As soon as Area 3 is revealed,
the dueling monster (either the
Carrock Dragon or the Giant of
the Broken Hills) that is closest to
death is immediately killed by the
other dueling monster. If there is
a tie, the Overlord chooses which
dueling monster is killed. The remaining
dueling monster is then
rejuvenated to full health and
gains bonuses to its health and
armor according to rules on page
23 of the Quest Compendium.

so, i think, when i add this rule to this quest, the idea of this quest is totally lost. what do you think?

BigYogi

I don't have the compendium, but that passage you quoted seems rather incongruous with the preceding paragraph of the errata:

"If both the Carrock Dragon and the Giant of the Broken Hills are still alive after Area 3 has been revealed, any wound tokens already placed next to them do count as inflicted wounds."

So the wounds you've been tracking count as inflicted wounds for all purposes when area 3 is revealed...but when area 3 is revealed, one of the monsters is instantly killed and the other is healed to full? What does it matter whether the wounds are "real" beginning at the exact moment that they all disappear?

the idea of this quest is, that there are 2 big monsters fighting against each other (and inflicting wounds with just a single power-die roll to shorten the battle between the creatures).

the heroes have to decide wether they want to disturb the big fight and then have to deal with both monsters or they wait until one of the big monsters dies and fight the surviving one. but while the heros are waiting, they have to deal with lots of smaller monsters.

that's the idea of this dungeon that gets lost with this strange additional rule.

BigYogi

BigYogi said:

Maybe the idea of waiting around while the two big monsters duke it out was not something the designers foresaw, and this errata ruling is designed to remove any reason for the heroes to wait like that. I don't personally mind if the heroes want to delay but maybe it adds more play time to the dungeon than the designers intended.

yes, maybe you're right...an official answer from FFG would be nice.

GFL on that one...lol

i got an answer from Thadd Powell.....will post it today evening here.

Hello,

I am sorry you are upset with the errata - it is definitely more pages than typical. Unfortunately I don't know of any correction reprint end user deal in the works. It's possible something may happen in the future, but it's not something I have heard of announced.

In the past, we have at times had (rare) supplemental cards or components, but that is not possible for a book. It is fairly unlikely we will be able to do a gift certificate, due to the complications of redeeming such a thing internationally (and some Federal rules involving issuing of credits/coupons indefinitely). I do hope that future printings will be reworked and corrected, but as the first printing is not even close to selling out, that's way too early to say.

Sorry I don't have more information - the best thing to do is to keep an eye on the 'News' Section for Descent.

Thanks for playing,
Thaadd Powell
Customer Service
Fantasy Flight Games

I was confused by the changes too. I assume that the other members are right. Waiting around for Kong and Godzilla to duke it out is weird, so having one fall while the heroes enter will speed this up. If you want it to be like the old rules here is my suggestion.

While with Blizzard they had a neat boss encounter called the Twin Emperors (that Mr. Roper helped design). They shared a life pool. If they got within a certain distance of each other then they healed each other very quickly with their auras. So you had to keep them apart or they heal. You could use this idea of a shared life pool. So say the two spirits were in love. While in love and working together their auras work. But when they fight the auras don't work. So roll a power die but instead of rolling it twice roll it once and subjact 2 life from their pool. Instead of letting them kill themselves though and to speed up the game make it so the heroes lose if one of the spirits kills the other.
All of the spawning rules remain. Part of Twin Emps was the fact that bugs spawned and had to be killed before they grew too big and blew up dealing massive area damage.
Now in Descent there is no "forced tanking" to keep them apart. So perhaps have two runes (encounter markers) in the two halves of the room that, when activated, creates a barrier between the two spirits (turns off their auras). At the start of the overlord's turn he rolls a power die. On a blank the barriers goes down and a hero will have to reactivate them again.
This will pretty much make for a fun encounter along the lines of what you are looking for. The reason the two spirits can't kill themselves is because if that happens the tension between the two tribes, families, what have you, will never be allowed to rest.

So there you have it. Kevin I know you read these forums. Why don't you personally answer this man's questions. Why is Thaadd, one of the few I still respect at FFG, answering questions. Mr. Wilson, I should point out a person named Bill Roper. He is the EP over at Cryptic and worked with Blizzard since Orcs and Humans. Last night I listened to a 2.5 hour interview with him. In the interview and multiple times before that interview he personally appologized for the mistakes made in Hellgate London, now a failed MMO. He doesn't stay quiet about it. He knew people paid his company money and he did a so so job on the end product and because of that he feels responsible. I took the time to thank him for being so admirable in a rather long post in the reply to his interview, I hope to be able to do the same once you decide to do the right thing.

Now the truth is out that the first printing of this product hasn't even sold out, and there is not going to be a reprint. Great! I just hope in your silience that you learned a lesson from this just like Bill did from his failure with Hellgate.

Thaadd I can't say enough good about. Watching Thaadd with FFG is going to be like watching Tim Tebow in the NFL. The saint that is smothered by all the greed surrounding him. Thaadd will take the time not only to address issues you have, but also apologize for mistakes she is not apart of. Even better when you need replacement parts she will hand write the letter apologizing for the mishaps. FFG staff could learn a lot from Thaadd, rather than looking at apologizing as a sign of weakness.

Dude, the compendium is full of quests from guest designers ; I can't remember if KW has an actual quest in there or not. In any case, Thadd is answering because that is her job .

Kevin headed the project. You go down with the ship. Sorry, but you don't hide from the fact that you made a mistake on the product you added your name to. Most of these guys that made the quests were new to the game and making quests for it. They came up with amazing ideas and did their best to translate it into Descent gameplay. Kevin, knowing that there would be mistakes from first timers to the product, should have made sure enough play testing went into the product before it hit shelves. Had the compendium had proper playtesting, I am sure half of the map errors would at least have been fixed. None of the other Descent products have come close to the errors this book has in it. I think Kevin figured these guys are excellent designers for games and figured they would be fine and understand the rules and such without help. He was wrong. It is an honest forgivable mistake. We are all allowed to make mistakes. We should also realize when we need to apologize for the mistake.

I probably would let this go if I didn't have ticked off customers coming to me wondering why I didn't warn them. I apologize and give them the errata I print out for it. Even though I had nothing to do with the errors, I don't see why players need to waste ink printing out fixes for a product they purchased, so I do this for them. I now make sure to sell the compendium with the errata plastic wrapped with it. It was at this point when I realized FFG is not a newbie game company anymore. They really have no excuse for all the typos and mistakes in rule books and their products.

I have no beef with Kevin. One failure out of multiple successes is forgivable and proves he is a great game dev. Unfortunately, it pretty much comes down to his timing of the mistake that spurs my frustration.

And Kevin did make a quest himself in it. The one with the map that needed to be replaced because all of the doors were the wrong colors. The Siege of Tamalir is the name.

Multiple people worked on the newer Spiderman movie, but guess who apologized to the fans of Spiderman for the lack of effort he put into the films direction? Sam Raimi the designer/director.

You are right. Thaadd, as a customer service rep, is doing her job. As the person that decides if a product is ready to release to the public, Kevin should have delayed the book for more play tests that it obviously needed.

I am glad the errata was made but that is a lot of ink you waste on something you already purchased.

Quick questions: Who edited the quest compendium? Also, who was the producer on the project? The editor is supposed to catch mistakes and the project's producer is supposed to handle quality control and make sure it's up to snuff.

They're the people to pester about the quality of the quest compendium. Supposedly, Will Hindmarch was signed on as editor when the original announcement was made, but I don't have the book in front of me so I don't know for sure.

Good luck with that, by the way. Your moralist speeches aren't going to endear you to the men and women who are trying to do their jobs without random people purporting to know how it should be done.

Not a surprise that the first printing is not sold out. I decided not to buy it after I heard about all the errata it needed.

If there ever is a corrected print run, I will definately reconsider.

Back on topic

So, I tried out the fight with some friends tonight after work using the healing auras.

First, the glyphs in this room now count as two encounter markers. Leave the glyphs out to keep track of the status on the auras. Give the heroes 8 conquest tokens when they enter the room but only when all of the heroes are in Area 3. Once in the room a horde of beastmen and skeletons will slam the doors shut preventing the heroes from escaping. The overlord can no longer spawn the skeletons (Restless Dead) and beastmen (Savage Revelers). When a hero dies they will be surprised to discover that the gods have taken notice of the heroes' accomplishments and will respawn the hero next to an unoccupied space in the room adjacent to either of the doors. This prevents the heroes from sitting in town and waiting for the monster's to get low on life or collecting potions. They had their chance already to do this in the rooms before Area 3.

Here are a few things to add to the rules. First time we played a hero just sat on an encounter marker to ensure the aura stayed down. So now make the two glyph markers deactivate only one of the creature's auras. We did not get many games in (4 total) but I suggest making the glyph on the right side deactivate the Dragon's aura and the marker on the left deactivates the Giant's aura. This makes it so that if the Dragon wants her aura back, the hero on the other side of the room has to be killed or knocked off. This also means the hero on that side will be out of range of the monster that has the aura they are deactivating. So for example, if a Magic user is on the left side's glyph, then the Giant is vulnerable but out of range, meaning another hero will have to attack he and the dragon will have to deal with the hero on the glyph.

At the beginning of the overlord's turn, unless the monsters are dueling, he rolls a power die for each deactivated aura . A roll of a surge will activate a deactivated aura on a monster. So a hero is not required to camp on the encounter marker to keep a monster's aura down. Flip a glyph to its active side while the aura it corresponds to is down. The Giant and Dragon are life linked and share a life pool equal to the combined health of a master giant and dragon at the appropriate level, so this means as long as one monster has a deactivated aura both technically get hurt. However if either the Dragon or Giant are adjacent to one another and one has an active aura, then their life pool recovers 4 health at the end of the overlord's turn. If both have active auras and are next to each other then they will heal a whopping 8 health at the end of the overlord's turn. As long as a hero is in their chamber they will halt their infighting and focus on the hero. By uniting for a cause the love they share temporarily activates their auras. If no heroes are in their chamber they resume their duel until a hero enters. When they are dueling the aura generated by the power of their love will deactivate.

While dueling the overlord rolls a power die at the end of his turn. If a surge is rolled then one of the monsters was able to significantly damage the other and their shared life pool drops 2 health. If the Dragon and the Giant kill each other before the heroes enter Area 3, then the spirits have fallen insuring that the conflict between the two families will continue to rage on, eventually corrupting the living ancestors and leading to a large scale war. A war that will swallow the world in hate. In other words, the heroes lose if they cannot stop the hatred caused by the raging spirits of the Carrock Dragon and Giant of the Hills.

I'll leave you to coming up with a clever death description when the two raging spirits fall at the hands of the heroes. The gods are on their side after all.

Thanks to Blizzard Entertainment and Keith Baker for the inspiring idea.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Off topic

Thundercles, rather than continue this here, I am sending you a friend request with something I feel you should know.

In another play through the heroes just ran to Area 3 and killed the raging spirits. SO now I suggest placing a Golem outside the door on the left side of area 2 and a Troll outside the door on the right side of areas 2. They act as meat shields. If they still die too quickly make them masters. This will require that you own a copy of Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair. Not sure what could make good substitutes in place of a Golem and Troll though from Journeys.