Well, I guess the topic title says it best

My question is: has anyone tried to play Descent as a light RPG like Warhammer Quest with its "roleplay" rules?

I've had tons of fun playing Warhammer Quest this way and I think Descent, using Road To Legend could be made to do the same things.

Instead of an Overlord, we'd have a Gamemaster who imagines dungeons (and woods encounters using RTL) fully laid out, introduces all kinds of puzzles and traps and basically tries to challenge the players but not destroy them. You know, a GM

There would have to be experience and progression of course (using but bending RTL rules). Sounds like tons of fun but I wouldn't know how to get started with it.

I do own Warhammer Quest but while I love many aspects of it, I much prefer Descent's combat rules.

Well, for starters you're probably going to find yourself making a lot of house rules to account for Descent's illogical nature. Off the top of my head, the rules for Soar, LoS into pits and jumping over water are all blatantly unreasonable in an RPG environment. There are many other situations as well. If you're serious about doing this, you'll probably never find them all before playing, which means you'll be making new rules on the fly. This means you'll have to keep a close eye on the mechanics to prevent them from spinning wildly out of control. Hopefully your gaming group is mature enough not to mercilessly exploit loopholes where found

Also, this is just my personal opinion, but I don't think the levelling mechanics, even in RtL, are granular enough for my RPG tastes. What I mean by that is that the heroes gain power in discrete amounts. A skill is a significant step up in power (usually), and as far as attack dice go, well your ability ranges from 1 to 15 in any single attack type (and most heroes won't bother with more than one). This means the power curve will be increasing a lot faster than it does in any actual RPG game engine, and as GM you'll need to make sure the challenges keep up with the heroes.

I see what you mean concerning the experience issue.

Perhaps it is possible to come up with extensive rules of my own, borrowing from both RTL and Warhammer Quest.

Failing that, there is of course always the option of just using Descent's minis and floorplans with D&D 4E, which, I have heard, is a pretty "light" and combat-heavy RPG.

I had Descent and played the through all the core quests in Journeys In The Dark solo using my own variant(streamlining the usage of APs and limiting threat pool) and my experience is that the game became way too easy. It seemed that it would take a ton of tweaking to get it to work like a Warhammer Quest style game. The components are so awesome you may want to try making up your own variant some of the variants posted in the homebrew section. (They look cool, but require printing new cards etc.)

I'm sure somebody will come with a challenging, but fun variant to play Descent RPG style yet not have to print up all new cards etc.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

That'd probably be how I run a Descent RPG, if I ever get around to such a thing. 4e and 3e are fairly similar in most respects, so if you're familiar with the latter you have a good idea of how the former works too. The majority of the rules are designed with miniature tabletop combat in mind, but that doesn't necessarily mean a combat-heavy game - that depends entirely on how your group likes to play.