RTL Game Length

By rgrove0172, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Posted at

My buddy and I have been playing RtL between the two of us and thus far have 72 combined Conquest. Its taken us the better part of 12 hours playing to get this far, basically on turn 5 as I write this. Working all 3 levels of a dungeon takes us at least 3 or so hours usually and a typical outdoor encounter about an hour or so all by itself. We find the tactical aspects of the game intrigueing but extremely time consuming. At this rate, as we play 2 times a week or so (4 hours sessions), we are guessing a couple months or more to complete a game. Is this the typical RtL experience? Are these players I hear that complete the entire campaign in a 15 or so hours simply rushing through the dungeons, not worry about tactics, skipping something we dont?

Posted at

15 hours for a complete campaign? Maybe if the OL does an earlier Tamalir rush and wins. For our current campaign we have played 10 Saturday afternoon sessions. We start a 1:00 PM and go at least until 6:00, usually longer. So say we average 6 hours a session, were up to 60 hours. We have 460 total conquest.

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A typical campaign level is 3 complete dungeons, or 9 dungeon levels (at least that was Kevin's original intent). So it should take 9 full dungeons to make it to the Final Battle. By your own estimates, that's 30+hours at least...

-shnar

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rgrove0172 said:

At this rate, as we play 2 times a week or so (4 hours sessions), we are guessing a couple months or more to complete a game. Is this the typical RtL experience? Are these players I hear that complete the entire campaign in a 15 or so hours simply rushing through the dungeons, not worry about tactics, skipping something we dont?

I'm guessing the people who claim 15 hours are the ones who use the Tamalir Rush strategy with some frequency, or perhaps the ones who used the "hide in a dungeon until the final battle" loophole before that was errata'd out. Either that or they just don't realize how long it really takes them. RtL was definitely designed to take several sessions to complete.

Our group has only played two campaigns, neither got much past Silver and each took about a month and a half of regular weekly sessions before we called it quits for whatever reason. Assuming 4 hour sessions (which seem like a fair average for people who have lives outside of gaming) and one or two sessions per week, I would say two or three months is a safe estimate to complete a campaign. I would expect SoB campaigns to be much similar.