Short Background:

Started a RTL campaign and after reaching silver the first time we decided we had made enough rule errors to warrant a restart. This past weekend we all met at a friends cabin in the woods and due to an ice strom spent most of the weekend inside playing through and eventually finishing the game (Heroes Won).

At some point during the weekend we had been snowed/iced in for roughly 36 hours and tension was high due to cabin fever, and lets face it that much time without a break and having the same people with no power or running water (darn electric well pump). Anyway we drew the "Bridge Of Doom" dungeon and the overlord set it up and away we went.

Shortly into the map, the Overlord used a crushing block card on the bridge. Then choosing to move the hero to the bottomless pit to kill him. There of course was protest, with rules being read, errata's being poured through (to the dim light og a lamp hanging from a rope to light up the room by the way of a generator). The heroes felt that the bridge indicated an non movable object, with the pit of death being a map element. The Overlord argued, his mission was to throw you into the pit of death, and he was using the block to do so. Claiming we could choose to move into the pit as a movement if we wanted to die. The result was a large argument going nowhere.

On one hand I can see the point that the Overlord was attempting to make, with regards to it being his goal for the dungeon to push us into the pit. However it gave a Red Razorwing the knockback ability to do so.

Have any of you encountered this situation, and how was it dealt with?

It is perfectly legal to push a hero into the bridge's pit with a crushing block. Playing a crushing block on the bridge will be an instant deathfor the heroes at this dungeon-level.
But this is not too hard as there are only two crushing blocks in the OLs deck and the OL won't have this card ready in many cases.

I didn't draw a Crushing Block while running Bridge of Death, but I'd have certainly played it if I had. It might be unfair to let this happen in the base game, but killing a hero doesn't end the game, or even the dungeon, in a campaign so it's a strong play but nowhere near broken.

It took me a minute to work through all the ifs, buts and therfores, but in the end I agree that the OL made a legal play.

Normally a CB beside a pit is valid because the heroes can always move through the pit, but at first I was thinking these pits are made special by the quest text making them instant death instead of just damage. I was thinking about Kevin's "fair play" ruling that the OL should not do things that make it impossible to proceed.

Then I remembered that the heroes always have the choice to flee a dungeon and continue the campaign elsewhere, which is certainly a valid option for this situation, so in the end I agree that the OL is allowed to put a block on this bridge if he wants. It basically forces the heroes to abandon this dungeon, but it doesn't make the game unplayable in advanced campaign mode.

I think the dungeon cards are many and varied enough that we don't reasonably need to worry about the question of the heroes being forced out of EVERY dungeon in a similar fashion.

The OL cannot force the heroes to flee the dungeon by playing crushing blocks as he won't be able to block the whole way. After he has played the first crushing block, there is still enough empty space to by-pass the rubble and to cross the bridge.

Remember that the OL is not allowed to play a crushing block next to the first crushing block - so there will always be enough space to by-pass the rubble.

The more complicated question is: What happens if the OL is playing a pit onto the bridge? According to the FAQ, a pit adjacant to another pit will be treated as one big pit. So will a pit played next to the death bridge's pit cause an instant kill?

That is a good question. I have played this level before as OL, but I do not remember playing a pit trap. But you are right, according to the FAQ, it would be considered to be part of the larger "pit of doom"

Has anyone else played this level? What did you do?

The rules for the level specify that only the original pit spaces are instant death. Pits played by the overlord behave normally.

I know combining logic and Descent is dangerous but Imagine the situation of the stone bridge across a bottomless chasm.... play a pit on the bridge. Wouldn't this just mean a gap in the bridge? If you would fall trough the bridge, you would end up in the same chasm... We would probably play it like that.

James McMurray said:

Aye, the rules makes this quite explicit. "preset pits only, not those resulting from traps". By playing it any other way, you're giving the Overlord an unfair advantage (on top of the fact that the bridge is pretty tough for the heroes already).

James McMurray said:

Ah, all right, I had not read the card again when I wrote this. But the same problem occurs in the WOD-quest 1, the collapsing mine. There is a bottomless pit, but there is no explicit rule what happens if the OL plays a pit adjacant to the bottomless one.

Quoting Scy800: "I know combining logic and Descent is dangerous but Imagine the situation of the stone bridge across a bottomless chasm.... play a pit on the bridge. Wouldn't this just mean a gap in the bridge?"

Have you seen the movie "Perfume: The story of a murderer"? There is a house built into (yes, into, not onto) a bridge. And in one scene, they are going down into the cellar... Maybe they used the same bridge as "bridge of doom" in Descent RTL. ;-)