I loved the original Descent and owned all of the expansions for it. When the second edition was announced, I was really excited. However, once I played it, I sadly determined I didn't care for it. I'm not a fan of the campaign structure. It seemed we'd get a group together, do the first couple of small missions and we'd never get beyond that. After that, trying to get the exact same group together at a time where we all wanted to play that was all but impossible. Descent has been sitting in my closet for a while now because of this.

I'm wondering if there are any expansions that use the second edition's monsters/characters/rules but instead of a campaign focus, go back to the single, epic, stand alone missions of the first Descent. If so, I will buy that in a heartbeat.

Descent 2nd edition quests can be played as one-offs. See details on page 19 of the base game rule book.

The H&M packs each come with 1-off quests. I'm sure you can find standalone quests in the Quest Vault.

17 hours ago, Sadgit said:

Descent 2nd edition quests can be played as one-offs. See details on page 19 of the base game rule book.

We've done that a couple of times, but they still seem to be greatly lacking the scale of the quests from the original Descent.

3 minutes ago, Bataar said:

We've done that a couple of times, but they still seem to be greatly lacking the scale of the quests from the original Descent.

Could you be more specific as to what you mean by "lacking scale"? For example, are you looking for a single quest that might take 6 hours to play? Are you looking for a "boss" with 60+ health, or perhaps hordes of lesser monsters? Are you looking for a map that is secret and revealed as you explore it?

13 minutes ago, Zaltyre said:

Could you be more specific as to what you mean by "lacking scale"? For example, are you looking for a single quest that might take 6 hours to play? Are you looking for a "boss" with 60+ health, or perhaps hordes of lesser monsters? Are you looking for a map that is secret and revealed as you explore it?

Pretty much the length. In the original, we loved some of the big maps that would take around 4 hours to finish, used a lot of different monster types, decent boss and allowed the heroes to collect a good amount of equipment and evolve to "high level".

19 hours ago, Bataar said:

I'm wondering if there are any expansions that use the second edition's monsters/characters/rules but instead of a campaign focus, go back to the single, epic, stand alone missions of the first Descent. If so, I will buy that in a heartbeat.

You could give the Delve or the game night kits a try. No overlord but they are made to be played in a single night.

1 hour ago, Bataar said:

Pretty much the length. In the original, we loved some of the big maps that would take around 4 hours to finish, used a lot of different monster types, decent boss and allowed the heroes to collect a good amount of equipment and evolve to "high level".

Unfortunately that experience was not liked by many. The focus of Descent 2nd Ed was removing the long play sessions and putting more focus on quest goals and campaigns instead of just killing things. So basically they purposely removed all the stuff you enjoyed about 1st Ed.

True. However, the quest vault offers a way to construct a quest that is as epic as you like. And, as Mists and Chains have shown us, with the right mechanic you CAN turn descent into a kill fest. If you want progression/levelling mid quest you'd have to build that in via special rules, but you could easily model it after the delve or the coop kits. (That is, award shop cards/XP based on monster kills or objective completion rather than quest victory).

On 10/5/2017 at 11:23 PM, Bataar said:

I loved the original Descent and owned all of the expansions for it. When the second edition was announced, I was really excited. However, once I played it, I sadly determined I didn't care for it. I'm not a fan of the campaign structure. It seemed we'd get a group together, do the first couple of small missions and we'd never get beyond that. After that, trying to get the exact same group together at a time where we all wanted to play that was all but impossible. Descent has been sitting in my closet for a while now because of this.

I'm wondering if there are any expansions that use the second edition's monsters/characters/rules but instead of a campaign focus, go back to the single, epic, stand alone missions of the first Descent. If so, I will buy that in a heartbeat.

Descent 2nd Edition is exactly that: a single, epic standalone mission where heroes start as weaklings with a single skill and rolling 2 dice and end as superheroes with up to 6 skills and rolling up to 6 dice. Only that now it takes a manly 20 hours to play, not the laughable 4 hours it took before.

Don't let the words fool you: a "campaign" is just one mission with lots and lots of loot (you see between 45-50 treasure objects - way more than in any Descent 1 mission) and, when put together, a bigger map than any Descent 1st edition map you played before (except Road to Legend of course).

Descent got more epic, not less.

I disagree that Descent got more epic. I believe "epic" means character growth, and generally Second Ed had less of it. But both editions have much to offer. Let's compare the various modes of Descent, from shortest to longest, and their levels of character growth.

1. 2nd Ed One-Off: 30-90 min, no growth.

2. 2nd Ed Print on Demand Expansions: 1-2 hours, minor growth.

3. 1st Ed One-Off: 4-6 hours, moderate growth.

4. 2nd Ed Campaign (standard or app): 15-25 hours: high growth.

5. 1st Ed Campaign: 60-100 hours: extreme growth.

So as you can see, simply add more time and the game becomes more epic. That's why fans of the original game say the one-offs were good because they always felt epic. Second Edition originally required the campaign to achieve growth, but later added PoD expansions for an experience similar to, but lighter than, the 1st Ed.

There are many ways to play Descent and with all the content out there, everyone can find something. The trick is to remember that if you can't commit to a campaign, there exist options that offer some character growth in a shorter session - it just doesn't exist in the core box of 2nd ed.