I am relatively new to playing this game. I usually run it as the OL.

1. I understand that there is a progression table available to run through the first 10 quests. If we run quest 4 or 5 at a single sit down, should I be offering the players the chance to spend more money beofer they start the dungeon? The first quest was way to easy for the players and I heard #4 starts the more difficult ones, so we skipped ahead.

2. We ran into a problem on quest 4. The first room of the 4 that the players went to was one of the all red monster rooms. Knowing that their star player would die, he made a mad rush into the room to try to kill the master ogre. He did a MASSIVE amount of dmg to the creature, 3x hp. But I rolled undying 3 times in a row. My question is this, according to the FAQ lingering effects last until an undying roll is failed. But should I seriously be rolling undying over and over until I fail? One attack caused me to roll undying 3 times in a row to stay alive. Or should I only get ONE undying roll and if the dmg is still enough to kill all hp, does the creature just die without another roll?

3. Another issue we had was time.... It seems to me that we are playing Descent like a compliated game of chess. Turns are taking really long to complete because the players sit there and plan all their moves together before they actually make them. It seems to me like it takes for ever for them to get done. I also felt like one player would monopolize the strategy and make all the decisions for the team. I can't imagine I would enjoy playing a game where I just counted my counters and rolled my dice and never made my own decisions. Does anyone have any suggestions on this?

4. Balance - When creating your own dungeons or campaigns, are there any guidlaines to keep the balance of the game intact. I don't want to feel as though I am an RPG GM of a dungeon crawl. I want to actually kill these guys! So when I create my own stuff to run them through, how do I keep the game fair for both sides, players and OL alike?

Thanks everyone. And I just want to say I appreciate this community. The forum posts that I have read since I got the game have alled helped with other questions that I have had over this last year.

1. You're probably referring to the optional "basic campaign" rules printed on the quest guide for making the heroes arbitrarily stronger when they've played more quests. Most people don't use those at all, and just do a full reset between quests. If you decide to use them, I believe the recommended procedure is to scale the heroes based on the number of consecutive quests they've completed without dying, not based on the quest number they're currently playing, but realistically, if the rules work at all, they'll work no matter how you assign levels.

2. Yes, you should seriously be rolling Undying over and over until you fail. Every successful roll gives the monster extra health equal to its wound threshold. This can occasionally lead to improbable results, lots of players have stories about one time that a master ogre revived 6 or 7 times in a row.

3. Descent takes a long time to play. All team board games can be played with a single player running the entire team. There are various things you can do to encourage players to play differently, like setting time limits, or restricting when they're allowed to talk, if your group is amenable to that sort of things. But it's basically just a question of getting your group to decide how they want to play.

4. Not really. There are some patterns you can follow regarding the typical distance between glyphs, number of monsters and treasures in a room, etc., as illustrated in existing quests, but some of the most interesting quests come from breaking those patterns. As in most game balancing, you rely mostly on the designer having a solid understanding of the game's tactics, thinking choices through carefully, and lots of playtesting.

You don't really need to design your own quests if you don't want to, though. Each expansion comes with more quests, there are bonus official and fan-made quests available on the web, and you can very reasonably play the same quest more than once...that's got to be hundreds or thousands of hours of potential play time already.

1. What Antistone said.

2. Yep, that's how it works.

3. Like Antistone said, Descent takes a long time. Though I agree that there should be a minimal amount of strategizing involved as this isn't a tournament game of Warhammer 40k. One of our players is a veteran wargamer who just has a knack for getting his character in the perfect spot for maximum damage. The rest of us just want to have fun and kill monsters. It was a lot like you mentioned for a while, he would tell everyone what they should do and sometimes out of spite I think we did something different. It's a team game and everyone has the right to make their own decisions, as long as it doesn't purposely affect someone else's enjoyment of the game. When I overlord, I keep the players on track and push them to make decisions, gently of course.

In the D:JitD rulebook, the player to the left of the Overlord is termed the First Hero and I take that to mean that if there is indecision and the game is starting to grind to a halt because of "chess plays" I ask that player to take the lead and do *something*. More experienced players tend to move along faster, so if your group is still learning, they may just need a little more time.

4. What Antistone said. I haven't made any custom quests yet, so I really can't give any input here. I am kind of working on a quest development system in my mind, though, as I play more and it may be a point-based system. However, I feel that quest and map design is as much art as it is plugging in numbers.