My group is getting less and less play time with Descent because of the campaign setup. We are more inclined to play a game (zombicide BP) that setups up fresh with each sitting (about 2 hours). We sometimes play Descent Coop quests (nature's ire, etc) when we are down to 4, but we are usually at 5. Ironically, the best player count for Descent.

What I was hoping to consider was ways to modify descent quests to be more of this nature. I'd like to still have Act1 to 2 progression. Any one experiment with this idea yet?

Ceaz.

There are rules toward the end of the base game rulebook which are instructions for standalone map- "epic"- play, with a couple levels of gear:

Basic (act 1, like a new game)

Advanced (act 1, with some xp and gold for heroes to spend before the quest)

Expert (act 2, with more xp and gold to spend before the quest).

Is that what you mean?

Various ways you could take bits of campaigns out of a campaign- the best possibly being pick part of a campaign you all like the sound of and decide what conditions are carried forward from preceding parts you've not played (you'd need to do a bit of prep reading through the 'before' parts and the one you wish to play)

Basically you'd agree an imagined 'if we'd played the parts before' starting point for whichever parts you do play, including as Zaltyre suggests above, effectively fast forwarding the movie to your chosen game.

You could probably fairly easily find ways of making it fairly replayable if you so wished by finding things you could change to mix it up a bit.