Hi,

We have played The Shadow Rune, Lair of the Wyrm, Shadow of Nerekhall and currently finishing the Heirs of Blood campaigns, but none of the players have ever got excited or drawn into the story. Comparing to other fantasy worlds, I didn't care much about the chatacters of the storylines. I'm not a native english speaker, but the names are also pretty uncomfortable to pronounce like Waiquar or Urthko.. or is it just me?

Are the other campaings better in storytelling? Or are there any engaging stories on the Quest Vault?

Thanks!

Heirs of blood was loaded with story, though most of it was setup for the campaign.

The only other official full campaign is Labyrinth of Ruin, or the combined Mists/Chains campaign.

As far as the vault goes, I made a custom campaign which I tried to give a cohesive story to (though the names are not any better). I'm a little biased as I wrote it, but I really like it!

I'm working on a storyline based epic campaign (the idea being parts work standalone but it actually ties up as a whole as a big adventure the heroes undertake- very ambitious players could play it all if they so wished or dive into specific parts!) as the new Genesys RPG inspired me - the unique aim is to make it ultimately for both Descent and Genesys RPG so it exists in both forms and to weave together a lot of the lore and history of Terrinoth, bringing together the stories of the heroes and enemies of Descent as well.

I'm super excited for this as there are a lot of ways I've thought up to utilise the characters and throw in lots of nice surprises and twists, for example the first encounter presents the adventuring party with the rat king thing and the banshee from Battlelore (both slightly repurposed as slightly something else *no spoilers*) but there's more to them than initially known. And I've explained Merick Farrow's flaming hands and magical abilities with a twist too. The parts of the campaign will gradually unfold and reveal the layers of the story.

In-game characters are likely to mostly keep their names or similar though (sorry Alarin).

So far I've only done the intro (I went for a scene-setting story in a similar way to how Heirs of Blood is set up), it's quite epic itself but then it is the set up of the whole campaign, feel free to let me know if you love or hate what I've done so far and if there's anything you might want me to consider including in the campaign it sets up, including if you've made a Descent quest in the vault or elsewhere that you think might integrate well that you'd be happy for me to make use of (with a 'this bit was made by' credit of course), adapting it should I need to to fit the overall story arc- I'm keen to encourage players to play fan made content and it might be quite nice to integrate some into the mix and bring it back to people's attention as a result. I'm open to working jointly on this too.

Also any thoughts on what can be added to such a campaign so it's not just monster-bashing and what you've most enjoyed playing Descent that might help me make this really enjoyable (obviously I hopefully want to end up with something good), the first draft of what I've completed so far is here:

https://adobe.ly/2GxF9yr

On 2/10/2018 at 1:52 PM, Watercolour Dragon said:

Also any thoughts on what can be added to such a campaign so it's not just monster-bashing and what you've most enjoyed playing Descent that might help me make this really enjoyable (obviously I hopefully want to end up with something good), the first draft of what I've completed so far is here:

Well in the original version of Descent there's an exploration aspect where you need to puzzle out which way to go and how to win as well as a narrative whenever you enter a new area. It's one of the more desired aspects of Dungeon crawls that 2ed chose to give up.

6 hours ago, Bucho said:

Well in the original version of Descent there's an exploration aspect where you need to puzzle out which way to go and how to win as well as a narrative whenever you enter a new area. It's one of the more desired aspects of Dungeon crawls that 2ed chose to give up.

Because it was one of the most complained about features of 1st edition. Descent is NOT an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, no matter how similar it looks.

In RPGs the DM is not trying to kill you, he's trying to entertain you. The group is there to tell an epic story, together. Hidden information is fine because in the end the DM is just using it for narrative twists and surprises. In the end everyone is there for the same goal, defat some evil and have fun.

In Descent when played properly the Overlord player is not there to show the 1-4 hero players a good time. He's there to beat the heck out of them. Hidden information doesn't lead to fun surprises, it leads to cheap wins that you could not have seen coming unless you already knew what was going to happen. So for new players the OL got cheap wins, and for experienced players the OL got steam rolled.

It seems to me like so many players are looking for a low investment RPG. Something where the DM doesn't have to do much work. Where people can just get together and play some short sessions for fun. Descent is NOT that game, nor should it be.

Every dungeon crawler that I've tried that attempted to be like an RPG ended up gimping the OL player. The goal wasn't for the bad guys to win, just delay the inevitable. I'm tired of games where I'm just there to be the punching bag for a group of players. One of the most refreshing aspects of Descent for me has always been that the OL is an actual competitor, not just a really good AI program. I don't want that "fixed" for the sake of telling a better story or exploration.

There are pros and cons to all the aspects Bucho and Proto Persona mention- and I think it's true some things work better in RPG settings, others in board game settings, so my experiment of a campaign that is for both (with different mechanics of course) could be an interesting exploration of this. And probably a bit of a creative challenge too!

I've got 1e and 2e Descent and I too can see why it was changed- and it's important that players can read the quest material (which for an RPG would be something to avoid if you don't want spoilers) so there's no advantage to either side from the main quest detail.

Descent's almost a two player co op which seems a contradiction but what I mean is it's the four heroes versus the game (and this is their adventures/ questing so there is that nice D-crawl/rpg overlap where their adventure is given life by the fact it's actually playing against them so their adversaries/challenges actually have a brain behind them) but because that game is a human player also out to win it's a clever and fairly neat mix of co op and versus play.

If there ever is any puzzling, twists and turns hidden elements, or other concealments etc in player v player games it needs to not bias the game to either side or make it learnable ('once side a or b know fact c they always or probably win' kind of thing), such things can work if they don't break the game but 1e may have had some issues and flaws in this respect.

But the OL as has been said isn't there to direct a story as with an RPG, the OL is there to win as a player.

So most accurately it's a team game of two sides, overlord v hero(es). I think. -ish.

Shall try and remember these points as they're a really useful focus for making two versions of the same idea in terms of how those different versions need to function, if anything doesn't work I'll have to check back to these reference points as they may be the key as to where one or the other is trying to be something it shouldn't.

On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 7:52 PM, Watercolour Dragon said:

I'm working on a storyline based epic campaign (the idea being parts work standalone but it actually ties up as a whole as a big adventure the heroes undertake- very ambitious players could play it all if they so wished or dive into specific parts!) as the new Genesys RPG inspired me - the unique aim is to make it ultimately for both Descent and Genesys RPG so it exists in both forms and to weave together a lot of the lore and history of Terrinoth, bringing together the stories of the heroes and enemies of Descent as well.

I'm super excited for this as there are a lot of ways I've thought up to utilise the characters and throw in lots of nice surprises and twists, for example the first encounter presents the adventuring party with the rat king thing and the banshee from Battlelore (both slightly repurposed as slightly something else *no spoilers*) but there's more to them than initially known. And I've explained Merick Farrow's flaming hands and magical abilities with a twist too. The parts of the campaign will gradually unfold and reveal the layers of the story.

In-game characters are likely to mostly keep their names or similar though (sorry Alarin).

So far I've only done the intro (I went for a scene-setting story in a similar way to how Heirs of Blood is set up), it's quite epic itself but then it is the set up of the whole campaign, feel free to let me know if you love or hate what I've done so far and if there's anything you might want me to consider including in the campaign it sets up, including if you've made a Descent quest in the vault or elsewhere that you think might integrate well that you'd be happy for me to make use of (with a 'this bit was made by' credit of course), adapting it should I need to to fit the overall story arc- I'm keen to encourage players to play fan made content and it might be quite nice to integrate some into the mix and bring it back to people's attention as a result. I'm open to working jointly on this too.

Also any thoughts on what can be added to such a campaign so it's not just monster-bashing and what you've most enjoyed playing Descent that might help me make this really enjoyable (obviously I hopefully want to end up with something good), the first draft of what I've completed so far is here:

https://adobe.ly/2GxF9yr

Looks good! If you are expecting feedback - I was kinda list (edit) lost in direct speech. Who says what. Which could be easily fixed with quotes or a narrator in the background or a script structure

9 hours ago, Proto Persona said:

Because it was one of the most complained about features of 1st edition.

Are you sure that you aren't thinking of this?

Quote

In Descent when played properly the Overlord player is not there to show the 1-4 hero players a good time. He's there to beat the heck out of them.

In 1ed the OL wasn't incentivised to show everyone else a bad time. Well until road to legend changed descent into a competitive campaign. 2ed gave up a good deal of epic story and exploration to keep that competition. The new road to legend on the other hand went the other way giving up competition to bring back the epic story and exploration aspects.

6 hours ago, Bucho said:

Are you sure that you aren't thinking of this?

In 1ed the OL wasn't incentivised to show everyone else a bad time. Well until road to legend changed descent into a competitive campaign. 2ed gave up a good deal of epic story and exploration to keep that competition. The new road to legend on the other hand went the other way giving up competition to bring back the epic story and exploration aspects.

I'm not sure how you played 1st edition, but I know the game did not tell the OL player to take it easy or that he isn't there to win. If you can find such a passage I'd like to know where it is. My copy of 1st edition says the OL's job is to kill the heroes and stop them from completing the quest. If you interpreted that another way I'd say your expectations of "what a dungeon crawl should be" have given you a misunderstanding of what Descent is, and has always been.

The OL was absolutely incentivised to win, and more importantly to win early and fast. Once the heroes got to a silver chest the outlook for a win was really grim, and once they got a gold chest the OL was rather screwed.

It has always been a competition between the OL player and the heroes. It has always been a winner take all game where the OL should be playing as ruthlessly as possible. If that's not what someone wants from Descent, they are better off finding another game to play.

Thanks Alarin. I need to work out how to do speech in writing better (well properly to be honest!) - shall look how other writers do it (writing is a strange art- you can do lots of reading and still miss the structure methodologies! I guess you remember the gist of the conversations but not how the author set them out on the page. I suppose if you're not specifically looking at a text for that reason your brain filters it out. Shall have to raid my bookshelves and re-read some of my collection as a writer rather than a reader...)

18 hours ago, Proto Persona said:

I'm not sure how you played 1st edition, but I know the game did not tell the OL player to take it easy or that he isn't there to win.

Hold on there, seems like the goal posts are moving. A moment ago we weren't talking about wins we were talking about "cheap wins". Furthermore while the original D&D didn't handle combat as a tactical mini's game, most RPG's these days do. It is not at all necessarily as different as you're making it out to be. Certainly pathfinder (the RPG I'm most into) advises it's "overlord" not to coddle players and I've lost numerous quests and had numerous characters die as a result.

But the other half of that equation is that while the overlord/DM/GM as the only one looking at the hidden rules can completely abuse that position they also have a certain obligation not to abuse their position. And in systems that don't incentivize that kind of behavior I've found that unless someone's a real **** they'll tend to play fair.

Where as post RTL1 seems like both sides are heavily incentivized to play cheap and rules lawyer.

2 hours ago, Bucho said:

Hold on there, seems like the goal posts are moving. A moment ago we weren't talking about wins we were talking about "cheap wins". Furthermore while the original D&D didn't handle combat as a tactical mini's game, most RPG's these days do. It is not at all necessarily as different as you're making it out to be. Certainly pathfinder (the RPG I'm most into) advises it's "overlord" not to coddle players and I've lost numerous quests and had numerous characters die as a result.

But the other half of that equation is that while the overlord/DM/GM as the only one looking at the hidden rules can completely abuse that position they also have a certain obligation not to abuse their position. And in systems that don't incentivize that kind of behavior I've found that unless someone's a real **** they'll tend to play fair.

Where as post RTL1 seems like both sides are heavily incentivized to play cheap and rules lawyer.

Pathfinder and other RPGs aren't a competition though. The DM can't win the game even if he's a jerk causing TPKs as often as he can. Descent however has always been a competition. It's the first dungeon crawl I've ever played that was. In every other game I've played the power of the OL player was nerfed to the point that he had no real hope of winning.

In Descent the OL is out to win the game. Holding back isn't playing fair, it's nerfing yourself to ensure you might lose. That is why hidden information was a problem in Descent 1st edition. It made situations where the heroes could play poorly because they couldn't know what the right play was. Descent 2nd edition fixed that problem, and it's a better game for it.

Do you intentionally make bad plays in other games just so your opponents can beat you? Would you play chess where you intentionally sacrifice a power piece early for no good reason? Give your opponent more cards in Catan just because you want it to be fair? Descent is not different from other competitive games, it just has more narrative.

To me a win that you didn't earn is a hollow accomplishment. I didn't win, I was handed a participation trophy. I'm usually the one running games, so I'm often in the OL type role. I'm tired of playing games where the OL is meant to be the intelligent punching bag to make hero players happy. I'm tired of being told to not play seriously because my fun isn't what's important. Descent is one of the only games out there where I'm not only allowed to win, but I'm intentionally given the means to.

You call it cheap for the OL to play to win. That the OL has an obligation to give the heroes a chance. I say Descent has never been that game, you just played it that way.

I think Bucho's point is the fact RPG's often aren't the GM making it easy for players- RPG's can be just as much about strategy and gameplay as a board game, so if the players want a challenge the GM can compete with them just as fiercely albeit in a creative sense (many RPG's wouldn't be much fun either if the players just felt like they'd be handed the success on a plate by the GM and hadn't had to play a really smart game, and as freeform as they are RPG's still have rules and strategy, how heavy or light depending on player preferences.)

But the difference Proto Persona is clarifying is that even though they 'act out' the PC's 'competition/challenge' the GM of an RPG is not a player in quite the same way as a competitive game- Bucho's right that they may still be out to stop the players succeeding and if the RPG isn't RPG-lite this could involve plenty of rules and strategy, so there is a kind of trying to win element in this case- the creativity just sits on top of it, but they are somewhat more of a facilitator or narrator/editor of the game- for example if their player feedback suggests it's not working they can be a bit more flexible with the rules and gameplay, how successfully depends how well they've judged their players' cues, and how well they know the players preferences for style of play. It's a misconception to think an RPG is easy for the players compared to a boardgame, it just has that difference of being flexible to be as easy or difficult as players want and likewise as rules rigid or rules free as they want.

Whereas in Descent the OL is a player of a two sided game, out to win and by the rules even if the rival players have it too difficult and not making their gameplay tamer if they sense the other players like less of a challenging game, if the game is in the OL's favour tough- the OL is in the game to fully exploit any advantage they get and beat the other players.

A GM of an RPG might be happy to see the PC's succeed if it's not a meaty RPG out to really challenge the PC's (even then a PC win is still a happy outcome for a fair GM!), friendships aside, an OL in Descent shouldn't ever be happy for the other players to win, in gameplay terms at least!

An RPG is o.k. to throw in a surpise or take an unexpected turn, a board game like Descent isn't unless it very certainly doesn't make the game unfair, hidden rules/info that does is a bit like a game of chess where if one player chooses to advance down the left side of the board they have a disadvantage that's purely down to the game not the opponent's strategic thinking so the opponent can spring that nasty surprise on them as only they knew the rule, Bucho's play fair point can be valid in some cases- you could have a game with secret info where the rule is, or you houserule it to 'unbreak' the game, that play gaining advantage from that before its revealed is outside the rules (it's something to discover but not benefiting any player who knows it beforehand in a way that unbalances the game), but if this is the case using search tokens or other 'no player knows' beforehand approaches probably work best anyway.

5 hours ago, Watercolour Dragon said:

But the difference Proto Persona is clarifying is that even though they 'act out' the PC's 'competition/ challenge ' the GM of an RPG is not a player in quite the same way as a competitive game- Bucho's right that they may still be out to stop the players succeeding and if the RPG isn't RPG-lite this could involve plenty of rules and strategy, so there is a kind of trying to win element in this case- the creativity just sits on top of it, but they are somewhat more of a facilitator or narrator/editor of the game- for example if their player feedback suggests it's not working they can be a bit more flexible with the rules and gameplay, how successfully depends how well they've judged their players' cues, and how well they know the players preferences for style of play. It's a misconception to think an RPG is easy for the players compared to a boardgame, it just has that difference of being flexible to be as easy or difficult as players want and likewise as rules rigid or rules free as they want.

To me this is the key difference. In an RPG a good DM is going to adjust the game to cater to his heroes. It's not necessarily making it easy, but it never feels like the goal of the DM is to make the heroes lose. If they fail or die it was usually because the player purposely made bad choices, often against the DM's recommendations. To me that is not a competition because it almost feels like plot armor for the heroes. Unless the GM is a sadist the heroes are meant to to succeed, and it kinda sucks out the suspense for me.

The OL should be trying to decimate the heroes with every tool he has. In Descent the heroes aren't meant to win, they have to earn it. I prefer that mentality. It makes a victory actually mean something because it wasn't just supposed to happen.

19 hours ago, Proto Persona said:

...it never feels like the goal of the DM is to make the heroes lose.

The OL should be trying to decimate the heroes with every tool he has. In Descent the heroes aren't meant to win, they have to earn it. I prefer that mentality. It makes a victory actually mean something because it wasn't just supposed to happen.

Agreed, however:

There can be RPG's where the DM plays mean because they're meaty and rules/strategy focused so for the players it needs to be a case of play smart or get unceremoniously beaten- encouraging a 'beat you if I can' approach from the DM (giving the players the tough game they want, exploiting bad choices and missed or messed up opportunities just like in a boardgame), a lot depends how the game is set up beforehand and how flexible the rules are, plus how it's played out, even Genesys can play this tougher kind of game if you wanted by how you supplement the rules. Although it is probably more challenging with a narrative system it's still possible, after all life is like a narrative system but it's unlikely to suddenly move all the rules in your favour and be totally perfect and challenge free, the reason- constraints- there may be countless possibilities and flexibilities but most of us know that still doesn't make for an easy 'win' and there are plenty of limitations and pitfalls to make things challenging at times .

So an RPG can certainly have those "sorry you're all dead, time to create new characters" 'this time you lost' moments, so even an RPG often isn't a case of the heroes being 'meant' to win! I guess a good DM/GM should know when not to hand-hold or 'deus ex machina' the heroes their way out of trouble if realistically they've failed as that's a kind of positive railroading (I need to fix it to keep them alive), but if for the players it's more about fun and story they might be fine with this.

I think we've highlighted the interesting contradiction that a game of Descent could end up played more like an RPG if the OL's being too merciful with the heroes, an RPG could end up played more like a board or card or other strategy game if the DM/GM is playing it tough and strictly by the rules, I think the important thing is are the players happy with how either is being played? If not it could be crossing too much into the other's territory or ceasing to be fun. And Descent isn't designed to be played that way and even the toughest RPG's are meant to have that bit of creative flexibility.