Sea of Blood Starting Location

By The_Immortal, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

I just noticed what appears to be an inconsistency in the SoB ruleset. It concerns the starting location of the Hero party at the very beginning of the campaign.

The setup rules very clearly places the Heroes and their homeport marker in the town of Gafford at the start of the campaign. Gafford is the cheap-potions town on the small island with only one dungeon accessible by land; after that, the Heroes must go to sea.

On the other hand, the FLAVOR TEXT on the first plot cards (or at least, some of them) contains a line of the sort "Fortunately, a small band of Heroes had just discovered a magical ship just outside the town of Garnott ". Garnott is the cheap-trait-training town on the map's "mainland." It has a couple of adjacent land-only dungeons, as well as access to the capital city of Dallak.

So...RULES-wise, there is no problem here. The rulebook clearly says Gafford, and the plots are just flavor text. However, as the names of the cities are so similar, it is not hard to imagine that an error could have been made (and obviously was); the only question is, WHERE is the error: the rulebook or the plot cards?

When I initially started the campaign, I thought the Gafford start was kind of cool; the single land-adjacent dungeon forced the Heroes to be much less 'blitzy' than original RtL, where blitzing the many dungeons close to Tamalir for just the first floor only was the clear opening strategy for the Heroes. However, having now seen how brutal the sea encounters can be without an upgraded ship, I wonder whether starting on the mainland makes more sense. The fact that the Lieutenants can win so quickly using plots like Leviathan already makes the game much less blitzy anyway.

So which is it: Gafford or Garnott?

I have posted an abridged version of this question to the Unanswered Question list.

(of course, as it stands the whole lieutenant-aspect of the game and their early-game invincibility completely breaks the campaign, but that's a different issue for another day)

Yeah, we thought the same thing. Boat was found in Garnott but we start in Gafford? Oh well, so the heroes took the boat out for a spin before going off on their first quest...

In other words, we went with the Rules not with the Plot Card. Would be a good question for the FAQ though.

-shnar

Has anyone from FFG ever answered this? From a "starting" point, Garnott seems more accessible for the players, with multiple options and "easier" paths.

Can anyone chime in on this one please? We just started our SoB campaign and it would be easy to switch locations now...

It's Gafford. Setup rules trumps card flavor text. It's not meant to be easy on the heroes. It's Sea of Blood. If you start in Garnott you could conceivably go an entire campaign without ever getting on a boat.

Though Garnott has only a 1 market and a 0 alchemist rating. If the heroes want that to be their home port, I say let them. demonio.gif

For me it's Gafford.

Flavor text dosen't matter in order to set up the game. Rules are the real thing!