The currently Descent Advanced Campaign is failing to produce an experience that relate to the standard Descent play. Descent is supposed to be a competitive boardgame between a team of 4 heroes players and 1 overlord player using character progression, quest objectives and a quite interesting tactical combat system.

The heroes power progression is mainly concentrated on equipment, I seldom see a hero buy a dice and never saw any buy a skill card.

The Overlord player usually win because he kill the heroes at start when they are weaker and with not a lot of Conquest Point avaliable or at the end because they take too much time to achieve their mission and are grinded off their CP Reserve. But more often than not the Overlrod victory is before the Heroes start drawing Gold treasure, after that they are usually unstoppable.

That is a description of my perception and experience as a Descent player (nearly always Overlord) of a standard Descent game.

Now, what a campaign game is ?

A campaign game is an persistant or semi-persistant environment where players are building up their powers and keep track of their achievement in a prolonged gaming experience compared to a standard game. A campaign can also be a linking of independant scenario, re-using same heroes. The key element in a campaign game, and the one the Heroes players are expecting is that they keep their heroes from one game to another and have them progress in power as in a roleplaying game.

Now, the question to ask is : Did an Overlord player fit into this pattern ? and I insist on both Overlord (and not gamemaster) and Player (and not game-manager or cooperant).

To answer this we need to ask : Could the OL player be allowed to win ? what kind of experience is he supposed to enjoy during the campaign ? Will he still be a Overlord and not a Dungeonmaster ? The Heroes-Player progression is evident (more dice, more gear, more powers), what kind of progression can the overlord really expect ? What are the element that define the Overlord (Heroes have character sheet, equipment, powers) ?

I am convinced that while thinking about thoses elements the final answer will quickly be apparent that in order to have a Descent Campaign the Overlord need to set-down from true Opponent to Dungeonmaster. I think that in a campaign game the Overlord player simply cannot exist as he exist in a standard scenario.

The first and more evident question I ask is very relevant :

1- Could the Overlord Player be allowed to win and if so, when ?

A campaign game is a very long experience, as it should logically be. People are investing time and energy to reach their goal. Over such a long time it is hard to keep the people interest, and to do so the situation need to stay balanced or more probably not so much unbalanced that the victory get out of hand. As we are not replaying a historical situation (as in a WWII history wargame by example) there is no relative point of reference, the loser lose, he cant look at history and say "At least I did better" or "I was supposed to lose anyway" and keep playing if he is losin with no hope of comeback.

The trouble is that in Descent there is 5 players, in 2 team of 1 and 4. Could we allow 1 player to win and still keep the 4 other player interested enough so they keep playing ?

Could we reproduce the standard Descent Drama that is the Overlord's better chance is to win early before the Heroes are too strong and still produce an interesting long campaign game ? People playing campaign want to play for long, they are not interested by an anti-climatic sudden death.

If the Overlord usually have no chance of winning by sheer physical confrontation against higly geared heroes, how can we provide him with a satisfying way to succeed at the campaign game ?

I think that there is no way the Overlord could be allowed to win in a standard, competitive way in a long campaign. The Overlord player should be provided with goals to reach and success to achieve in order to motivate and guide his game (if there is no gain there is no motivation, no aim, no calculation as there is no objectives to reach). But thoses objectives shouldn't directly oppose to the Heroes Players ones, like directly defeating them or sudden death (Tamalir Raze) condition.

I also think, that, just like in standard Descent, the Heroes Player should be provided with a greater goal, central to the campaign, that cannot just resume to : counter the Overlord and stop him from achieving his mission until the clock run out and you bash his sorry head in one on one. I think the campaign goals should be parrallele but assymetrical, not directly one on one with the campaign being a mere excuse to prepare for the final confrontation. I think the Overlord player presence on the board should be more physical, like a recurring protagonist.

In other word, the Campaign's Overlord shouldn't be allowed to win, to succeed on his task but not to win, or the game will be a failure 4 time out of 5, and that's a lot for a long game.

About nr 1, should the Overlord be allowed to win.

Of course he should! I don't know your group, but the people I play with would find a game like Descent very boring if the Overlord was not playing to win. Without the possibility of loosing there is no challenge, and challenge is needed in a game of tactics. IIf we wanted a Storyteller rather than an Overlord we would play a regular RPG instead.

Before I can even really respond to what you've said, since I think I am taking something wrong I need to know one thing.

When you say "campaign" are you talking about the campaign rules outlined in the JitD Quest guide, or are you talking about the advanced campaign expansions of Road to Legend and Sea of Blood.

If you mean the one in the JitD guide, then I pretty much agree with you as the OL really does nothing and there is no incentive for him at all.

If you mean RtL/SoB, then I think you have flown very very far off the mark of the games.

Big Remy said:

I'm pretty sure he means the advanced campaign expansions. At least RtL, since he refers to the Tamalir Raze strategy. I also agree that this seems to be a case of the game not doing what he wants it to.

It is a flaw to consider the game as 1 vs 4. It's really 1 vs 1. The heroes have nothing hidden from each other, no separate goals, no way to do better or worse than their allies. Having 1 player play 4 heroes will have no mechanical differences from 4 players playing 4 heroes. This is really a 2 player game, but with 1 player's position being easy to share with friends. But in the end it's no different from having 4 people playing 1 position in a game like Puerto Rico, all arguing over which role to collectively take each round.

Therefor, an OL win rate of ~50% should be expected, and would be fair if it was so.

topics like this really make me depressed...

Badend said:

Love the Puerto Rico reference! Ahh the newbie games... 1 new player and everyone insisting on the optimal choice of role......

I agree that the key fallacy has already been pointed out.

Descent is not really a 5-player game. This is true even in the individual maps, but I think the length of the Campaign games really highlights this fact. Lately, I in fact *have* been playing it 2-player, with one player as all 4 Heroes, since mathematically, it really is a 2-player game. The book-keeping is a little bit daunting for novice players; and in general I prefer 2 Hero players just to have additional discussion. But more than that is overkill.

As a 2-player game, I enjoy it just fine (well, other than the massive broken parts of Sea of Blood, but I'm working on those...), and I certainly want both sides to be able to win.

For the reason of not wanting to end a campaign preemptively, we've taken out the Tamalir razing victory condition, instead if Tamalir is razed, it gives the normal 1 conquest/turn for the overlord, and I think we're also adding on reducing the building values in Tamalir by 1, or maybe some other effect to make things difficult on the heroes. This way it doesn't end the game early, but it still makes things more difficult for the heroes if they let the Overlord raze Tamalir.