I have Descent: Journies in the Dark and I just purchased Road to Legend with it. My players and I have played through some of the quests in the core set so far but one thing they don't like is the fact that they have to turn in their looted equipment and treasure at the end of each play session, even though they keep their acquired skills....according to the basic campaign rules.

They really want to implement the advanced campaign rules from Road to Legend but I have a few questions. I really want to finish the 6 or 7 other core set quests we have not completed yet and I'd like to incorporate them into the advanced campaign rules somehow in the sense that players keep their skills and looted equipment from the remaining core set quests. Would doing this make the remaining core set quests too easy for the players and also would it make them start way too powerful when starting the campaign stuff from RTL?

Yes, and oh god yes. Also, under the basic campaign rules in the quest guide the heroes only keep their starting 3 skills, all purchased skills are discarded.

The base quests are not really made for playing as a campaign. A group of heroes that is not starting from scratch will probably break the whole system.

My advice? Use RtL if you want a persistent campaign, and play the one-shot quests for a change of pace once in a while. As most of the forum dwellers will tell you, mucking around with Descent is a fairly large undertaking if preserving balance is your goal.

What our group loves about the advanced campaign vs. normal play is that normal play is rather anti-climactic. As heroes, you struggle along to finally get that gold weapon, and even then it's a shot in the dark if it's te one you really want, and 2 turns later, game is over. No chance to really enjoy the weapon and pound the crud out of some baddies. In the campaign, you get quite a few sessions to finely tune your warrior and then at least beat the crud out of the Avatar! Much more satisfying for our group.

Having said that, Proto's got it right. Don't try to mix the two flavors of the game, just enjoy each in its own right.

-shnar

shnar said:

Have I mentioned the quest in Enduring Evil where each hero starts with one gold treasure of their choice plus 2000 coins? (#8: "Race the Dark")

daddystabz said:

Yes, that will make them far too powerful. For one thing, letting them keep what they have now and start a campaign means they'll have Gold weapons at Copper Level, and they'll slaughter you as OL. For another thing, you probably haven't run into the relics yet if you still have 6-7 quests left in the book. If you let them keep the relics (Soulbiter, Blade of Light, etc) outside the quests they were intended for, then the game will simply be an exercise in dice rolling. Soulbiter in particular would be game breaking because all the cool rules are on the card, but the balancing limitations are quest-specific rules. Once you get out of that dungeon level you'd have a big debate (and one which has little basis in the rules either way) on whether or not Soulbiter should keep hurting the heroes.

Vanilla quests are not designed to be played in a chain, as others have said. If you want a big long campaign, start from scratch and play RtL. If you only have 4-5 hours and want a quick single game, play one of the vanilla dungeons. Don't get stuck on one dungeon if the heroes lose either, move on to the next for your next game, no matter who wins. Treat each vanilla dungeon as a one-shot game session. A lot of people (my group included) were thrown on this note when they first played the game, but trust me, it works better this way.