The new LOTR game may give us even more kit to re-purpose for Descent, especially for those of us working on our own creations, they've already announced the first minis expansion - the warg might have various uses including for a werewolf character as it has quite a fitting look- it could quite believably be a lycan or a werewolf (using another mini for its less canine form).

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/4/12/hunt-for-the-ember-crown/

On the 'own creations' front life juggling (times you have to work or do the less fun chore-y stuff- the biggie for me being some housework-from-hades mountain-shifting- I'm determined to finally complete an oft-put-off post-housemove clearout and have that finished by the end of 2019 which will eat up quite a bit of my free time this year, but on the flipside could mean finally finding my missing Descent first edition kit- some of it remains in hiding due to the move, mainly printed stuff like the quest books and map boards, found most of the rest of it! Frustrating as I have some ideas for it I can only do if/when I find it such as bringing old characters into new stories or/and reworking those stories.) along with my overactively creative brain coming up with ever-more ambitious ideas (most recently some full on cartography and making brand new tiles is now also on the road map, pun intended) keeps delaying my stop-start-stop-start progress on my projects although I am still working on stuff, that stuff's just grown a lot in scope and ambition, so I still have a lot of things up my sleeve I'm quite excited about. Part of the delay to some aspects is saving up for useful resources such as some of the mapmaking software/assets, so I may well start putting placeholders in rather than wait til everything's there then update as and when it becomes possible.

My first creations will be for Genesys RPG use in the setting but I still plan on the dual development angle of doing versions for Descent too.

So there's plenty of time for people to help playtest the awesome things other player-makers have shared for the game and continue to do so. Please help with this playtesting and feedback for them as I know how much work goes into what they're doing and it keeps the game going with exciting new content from the community.

With other players making new things, new things from FFG finally (I'm still convinced there can't just be the card deck!) and the things I'm working on there are plenty more adventures to follow in Terrinoth I feel.

The questions:

On the map/tile making front:

1. do players think you could make hex based maps an option for Descent, not to replace the tiles but for wider-area or landscape themed locations (including settings such as ice/desert)

2. what about the idea of larger scaled tiles so the Rune Wars Miniatures minis or other larger-scaled minis could also be used (sacrificing a bit of scale-mismatch for more options with bigger grids to allow for this flexibility)

as these are both things I've been thinking about, your thoughts would be useful, I'm already planning to look at how LOTR Journeys implements its hex and tile map system when it's out re if that could work for Descent.

LOTR Journeys hex tiles reimplement the Runebound world map, not the Descent skirmish level tiles.

On 4/13/2019 at 12:05 PM, tibia said:

LOTR Journeys hex tiles reimplement the Runebound world map, not the Descent skirmish level tiles.

They've combined two gameboard/tabletop mapping methods as per this article:

" For many scenarios, you’ll remain solely on the journey map, but for more tactical situations like a micro-scale, combat-oriented adventure, you’ll move from the journey map to the battle map—a smaller board that you can fill with terrain, creating an Orcish encampment, a ruined building, or even more unusual locations. Whether your journey takes place among the rocky hills of Eriador, deep in a musty cave, or in an old fort overrun by Orcs, your campaign can take you between far-flung adventures on the journey map or fast-paced, frenetic action on the battle map! "

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/1/13/the-lord-of-the-rings-journeys-in-middle-earth/

so it's a new idea of sort of combining the two, a hex-crawl/wider area hex system and a more local tile system, the latter being the closer to Descent but not exactly the same. I'm quite looking forward to seeing how they've implemented this.

This is what got me round to thinking a system of different map options could work for Descent custom adventures- if you're out in the icy wilderness hexes and a less specific map might serve a purpose, if you're in the monster's lair or the sorcerer's lab the more up-close detailed map tiles like we have in Descent now, it may also be possible to have flexible generic areas somewhere in-between for a wooded area for example but where this can be varied to suit the specific adventure. Then for very large areas a mapsheet like Sea of Blood had is an option, obviously such choices depending on the specific location needs of the adventure being designed and if it works for the gameplay mechanics being play tested for that adventure.

So this kind of idea is where people's feedback and ideas would be useful as it's something I'm considering for my adventures, and there's the obvious possibility of using the LOTR map elements in Descent if this works in any way (which I'll be exploring - haha - once we know more about them).