So I managed to get a few family members together to join me in playing a Descent campaign. I chose the Shadow Rune, because I will be playing as the overlord and a I read it favored the heroes quite a bit. Just like a back alley drug dealer I wanted to get everyone addicted on the sweet, sweet Descent glory before we move onto more polished and competitive campaigns.

While to date I've played about 8 or 9 quests with my Fiancee, they have mostly just been trial and error "exhibition games" with new heroes and basic rules.


But with the start of this campaign I was to create an experience that everyone will enjoy and at the end of it, want to come back for more.

First blood, achieved just that. The new players had a great time learning the mechanics, working together and gaining a feel for the game. I sensed a great deal of achievement in them as they slayed the mighty Mauler. They selected "The Cardinals Plight" as the second quest, however I managed to win this quest. It was hard fought, and an absolute battle for both sides. However, I did manage to kill the Cardinal before they found the Rune key. Everyone had a good time, but I fear continued defeats will deflate their enjoyment of the game, as each quest is quite mentally demanding.



Can anyone give me any hints or tips on how to make a campaign engaging exciting and balanced. I want to make sure each quest is indeed a close battle, but I fear that my experience in strategy games will more often than not give me a significant edge. Perhaps I am being cocky and once the heroes are upgraded with new skills and weapons it will take every tactic in my book just to win a first encounter.

Anyway my rambling aside, TLDR - Does anyone have any tips on running a campaign that ensure everyone has a good time and wants to come back for another campaign afterwards?

I tend to have two ways of playing Descent, depending on who I'm playing with.

If I'm playing with competitive, strategically minded opponent(s), then I go all out. I wouldn't want my opponent to hold anything back, so I don't either. These games are like intense games of Chess with luck thrown in, and we min-max the heck out of our builds and quest choices. I've also rebalanced the game with my variant patches to introduce more variety so there are more strong choices of hero/class and overlord decks. The Lost Legends expansion in particular felt unplayable without the changes.

However, I find players who can play at that level are quite rare and I don't get the opportunity to play this way as often as I'd like, especially lately. This sometimes leaves me playing Solitaire against myself - strangely enough I think the game works this way too, albeit with diminished effectiveness on some aspects of the game, such as knowing the contents of the Overlord's hand.

The more common situation is where I want to introduce someone to the game, or I'm playing with someone with significantly less experience and a less competitive temperament. In that case, I take a completely different stance on the game. I focus on creating the most enjoyable situation possible for them - picking monster groups and powers based on whether they match some kind of common theme (e.g. playing Queen Ariad and then picking lots of spider open groups, and using a Trap focused Overlord deck.) I also 'role play' the monsters a bit, having them make sub-optimal decisions and allow them to be 'baited' by the heroes, into bad positions so they can use their abilities to the maximum effectiveness.

At first I thought players might be annoyed about me 'going easy on them', but this wasn't the case. They don't mind if things go really well for them or things are a little easier than they thought. And if I detect things are going a little too smoothly, I turn up the heat a bit. Just playing a little smarter than before throws them off, or just adding a strong card choice to the deck (e.g. adding either of the two Servants to the Overlord deck is an enormous boost in power on-demand for just 1XP) or picking a more overpowered monster group like Bandits or Kobolds for a quest or two is more than enough to make them sweat and get engaged again.

I also find players are thrilled when they pull off clutch victories. So sometimes I set up a situation where I 'almost' win, and then make a little mistake and give them an opportunity to get back into the game. I can tell from the long excited conversations after the session that they loved it.

Bottom line I think is that players really want to win. And this effect is compounded when they have to invest so much time to play a game of Descent when there are so many other activities craving their time and attention. So I let them win - most of the time - and I find they're much more likely to enjoy the game and back for more. As for me, I don't care if I lose when I'm focused on creating a fun time for my friends. And once in awhile I find someone who wants to dig deeper and play at a higher level (and doesn't mind losing) and I get an opportunity to play competitively again 😈 (usually ends up being a game of 2 players, with 1 player playing Overlord and the other player playing a full group of 4 heroes)