Descent Road to Legend is the game that brought me from the world of role-playing games to other types of tabletop games. It provided a very rich simulation of a dungeocrawl experience with fun combat that was very tactical. Players moved through dungeon by unlocking a series of checkpoints. They would have to hussle because the overlord could spawn monsters and bury the players in sheer numbers.

Descent 2nd Edition and its derivatives (Imperial Assault, LotR) made the decision that brevity was all-important. Missions have built-in timers that virtually ensure the players lose after six or so turns. Games are won or lost based on some objective in the end zone. Combat now becomes something that's just...in the way!

Enemies are brittle as glass, and their role is not to engage the players in pitched battle, but rather suck some actions out of them as they get smashed. Players that do well at these games learn to sink as few actions as they can into battle, so they can reach the end zone and rifle through trash or some other sort of scramble. The most prized abilities are things like teleporting and acrobatics that let players disengage.

You know the really sad thing here? Road to Legend got it about 90% right. Dungeons were smaller than in the original game, but they still felt like dungeons. Spawning was still possible, but held in check. What needed to be fixed were the top-tier gold treasure magic items, and some character abilities that weren't well-designed for small dungeons or a campaign style. We just needed a tune up.

I keep hoping FFG will learn, but then I play the LOTR game and sure enough, when orcs show up and the party engages them, all it does is slow the party down .No loot, no XP, none of the trappings that makes combat rewarding, and all the while the clock is running out so the game ends with an unceremonious wheiper. I don't know how someone finds that fun. My group didn't.

Please, FFG, bring back battles. Let us fight, because fighting is more fun than watching a clock.

Well our groop Finds it fun.

not every game needs to be sluggish fight that last forever.

i Also have those games. And I actually like those too, but very few of my friends like those slow grinding games.

14 hours ago, SteveG700 said:

Descent Road to Legend is the game that brought me from the world of role-playing games to other types of tabletop games. It provided a very rich simulation of a dungeocrawl experience with fun combat that was very tactical. Players moved through dungeon by unlocking a series of checkpoints. They would have to hussle because the overlord could spawn monsters and bury the players in sheer numbers.

Descent 2nd Edition and its derivatives (Imperial Assault, LotR) made the decision that brevity was all-important. Missions have built-in timers that virtually ensure the players lose after six or so turns. Games are won or lost based on some objective in the end zone. Combat now becomes something that's just...in the way!

Enemies are brittle as glass, and their role is not to engage the players in pitched battle, but rather suck some actions out of them as they get smashed. Players that do well at these games learn to sink as few actions as they can into battle, so they can reach the end zone and rifle through trash or some other sort of scramble. The most prized abilities are things like teleporting and acrobatics that let players disengage.

You know the really sad thing here? Road to Legend got it about 90% right. Dungeons were smaller than in the original game, but they still felt like dungeons. Spawning was still possible, but held in check. What needed to be fixed were the top-tier gold treasure magic items, and some character abilities that weren't well-designed for small dungeons or a campaign style. We just needed a tune up.

I keep hoping FFG will learn, but then I play the LOTR game and sure enough, when orcs show up and the party engages them, all it does is slow the party down .No loot, no XP, none of the trappings that makes combat rewarding, and all the while the clock is running out so the game ends with an unceremonious wheiper. I don't know how someone finds that fun. My group didn't.

Please, FFG, bring back battles. Let us fight, because fighting is more fun than watching a clock.

Dude, combat only exists as an obstacle to keep you from getting to the prize. The prize only exists to give you either a trophy or a currency you can spend to make you better at combat. You could level this same criticism at most dungeon crawlers and RPG's. Actions are the unit of in-game time, and in that sense all these games are just time management simulators. It's a joke in 5E D&D that unless you are playing by ALL of the rules to the absolute letter, gold is actually pretty frickin worthless.

@SteveG700

Legit complaints. Even in first edition, monsters were just to get in the way between the players and chests where you could score loot. Overlord players allow for better challenges/ fights as you can apply tactics that an app AI cannot, however its still an attrition game, as the players overpower monsters and you really are working to bring them down enough times to trigger a hero loss.

2nd Ed made it a point to reduce the game length from 1st Ed, which even as someone that loved 1st Ed, I have to admit the games were horrifically long sessions. This did result in constantly prodding the heroes to move quicker and be more calculating with their actions. Tick-tock, tick-tock, gotta keep moving forward...

I do think there is a better chance to get away from that with Legends . In the stream they specifically called out that there will be more exploration and interaction with the gameboard, instead of a dead sprint to the end of the dungeon. So, they acknowledge that issue with 2nd Ed, and are trying to move away from it. Looking at the mechanics moving away from fatigue/health attrition with the card-flip mechanics and giving more actions per round (1 move + 2 others), it does seem like they want players "doing more stuff" instead of having to be very careful about not wasting any actions. Instead of losing an action and resting to get rid of fatigue, you do stuff to get rid of fatigue. It sounds like a nice twist.

8 hours ago, kris40k said:

@SteveG700

Legit complaints. Even in first edition, monsters were just to get in the way between the players and chests where you could score loot. Overlord players allow for better challenges/ fights as you can apply tactics that an app AI cannot, however its still an attrition game, as the players overpower monsters and you really are working to bring them down enough times to trigger a hero loss.

Here's the thing I may have needed to speak about in greater detail: in 1st edition, tactual combat was the heart of the game. Players had a palette of actions to choose from, and you had to pick one at the start of your turn. There were a ton of tactical possibilities. Should you declare Battle (two attacks, no movement) and perhaps need to burn stamina for actual movement? Or perhaps you'd need to conserve stamina for power dice ('member all those little black dice?).

Then there were the orders: guard, aim, dodge, rest. Some monsters were so tough that if you ran into them near the start of the dungeon, deciding whether to dodge or aim was an important consideration. Aim could be decisive, but the OL could take it away by inflicting damage. Similar deal with guard: you could go into an overwatch mode, and the OL had to take that into account and try to break it. Lots of pressing your luck, lots of risk-vs-reward.

For sure, there was a learning curve. It was a grind when players brought in their experience playing fighters in old versions of D&D (roll well, that's the tactic). But once players learned the language of the game, there was so much depth and variety to encounters. No timers, just accruing conquest until somebody won.

So I would disagree strongly that monsters were just in the way. Very different game from not just 2nd edition but pretty much every dungeoncrawl that came later. Battling them could be a real testament to skill...You know, until you get some treasures and start brushing dragons aside like cobwebs.

So then I eagerly get to 2nd edition, hoping for some refinement. And what do players do now? They move close enough to attack a monster and chuck them dice. If Candyland is roll-and-move, the later iterations of Descent were move-and-roll. Or, better still, just hop past critters to avoid that action-consuming roll. Depends on whether you want to have fun versus beating the mission timer Shorter play times at the expense of depth is like making a train run on time by not picking up any passengers. They ceded a lot of territory to games like Omega Protocol and Conan.

8 hours ago, kris40k said:

I do think there is a better chance to get away from that with Legends . In the stream they specifically called out that there will be more exploration and interaction with the gameboard, instead of a dead sprint to the end of the dungeon. So, they acknowledge that issue with 2nd Ed, and are trying to move away from it. Looking at the mechanics moving away from fatigue/health attrition with the card-flip mechanics and giving more actions per round (1 move + 2 others), it does seem like they want players "doing more stuff" instead of having to be very careful about not wasting any actions. Instead of losing an action and resting to get rid of fatigue, you do stuff to get rid of fatigue. It sounds like a nice twist.

Good points, and I do have hope. I would love to see a revisitation of 1st edition at some point in time. But I would be happy to see a version of Descent that has combination of strategic and tactical depth rather that constraining the game to the same streamlined playbook every time it's played.

A big part of it, really, is just having some tough monsters, and sometimes (not always) the goal is to actually kill the monsters. Stuff that makes the party have a postmortem after the TPK to figure out that maybe there's another level to the game than dice-chucking.

I totally agree. I loved Descent Road To Legend, and D2 butchered most of what made it great:

- Deep tactical combat was replaced by race for the objectives (granted, this was partially corrected in the expansions, and in Imperial Assault)

- The strategic decisions were removed (Overlord purchases, and lieutenant actions), and were replaced with a semi linear campaign.

What I hoped for was just a rebalance of Descent RTL (because there was indeed a runaway problem. The side that scored the most points early would become even stronger, making catching up harder and harder as time went), with some of the fiddliness removed (because there was a bit too many concurrent conditions).

Also internal balance (between heroes and overlord options) could have been improved (I still remember Talia or Nanok being much stronger than their competitors).

What made Descent great for me, was that in my group, playing overlord was something we all looked forward to.

I also like Coop crawlers, but the market is a bit crowded in this department these times, and they still feel more like "skinner boxes" than Descent ever did.