Would it really be that hard for the community to implement their own? What do you guys think? My quick thoughts below:

Just thinking off the top of my head with my very limited board game design understanding, shown below are the things I think someone would need to be a successful overlord:

1. A way to set up each quest (could still be provided by the app)
2. A way for the heroes to play (seems to already be provided by the app as well)
3. A way for the overlord to play the monsters (might be able to be extracted from the app depending on how transparent app info is)
4. A way for quests to reward either victor (overlord or heroes which seems to be the biggest problem IMO)
   1. Maybe the overlord isn't supposed to stop the heroes but just slow them down as much as possible. Slog gameplay is boring though
5. A way for the overlord and heroes to modify difficulty on quests to get the right balance (could be as simple as buffing/nerfing damage)

Based on all that, shown below are the simple top level specs I can think of:

1. Engaging hero gameplay
2. Engaging hero progression
3. Easy setup
4. Engaging overlord gameplay
5. Engaging overlord progression
6. Engaging quest mechanics

Shown below are things that I think would need to be avoided

1. Slog gameplay (games should be quick but not necessarily in a pure playtime view but more of a "interesting things keep happening without the players just getting stuck in one spot"). Don't want that feeling of "is this quest over yet?" to EVER come up
2. Too snowbally of mechanics

15 hours ago, The MechE said:

Would it really be that hard for the community to implement their own?

Honestly yes, getting the balance just right in competitive descent was always fiddly and took more playtesting than a lot of the fan content would do. I'm not saying there aren't people hanging around 2ed forums that couldn't do it.

Honestly some of you all are more qualified than the people who made the last official expansion. But my experience with Descent is that most of that experience is going to stick with 2nd edition. If Legends of the Dark succeeds it's because a whole new generation of gamers takes it up.

The characters, items, monsters, and core rules in Descent: Legends are not being created with a player control of the opponents in mind from the ground up, unlike Descent: Journeys was, so, yeah, implementing a player controlled Overlord would likely be hot mess, likely worse that Descent: Journeys is when you are trying to run an automated Overlord. Likely would require so much re-work of all that it would little resemble Legends , and you would just be better off playing Journeys .

The projects were separated for a reason, you can provide a better experience when you can focus your scope.

What the two posters above said.

I add: Core mechanics and mainly Balance (which is a lot of playtesting) are the task of designing a game.

They designed a puzzle - so the task of making a game out of it as fan made would inevitably be the same as all fan made content done before: several people doing it (awesome work) but not enough people playing it.

A final killer for me is to need improvised or home made components.. for a product this expensive that's completely out of the question