Anybody have any rumors or gossip about what is coming up next for Descent?

We have been going on a solid year with no news announcements about what is coming up next in the line.

Expansion?

Second Edition?

Campaign Set?

Card Sets?

We all know there is no way they will abondon Descent as I am sure this is one of their highest grossing products from a sales perspective.

Anyone have anything?

Nostromo said:

I highly doubt this is one of their highest grossing products. My guess is it makes a modest profit and it tickles the fancy of the creator to keep spitting out expansions (i.e. as long as it makes money he'll have the go-ahead to make more). But, since Kevin is busy with the Civ board game, I don't think there's any traction on a Descent product this year. Maybe when he's done with that, he might return to give us heroes from Zanaga?

While all of us would love a "small box" expansion of just cards and maybe miniatures (heroes and/or monsters) a la Talisman, I doubt we'll ever get one. More likely the next expansion we get will be a "Vanilla" expansion using heroes already made for Runebound, like Zanaga...

-shnar

I actually posted a poll over on BGG's Descent forums asking if people would want a 2nd edition. Personally I would love one, or at least an updated and revised rulebook for the game. Either of those would be great to my mind, but I think the chances of either one are practically nothing.

As for what I think will happen, I'd agree with Shnar, probably not much until Kevin finish the civ game, and then another Vanilla expansion using more Runebound heroes. But I'd guess that's over a year away at the least. In the meantime they're trying to keep us sated with things like a SoB hardback map and Dungeon Quest heroes .

On Kevin not working on anything and the comment that its not high grossing:

Uh...WotC just made a DnD knock off of Descent...it looks good. I personally think FFG made some fat cash (one of their best) off of Descent, WotC (which is all about the money) realized this and wanted to also capitalize on the dungeon crawler market. Their version (WotC's) is CLEARLY set up for multiple expansions. I would guess they are going to suport this line for awhlie.

I think the biggest complement is when another company tries to copy your work...which IMO, castle ravenloft is a direct rip-off of descent.

So I hope for their sake (FFG) they are working on the future of Descent.

Kartigan said:

I would imagine they aren't working on only one project at a time... with all the many aspects of producing a game - I wouldn't be surprised if Civ wasn't already past the creative part and into heavy play testing... as we have essentially seen some of the pics and mechanics if I recall...

I am hopeful for a Vanilla expansion first half of next year... Maybe we'll get a a few hero packs or something fun like that - being we have DQ now.

I would also LOVE a comprehensive rulebook - one that would come out at the same time as the expansion or shortly after - that would be an expansive all inclusive manual - FAQ notes incorporated.

But hey - that's me.

I *seriously* doubt Ravenloft was created because of Descent. DnD has been moving more and more towards a board game ever since HeroClix was proven successful. And either way, that doesn't prove anything as far as the profitability of Descent. IMHO, it's making money, or else they wouldn't keep reprinting it, but I don't think it's the cash cow you're making it out to be...

-shnar

shnar said:

I don't think initially Descent was a cash cow... but I imagine that each reprint has to do better and better money wise. They are currently reprinting the core box for the 2nd time since I have been paying attention... likely a 3rd.

So the core is obviously still selling... and well enough for reprints.

Nostromo said:

There is a witch who lives down the street from me and I asked her if she could forcast what was in store for Descent. She gave an ominus prediction. She said a sixth player would soon be joining the battlefield. A malevolent force of destruction. A force so evil and so vile that the heroes and the Overlord will have to join forces in order to defeat him. Mwuu-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Nevron said:

Fantasy Flight is going to use their GW rights to put a Games Workshop Avatar into Descent?!? *Shudder*.....

SoylentGreen said:

Oh yes, it's making a profit, but I really don't think this is one of their "best sellers". I think it's making a modest profit, and as long as it continues to do so we'll continue to see reprints and expansions (so convince your friends to buy a copy!).

-shnar

Nostromo said:

Ravenloft is hardly the first D&D board game that's ever been made. They've been doing this ever since they started DDM, which I think was a couple of years before Descent (not 100% sure about that though.) In any event, judging from what I've seen of Ravenloft and previous D&D board games, they're just a lighter, faster version of full-on D&D. The fact that such a set up greatly resembles Descent is hardly their fault - D&D has been around a lot longer than FFG.

My point here is that you can go around saying product X is an obvious rip off of product Y until the cows come home, but more often than not product Y is drawing on more than a few common tropes that have been around since time immemorable in one form or another. Who among us (who's old enough to remember it) didn't see Descent on the shelf and immediately think "Hey! That looks just like Hero Quest!" or "Hey! That looks just like Warhammer Quest!" Not so terribly original now, is it?

I'm not saying that Descent's success had zero impact on Ravenloft and their plans to make expansions/sister games to match, I'm sure it did. I'm just saying there are plenty of miniature-based dungeon crawling games set in high fantasy universes. It's not like Descent has an immaculate and protected position as the inventor of all things dungeon crawl.

On the question of how much money Descent makes... I obviously don't have any insider information on their sales data, but when I look around the products on this website, Descent certainly strikes me as one of the biggest and most prolific among them. If Descent isn't one of their biggest sellers, I'd really like to know what is.

Last but certainly not least, to answer the OP's question (with my own 2 cents): There's nothing in the rumour mill right now, but I don't think that means they're done. I didn't realize Kevin was working on a different game, but that news certainly does explain the silence over here. My wallet is happy for the pause, and I look forward to whatever comes next. Personally I'm expecting a vanilla expansion, assuming the pattern holds. I always enjoy new monsters and new bits to throw at my heroes >=)

Steve-O said:

My wallet shares your sentiment!

I hope the general consensus is right that it would be a Vanilla expansion next - the campaigns are fun and all but nothing beats more monsters, traps, and things the vanilla expansions add.

Steve-O said:

Though to be fair, the most recent edition of D&D is newer than Descent, and I saw several people remarking on similarities between Descent and the fourth edition of D&D when it came out. There's probably some amount of cross-pollination going on (both directions).

Antistone said:

There has been quite a few people I have run across that do not like version 4 of D&D at all - they felt it was gearing more and more as a ruleset/conversion to video gaming (which in some respects lends well to board gaming as well...)

So it wouldn't surprise me if the version 4 writers looked at some of the Descent dynamics... there is nothing out there (that I can think of at least) for a board game that is as encompassing as Descent.

Like Tanhauser, I hope FFG release a streamlined new hardcover rulebook that covers Descent and all its expansions. This would be clearly written, and incorporate all FAQ/erratas.

Also, I i hope they release at least one more Vanilla expansion with new montsters, heroes, and tiles. The heroes should be the uber-cool new ones from Runebound: Mists of Zanaga!

It's to bad the Quest Guide had so many errors and thus got a bad rap and performed badly in sales. It sounds like they won't do another which is a shame. I was hoping for yearly Quest Guide compendiums!

Frog said:

I would have thought that would be an affordable way to make money too, that the costs of the quest guide have to be less than a whole expansion (i.e. no miniatures, no tiles, etc). However, I have heard Kevin rant that the majority of time spent on expansions is the quests, so while the material costs should be lower for a compendium, the development time must be greater?

(that, and poor performance of the previous guide isn't helping)

-shnar

Antistone said:

That may be true, but I also think there's a fair amount of people just noticing similar trends and assuming one is a rip off of the other. Some ideas are similar because they're good ideas. It's not that one company is trying to copy another, it's just that these are some basic fundamentals of gameplay in this genre.

What are the core mechanics of Descent? Fatigue, Armor subtracts from damage, randomly rolled range? Those aren't all to be sure, but they are three of the big things that stick out when I think about how the Descent combat engine works. None of those things are in D&D 4th Ed. I mean, maybe for one-off powers or something, but not as part of the core mechanic. I have seen games based on d20 3.5 that used armor as damage reduction, which certainly seems similar to Descent, but it doesn't seem to have been adopted by the D&D core at any point. If they were really trying to imitate Descent I'd think that would be an obvious one. Ah, but perhaps the wily D&D designers avoided that one because it was too obvious. This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made of.

When I think about Descent as compared to D&D, the only similarities that jump out at me are the fantasy theme, the dungeon crawling, and the fact that both use miniatures for tactical combat. None of that strikes me as proprietary Descent material.

Steve-O said:

There's a difference between trying to duplicate a style or appeal to the same audience and duplicating a game engine outright.

Regarding your examples, though: randomly rolled range (and power surges, which I'd put higher on the list of distinctive Descent combat mechanics) really relies on the custom Descent dice in order to work. Armor subtracting from damage is a common mechanic in games with small combat numbers and a small range of variation, but is probably a bad idea if you want to pretend your game scales to 30 levels. Descent's implementation of fatigue also doesn't scale really well (anyone want to share stories of 11-fatigue heroes in RtL?), but encounter powers are analogous to fatigue - they're a limited opportunity to do something special that refreshes when you have time to rest.

Though I'm certainly not saying there's a strong resemblance between D&D 4e and Descent - I'm not sure I'm even familiar enough with 4e to judge.

FFG considers its "Terrinoth World" as a creation to develope in the next future, I'm pretty sure 'bout this. And Descent actually IS a consistent part of this project. If the "old" Runebound received a new expansion few months ago, why shouldn't Descent?

At now, considering ALL the Descent minis (promos, metals and official), we have 196 pieces: I really like to get more than 200 minis in my collection as soon as possible, so I hope in future a vanilla expansion with about 20-30 new minis!

I don't want to denigrate all those who say that the new D&D boardgame will kick away Descent, but this makes me laugh. I think that Castelravenloft is a simplified version of the "highlander" D&D, probably the best fantasy RPG ever created, and for this reason it will always remain a "sub-game" of something bigger and deeper than itself. Yes, it probably will have a lot of expansions due its D&D background, but, in my opnion, it will remain forever a second-line product for all those who loved the RPG. Note that this is the second attempt to create a fantasy boardgame dungeon themed on the D&D basis: as you well know, the first one (with its two expansions "Eternal Winter" and "Forbidden Forest") fallen down sadly few years ago. So, good luck to WoTC, but I still think (after seen the online previews of Castelravenloft) that Descent (and all its expansions) remains too far to reach for now.

Descent has the best battling mechanism so far seen in its category, an incredible variability of strategy to figure out, an insane amount of cards, treasures, weapons, runes and -please note- a fantastic (and unique) campaign modality (fixed by Faqs, of course). Actually, Descent is THE battle-fantasy-dungeon themed- tactical boardgame out there, better than both WarhammerQuest and glorious HeroQuest (same spirit but more stuff for Descent and better battle system). Descent is the actual "King" of this gender. Then all the others. Game over.

Well, I broke down and bought Ravenloft today so I'll report how "similar" the games really are (which I doubt they are at all). The final tipping point: 1-5 players. I figured if it's even remotely similar to HeroQuest/SpaceHulk/Doom/Descent but it has solo rules, it's worth a shot. If not, maybe I'll create custom monster cards for the figures

-shnar

shnar said:

Lemme know what you think of it - I'm remotely curious about it - party cause there is that solitaire option.

That, and the fact that it was co-op were the final deciding factors. I'm *not* a big D&D fan and almost passed because of it. Initial impressions from just reading the rulebook and looking at the components, it's a *much* simpler game than Descent (which might be a positive). it's not as random as I thought it would be (while you build the tiles as you go, there is a specific scenario you play out) and I'm utterly shocked that there are no rules for creating your own character. This is D&D! I would have thought there be a chargen system right out of the box! Instead, it's just pick one of 6 heroes and off you go.

I'll actually play the game tomorrow to get a better feel for it

-shnar

Well I've played it 4 times now and I have to say, it's a very disappointing game. The rules feel slapped together, the monsters nor heroes are varied enough to be fun, and the adventures don't change enough of the game to get rid of the repetitive feeling. While it's a simple game as far as mechanics go, at first I thought this was going to be a boon but it's turned into a detriment. The game drags on and you feel as though you have very little chance of stopping the inevitable no matter how well you play.

A "Descent Killer" this is not...

-shnar

shnar said:

Are you not the guy that claimed DOOM is better than Space Hulk? rofl

No offense, but I don't believe you!

I took a look at the online rulebook. The writing doesn't seem to be any tighter than Descent's , and looks like it could be very confusing in some places if you didn't have some background knowledge of D&D terminology/mechanics. Looks like the game probably suffers from having heroes that grow stronger but monsters that show up in random order, like a lot of games with RPG themes but no one playing the DM/monster's team. And it's hard to be sure without seeing the powers, but it looks like strategic positioning is probably almost nonexistant, since monsters teleport around, their movement can't be hindered, there's no line-of-sight, range doesn't alter attack effectiveness, and all the max ranges used in examples were specified in pretty coarse terms. There's no orders, no fatigue, no shop, no power surges, and you're limited to what Descent would call Advance and Run actions (and you can't attack mid-movement). Even if it's a great game, I seriously doubt the play experience is anything like Descent.

I have doubts about about player scaling; I suspect bigger parties are better, but it depends on the victory conditions, which are apparently scenario-specific (and there isn't even an example in the rulebook). It looks like larger parties can split up and basically function as if each of them were playing a separate solo game, except that items can be given to anyone when they're drawn and you could presumably explore the dungeon in a lot fewer rounds. If they stick together and only explore once per round, they should obliterate the monsters (one per room, no scaling), and it looks like they can fairly easily choose who the monsters attack (for distributing wounds, or abusing defensive buffs if any exist), but they'll be forced to draw a ton of events, and monsters always get to attack first.

The hero pictured in the rulebook as an example appeared to have powers that could only help other heroes, which seems fairly idiotic for a game that you can supposedly play solo.

But I haven't played the game. Haven't even seen the components, other than the pictures in the rulebook. So take my conjectures with a grain of salt.