I've heard a lot about the rules of Descent. Is it true that there are a lot of holes in them?

Pulsar said:

I don't think holes is a fair description.

There are a few things that are 'simplified' for the purposes of boardgames and just have no 'good' thematic reason.
The rules are written in a conversational style which is inherently imprecise.
They use the same descriptor for multiple technical terms!
They have made a design decision to treat each expansion as totally independent of other expansions. This is good in that each expansion only needs the base game to play, but it is bad in that they do not consider the effects of combining expansions.
Most important of all, it is clear that the basic rules have been through several iterations, each of which 'patched' certain parts of the rules. They appear to have done no editing at all at the end so you effectively have parts of several different rules sets mashed together, often in contradictory ways - and many examples have errors in them that seem to be to 'later changes'.

Then add that for most of the 'support' lifecycle they have answered questions more or less randomly as they came up - often contradicting other answers either directly or indirectly, and sometimes just flat out misunderstanding the question due to poor question wording.

The amazing thing is how great the game is despite the mess the rules are in.

Corbon said:

QFT.

Normally I'm no stranger to the concept of house rules to fix things I don't like about a game, but in the case of Descent I'm hesitant to make any because I can see a domino effect requiring house rule after house rule to keep everything in check. In cases like that for other games I generally fall back on "play by RAW and ignore the stupid parts" but that can be difficult to do with Descent as well just for the sheer volume of stupid little things.

Any ordinary game would have been sold/trashed a long time ago in this situation, but there's something about Descent that keeps me coming back for more despite the obvious and sometimes irritating flaws. Part of it is probably its connection to the Terrinoth universe. Mechanics aside, Descent is one of the larger portals into what I consider a very interesting fantasy setting. If it were set in an independent game world I probably wouldn't enjoy it so much.

I recently bought the game with 4 expansions, including the Road To Legend advanced campaign. We played 1 vanilla quest and jumped right into the campaign. 5 players. We started about 5 weeks ago and have had 8 sessions.

To answer the question, I would have to say that in my experience, that no, the rules generally are simple. There's just quite a lot of simple rules going on at the same time!

We have maybe 1 rules question coming up per session, but for ease of play I usually just rule in favour of the heroes and then do research post session to clear things up. You will find that practically any issue you may have has already been answered on the forums here or at BGG (usually by Corbon or Steve-O!! )

I feel that as long as one player has read the rules and FAQ before playing that's ok. I usually explain to the heroes concepts that they need to know as they become relevent e.g. treachery, ice, soar, bleeding etc etc.

These posts are abolutely pointless.

The Old Man said:

Well at least yours doesn't stand out from the rest in that regard.

Just do a search of his messages. Three things are clear. One is that he doesn't own the game and in most cases hasn't played the game he's posting about. Two, it appears these posts are to get his Points up for contests. Three, he also has appointed himself chief critic of FF Games, even if he hasn't play them.