Hi,

I am wondering at what age I could start playing this with my son (he is 4 now)? What experinces do you have? The earliest I have read so far was a review on Amazon who said he was playing with his kid which goes to first grade.

I tried to play Hero Quest with him but he didn't enjoy that much, he is liking Dungeonquest a lot, but of course I don't expect him to finish up this game or any others, until now max of 30 minutes play is what I get :-), but that is a good start!!

Any other experinces? Any other game recomendations (Fantasy not Sci-Fi). He also seems to enjoy more Coop play then others!

Thanks in advance!

I haven't played Descent with my son, but we played the Castle Ravenloft board game when he was 8 and he liked that. Castle Ravenloft has a much simpler rule set than Descent, but is a very similar game otherwise.

Well if 30 minutes is his limit, I'd probably hold off until he could handle a 3-hour+ board game, because the longest Descent game I've played was 8 hours, and that was with highly-competitive gamers at an engineering school. Although, that was the exception. Including set-up, I'd say average game length is about 5 hours.

I say hold-off, mainly because set-up can often take 1/2 an hour, there's so many tokens and things.

But gameplay-wise, it's simple enough. Matching colors to dice and whatnot, so I really think your only challenge is attention span.

I would estimate age 8-10 minimum for this game, based on reviews I've heard from other parents playing with their kids. The content is not offensive in any way for younger children, but the game does have a complex rule set and takes a while to play. Doesn't sound like your kid is ready for a 4-5 hour dungeon romp just yet, let alone one that tends to punish the heroes if they make any mistakes.

C'mon 2015! =)

It basically depends how much of the rule book you want to include. If you leave out Overlord cards, readying, fatigue, movement actions, skills, coins and moving to town, then you could probably get going early, like 9, or so– whenever reading skills are developed enough. If you want to keep everything in, then you could probably struggle through a game by age 12.

If also depends how important it is for you that the kid actually understands what's going on, and can internalize all the stuff that is going on. There's a huge difference between understanding what Orders do, for example, and actually having any clue about when to use them. I teach a class about game design at an private (and somewhat selective) highschool, to 13-year-olds. I use Descent in the classroom as an example or games that require teamwork and independent action. These kids are smart, and they play lots of different kinds of games, but they are completely boggled by many, many aspects of Descent– e.g. They are incapable of mentally juggling spawn-lines, tactical decisions, and long-term objectives . After 3 dungeons, they still have to ask if Staff of Fire is better than Crystalize, and have utterly no idea about how to use Telekinesis.

If that's important, then I'd say, maybe another 13 years?

-pw

phelanward said:

Off-topic, but ... wow! Game design classes at school? I obviously attended the wrong schools ...

Ha. Trust me– you probably wouldn't want to go to this school. It's for the (usually) spoiled spawn of oil fat-cats and mafioso. But as an expat teaching English, I am allowed to design my own curriculum, as long as it's engaging and requires a vigorous use of English conversation.

-pw

Hi, Piledriver.

I just got the game to play with my daughter, 8,my son, 4. I'll tell you my experience. Your mileage may vary.

My wifeI got Pirate's Cove to play with friends, but that's rare these days, so most of the time when the game was out, I was playing with the kids. Like you said, they prefer co-op. Occasionally they relish the chance to blow daddy out of the water, but more often than not they want to "team up" to fight one of the Legendary Pirates,then "not fight each other." The game's not designed that way, so I looked around for a game we could play co-op. Descent quickly made it to the top of my list. Looked a bit complex for my kids, but I figured they could grow into it,in the meanwhile I could probably make something of it.

The kids love it. My 4yo son's attention span is about 30 minutes, too,the full rules are too complex. Here are the modifications I made.

* Most significantly, I do not play against them. I control the monsters, but I also control a hero. My goal is not to defeat them, but to provide a tough challenge that they can overcome. So I'm playing more like a DnD dungeonmaster than an overlord.

* They each got to choose a hero of their liking. This was very important to them,took no small amount of time. Once they had chosen, I picked a hero to "fill in the gaps." I painted those figurines to help with immersion.

* Don't remove moneybuying equipment. That was a big part of the fun for them. My 4yo son wanted pretty much one of every type of weapon,he insisted on using everything, regardless of how good his character was with it. Let him do it. Choosing which weapon to attack with each round was a big part of the fun for him.

* I took out Conquest Tokens, the overlord's tokenscards,curses on treasure chests.

* I didn't even try to explain "Readied Actions." They understand their turns this way: they move twice, moveattack,attack twice.

So you might say we're using the Descent pieces to play a simplified game of my own invention. The enjoyment we're getting out it is working together to kill monstersfind treasure, not the challengerivalry.

Cry.Havoc - That is a very interesting post. Thank you for that! I have been wondering about when my 6-year-old grandson would be old enough to play. To this point, all he's allowed to do is roll a die on occasionshuffle some of the piecescards into position. Nothing much, in other words, so it was of interest that your 4-year-old son actually gets to play.

Is Pirates Cove a fun game? I bought it a couple of years ago but have never played it.

Hi Havoc,

thanks a lot for your answer, it made me order the game :-).

I was already thinking about changing some rules, one of them being that I would also play a Herodon't make it so hard with the Overlord. Thanks for your postyour ideas again!

At what age can I start playing this with my son?

Well, if you're old enough .to sire offspring, I'm sure you're old enough .to play Descent....

I'd say at about eight you might want to think about Heroquest. Descent is far more complicated, so once they've got Heroquest down, then move onto Descent. Like Cry Havoc said, you definitely want to be playing as a GM not as an antagonist.