The only real drawback I gather about Descent is the play time. I will be inviting guys over to play that like this stuff but are not really 'gamers' as much as I. I'm concerned that the time it will take to get familiar with the game will kill their desire to play more. Can you guys give me any advice on how to keep it moving, as well as make it as awesome as possible?

Read the rulebook and the FAQ (both are available online here in the support section for the game.) Read them multiple times each. You can probably skip the parts of the FAQ that refer to expansions if you don't have them coming too, or you could read them anyway for some extra insight into what you might see in the future.

The first couple of quests in the quest book are easy on the heroes, so you probably don't need to throw the game just to make sure they have fun, but knowing the rules as much as possible will help keep things on an even keel. Also, be sure to impress upon them that the Overlord player does have a good chance of winning and defeating the heroes. There is no implicit expectation that the hero players will conquer everything before them - they'll need to work together and focus on the goal if they want to come out on top.

Other than that, nothing can really prepare you for the tactical powerhouse that is Descent, other than hard-won experience, of course

Edit: almost forgot: Always play with four heroes. No matter how many people you have at the table. 3 can get by, especially with the base game quests, but 4 is the number the game was really designed to work with in general.

Every gamer group is different, but here's what I've learned being the Overlord for my group:

1) Stress the fact that they have to verbally declare their equipment and action before they start touching their character. Its an official rule, but my group really needs constant reminders about it.

2) Narrate the actions. It's not as fun to roll the die and just take damage. Especially as the overlord, talk about how the swords cleave through the skeleton or arrows bouncing off armour. My gaming group tried D&D, but we've never been able to stick to it. This gives us the combat-side of the game and we role-play a decent amount as well.

3) I've found that the descriptions for each area aren't that great, and tend to let the area describe itself with the tokens; only fleshing out a few descriptions. That may be my personal bias though.

Fuller said:

All very good advice.

I'll just take this opportunity, on the subject of "role-playing" to point out that there are a lot of little illogical gaffes in the rules for Descent (ie: you can jump over pits but not over water; every time a chest is opened, everybody immediately gets treasure no matter where they are in relation to the chest.) I don't want to discourage to the idea of role-playing, for I do genuinely enjoy the hobby. Just be aware that doing so with Descent is going to enhance the probability of players asking questions about these illogical rules, which may or may not affect how much fun they have with the game depending on how "into it" they were. At that point, you either have to start making house rules (which can quickly affect game balance) or just hand-wave fluff and go by how the rules are written (which might undermine future efforts to keep suspension of disbelief going.)

I know, for example, that people I've played with who are heavy role-players were somewhat disappointed when they realized the extent of the illogical rules, while those who didn't give a whiff for fluff generally accepted the rules and laughed. Personally, I find it helpful to think of Descent as simulating a computer game RPG (like Final Fantasy) instead of something like D&D. That doesn't really help with the role-playing idea, but it makes a surprising number of the rules make sense, in a way.

I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying you should be prepared for this to happen and have some ideas of ways to address it with your group.

Thanks for all the advice! I'll start reading the rules online to prevent stalls, as well as narrate. I don't think they'll sweat logic so much.

Also, play a practice game solo before your friends come over. Just reading the rule book probably won't be enough without actually playing the game as you're learning it. At least that really helped me.