We are playing Sea of Blood (Master of the Hunt with the Lighthouse plot), and partly through luck (our OL missed his 8 first raze rolls, and was not particularly successful afterwards), partly through good map management (we went to Garnott only from mid-silver, which allows to end the game rather quickly by doing one dungeon after another of the many – five, if your ship has Elven Sails and Dead Man’s Compass – that are directly accessible from there, plus the five in a row to the north starting with Azure Peaks), we have a chance of reaching the final battle.

Being at the very beginning of the gold age, our OL has razed 3 cities, is sieging a fourth and will soon be sieging a fifth. There will probably come a point at which, between us leaving a dungeon and entering the next, the OL will roll for the victory. No complaint about that if it happens just once or twice: it means the campaign was well balanced (even though, as written above, only through sheer luck).

My complaint is, however, on the effect it will have on the game inside dungeons: on both sides, heroes as well as OL, sloppy or, worse, purposely bad play will be rewarded. The heroes should not care anymore about not dying, as if they die enough, the OL will not be able to roll for a raze anymore. The OL should not try too hard to kill the heroes, as it will leave him time for one or even two more raze rolls.

We can agree that we will continue to play as well as possible – but isn’t “playing as well as possible” playing to win? In any case, the temptation will be great for the heroes and the OL to give advice to each other, and every bad play that is not done on purpose, while made fun of or met with a sigh of relief before, could be criticized by the other side. Playing while rooting for the other side is simply not much fun.

This is an annoying way of experiencing the endgame to such an epic campaign. As a matter of fact, a game progression system that rewards bad play in the endgame strikes me as not being a very good game design.

I tried to think of something that would solve this problem, and came up with the following solution for our future campaigns:

Game progress should depend on the heroes’ Conquest only.

If the copper/silver/gold age endings happened when the heroes reach 100/200/300 Conquest (or maybe 80/160/240 for an easier campaign), there would be no more incentive for sloppy play at any stage of the game; both sides would simply try to rack up as much Conquest as possible, while giving as little as possible to the opponent.

As a bonus, weird ideas like killing each other to reach the end of the game would not work any more.

As a 2nd bonus, the Divine Favor rule would not be a liability for the heroes any longer.

As a 3rd bonus, it would thematically make more sense than the official system: to reach the evil avatar in his final keep, the heroes would have to accomplish a certain number of tasks, like making the country safer by cleaning up dungeons, and once they have done enough of that, they would gain the right to confront the avatar in his keep. It is not very logical that the more they die, the sooner they gain this right, as it is the case under the official rules.

The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems to me that the game progression should depend on the heroes’ Conquest rather than the total Conquest to avoid the problem mentioned above, with the added bonuses . However, I might have overlooked something, and that’s on reason I post this. Would there be any problem to this way of making time progress that I haven’t thought of?

Another reason I post this is that, should there be no problem to it, it could be added as an errata to the upcoming FAQ, as it would make Descent campaigns more enjoyable and thus better games.

Its now in the SoB balance issues and suggestions section - thanks for a good writeup that was easy to simply cut and paste from the actual suggestion onward.

Hi,

We had the very same problem in RtL.

I have to start with the fact that we are not so experienced players in Descent. Neither the OL.

The overlord had the plot , where he builds temples in razed cities, which decrease your fatigue and wound in the final dungeon if they are within 3 distance if I recall it correctly. Sorry i do not have the game at hand I do not remember what is it called.

We figured out in the last turn, that practically we wont stand a chance against the avatar if we let him raze another 2 cities, what was very probable at that point.

So we did the same as your group, we did not care anymore about hero deaths, and later on top of that we started to kill each other to increase the total conqest points in order to reach the desired 600 to have us immediately in the final dungeon.

I told my brother (OL) that in my eyes he was the "moral" winner of this campaign, because he played well, but in the end we managed to defeat the Sorcerer King with 3 heroes surviving (then we had to deduct only 2/2 wounds/fatigue). Only my poor, but devastatingly brutal Laurel was sent to the Reaper.

I reckon that this should not be an appropiate ending of such a campaign, and it was very frustrating to the OL as well. We chose this option only to see an avatar battle at last (it was our 2nd campaign, in the 1st we failed by losing Tamalir to the OL). I may have overlooked some rules, but I think there is nothing against this twisted idea.

I have another question regarding the Sorcerer King's keep.

I admit it might be a spoiler for those who have not played against the sorcerer king, so those players do not read from here please

(Note: we do not examine the dungeons prior to playing them)

As I wrote above we succeeded in reaching the mirror room.

Have we played well when we managed to destroy all mirrors with the marksman ability (I am unsure about the skill name I have the game in Hungarian, it is when you can make your targeting from an adjacent empty square) without taking a single scratch from the OL? I think that is kinda weird to get over this room so easily, by just having a skill (a good one though imo). I thought at least one or two heroes should be severely injured or dead in that room.

Sorry if some thoughts are not comprehensive, I am Hungarian, so English is not my native language

Ispher said:

The only problem I can think of - and it may not even be a problem in practice - is that if the heroes have full control over how quickly the campaign progresses, they could stall their CT gain to some advantage, the most extreme example being to freeze progress until the OL player concedes.

I'm not entirely sure that this tactic would work though - the OL can still gain CT through razing cities and use that to advance his Plot, eventually winning if the heroes refuse to act (as it should be.) Some plots might be more vulnerable to this, however, if, for example, the hero party was able to camp on a quest item the OL needs to advance. In theory he could still fight them until he's able to take it by force, it would just make the game tedious.

It's a potential flaw - something the community should probably play with to determine how serious a threat it is. Assuming it turns out to not be a problem, I don't see any down side to this house rule.

To avoid the problem I mentioned while still leaving the OL some kind of control over age changes, the solution I would propose to my group for our next campaign would be to keep the current rule for getting to silver and gold ages (200 and 400 total conquest), but to base the end of the game on only the heroes' conquest total (either 300 total or 100 more than what they have at the beginning of the gold age). That way, the game would work like it is supposed to do without any incentive or reward for playing badly on purpose while keeping the game exactly like it is now except for the very end, which would be better because its main problem would be solved.