I'm in no way a veteran Descent player, but after last night's session I started thinking about a bit more "story" approach to the game. Now it is all about monster bash to get the treasure with a couple of little tricks thrown in for good measure.
In Mansions of Madness the investigators are trying to find clues or what the hell is going on. I could see a similar kind of system working nicely for Descent. The core game is there, now what you just need to add is a story and puzzles around the map and send in the heroes. Like in MoM there is a timed event deck, which makes things happen (flood gates open, monster patrol walks in, the dragon awakens etc.) after certain amount of turns. The clue cards found could help the heroes get better treasures (keys to the vault), some insight on what is going on in the story or maybe a knowledge of a big bosses weakness (the dragon has a soft spot under her wing).
It would be easy expansion to create for FFG:
- A book/leaflet of new adventures (maybe 5 or 6) containing the info how to combine this expansion with vanilla box and other expansions
- A deck of timed events
- A deck of clue cards
I could imagine this kind of expansion would be relatively inexpensive to create and publish, if FFG would use the lessons learned from Mansions of Madness, and it would add a whole new layer of gameplay to Descent. I bet that many Descent owners would jump to the possibility to get something like this. As inexpensive expansion ($25 or so) it wouldn't matter if the stories wouldn't have that much replay value.
I know I'd be thrilled to have something like this.
What do you think?