I was looking around the D2e forums and noticed that a few people that have been playing D1e keep their games to the box times of 3-4 hours. I've always noticed that my games always take 6+ hours. I'm generally the OL and all my players know what they're doing but the games always seem to take longer then the box time. Have you other players had the same trend or am I doing something wrong?

I've generally noticed that my players are usually a little hesitant to move along the path and will draw time out that way. I also tend to stop spawning monsters further into the dungeon to 1) save time, 2) spare the lower monster packs the pain and humiliation of "trying" to kill the heroes.

How well organized are your tokens? Do you have them sorted in baggies or something so its easy to find the type you need, or are they all just lying around in the box? Same question for how you organize tiles when packing up the game. Having everything squared away in easy to find places will greatly speed up game play. Particularly during set up, which can take a lot longer than people sometimes realize.

Secondly, the fact that your heroes are lollygagging around the dungeon doesn't really help things, either. Is there a reason they don't want to move forward? It sounds like you're even giving them the game by holding back on spawns, I don't know what they'd be so scared of. Especially if they already understand the game engine.

Thirdly, you should recognize that even under ideal circumstances, only the shortest of quests generally get finished in 3-4 hours. The larger maps always take longer, no matter how fast your group is. This is a big, long game, no matter how you slice it.

I think Organiszation is everything. I have had the odd game go 4-5 hours, but that is rare, 70% of my games are under 4, many are under 2, but those are ussally cause of hero conquest loss.

Yeah, it's really easy to be less than 4 hours if the heroes lose, lol. But our group continues to play to the end of the quest for a partial victory if the heroes can get back into the positive Conquest.

And you should be spawning on them all the time, by the way. Either just to make them fight through your guys, because them being slow is to your advantage. (You get to find the best cards in your deck, and hopefully cost them 3 conquest by reshuffling!) And always look for a chance to spawn on corners so they can attack that turn. Leaving a squishy wizard by a corner is like Christmas for your beastman war parties!

I have the same problem. We played I think the 7th quest in WoD and after NINE hours we still weren't done. Factors are

1) There's only 2 of us, I was playing 4 heroes.

2) We chat a bit about movies etc - not that much though.

3) We give our moves a reasonable amount of deliberation. Co-ordinating the moves of 4 heroes (and FOUR familiars!! Mata, Kata, Challara's dragon and shadow spirit or whatever it's called) requires quite a bit of deliberation.

4) In size the map resembles the London Underground.

Like a lot of WoD quests it turned into a bit of a chore as I gradually realised I hadn't a hope in hell. Too **** hard even with ToI feats.

I had the idea of playing a variant akin to speed chess, with a clock to limit move times. I think however that would just be frustrating and lead to a lot of hero deaths.

At this point my hope is that second edition allows for sane game durations. @ FFG, Publish the rules already!

Deleting dupe post, sorry bout that

My Games ALLWAYS take between 5-9 hours!

5 hours would be considered a fast game.
And we don't have any "newbies" in our group.

krunsh said:

I think that most people telling that they finish a game in 2,5-3 hours are playing with 2-3 players max (1 OL and 1-2 Hero Players, controlling 4 Heroes). And still they don't convince me entirely.

A Descent game can't be that short, there's too much strategy coordination to be done and with 4 different brains it takes a lot, except in obvious situations which are quite uncommon. With experienced players the decisions tend to be quicker and smarter, but the size of vanilla maps doesn't make up for short games. The only Quests that we were able to finish in a single evening session (20.30 - 0.30/1.00, game already set up) were the smaller maps from Tomb of Ice. We completed "The Cauldron of Tears" in 4 hours and "Cousin Durnog" in about 3 hours, 4 player games (1 OL, 3 Heroes).

Base game quests take us two sessions to complete (7-8 hours), no matter how difficult. The OL is not supposed to give up Spawns and allow Heroes to advance at leisure. Time is on his side and we lost quest 9 at first attempt because we took the wrong turn (into the room with big monsters) and then we ran out of time (he depleted his deck before we were able to recover enough CT). This process took about 5.30 hours and was the biggest "turn of the tide" I've seen in a Descent game so far.

Descent gameplay doesn't make up for fast games. This is well known and accepted by players. There's a 2nd edition coming and fans are looking forward to see how this will be improved.

The_Warlock said:

I think people who cite that kind of time are probably spending more time playing shorter quests. Play time does vary significantly based on how big the dungeon is and how much time heroes need to spend crossing the same regions multiple times. Being well organized and well versed in the rules certainly helps, but the biggest factor in determining this sort of thing will always be what quest you're playing.

One should also factor in sissy OLs who don't spawn very much in the interest of keeping things short. =P The hero players may not realize how little the OL is spawning, or how big an impact that can have on play time. If the person who cites 2.5-3 hours as an average is usually a hero player, it should be taken with a grain of salt.