I know the conversion kit will cover most everything, but will it cover everything for Road to Legend and Sea of Blood?

And how long do you think until we start getting expansions for 2E?

Keggy said:

1) Doubtful.

2) Probably about a year after release of the base game.

Keggy said:

The conversion kit will NOT cover "most everything." It will cover figures . Heroes and monsters. That is all. There will not be anything in the kit to convert other tokens or game components from 1e. ONLY figures.

This means it will probably not cover ANYTHING from RtL or SoB, unless by chance it includes conversions for the LTs and/or Avatars (which are not, by any means, promised to be included. They might be, they might not be.)

2e will have its own campaign engine in the box. How similar or different that might be to the AC game in 1e remains to be seen. It seems like heroes have a lot more options for character growth though, which is a good thing as far as building them up over a longer game goes, but we don't really know much of anything about how the 2e campaign will actually work.

Keggy said:

Well, if the 1e schedule is anything to go by, it'll probably be about 1 expansion per year starting some time in 2013. Though honestly, I'd be cool with them going a bit slower this time around. Take some time and make sure the expansion rules are well thought out as far as how they work with the base AND with each other before piling one on top of the other like what happened with 1e.

If the 2e base game is solid, the fans should be able to keep themselves occupied making fan quests, allowing fewer but better designed expansions to slowly increase the game's size. The conversion kit adding back in all the 1e heroes and monsters (for those who have them anyway) should also do wonders to keep the desire for new content to a low simmer.

Personally I'd hope the first expansion comes out pretty fast. But that depends on how many scenarios are in the base set. After that one a year would be nice. There have been years for them to figure out how to do good scenarios. I imagine they will have quite a few in there.

Personally I think that FFG will do the same with D2 as what they're now doing with Mansions of Madness. Print on demand adventure expansions. Of course this all depends on how strong and expanded the D2 core rules are to begin with and how replayable the core box quests and campaign are. I really, really, really hope that in D2 the campaign and the quests are more thematic and story driven, so the first big box expansion will be a completely new campaign set with new adventures and themes.

As we don't know much about the D2 core box campaign system, it can be something really flimsy and they will follow the path of D1 with the expansions and release a real RtL type campaign in the box later. I sure hope not, but it is always a possibility. In all honesty there was a campaign system in D1 core box as well. The released info has lead me to believe that the D2 campaign is much more fleshed out and even has some simple "if you fail in A1, then B2 will happen instead of B1" type causal mechanics.

Mordjinn said:

I would be cool with that model for new quests. Hopefully it would also take the pressure off the need to release a box expansion, so that those they DO make can be more focused on whatever elements can't be done POD.

Mordjinn said:

FFG is pretty good about learning from past mistakes, in my experience. The primary flaw with the basic campaign in D1 was that it didn't deliver what players really wanted from a "campaign mode" - namely, persistent characters who kept their equipment and other upgrades across dungeons. Of course, vanilla D1 was poorly set up to allow that sort of play in the first place - power upgrades were pretty significant from one step to the next, and there weren't that many different ways to upgrade a hero, so letting them keep everything would result in super-power-capped heroes in fairly short order.

The AC game was primarily focused on slowing down that rate of progression to allow a more steady build up. Reducing starting skills to one each, forcing heroes to play with copper and silver treasures longer before being able to upgrade to better stuff, that sort of thing. It worked well enough for delivering the campaign-style of play that people wanted within the structure of the game engine they had created, but it still had a few glitches that were (IMHO) primarily due to the fact that the AC game was essentially "tacked on" during the expansion period of the game, after the core mechanics had been set out. For example, how devastating Crushing Blow became if used early in the campaign. CB is not a terribly powerful card, but it IS really meant to be saved for good silver or gold items, not wasted on copper. By drawing out the progression of treasures, the OL had little reason to save the card if he drew it early since he knew he'd see it again long before it was really needed. And losing the best copper item the party has seen during a phase where they're still struggling to put a significant amount of money together doesn't exactly help morale, so to speak.

From what I hear about the D2 campaign (which isn't very much, mind you) it sounds like it will be somewhere in between these two extremes from D1. It sounds like the campaign will progress from one quest to another ("vanilla" style quests) with heroes gaining power slowly over what looks like a wide variety of advancement options. It also sounds like there will be plenty of conveninent "stopping points" in those quests, so players can pack it up if they don't want to play all night (always good.) It doesn't sound like there will be an overworld map, though. (There might be, but I haven't heard mention of it.) I hadn't heard about this branching logic thing before, but it certainly sounds promising to me.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to D2. I have yet to hear anything that makes me doubt it will be a huge improvement to the experience and the Terrinoth setting.

Steve-O said:

I think it's very possible that there will be an overworld map. If you look at the picture of the cards in the section "Embark on a perilous campaign against evil" and zoom in, you can read following text: "Do not draw an event for the next path you travel this phase". Sounds interesting...

Philipopotamus said:

I stand corrected. And grateful. =)

Philipopotamus said:

Yup. Those cards look like they are random travel event cards. Thanks for pointing them out!

Mordjinn said:

I'm also wondering if they'll add in dungeon creation rules. If they gave us that, then the need for an immediate expansion decreases yet again...