I've been playing Descent for a couple of years, but I have held off on buying Road to Legend. I love the original Descent and the two expansions I have for it (Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair). I get really irritated, however, because once a quest is over, my hero is pretty much done. The cool gold treasure I found in the last room...I don't get to bring it into the next quest with me. Being a former Dungeons and Dragons guy, the idea of building and expanding a character as he progresses through various dungeons is very appealing. Basic Descent doesn't cover this well at all.

Does RtL cover this aspect of fantasy dungeon crawling? Also, as I understand it from scanning over the rules, you draw a card or something that determines the type of dungeon your characters encounter. I understand these dungeons are smaller than in the base game. Is this accurate, and if so, how long does it take to play a RtL dungeon? Can you play through a couple in one setting, and is there a lot of downtime shifting tiles around? One final question about RtL. If there is a deck of pre-determined dungeons, does RtL get repetitive after a while? Once you beat a dungeon, and you play the game another time, is there still an element of surprise to that dungeon or not? I would just like some input on these issues before I fork out the money. Thanks in advance.

As a former DnD guys as well, go out and buy RtL. I haven't played DnD since I started playing RtL because I like it better especially with the swtich of DnD to 4E (folks, please repress in the impulse to turn this into a RtL vs 4E debate, they are very different games).

The character progression will probably satisfy your need for development. As for dungeons being smaller, yes the individual floors are but each dungeon is three levels so it can take the same amount of time to make it through a dungeon as the core game,

As for variety, I've played a few campaigns and it doesn't get repetitve. The random draw of levels helps, as there are some levels that you really don't want to draw first (or second or third for that matter). For example, Pulling #40 Sess the Forge on the first dungeon level of the Hero's first dungeon can be a nightmare Plus with the varying make ups of the Hero parties, skills, weapons and OL tactics it does well.

You will now get a ton of posts concerning balance issues, how Crushing Blow is broken, etc etc. While some of the them are legit (like the balance issue with the Avatar battles) the rest are merely personal tastes (like I don't think Crushing Blow is even slightly broken, nor do my players).

End point: I highly recommend buying it, especially if you already have the rest of the expansions. I myself have all but ToI which I'll be getting sometime in the near future.

I've just got it (3 hours ago), and I feel like a little hobbit just out of the Shire.

(buy it)

Personally, I think RtL will be up your alley, as others have mentioned.

You will build up your character (Or your Overlord/Evil minions). The only thing is, as most people have found, the game can have some balance issues. And 90% of the time, it seems, the early game is the Overlords. Though the later game becomes the Heroes.

If you have the players, especially, and they all love Descent, this is a great buy. The best thing I could say though, is download the rules and read them. That will give you a hint of what it is like. After that, look through the threads here and at BGG for ideas on how to improve on balance. Or play a campaign through yourself and see what needs to be changed to suit your own taste.

rtl is worth having just considdering the sheer volume of things you can do with the contents other than rtl lol oh and the campaign is fun too