My gaming group is going to play its first game of Descent next week.

The DM duty falls me (as usual) I've done plenty of DM work from heoquest to D&D. But i'm aware that every game has its own style of play.

That being said I was wondering if any vetrans out there had some advice for:

1. Keeping The game moving Quickly. (What can we do to make sure one quest doesn't take all day?)

2. "Winning" as the DM (concentrate on weak heroes? Lots of traps?)

1. Print out some of the nicer player aids from BGG (like my "order" cards /plug). HJelp the Heroes through their first coupple of turns, make sure they know how the game plays & they don't treat it like a standard dungeon bash.

2. Don't. Let them win, but only just. Then, in the seccond secario, slay them horribly.

The first quest cannot take a day anyway. Have them discuss moves as a group, rather than every-man-for-himself. Be sure to point out that a) critters DO NOT drop loot, and b) that they DO NOT give XP. They exist solely to drain resources. Also point out that a "full-clear" is most often pointless and almost always impossible.

Make them look at the board layout and realize where they have to get to to kill Narthak (Look at the board. Where would the boss be, eh?" and point out that once they kill him, the game ends, with them victorious.

Also, help them to realize the vital mechanic of Line of Sight and that stalling gives you cards AND threat.

I also echo the suggestion to let them win, barely.

Player aids, as someone up above said, is a great idea. In fact, on BGG, there is a rulebook that has all the rules of the game with the errata printed in, I printed that out and stopped pulling out the old rulebook myself. It's also, IMO, ordered more sanely than the FFG Rulebook is.

There is also a nice one sheet (Double sided) player aid that can be printed, modified slightly for errata, and handed out to the players so they can see the turn order, the various effects that can be caused, etc.

Each of these are quite handy.

Slev said:

And don't forget the manical laughter. Its key.