So my friends want to look at the OL (me) discard pile while playing to see which cards I've used. On one hand there is no rule I've seen that forbids this. On the other hand, I said they weren't allowed to because in essence they could metagame by knowing what cards were left to play. Thoughts?

Well, there's nothing in your discard pile that the heroes couldn't theoretically know about, so I guess it's a question of how much emphasis you want to place on memorization. Would you forbid your players from taking notes about what happens during the game? Would you feel any better about the advantage the heroes get from card-counting if they did it by taking notes rather than looking through your discard?

Personally, I'm not fond of memory games, and I would never want to forbid people from making a record of the game, so I'd probably allow it. Some people I've met seem to have very different feelings about memory and note-taking (in general, not specifically in Descent).

Admittedly matey, I've only played one game myself. Though the Over Lord thrives on what the players don't know.

He's an entity of mystery! Of intrugue. Of cunning, guile and evil genius. Personally, I'd never let the players sift through my discarded deck, nor will I let them know which cards I've bought with my threat pool when I finally recieve Well of Darkness. It'll subtract from one of the few edges you have when it comes to doling punishment to those snivvling little heroes!

Keeping them on their toes all adds to the suspense of the game, and in turn that can lead to tactical errors, a false sense of security or any number of other things that can lead to you picking them off one by one. It just takes one wrong move and a well thought out OL strategy to shoot one of the players down.

If it were me, I'd tell my players that there isn't a chance in hell and I'm sure some of the experienced blokes will probably back me up. And if not, I'll run away with my tail between my legs and continue to do things my way anways

Good question! I consider all of the discards to be public information (ie. if the OL discards a bunch of cards, they have to show the players each one rather than dumping a stack and letting them only see the top). And of course any cards that are played, the players know about. So I don't see why the discard pile should be kept secret. On the other hand, if they aren't paying attention to what's been thrown in the discards, too bad for them.

I would just let them see it.

I can see both sides of the argument, but I tend to lean in the direction away from letting the players sift... To me it's less about the strategy of it (or the memorization, if you prefer) but more the fact that sifting through the discards:

a) Slows down the game,
b) Fights against any "Immersion" there is to be had (you're no longer heroes in a dungeon, but rather players counting cards), and
c) As Chromatism said, it goes against what I feel to be the "Spirit" of what the Overlord player represents. Much of the Overlord's power is in the uncertainty of his hand of evil, and I would never want to take that away from him!

Pay NO attention to the man behind the curtain!

Attempts to metagame in order to win are unsportsmanlike.

Thundercles said:

...seriously? You're complaining about metagaming in Descent ? And you're complaining about players attempting to win in an explicitly competitive game like Descent?

At my table, you're the one who would be kicked out for being unsportsmanlike if you started saying things like that. Next you're going to tell me that it would be unsportsmanlike to make sure you get LoS to an area to prevent spawning, because the fact that LoS prevents spawning is a "metagame" rather than "game world" consideration.

Actually, I think the los thing isn't really metagaming. I'm sure the heroes know that the monsters can pop out anywhere so they would scout around to make sure they don't surprise them.....

Antistone said:

Wow, this sounds like a pet peeve of yours. Now that I think about it better, there's much to metagame in Descent that has nothing to do with mechanics (although your examples are, I think, the stated purpose of the mechanics in question). For example, the OL tips released a while back constitute a fun form of metagaming for the OL, with lies, deceit, and trickery. So, to revise my statement, this particular form of metagaming (card-counting) is unsportsmanlike, especially since it attacks a specific game advantage the Overlord is supposed to have.

Thundercles said:

What the heck? This specific tactic is unsportsmanlike because it helps the heroes? I suppose it's perfectly OK if the overlord counts feat cards, then? Are you going to tell me that it's unsportsmanlike to look at what skill cards the heroes currently have face-up in front of them if you're doing it to decide whether you should buy another combat skill?

Nowhere in the rules (at least that I can find) does it say that the overlord is supposed to have the advantage that the heroes don't know what cards he's already played. You're just making that up; and it's a rather implausible thing to make up, since the heroes get to see each card as it is played or discarded and therefore do know everything in the discard, unless they forget. You apparently think that remembering what happened earlier in the game is unsportsmanlike.

Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine, but that doesn't change the fact that you're making up arbitrary rules and proclaiming them as fact. There's no basis for this in the rules, explicit or implied; as far as I can tell, you just don't want the heroes to do this, and so you're proclaiming it unsportsmanlike in an attempt to force everyone else to play the way you want them to play.

If you want to have a house rule that says players can't deliberately card-count, that's one thing--I think that's a bad rule, but you can play that way if you want. But to then tell the entire world that anyone who doesn't follow your personal house-rule is "unsportsmanlike"...that's just being a jerk.

Ah. Well, then, I personally consider discard pile perusal and card-counting to be unsportsmanlike, because I feel that the heroes are not supposed to know what cards are or could be in the Overlord's hand. Of course, this is an assumption of mine: I guess you may show the heroes your hand and the rest of your deck as you see fit.

As for denying the heroes the power of memory, that's a great straw man argument, but as all such positions, it's an exaggerated and ludicrous statement and you know it. Without training and dedication (as well as possible natural talent), it's exceedingly difficult to remember the entire overlord deck and which cards have been played, unless you use the time-honored mental supplements, "pen" and "paper". If a hero player can remember such details from the get-go, without effort or aids, then no, I'm not going to deny him his amazing mental abilities - but playing against such a person is completely different than playing against a hero who has no idea which of the 36-42 OL cards is in your hand at this very moment. Experienced OL players who know how many trap-space cards are in the deck have an advantage over heroes who've played maybe 4 or 5 games, and will plan their movements according to the number of space traps they believe you to have.

Attempting to gain and capitalize on an advantage like knowing as much as or more than the overlord about his/her own cards is, in my opinion, unsportsmanlike metagaming. It's use of components that make up the game world in a way that runs outside of the game rules in order to give your side an advantage you don't normally have, and I consider that to be unfair. Whether you feel that my opinion is important enough to use or insult you personally is your decision.

You imply that I may as well let the heroes see the OL's hand and then accuse me of making staw-man arguments? Knowing which half of the deck is in the discard pile and knowing the exact cards currently in the OL's hand are obviously worlds apart (except for a very small segment of the game, right before the deck is reshuffled). And your previous statement was that card-counting was unsportsmanlike, which normally refers to remembering the cards; if you meant specifically looking through the discard pile, then you grossly mis-represented your own position, and accusing me of burning straw men is hardly appropriate. The "banning memory" suggestion is perhaps ludicrous, but that's hardly my fault if it's exactly what you said (and casinos will kick you out if they think you're trying to remember all the cards that have been dealt, so it's not like it's never been tried).

As far as the practicalities of memorization, I consider myself remiss if I do not know at all times the remaining number of spiked pit, crushing block, paralyzing gas, charge, beastman war party, and generally several other key cards that remain in the deck, whether I'm playing as overlord or hero (and assuming that the OL didn't remove any of them from his deck with treachery). I don't usually know (or care) exactly how many aim cards or exploding chests have hit the table, and there's lots of information that I simply can't know (like which exact cards are in the OL's hand, or what cards he added or removed with treachery), but keeping track of the more important ones (insofar as it is theoertically possible) is entirely practical and occasionally has a significant impact on the game. And if anyone in the game asks me what I think the current count is, I will tell them, friend or foe.

It's true that less experienced players are much less likely to know these things, and if you think that means that experienced players should mercilessly crush them rather than helping them learn or allowing them player aids that replicate the knowledge that an experienced player would already have, then I guess you can do that, but I wouldn't want to play with you. Do you also refuse to tell them the average range/damage a weapon rolls and forbid them from looking things up in the rulebook? Because that's advantageous information that can be memorized and playing against someone who knows it is quite different from playing against someone who doesn't.

Your position makes no sense to me. I suppose I could understand if you said "looking through the discard is cheating, because trying to remember everything that's been played is part of the game that everyone is expected to practice, just like formulating good tactics." But to say that card-counting is an unfair tactic outside of the game rules unless the person doing it has an awesome memory (and then it's perfectly fair and justified) sounds silly to me. And if you think that looking through the discard is cheating, then you should say that it's illegal , not "unsportsmanlike."

Should an OL be allowed to discard from their hand in secret?

Seems to me this would allow possible cheating. Because of this cheat potental I think what cards the OL plays and discards should be public knowlage. If this is public knowlage is there a time limit on how long these cards are public?

I must agree on that point... Cards must be revealed as they are discarded for threat, otherwise it leaves the door open for cheating (if you're in a group where that's a concern) or mistake making (if you're an OL like me who occasionally messes up his arithmatic -- I can ace third year university courses in math but screw up basic addition and subtraction ;-D)

I have to put my 2 cents in here as a Hero.

Discards need to be displayed, and the threat count checked, as even the most math oriented person can make mistakes.

Our overlord needs to let us know what cards he's putting in the deck, as he has to pay for them, and everything that costs, needs to be verified.

As for the discard pile, I'm 1/2 and 1/2 on it. We have never tried to look at it, in our year of playing, but I doubt our OL would stop us if we asked. It is a huge time sink though, and I don't think I would promote it. Plus, I KNOW where every card I'm concerned about is.

1) I never meant to imply that discards should be secret. They should be face up at all times. I was only talking about going back through the cards that weren't in immediate view.

2) Once again, I apologize for opening (yet another) can of worms. ::slowly backs away from topic::

For the record, I announce every card I play or discard (for threat or otherwise) as Overlord, as I always thought that's what you were supposed to do. It's not my intention to recommend that others should hide their discards at the moment they're discarded.

Antistone said:

Oof...hard to know where to start, since I'm so obviously stepping all over your toes on this one. First of all, I should probably put more effort into posting a rebuttal to an argument started by a one-liner, but I didn't care to explain myself very much or very clearly because I have other things that I'm ostensibly supposed to be doing (is procrastination ever something that one gets over?).

I see your point that it's pretty silly to assume that knowing the remaining cards will confer some kind of clairvoyance into the OL's hand unless there's very few cards left, and that my point was represented poorly by me and not you in this case; sorry for accusing you of straw mannery. Really, I should have attacked your accusation that by "unsportsmanlike" I meant that I was going to kick people out of my gaming table or any of the other random things you extrapolated from my first line, but I clearly chose poorly because, again, I didn't bother putting effort into posting. At the time, I equated card-counting with seeing the discard pile because the extreme point of card-counting results in no longer needing to see the discard pile; that justification is another logical fallacy and apparently a rather offensive one at that. I apologize for my lack of care: I meant no disrespect by it, I've just been rather busy this weekend.

I guess at this point I should define what I mean by "unsportsmanlike". To me, "unsportsmanlike" refers to the moral gray area of activities that are neither illegal nor classy. I feel that unsportsmanlike behavior is the kind of stuff a competitor could conceivably do in order to attempt to win, and it would definitely help them, but if they did it while competing with their friends, they run the risk of being thought of as a jerk. I'm not going to ban someone for doing something unsportsmanlike, but I definitely will avoid playing with them, because it makes me think of them as dicks. I understand that there's several sports rules that ban what they call "unsportsmanlike conduct", but there's still things that can be done which aren't exactly illegal but aren't exactly nice, such as certain intentional fouling strategies in Basketball. As a final example, it's a **** move for me to invite my friends over to play a fighting game and then train a bunch so that I beat the pants off of them every time, even though it's not strictly "forbidden". There's a whole range of these, and they tend to be the kinds of plays that cause people to whip out the rulebook to see if that's legal or even fair.

So, back to our little argument. No, I'm not going to "tell [you] that it's unsportsmanlike to look at what skill cards the heroes currently have face-up in front of them if [i'm] doing it to decide whether you should buy another combat skill". I'm also not about to do any of the other things you sarcastically posited as my next actions, and the way you painted me in that negative light was both a way to show how ridiculous I was being and also a good example of what I consider to be "unsportsmanlike conduct". If a friend talked to me that way, I'd tell him to go f*ck himself and the horse he rode in on (in the most ironic way possible), to demonstrate that I didn't like the tactics he was using but I have no problem continuing the insult trading as long as we're all kidding. If my friends start sincerely insinuating that I'm ridiculous and casting aspersions on my character, then I'd stop arguing with them because, well, I don't want to play with them if they're going to be such dicks about it (and because apparently I'm in the habit of saying stupid things, but it wouldn't be an analogy if there weren't some way to view it such that the analogy breaks down). When arguing with people who aren't my friends, well, all emotional considerations are off, and my opponent and I are allowed to use anything we want in order to come out on top, as long as we don't break any rules.

Hopefully that's enough explanation on what I mean by unsportsmanlike ( I'm getting bored by it ). Coming back to Descent, it's supposed to be a game of friendly competition. If I don't tell other players what the average damage of a weapon is, it's because I never bothered to learn it (I'm the kind of player that relies on damage ranges to plan my next move). You were right when you said that I didn't want my heroes to card count: I don't, because I don't put any effort into memorizing them myself. When I stressed the advantages of memory-talented or experienced players, I didn't mean that those abilities were fair or justified: I was just trying (and failing) to underscore the such players would have, especiallly at my table due to the relative lack of experience of the players. Personally, I try to exercise as little of my memory as possible, mostly by concentrating on the current situation. Since you reveal your card-counting efforts to the less experienced members of your table, I'm going to assume that you also believe that card counting gives the counter an unfair advantage as long as no one else knows that information. Actually, if I understand you correctly, we have similar beliefs, only I (naively, now that I think about it) believe that experienced players can forget such meta-information whereas you believe that it's best if that information is freely provided.

I still think that trying to figure out and remember what overlord cards have been played is unsportsmanlike, although I realize now that it's actually not a problem to me if the information is shared with everyone. At this point, I'm left with thinking it's more fun if the only known OL cards are the top of the discard pile and the Overlord's hand, but entertainment value isn't really what this conversation is about. I don't find much entertainment in being so ruthless about winning that I start trying to exploit game mechanic information, so I'm going to be biased against card counting, looking at discard piles, and other similar forms of metagaming. However, I'm not so zealous about information lockdown that I want to start banning activities: I just think that card counting is a **** move, especially when I'm playing the OL, y'know? I'm sorry if that means I'm calling you and your friends dicks: I really mean it more as "I consider it the kind of thing that I wouldn't do", because I have somewhat high standards for myself (and because I'm lazy as all hell).

Hopefully, this manages to clarify what I mean and downplay the offensiveness of my words. Antistone, I'd like to point out that you might want to think about taking things a little bit lighter: I understand that it's a big deal when someone is wrong on the internet , but it's hard to relate to your point of view when you pepper your speech with allegations of stupidity, ridiculousness, and incomprehensibility. I mean, my first thought after reading your response to my (inane) comment about metagaming was to try to figure out how to harrass you and rile you up, not take your position as legitimate. Then again, I'm a bona fide jerk, so that might just be me being a ****.

McRae, sorry to have shanghaied this thread with bickering. In my opinion, the answer to your question is that if you let your heroes see your discard pile, it should be on the condition that you get to see it to so that everyone's on the same level about what's left.

Sure , you can have a look at what I discarded... during game.

The card I discarded before game and the Treachery card I didn't buy are secret. Thoses are part of the Overlord tweaking and supposed to be kept unknown to the player until played.

This way you can keep checking my discard pile to see if I already Discarded the Curse of Monkey God... only to discover after game that I didn't put it into the deck at all...

You can actually use players watching the discards to your advantage. I tend to hoard traps, waiting until an opportune moment or playing several in rapid succession. I will occasionally bait players by throwing away a trap but holding onto several more. Players will foolishly think it's safe to open a chest when they see Mimic or Explosive Chest on top of the discard pile.

McRae said:

Talking to people that disagree with you is the only way to learn.

I am trying ot understand your point of view here. If the OL discards should not be secret how long should they be public knowlege?

Allow me a hyperbole here.

Let's assume the OL wants to discard three cards for threat in order to flip over the eyes and make a new spawn. I think we have established that the OL can not pre-stack the three cards out of view and simply put them all in the discard at the same time (this would cause 2 of the three cards to be covered by the top card and thus have been discarded in secret.) So now we must decide how long the other cards must be shown before they can be covered. What if the OL discards them as fast as he can and the first two cards can only be seen for 1/450000 of a second (here is the hyperbole please do not respond that this is impossible.) Would that be considered legal? The discard was not secret per say but the heroes may not have had a chance to see it. I assume you would be against this.

So I am now looking for how you feel the above situation should be handeled fairly.

I am looking for a clear understanding of your position. I am not looking for agreement on what should be allowed.

If you are worried that your opponents would card count you, then make sure you shuffle the discard pile once you run out of cards, as you are supposed to. This eliminates card counting. I don't have a problem with my players looking at my discard pile or even looking at the book but, I don't offer that up. If they ask I let them. Since I have all the expansions, I allow my players to pick their characters, and we ramdomly draw a dungeon from the game or they can pick a dungeon that they lost at in a prevoius game.

We have a lot of fun and we have a 50% average of either side winning everytime.

It really depends on who you play with I guess, I play with my friends and no strangers usually so I am not worried about every intimate detail and neither are they, we are here to play and have fun.

To each his own I guess.

That's one thing I do like in RtL. If you stop mid-dungeon like between say Level 1 and Level 2, you get a whole new discard pile at the start of the next session. Makes card counting really hard to do.

Thundercles: I apologize if I come off as being too adversarial, but please bear in mind that I posted first, and you came in and attacked my play style. Kind of got me on the defensive. Also, if I'm going to argue that your position is ridiculous...you kind of have to be prepared for me to say that your position is ridiculous. I do make an effort to attack only a position or argument and not its proponent, but you need to realize that if someone is debating with you, then it's kind of a given that they're going to paint your position in a negative light. That's kind of a prerequisite; they can't argue against you at all if they're not allowed to do that.

Sir Spanky said:

"Card counting" normally refers to keeping track of which cards have already been revealed (and therefore which are still in the deck), not to remembering the order of cards so that you know when they'll show up again if the deck isn't shuffled properly.

For example, if I see you play two spiked pit traps, then I know that you can't play any more until the deck is reshuffled, because there are only two in the deck; that's card counting, and it works just fine no matter how well you shuffle.

Though I heartily encourage thorough shuffling, too.

Meh, I'm used to Magic: The Gathering, where anyone can look at the entirity of anyone else's graveyard (i.e. discard pile) at any time. Of course, the games aren't the same, but it seemed the easiest way to handle it.

Antistone said: