I've just written this in another thread, but though it warrants it's own. Do we know, or do we have any theories on where the emphasis of 2ed lies? Is it in the standalone, one of games/maps, that seemed to be where 1ed had it's loyalties, or do we think it's in the campaign side?

For me, Descent was ALL about the campaign. Recurring characters, increasing of power levels, smaller dungeons playable in less than 3 hours - all of these were a massive draw. If we wanted to play a one of Descent game for an evening, we could easily recreate a 'dungeon' from the campaign game, with three levels drawn from the available ones.

I really hope the campaign is more robust, and clearly where they want the game to go. I'd be interested to hear if there are people out there that do not and never intend to play the campaign varient...

I enjoyed the campaign mode in 1e, although at the end of the day I always found myself going back to vanilla. However, that's not because I disliked the idea of campaign mode, more because vanilla was how the game was originally made to work. I disliked how the campaign basically just stretched out the acquisition of gear to make the game longer.

In 2e, I look forward to seeing a game engine that was built with campaign mode in mind from the ground up. I expect it will be a much smoother experience that way.

As far as what we know; we know campaign mode will be int he base box. We know it will involve many "convenient stopping points." We know it will include chaining together smaller quests into a longer game experience and that there will some plot elements that change depending on whether or not the heroes complete specific objectives within a given quest. All-in-all, it sounds like a much more theme-heavy game (that will hopefully still include a significant crunch factor for those who enjoyed Descent as a tactical combat experience.)

The idea of chaining together smaller quests seems like the ideal compromise between vanilla and AC to me. Those who want to play a long, multi-session campaign can do so by simply keeping the same heroes and tracking past objectives. Play for as long as you like in a session. Those who don't have the time or patience for a longer game can just play one or two quests at a single sitting and then start over next time. All in all, sounds pretty good to me.

It seems to have a campaign mode built in. If you look at the images it even has Runebound-style skill challenges in what appear to be branching story-line cards. Also notice that like Road to Legend there are outdoor regions on the backs of some of the tiles.

Awesome, really glad to read this, and it's exactly what I was hoping for.

Really looking forward to seeing what they do with this. It's the game I am most looking forward to at the moment. The one thing I really hope they do is address the variety of monsters in each dungeon, and the frequency of certain ones turning up. As I may have mentioned before, but I'd like to see monsters given a points value, or tier systemm rather than just '4 skeletons and 1 sorceror', so the overlord can determine which creatures appear, and can also 'theme' levels to have a certain feel (i.e. lots of undead, lots of spiders etc). A spawn card that said 'Spawn two 'tier 2' creatures and one 'tier 3'' or something similiar would be easy enough, and stops the crazy combinations we get at the moment, AND means new monsters easily fit in...

Alas, I suspect this is too late already...

Sausageman said:

I doubt they'd go for an abstract tier system for the spawns, personally, although I sincerely hope they've cooked up SOME way to use "expansion" monsters on a more regular basis, otherwise all the monster stat cards in the conversion kit will be mostly for naught.

Yeah I'd like something like that to. Maybe if a tier system is too abstract a point system might be nice. Like spawn 8 points worth of monsters and each monster had a value.

Kartigan said:

This (or the tiers ) is exactly what's needed. At worst, they might bring in a Rune Wars: Banners of War 'figure replacement' scheme, but I don't think that's good enough for the volume of creatures we're talking about...

This is a text on a travel event card (I call it travel event card):

"The overlord chooses 1 of his monster groups for the quest, then makes an attack with each monster of that group,....."

So, the overlord seems to have something like different monster groups. So it's theoretically possible to have the first edition monsters included in a group.

Just speculation...

Philipopotamus said:

Makes sense. The conversion kit would probably include "monster group cards" (for lack of an official term) that use the monsters from 1e. Hopefully organized into logical groupings, but time will tell. I'm guessing each "encounter" in a given "adventure" will get at least one monster group, thus allowing the OL to spawn prebuilt sets of monsters from among whatever he has available for any given encounter while playing.

All speculation, of course, but it does track with the sort of improvement I would expect FFG to come up with considering the criticism 1e took for not really using expansion monsters outside the expansion they came in. This sounds like it should do the trick quite nicely. And if certain players are unhappy with the groupings FFG gives them (because they don't think skeletons and beastmen should roll together, or something), then it should be simplicity itself to come up with homebrew groupings that match the player's desires.

I'm guessing such groups will replace standard spawning (since I seem to recall hearing that spawning as we knew it was out.) In theory, this means each monster group should (hopefully) be balanced to put up a fight against a standard hero party, thus dealing with spawning and scaling in one fell swoop.

(If my speculations are anywhere near correct, of course =P)

Steve-O said:

So so we think we're gonna get groups ala the campaign (Beasts, Eldritch, Humanoid), by 'power level', or both?

Like you say, pure speculation, but an interesting topic, and nice to see that it looks like FFG have given it consideration.

Sausageman said:

Well, personally I'm hoping that the focus is on making sure each monster group can put up a decent fight against a party of heroes. Whether they're stratified in categories or different power levels is less important to me. I don't know if 2e will maintain the gear tiers (copper, silver, gold), but if it does then ranking monster groups by a similar scheme seems the most straightforward way.

Personally I'm hoping they've cooked up something a little more organic for gear this time around, but that remains to be seen.

Steve-O said:

Maybe it's just me, but I'd quite like to see 'spells' this time, too. In 1ed, a 'mage' was anyone that picked up and used a rune...

Sausageman said:

Spellbooks do exist (according to Runebound) in some parts of the world. Personally I've always found the concept of rune magic as a standard practice to be something that sets Terrinoth apart from other fantasy settings.

For what it's worth, not just anyone can pick up a runestone and make it do magic. You have to be trained, and the Rune Keepers seems to have a pretty tight grasp on the tutelage of rune magic in Terrinoth. It's possible to figure it out yourself (Runewitch Astarra is apparently self-taught, according to her RB fluff text) but it doesn't sound like it's too easy that way. You either need to be really, really smart or have a natural inclination to magic.

I realize that Descent doesn't have any rules to prevent melee heroes from using rune stones, but I prefer to think of that as them not wanting to add extra restrictions for no good reason. Thematically, a tank character MIGHT have some training or some natural talent. It's one of those things that CAN be explained if it needs to be. The fluff seems pretty clear on the idea that most people who use runestones get trained how to do so.

Steve-O said:

Well, perhaps we will see restrictions like this in the future - and not just for rune weapons. The two-handed flail that you 'must have in melee to use, or the magical bow that you must have in ranged and in magic to use, etc. Like you say, they may have doe this so not to bombard us with restrictions, but I see this as a way to bring in more powerful items that the heroes need to work at to be able to use. And thematically, it makes sense to me too...

Truth be told though, it's only really the magic side that bothers me. I can't really think of anything tangible that seperates a mage from any other character type. I guess you could argue that their inherant abilities do this, but I guess I'd like to see things that can only be used by heroes with certain proficiences. And hell, now they've brought in classes, who's to say there won't be...

Sausageman said:

I think that would be cool. Might even give the split heroes (and in particular, the "jacks of all trades" heroes) some "raison d'etre." Would also give heroes a reason to at least consider training traits other than their best.

Sausageman said:

well, mages have a tendency to have more area effect and special effects attached to their weapons, while archers mostly just do lots of damage to a single target. But I concede that's a subtle (and not entirely consistent) difference. Mages are still mostly "Archers+" when it comes to party composition. I suppose archers also have (at least theoretically) the ability to wear slightly heavier armor since they don't need to worry about not having runes. Still, your point is well taken, and a little more diversity can only do the game good.

I'm still hoping that FFG will surprise with optional co-op rules out of the box.

Ebonsword said:

What exactly do you mean...like a D&D automated encounter deck that circumvents the need for an overlord?

Pete C said:

Sacrilege!

Pete C said:

Well, hopefully better than the way that the D&D games do it, but, yeah, something like that.

In my opinion, no amount of cunning on the part of a game designer would be able to replace a human overlord with an AI system.

Descent is a game about one evil overlord player against a group of hero players.

I would not be against an optional, card driven AI for those that like it, as long as that would not affect the design of other parts of the game.

OPTIONAL, mind you.

Mestre dos Magos said:

100% agree, and something I've said previously. Only a human can intentionally awkwardly throw a block trap down to make it impossible for a character to reach their destination with the amount of movement points they have left. Only a human will ignore the heavily armoured, heavily wounded character in favour of the unwounded, but armour 1 character, as they know, efficiently speaking, they will inflict more damage. Etc etc etc

Basically, if you want a co-op, all vs the game arrangement, why not play Gears of War of the D&D game? Descent is harking back to the old Heroquest type of game, where one person was the evil Wizard/GM/Overlord, and everyone else rallied together to defeat him. Changing this fundemantally alters Descent to a different game...

In my opinion.

Oh, and reading earlier posts in this thread, apparently I can't type. Nearly everytime I said 'of' I meant 'off'. And there's the odd 'so' instead of 'do'... Honestly, for a native English speaking, that's p*ss poor...

Sausageman said:

My two cents on this issue... you can solo Descent, playing both the Overlord and the Heroes. It's a complete different experience, clearly, but if you're fair with your choices and try to act honestly, you can still have a great time. This is a very important step if you need to playtest some Scenarios, or want to try some fixes for the existing ones (for my personal taste, almost all Scenarios published in the core set - not talking about expansions, I still have to try them - are kinda easy). So, no AI needed, just some patience and being fair with your choices :-)