This thread is for helping provide FFG with product lines that you'd be willing to purchase to enhance your Descent 2e experience. As the list grows I'll try to recompile the list into this first post for easy reference.

• Extra dice packs - This one seems to be one of the top and I know that my play groups wouldn't mind having their own dice to add to their die collections.
• Figure packs - This one comes from a number of different forums and there are a large number of people wishing they could get more monsters to paint, add to their other games, or simply just have more of for homebrewing
• Painting books - The heroes are all depicted with some pretty good art. A book or two with ideas for how to paint our figs for 2e would be helpful, especially if we can buy more figs and paint them specific to certain things.

I've heard people tossing around the idea of borrowing from your LCG strategy and releasing content in quarterly cycles and maybe even monthly, would people be on board for that?

I personally wouldn't mind smaller expansions for Descent components. Maybe a pack with 4-8 new heroes and their cards, or a box for a new monster type with enough figures for 1 group. You could release a new class from time to time, which really only needs to include the class cards so that could be PoD. And every so often a new quest campaign, with a quest booklet, some new equipment or relic cards, and stats/tokens for new lieutenants.

The problem would be distribution - packaging and distributing a half-dozen little items is a lot more complex and expensive than 1 box, so I don't see FFG going this route unless Descent 2e suddenly gets hugely popular.

I'd mostly be interested in new campaigns. These could come in two versions. One might be a POD expansion with a quest guide (perhaps a smaller version than the one included in the base game) and a few tokens and cards. The other would be a more traditional expansion with some new tiles, new cards, new heroes, new monsters, and a new quest guide.

If, for any reason, the POD expansions can't include a quest guide, there could still be POD expansions which feature new skill cards and Overlord cards. These could even introduce new archetypes for the classes (so could the more traditional expansions, obviously).

lorddax said:

Well, I'm sure you would if FFG's forum software allowed you to edit posts after longer than 5 minutes. But I digress.

As far as what I'd like to see for new content, the big thing is more quests and campaigns. That could theoretically be done POD (or PDF-published) as long as said quests/campaigns can be built with the base game box. Knowing FFG, though, I suspect they'll want to put out more bits for new content, and I'm not exactly opposed to that, either.

New heroes I'm really ambivalent about. With the conversion kit, I'll have more than enough heroes and monsters to keep things interesting. I'm not opposed to more, of course, but I don't really need them either. New classes and the decks to go with them would be interesting, though. Whether said classes become new options for the existing archetypes or the basis of new archetypes, I'm cool either way. I think I'd rather see them as new options for the four existing archetypes, though, otherwise the pool of heroes who can use them will be limited to whatever new heroes come out alongside them, and that would start in on the old "expansion material that almost never gets seen outside that expansion" business again. I think the four archetypes they made do a fairly good job of covering the bases for any new class ideas. Warrior, Mage, Healer, Scout… I'm sure more could be brainstormed if they really wanted to, but I'm not convinced that more are needed.

I do, however, want to see said new material properly designed and tested. If that means waiting a year, two years, or even longer to see an expansion come out, then so be it. I would rather have a few well-made expansions than a buttload of crappy ones.

Edit: Another thing I'd be interested to see is how extensible the campaign power levels could be. The optional rules provided in the rulebook seem to allow for any one-shot quest to be played at "basic", "mid-Act I" or "mid-Act II" power levels. Assuming the quests are properly balanced at each level (and that is an assumption I am making - time will tell if it is correct) then I wonder how easy it would be to throw new power levels on top of those.

The advantage of doing this would be that they could make a new expansion with a campaign that is designed so it can be played "fresh" (start with basic equipment and level up through Act I/II) or it could be played "after the base campaign" (start with heroes who have completed the base camapign and power up through Act III/IV, for example.) The disadvantage would be that they'd need to put out a whole new set of monster cards for all the monsters (theoretically including 1e monsters.) How easy this whole thing would be to balance also somewhat depends on how linear the advancement math is. I think it would be a cool idea to play around with, though.

Steve-O said:

It is not possible to EMPHASIZE this statement enough … I do not want a repeat of Descent V1 expansions such as RTL and SOB that seemed to be put out without regard to play testing with all of the previous expansions / monsters / card combinations, etc. As Steve-O said, I would rather wait a year or longer for a well thought out, tested expansion, than get one that ends up just generating 40 pages of FAQs and errata …

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the design goals of 2e's streamlining was to allow easier content turn around. I'd happily buy one off monster pools each quarter for homebrewing that were leading up to a campaign pack that you could buy boxed or piecemeal, with a full expand every other year.

A cycle of new hero cards on a quarterly schedule with a new skill & item would also get my money.

Any print on demand stuff would be great or even a "play test" program kind of like a public test realm that mmos have.

I would like to see campaign books. No additional components necessarily, just more stories with the existing components. Maybe a campaign usable with the base set and another with base set + conversion set.

Steve-O said:

I completely agree with all this. Adding another class within each archetype would definitely be my preferred method of adding new stuff for the heroes. Hell, with a couple of minutes thought, I can come up with 1 or 2 for each one already, I'm sure FFG can do as good a job at worst.

I'd like to see campaigns move into a more epic level too. Acts III/IV (or beyond), with much harder monsters, bigger maps with tougher objectives, and 'uber' powers for the heroes. The 'Epic Level' stuff like they did for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I really enjoyed our Gold level campaign in RtL where the heroes were nails, and the monsters couldn't be underestimated either.

And an aside from this, I'd like a bit for 'city' detail. I'd even go as far to say city map sections wouldn't go amiss. I can see them being used a fair bit in the story driven campaign. I know it's 'Journeys in the Dark', but there's only so much 'in the dark' they can add before they need to come out the other side

Or maybe they need an underworld theme at some point… They dug too far I jest

Sausageman said:

The tiers of campaign are a good idea I think, kind of like how WoTC pushes out the adventure series for Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers of heroes, I could see FFG doing a similar thing in Descent. You could even look at the base set campaign as mostly "Heroic" tier with some lead in to the next tier if you use the WoTC examples of adventures:

Heroic: The fate of a village might hang on the success or failure of heroic tier adventurers, to say nothing of the characters’ own lives. Heroic characters navigate dangerous terrain and explore haunted crypts, where they can expect to fight savage orcs, ferocious wolves, giant spiders, evil cultists, bloodthirsty ghouls, and shadarkai assassins. If they face a dragon, it’s a young one that might still be searching for a lair and has not yet found its place in the world—in other words, much like themselves.

Paragon: The fate of a nation or even the world might depend on momentous quests that such characters undertake. Paragon-level adventurers explore uncharted regions and delve long-forgotten dungeons, where they confront savage giants, ferocious hydras, fearless golems, evil yuan-ti, bloodthirsty vampires, crafty mind flayers, and drow assassins. They might face a powerful adult dragon that has established a lair and a role in the world.

Epic: Epic adventures have far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions—in the natural world and even places beyond. Epic characters traverse otherworldly realms and explore never-before-seen caverns of wonder, where they fight savage balor demons, abominations such as the ferocious tarrasque, mind flayer masterminds, terrible archdevils, bloodthirsty lich archmages, and even the gods themselves. The dragons they encounter are ancient wyrms of truly earth-shaking power, whose sleep troubles kingdoms and whose waking threatens existence.

As far as alternate tiles, I would buy those in a heartbeat for homebrewing, even faster if they came with extra quests either standalone or campaign alternates!

Some things I'd like to see:

I'm going to re-add the idea for a miniatures pack for just the 1E monsters and heroes. Preferably they should be split up based on what expansion they came from; so a "Base Game" minis pack, a "Well of Darkness" minis pack, and so on. They don't need to contain as many miniatures as the 1E version of the game came with, either; only enough to meet the 2E group limits (plus some extra minion kobolds, since the masters spawn more when they die and get to ignore the group limit).

I wouldn't mind a campaign book that retells the 1E missions in campaign form. Not an exact replica of the 1E quests, but remakes of them with similar themes. They don't even need to be as long as the 2E campaign, just something that would last for one "act" instead of two.

New classes would be awesome. New heroes to go along with them (sorta like how each of the 2E heroes each match one of the classes) would be cool, too. They don't need to add new archetypes, either; pretty much any class you can imagine could fit into one of the four general roles they had (and adding new archetypes would kinda mess things up with the conversion kit, since none of the heroes there get to be used with that class). They could also add "multi-archetype" classes; a Battlemage class could be both Warrior and Mage archetypes, and either one could play it, for instance.

I'd also like if they release campaign books that are just sold as books, not a regular expansion. That's not to say I don't want 2E expansions with more bits, of course, but I can imagine a lot of stuff done with just the base game components (although new lieutenant cards and stats might be necessary).

I'm not sure if adding an Act 3 to the game would be good though, as it would mean either releasing an all-new conversion kit that has just the act 3 versions of the monsters, including act 3 versions of all 1E figures in the new game, or just making it impossible to use 1E figures after act 2.

FFG - Take my money!!

I for one want Extra dice set,

After three games, I want my own Dice!!

LinkN said:

Yeah, that's probably the biggest drawback to the idea of creating higher "Acts." I'm guessing they wouldn't want to put such 1e monster cards in the official expansion that created the higher Acts, and successive "Conversion Kit Upgrade Packs" would just get annoying really fast. As a POD, it might be manageable, but it'll still be a headache to maintain 1e monsters in this manner.

Steve-O said:

I have to agree that adding more classes instead of archetypes would be the wiser (and easier) approach.

Adding "epic" tiers can easily just turn into nothing more than massive amounts of dice being rolled at once from my experience. I like the idea of themed expansions (like the Underworld one mentioned earlier). There are plenty of mythologies in the world to draw from, too. A co-op involving FFG & AEG to do Descent: Legend of the Five Rings would be incredible I think and not at all something out of left field.

JSM3050 said:

Seems unlikely, since AEG also has its own dungeon adventure game (Tomb), which they have crossed over with L5R. Companies tend to not like competing with themselves.

taleswapper said:

This. I can't wait to see what kind of campaign boxes they come up for this game, but I can wait for play testing first.