Descent Road to Legend: Convention Style

By jeff.kahan.1, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hey everyone! I'm looking into the possibility of having an ongoing "convention-long" RTL campaign and am hoping to get some ideas and feedback from all the enthusiasts out there. A couple of premises:

1. While I'm certainly happy to start things off and play a bunch of Descent, I don't want to have to be at the table for the entire convention

2. I figure we'd have scheduled session times, maybe 3 hours long with 1/2 to an hour between sessions. There would be signups for OL and Hero players for each session.

3. At the end of each session, the OL (or designated player) records the current game state at which the next session will begin (will require some additional record sheets etc...)

4. The players at the first session would determine the Avatar, Plot, and Heroes.

5. At the end of the night, I'd probably have to be the one to pack it all up (since we'd be using my set)

6. Include TOI Monsters/Dungeons/Treasures - NO FEATS

Thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestion? (TICS?)

Thanks!

Oboewan said:

Hey everyone! I'm looking into the possibility of having an ongoing "convention-long" RTL campaign and am hoping to get some ideas and feedback from all the enthusiasts out there. A couple of premises:

Thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestion? (TICS?)

I assume 2 days? You'd have no hope of doing anything like a full campaign in one day...

Other than that, I'd suggest running a preplanned series of dungeons, say one at each level (maybe even just the legendary dungeons?), allowing non rtl treasure chest rules (ie 1 or possibly 2 each hero), followed by a final Avatar fight. Allow the heroes a limited amount of upgrades at the end of each dungeon - say 1 skill each (maximum 2 different towns for the 4 heroes), 2 dice upgrades and the level upgrade. Allow the OL to buy 100CT worth of upgrades at the end of each dungeon (or 30 at the end of each level - the lost 10 covers Lts). Just give the Avatar every upgrade he could get.

So, 3 legendary dungeons, each has three levels (one level with each category of Boss monster, but randomise within the three levels for that dungeon) and the 'legendary level. Then an assault on the OL's keep.
That's probably do-able in two heavy days.

Wouldn't you need 60 waking hours of con time to finish the campaign?

Thundercles said:

Wouldn't you need 60 waking hours of con time to finish the campaign?

The Con is 4 days long :-)

I like some of Corbon's ideas. Maybe just do the Delve? Or maybe just do Vanilla Descent WoD dungeons with Feats?

I suggest just pre-picking the avatar, plot, characters, etc.

That would save a ton of set up time. You could have all the pieces set up and more importantly, you could have all the cards/pieces you aren't using put away.

Why not just "start" the campaign at Gold Level, like how the Rules say you can? Then you can finish in maybe one day?

-shnar

Echoing sithbunny36, I think you could save a lot of time if you pre-choose the Avatar, Plot and Heroes. Only the first group of players would get to choose the heroes anyway so you do not lose much from the overall experience.

For the purposes of time, I agree with shnar - you might consider starting at a higher campaign level. I would probably go with Silver, so you can keep some more advancement strategy in the game. With this approach, you might consider taking care of the initial item and skill purchases beforehand, again in the interests of time. That way, your first group can get right to the game. You lose some early customization, but again, only the first group would get to do all of that anyway and the pre-game set-up can take quite awhile if starting from Silver or Gold.

I'll guess the sessions would end once the group feels they have had enough and at the end of a week. In the case where one group finishes up a dungeon, I would defer the decision to return to Tamalir to the next group since they will be playing with those characters next and may want to buy items or train in the city. Alternately, you might consider a house rule which allows each new group to remain in the same spot on the overland map but train/visit as if they were in Tamalir, but at the cost of additional conquest for the OL. That might give people a little more options with the heroes they will end up using.

It would also be cool if you managed to find a way to summarize the overall "story" of the campaign at the end, so people could stop by and see whether the heroes ultimately triumphed against evil, or failed miserably. I know I'd be interested in how my group fared after we turned the reigns over to another group of people! If you do find a way to do this, post the summary up here or on BGG too for us! :)

I also suggest hand-picking the people you want to play with from those interested, not just taking the first four who come across.