hi there,

I am thinking about picking this game up. I've enjoyed Runebound and see that this is in the same genre. However, my group and I are big fans of the old Warhammer Quest game, which was Co-op with no GM necessary. I have not seen anything to indicate that this game does not require one. I have not read the rules for this game, but I did see that it requires an "Overlord" which I assume is the same things as a GameMaster. Are there rules out there for a variant for Solo or Co-op play for this game? Are dungeons planned out or random generation?

There may be some variant out there that allows for co-op play, however no instructions are included in the game to support it. When compared to other games, one thing that is hard for some groups to get past is that the overlord is actually trying to kill the heroes. In other words, the overlord player is a team of his own and wins the game by killing heroes. If your group is used to games like D&D where the one player serves more as a storyteller, then this might not be the right game.

A quick count on the BGG Descent Variant Subforum yielded over half a dozen threads in the first page about solo and/or co-op variants. It seems like it's the problem that everyone wants to solve, which probably means there's no existing solution good enough to gain widespread acceptance. There's certainly no lack of ideas you could try, but the game doesn't particularly lend itself to that sort of play. Out-strategizing the enemy team is a major gameplay component, and there's just no way to preserve that without some kind of intelligence in the OL chair.