Spawning rules:

Can the Overlord spawn creatures in areas that the heroes have completely cleared?

This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me if Descent is supposed to be somewhat of a tactical dungeon crawling game. It would seem to force the heroes to spread out as much as possible so that line of sight covers as much of a dungeon map as possible which completely goes against any real world tactical logic and the spirit of nearly every paper and pencil role playing and computer role playing / dungeon hacks I've ever seen.

Are we correct in reading that an area can never really be cleared and that the best idea would be for heroes to all spread out and tackle dungeon rooms / areas all by themselves? Movement rules don't appear to let heroes create much of a human wall factor so this doesn't make much sense to me.

We are just playing with the stock set at the moment and don't yet have the expansions.

Thanks!

MadMikigan said:

Yes, he can. It doesnt matter if you've cleared an area... if you dont have some hero (or boggs) with line of site to a revealed space, then the OL can spawn there. The dilemma you pose is one of the challenging aspects of the game. You have to find the right balance of spreading out to maintain sight lines, with concentrating your firepower to clear areas or monsters.

I would suggest not tackling rooms w one hero by himself. Concentrate fire as much as you can, since a dead monster is one less thing that can hurt you... but you do want to keep an eye on sight lines, and not allow a situation where an OL could spawn in a corner, then in the same turn reach a squishy hero and kill him.

MadMikigan said:

What Poobaloo said.
What you appear to be missing is that this is not a random mindless dungeon hack. There is a mission. Focus on the mission, that is what makes it tactical. You win by succeeding in the mission. You do not win by killing shedloads of monsters. The monsters will take care of each other if you fulfill your mission. I

It is in fact possible (though exceedingly unlikely) to fulfill some missions without killing a single monster. We played one that could have worked like that on Saturday (from AoD expansion).

Corbon said:

So every computer rpg and dungeon crawl that is different than this is mindless? It just doesn't seem to make much sense that an area can't be cleared and that the second after a space in a room behind a party becomes non LOS, things can appear without some clear spawn alter, portal, or some cool fantasy mechanism that would need to be obviously destroyed to stop it.

Movement seems to have issues as well as melee battle tank type characters can't form human walls to stop the flow of monsters (so that the ranged characters can hang back and not get bull rushed by monsters who could devastate them at no range) as long as there is a sliver of a diagonal line that the monster could/can become two dimensional and squeeze through between two open spaces.

I could see friendly forces allowing that event, because they would 'permit' them to pass. But why enemy forces can doesn't make a lot of sense.

Could you shed light on any non mindless dungeon hack computer or board game that is as tactical that allows this? I can't think of any. That is why I think these are not necessarily intuitive.

Thanks!

MadMikigan said:

Well, simply wandering about killing everything that moves is pretty mindless IMO, yes. Descent isn't like that. It is not a dungeon hack! You have a mission . Do the mission, ignore everything else. If you get sidetracked from the mission and try to clear the dungeon instead you will lose. That is intentional.

Why shouldn't the monsters have hidden passages, concealed rooms, unknown powers that let them appear from anywhere? Its a dark, dank, unknown, infested dungeon not a brightly lit, immaculately maintained, eat-from-the-floor clean jaunt through a playground. The heroes aren't in the dungeon carefully clearing each room, swabbing down the floors and walls afterward, hanging paintings, setting perma-burning torches, laying the china on the table ready for the next guest, then moving forward to clear the next area. They are creeping through dark, smelly, damp, rotting corridors by the light of flickering torches with unfathomable noises all around them in the dark, monsters bursting out from around every corner, in front as well as behind. They are only in this miserable, unpleasant, dangerous place, because there is something that needs doing and they are the ones to do it. Like any smart hero they would far rather be back at the pub. So get in, do the mission, get out. Let the beastmen kill each other!

You can swing an axe in one space width. So a space is what, 2-4 metres square? So a 2 space corridor is 4-8 metres wide. 2 guys are gonna form a shield wall to block that? Well, actually they can ! But they have to do it right, side by side, not stand one up, one back, on opposite sides of the corridor.
there is no 'squeezing into 2 dimensions to fit between spaces. There is an acknowledgement that heroes and even obstacles are not perfectly square and do not take up all the space in a space. There is also an acknowledgement that it is simpler, and easier to resolve, to count an entire space as the same thing for most LOS purposes (as though figures and obstacles were large and square, perfectly filling the space) even though it is not. Thus there is no need for an ASL style piece of string for LOS, no arguments about figure A being flattened against the edge of this space, so figure B can see past it and shoot figure C. KISS and it works, well.

Remember to, that it is a boardgame. Things are representative. Rules have to be (relatively) simple, and easily resolved.

There are a few things in Descent that make no sense at all, but most things make perfect sense if you can look at them the right way. Just because the first way someone looks at them doesn't fit, does not make those things 'wrong'.

Put simply and to try and clear the air here, you've made Descent newbie mistake number one: This is not your typical dungeon crawl game.

Other games have had non-safe/clearable dungeons before (Warhammer Quest anyone?), so this is not something new.

In fact, the fact that in pen & paper AD&D-style RPGs dungeons stay cleared is one of the oft mooted criticisms of that genre anongst the RPG intelegensia.

Facts: If you play Descent as a "standard dungeon bash" you will loose - it requires new tactics.

The scenarios in the basic game will teach you these tactics. Play the first scenario over and over again until the heroes win. Then move on to the second, and so on.

Once you've finished the lot, you'll have mastered the basic tactics of the game.

I didn't like Descent when I first tried it as I, like you, was thinking in traditional dungeon bash terms. Once I understood the above though, I found it to be an amazingly challenging and enjoyable game.

It's actually pretty simple to imagine. These creatures aren't "magically" spawning, they are crawling into the dungeon through cracks in the walls, secret passages, etc. They don't want to reveal their secrets to the Heroes, so they do it outside LOS. Also, they could just be hanging out, rushing to the scene of the attack from elsewhere in the dungeon and the mechanic for that is that they don't "appear" until they are "spawned".

IMHO, it makes more sense than most Computer RPGs, since why would "clearing" an area mean it should stay clear? There could and should be creatures coming in from all areas, and clearing an area shoud NOT guarentee it being empty forever. (Oblivion did a good job at this, areas 'back-filling' often).

-shnar

I agree with most of the replies here. But just let me state, my first guess is your playing the heroes not the OL and second suggestion...where would the OL spawn if you can't spawn in so called "clear areas"...hmmm?!...you would be deep in the dungeon in the 3rd room line of sight everywhere and no places to spawn cause you "cleared" the last 2 rooms... if you want it like that...call it a cooperative game and just bash monsters as they spawn on the map.

The OL as far as the rules go can spawn behind a piece of ruble that no one has loss on, and then smack the heroes in the head...and if you need theme with that let me just say...are the heroes in rpgs the only ones that hide and ambush ?!

Schrodinger's monsters both are and are not lurking in the shadows, until the superposition is collapsed when the heroes gain LoS or the overlord plays a spawn card.

Slev said:

Fair enough, the game is what it is but having no mechanism at all of sealing off a door/corridor (door spike, magic spell, pile up a bunch of bodies) seems counter intuitive. Seems best that the heroes just run to the goals and just take every blow along the way then in Descent.

I wasn't able to afford Warhammer Quest when that came out long ago (though I wish I could), were there any others that had impossible to clear, make safe, any single area games? I played a lot of the crawlers and lots of tactical games and the ability to wall off or at least slow down a force coming from a specific direction was in all of them.

Playing the first scenario enough times to understand the counterintuitiveness appears to be the play. Good call on that one. We'll have to do just that.

Thanks!

I wouldnt say Descent is counter-intuitive... like any game, it has its learning curve. Having grown up on D&D, I wouldnt say D&D was any more intuitive, nor more of a "dungeon hack". In D&D you likewise had goals, the sole goal not being that of simply clearing a room. Even games like Gauntlet (remember those?) did not pay off if you spent your quarters trying to kill every monster and spawning portal. The goal was to get to the next warpey thingey, and so that's what you tried to do. Playing strictly to clear everything and seal off a room isnt intuitive, it's having only one strategy - and a mediocre one, at that. Playing Descent is quite intuitive once you focus on how to best meet the goals.