A Former Role Player’s Descent Into The Dark

After spending several years in the board gaming community, I’ve noticed that certain games tend to attract players with similar gaming backgrounds. Said differently, there seems to be a few specific entry points or “gateways” into the board gaming hobby that essentially define a genre or style of game. If you enjoy a certain “gateway” game, it is likely that you will also enjoy the games that were inspired by that gateway. For example, my favorite game of all time is Diplomacy, a multi-player war game that features heavy negotiation. Because I enjoy this genre of game, it is likely that I’ll enjoy other multi-player war games that feature heavy negotiation. Obviously this isn’t always true, but amongst hobby gamers there does seem to be a tendency for them to enjoy games with similar themes and mechanics.

In my experience, a very common entry into the hobby comes not from another board game, but a different type of game entirely; role playing games. My experience has been that players who have played (or even dabbled with) role playing games in their past are far more likely to enjoy specific types of games (such as theme heavy strategy games or miniature games) than players that have never been exposed to or enjoyed role playing games. The only explanation that I can come up with for this tendency is that role playing games are actually a gathering of several mechanics, some of which can be removed and enjoyed on their own.

To me, this is a fantastic way to describe what Fantasy Flight Games has attempted to do with Descent. The game focuses almost entirely on the tactical combat aspects of a role playing game and ignores just about everything else. Having dabbled with role playing games in high school and college, I was a both intrigued and concerned by this. I’ve wanted to try the game for a couple of years now and finally had the chance over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I’ve tried to list my impressions below.

Please note that despite these impressions being based on a single weekend of play, I’ve tried to be quite thorough in my description of the game. I am not only listing my impressions, but am providing my opinions on many of the game’s rules and mechanics as well. If you aren’t interested in reading my impressions of the mechanics and just want to see my overall impressions, please skip to the end of this article. If you are interested in more detailed impressions, feel free to continue reading below:


The Descent Box

Background:

Before I begin with my impressions of Descent, I think it’s important that I admit a negative bias towards role playing games in general. While I have had a few positive experiences with role playing games in the past, these experiences were unfortunately an exception rather than the norm. In general, I consider role playing games to be unnecessarily complicated, time consuming, and I haven’t enjoyed playing with any player outside my old gaming group. I just don’t fit in with the typical role player anymore. In particular, I’ve grown weary of how seriously most role playing gamers take their games and the fantasy/sci-fi themes that role playing games typically focus on. Perhaps it’s just the result of getting older, but to me games should be more about spending time together with family and friends than anything else. Any game that puts more of an emphasis on theme than on player interaction has an automatic strike against it. Descent’s theme borders dangerously close to “fantasy that takes itself too seriously” so I had some real concerns going into my first game.

If you are a player that plays role playing games on a regular basis at a game store, school, or even on your computer it is important that you realize I am part of a different gaming demographic. I guess I’m a bit more casual a gamer than I once was. That being said, I do think that because of my role playing past I am more likely to enjoy a game like Descent than a player with a background in other game styles such as word games or abstracts. Keep this in mind as you read the remainder of my impressions.

Quality of components:

Descent has some of the best components available in any game on the market. My only real complaint about the game is its overall visual style. The board is made of puzzle pieces and uses little 3D doors and plastic miniatures so the components look pretty “toy like.” The color palate and art on the other hand is very dark and serious looking. It’s almost looks like someone was trying to say “Hey teenage boys! It’s OK to play with this toy because it’s dark, moody, and has giant demons in it!” Come to think of it, the art reminds me a lot of the old He-Man cartoons that I wasn’t supposed to be watching when I was a kid. I can’t tell if the artists want me to take the game seriously or not (I chose to not take it seriously and think I had a lot more fun because of it). Personally, I’d rather have seen a visual style more along the lines of BattleLore or the old Heroes of Might and Magic computer games so that it was more obvious that this was just a fun romp through a dungeon and not epic fantasy that people are supposed to take seriously. That’s just a nitpick though. The quality of the components is fantastic and I don’t think anyone will have any serious complaints about them.

Descent is introduced to players through a very attractive full color rulebook. I really wish that the game’s board had the same bright and fantastic look depicted on the rulebook’s cover and in the very stylized art scattered throughout the rules themselves. This art screams “this is a game, have fun!” and helps to put players in the right frame of mind to enjoy the board game. It has an attractive layout, is easy to read, and seems sturdy enough to last through repeat reads (which unfortunately, you’ll probably need to do a lot of at first).

The game’s “board” is actually a series of puzzle like tiles that can be attached together in a variety of ways. The tiles have a several shapes such as hallways, chambers, pits, magic glyphs, treasure chests, and all the other assorted items one would expect in a game with a role playing theme. All of these pieces have a “grid” of squares on them representing the spaces that the various heroes and dungeon denizens can move each turn. All of these components allow players to create unique “dungeon maps” that are different each time that you play. The pieces themselves are well constructed and despite their rather muted color palate (that doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the game’s art), they don’t look bad. The pieces seem sturdy and are actually kind of fun to assemble. If you are following one of the scenarios included in the game, I’d strongly recommend purchasing some sort of tackle box or plastic dividers for your game pieces. It can be a bit difficult to tell the difference between some of the pieces if they aren’t separated first. Overall, it’s pretty quick to set up. I think we managed to set up our first dungeon in about 15 minutes.

The “Puzzle Like” Map Tiles

Like most Fantasy Flight Games products, Descent also includes a ton of full sized playing cards that are used to represent everything from a player character’s fantastic abilities and magical items to the evil Overlord’s traps and henchmen. These cards are sturdy and have a nice visual style. The cards in a few Days of Wonder’s games are of higher quality than Descent’s cards, but that is probably the only company I’ve purchased from that offers games with better cards.

Besides the tiles to construct the custom game’s “dungeon maps”, the primary components in Descent are the 80 plastic miniatures that come with the game. The miniatures are scaled quite nicely with human figures and small enemies (like skeletons) standing about an inch or two in size while the larger creatures like Demons and Giants are almost triple or even quadruple the size of the human figures. The sculpts of the miniatures are pretty detailed for their size and almost beg to be painted (unfortunately I hate painting, so that won’t happen). They aren’t the same quality as what one might find in a miniatures game such as Warhammer, but when compared to other similar games they are of similar if not higher quality (for example, they are better looking in my opinion than what one finds in BattleLore).

On the downside, the plastic is very shiny. I know it’s a pretty silly gripe, but the shiny plastic is one of the main reasons the game has such a high “toy” look. If the plastic was more muted, or if the miniatures were painted, the miniatures might look a bit more like they were from a miniatures game instead of a child’s toy box. Overall though, the miniatures are highly functional, easily identifiable, and a lot of fun use.

Descent also comes with a full color Quest Guide that shows you how to set up the various dungeons and quests that the game ships with, gives you access to a free online quest editor (although I can’t seem to locate this on the newly redesigned Fantasy Flight Games website), 20 different stat cards for the game’s Heroes, and a ton of the various health and stamina markers, templates, familiar tokens, and various other sundry items associated with the bookkeeping elements of the game.

Overall, the quality of the components is amongst the highest of any game that I have played. Despite my preference for a slightly more consistent artistic style and less of a “toy” appearance to the game, it’s still an attractive game that seems sturdy enough to last through years of play.

Gameplay:


Heroes Explore One Room Of The Dungeon At A Time

Compared to most role playing games (and even to most miniatures games), Descent’s gameplay is pretty simple. The core mechanics of the game can probably be learned by most players in less than 15 minutes, particularly if they have experience with computer or pen and paper role playing games. The game’s 24 page rulebook does a pretty good job of explaining the rules, although there are still a few annoying rules exceptions that need to be referenced and it’s not always obvious where in the rulebook to find the answers. You’ll probably be flipping through the rulebook quite a bit your first few games, which unfortunately slows the game down a bit at first. Descent is at its best when played quickly, so I really wish that the last page of the rulebook was an index instead of an advertisement. On the plus side, the scenarios ease the players into the game by using a structure that becomes increasingly complex and difficult over time. This helps players avoid becoming overloaded with information at the start of the game. Personally I’d have organized the rulebook a bit differently or at a minimum put in an index, but overall I give the rules acceptable marks.

The core of Decent’s gameplay is built around “quests.” Quests represent the various adventures or missions that the Heroes and Overlord compete in. Before starting each quest, players select who will be the Overlord and the remainder of the players will join forces as Heroes to compete against this player for victory in that quest. It is very important to point out that the Overlord is not a dungeon master or a narrator. He is as much a player in the game as the heroes. This means that Descent is not a light role playing game; it is a competitive strategy game. While it is true that when playing as the Heroes Descent can feel a bit like the tactical combat portion of a role playing game (or perhaps more like a multi-player version of the computer game “Diablo”), when playing as the Overlord Descent often feels more similar to the old computer game “Dungeon Keeper.” Players looking a role playing replacement beware. This is a competitive strategy game, not a light role playing game!

Setup

Once the players have selected their quest and determined who will be the Overlord, they select their heroes (I recommend using a random selection of heroes as suggested by the rules for the most variety) and start the quest. The heroes are all pre made so there is no time wasted creating custom characters before the game starts. All you really need to do is to read your hero’s character card, select the appropriate skills from a deck of skill cards, purchase some equipment at the market, and then you jump right into the action. This pre-game setup plays quickly and nicely avoids the “we just sat around and made characters all night” problem that you frequently run into with role playing games. The whole setup process takes a matter of minutes instead of hours.

While the Heroes are selecting their equipment, the Overlord builds his dungeon/lair per the guidelines listed in the quest guide (or perhaps one of the many quests that you can download from the Fantasy Flight Games website or a custom quest that the Overlord has made). The Heroes start with a “map” of the dungeon, which basically means that the Overlord connects all of the puzzle shaped tile pieces to create the “game board” before the game begins. The Overlord places all the appropriate floor tiles, doors, etc. However, none of the tiles are “populated” with enemies, traps, pits, treasure, etc. until the Heroes explore that section of the dungeon. Once the tiles and doors have been placed, the Overlord reads some introductory text (i.e.; The heroes are looking for the mythical “blade of light” that is rumored to be in this dungeon, but no one who goes in the dungeon to look for it ever returns…). These little bits of text are written in a very dramatic “epic fantasy” style so once again I wasn’t sure if it was something I was supposed to take seriously. I chose to just have fun with it so I just laughed to myself about how silly the whole thing sounded and kept playing (then I laughed nervously to myself as I thought about how I probably would have taken the whole thing seriously back in high school… scary).

Movement and Combat

Movement and combat for the heroes is pretty simple and will be picked up quite quickly by anyone with role playing experience. Basically, heroes talk amongst themselves to figure out their turn order, and then each hero gets two actions per turn. The heroes can either move twice, attack twice, or move once and attack once. They can also spend an action to prepare a special action such as dodging, taking aim, etc. Players move up to the amount of spaces listed on their hero’s card (so if a hero had a speed of 4, it could move up to 4 spaces with each action). Attacks require line of site and once that has been established (which is very easy to figure out because of the combination 3D models and grids on the game board tiles), you roll a die to check to see if you hit and how much damage you did.

In my opinion, the die rolling system is what moves Descent from an average game to one that has truly interesting combat. Every weapon in the game allows you to roll a specific combination of custom six sided dice and has unique results based on the results of those dice. Each die has symbols that represent range, damage, and surges (surges let you use special abilities). There can be any combination of these symbols on each face of the die. For example, one of the faces on the red die has a “1” to represent a range of 1, 3 “hearts” to represent that it does 3 damage, and 1 “lightning bolt” to represent that it provides 1 surge. Another face on a different die might have a different combination of symbols (perhaps just a range value, or just surge symbols). Some die even have a “miss” icon to show that no matter what else is rolled, your attack will fail! Typically, you’ll see higher damage on faces with lower range (like the 1 range/3 damage die face listed above), or you’ll see faces with higher range and lower damage (perhaps a range of 4, but no damage at all).

Every die color has a different set of faces. For example, the “red” die tends to have a lot of faces with high damage, but also tends to have faces with very low “range” values. The “yellow” die on the other hand has higher range values, but it has very low damage values. The various weapons in the game tend to use the die colors that match their expected range and damage outputs. A sword will probably use the red die since it is a melee weapon and doesn’t need a lot of range, while a bow will probably use the yellow die since it has a lot of range, but is balanced by the fact that it does little damage.

After rolling your combat die, heroes count up their total range value and if their target is within that number of spaces from their miniature figurine, they hit! If they don’t have enough range to hit, all is not lost. They might have enough “surge” to help them get the extra range they need.

“Surge” represents a weapon’s special abilities. For example, a “magic bow” might allow the player to spend 2 surge to increase their range by 1. If a hero didn’t have enough range to hit their target, but happened to roll 4 surge, they could increase their range by up to 2 in order to get the extra range they needed. Surge can also be spent in other ways such as increasing damage or in a special ability like setting the hero’s target on fire! Every weapon has their own rules for how the heroes can spend the surge they roll which is what makes each weapon feel unique.

After a hero has verified that he has enough range to hit his target (spending surge as needed), he counts up the number of heart symbols on all of his die faces to identify the number of hits that he does against his target. Additionally, if he has leftover surge and his weapon allows him to spend surge to increase his damage, he can add that value to his hit total as well. Once a hero has identified his total number of hits, he subtracts the target’s armor value to calculate the amount of damage that the he does to his target (i.e.; 5 hits less 2 armor equals 3 damage). It’s an incredibly fast and simple system.

In many instances, players still won’t have enough range or damage to hurt their targets with the base dice from their weapons. This is where the “power dice” come into play. Power dice are basically “extra” dice that represent a hero’s weapon specialization. Each hero starts with a pre-set number of power dice at the start of the game. Additional power dice can be purchased during the game to represent training in that weapon type. Power dice are rolled along with the attack dice and work very similarly. Like attack dice, they also have range, damage, and surge faces. Unlike the attack dice, heroes cannot use every symbol on the faces of the power dice that they roll. Heroes must choose how to spend the symbols on each of their power dice, selecting either the range value that was rolled OR the surge value OR the damage value. It’s really interesting because these die faces are almost a resource of sorts. Because heroes choose how the values are spent, the power dice provide some very interesting choices.

Attack and Power Dice

On paper, all of this sounds a bit complicated, but in practice its lightning fast. Heroes roll their attack dice and power dice together, check for range, and then spend their surge and damage as appropriate, choosing how to spend the values on their power dice as needed. This single roll of the dice provides for some fun choices, but none so agonizing that it slows the game down. Combat generally takes a matter of seconds so there is very minimal downtime and players stay in the action at all times.

On the downside, combat is pretty simplistic when compared to the more complex combat systems of traditional role playing games (or even war or miniatures games). There is also an odd tendency for enemies to feel a bit like “lead balloons.” Because of the way the combat system works, heroes generally will either come up with very high amounts of damage that bursts through the target’s armor causing mass amounts of damage, or they’ll end up with a low amounts of damage that cannot pierce the target’s armor and do little to no damage at all. The heroes suffer from this same effect, so players will often gamble on killing an enemy with a single attack, knowing that if they have a bad roll, the enemy will probably be able to kill them in a single round of combat as well.
In general, heroes feel very powerful when they are winning, clearing entire rooms of enemies before the Overlord has a chance to react. This can be a lot of fun for the heroes as it makes them feel powerful and at times, unstoppable. At the same time, when the heroes are losing things can feel pretty overwhelming as they suddenly feel fragile and can’t seem to stay alive. It’s an odd balance and one that I imagine might be a negative for some people. In my opinion it’s very much in the spirit of the game though. Descent is a hack-and-slash competitive strategy game akin to Dungeon Keeper than Dungeons and Dragons. One should not be attached to their characters because a hero’s death is as much a part of the game as the monster killing. The game is not about keeping characters alive at all costs, it’s about keeping them alive enough to beat the Overlord.

The Overlord

The Overlord waits for the heroes to finish their turn, and then spends his turn doing everything he possibly can to kill the heroes. At the start of every game the heroes are given a specific amount of “conquest tokens” and each time a hero is killed, the Overlord gets to take some of that conquest away. When the heroes have no conquest left, the Overlord wins the game. Of course, the heroes have opportunities to gain more conquest as they explore the dungeon by doing various heroic tasks like activating magic glyphs, opening chests, etc. Descent then becomes a race of sorts to see whether the Heroes can accomplish their quest before the Overlord is able to kill them enough times to remove all of their conquest tokens.

To aid the Overlord in killing the heroes, the Overlord is armed with a variety of traps, curses, and monsters. As the heroes explore new rooms in the dungeon, the Overlord automatically populates this “explored” room with a variety of monsters, pits, traps, treasure chests, etc per the guide for the quest the players are playing. A hero might open the door of a dungeon room only to find that he is face to face with a giant serpent or that the room is infested with bat like razor wings. The Overlord can also place curses on the treasure scattered around the dungeon, forcing the heroes to balance their greed with the knowledge that any one of those chests might do anything from causing damage to turning them into a monkey (to me this ability alone proves that Descent is a light hearted game; any game that allows a player to be turned into a monkey should not be taken seriously)!

Each turn, the Overlord uses a simplified version of the movement and combat rules that the heroes use to move and then attack with his minions. The various monsters have a simplified set of abilities that are listed on a set of monster cards. For example, the serpent like Naga can grapple an opponent, keeping them in one place while other minions move into range. The giant can knockback a hero into the range of another enemy. Sorcerers can blast opponents with an area attack spell. Razor Wings can swoop in and pick off damaged and vulnerable heroes. There are even special “commander” units that give bonuses to the normal monsters when they are nearby. Every monster has a role and because they tend to be much weaker than the heroes, they must be used effectively in order for the Overlord to defeat the heroes.

The Overlord can augment his minion’s abilities abilities by spending a special resource called “threat” on a variety of traps or curses, and can even spawn in new monsters. There is something quite satisfying about crushing the heroes with a giant bolder or spawning a horde of skeleton archers on their flanks.

Just as the heroes gain conquest for performing heroic actions, the Overlord acquires threat and overlord cards as the game progresses, making him increasingly powerful the longer the game lasts. Again, Descent is a race of sorts between the heroes and the Overlord and the victor is often the one that can utilize their abilities most effectively (making it a competitive strategy game).

Death, Loot, Skills, and Leveling

As the Overlord becomes more powerful, it becomes increasingly difficult for the heroes to deal with his minions and traps and they become weak and die. Fortunately for the heroes, death isn’t really that big of a deal. When a player dies, he loses half the money that he has managed to acquire while exploring the dungeon but doesn’t lose any items or skills and can respawn at a magic glyph on the following turn (heroes find glyphs as they explore the dungeons). The only serious loss to the heroes is that each time a hero dies, the Overlord gets to take some of their conquest tokens, and if the heroes run out of conquest tokens, the Overlord wins the game.

To help protect the players from the Overlord, the heroes can use the magic glyphs scattered around the dungeon to transport themselves back to “town” and use the loot they find in the dungeon to purchase a variety of potions, items and skills. Heroes don’t really “level” per se. Instead of leveling, you can buy new skills or you can train with a weapon type in order to add additional power dice when you use that weapon. Skills are what make your characters feel like they are part of a “class.” For example, a character might have a skill that allows them to spend 2 surge to make an additional attack when they use a ranged weapon, or they might have a skill that lets the character get 2 free surge when they make a magic attack. This means that instead of having a “level 3 rogue” you’d just have a hero character with 3 skills from the subterfuge deck and perhaps some extra power dice in ranged weaponry. Likewise you wouldn’t have a “level 5 mage” you’d just have a hero with 5 skills from the “Wizardry” deck and a lot of power dice in magic attacks.

Heroes can also spend their loot on new weapons, which are divided into increasingly powerful (and increasingly expensive) “bronze”, “silver”, and “gold” levels. A bronze level weapon is better than a standard starting weapon and might have some minor special abilities like allowing the heroes to spend surge to increase range. A gold level weapon on the other hand is very powerful and might be able to increase damage, range, pierce through enemy armor, and even set opponents on fire! As the various minions that the overlord is using become more difficult to damage, it is important that the heroes take the time to upgrade their weaponry to enable them to continue to defeat the monsters they face. You can also purchase better armor and magic items as well.

Heroes can purchase potions to heal the damage they have taken, although I’m not convinced these are the most useful choice as I can also buy potions that let me take additional moves or increase my damage and killing minions completely so they cannot attack me at all seems to be more effective than healing damage and allowing the minions to attack me again. I’m sure with more experience I’ll learn when it is better to use a healing potion and when it is better to use the other potions.

A Few Of The Game’s Heroes

Player Interaction

One of my main requirements for the games I play today is that there must be a lot of player interaction. Multi-player solitaire games that can be “solved” just aren’t very fun to me. I much prefer games with a lot of trading ala Settlers of Catan, negotiation like in Diplomacy, or “take that” card play like in Cosmic Encounter. Traditional Role Playing Games do offer a large amount of player interaction, but I just don't enjoy a lot of the interaction it creates. The whole “getting into character” business where people use fake (and usually bad) Scottish accents and memorize the ancestry of the kings of Cormyr (and talk about it over their pizza, cheese puffs, and Mountain Dew) is just weird to me. Where I felt that role playing games were at their best is when there were challenges that required players to work together in order to accomplish a goal, much like the class based first person shooters do today. I honestly enjoyed the strategic combat, particularly when you had an opponent with powerful wards that could only be broken through a combination of magic types and melee attacks that no single player could provide.

To me, Descent almost captures the good elements of role playing games, and almost eliminates the silly interaction completely. I say almost because while it is true that players must work together to effectively combat the Overlord, I never quite faced an opponent where I realized that I must use a variety of skills to defeat him. A large part of this is probably to keep the game from breaking when you use random characters (which I really do encourage to keep the game from becoming repetitive). It would really be unfortunate to have a quest that could only be defeated by a character that is good with a bow, only to be handed a bunch of characters with melee and magic skills. That being said, there are definitely scenarios in which players with certain skills are more effective than others, so the heroes are forced to work together. There is also a lot of discussion amongst players about things like who should attack first, who would benefit most from a certain magic item, or which enemy they should concentrate on first.

The Overlord doesn’t have the cooperative interaction that the heroes get, but he has a ton of “take that” interaction. The first time a player falls into one of the Overlord’s traps and dies must bring a smile to just about any player’s face (if you think this would not bring a smile to your face, stop reading this and don’t ever think about purchasing this game again, it’s not your sort of game).

Another positive (for me anyway) is that the heroes are all pre-made so I didn’t see anyone try to “make a decision that their character would do” and jeopardize the entire party of heroes because of it. I would guess that most players will just view their characters as game tokens and keep the game at just that, a game. I can’t see Descent turning into a lifestyle like many role playing games seem to do. Unfortunately with the quest text being written in "epic fantasy style " it seems unintentionally funny so if you can't laugh about saving the world from an evil demon, this might detract from the game a bit for some players. Likewise, if for some reason you think that this game should be taken seriously, I think you won't be happy because the text isn't very well written. It's very much "B Movie" style fantasy.

Putting It All Together

Closing Thoughts:

The most important thing for players to realize about Descent is that it is in no way a role playing game, does not try to be a role playing game, and the only similarities that it has to a role playing game is its theme and a few of the combat mechanics. Descent is more like a multi-player version of Dungeon Keeper or Evil Genius in which players compete with the Overlord in a competitive strategy game. It is (or at least should be played as) a very fast paced, light hearted dungeon romp that has the heroes cutting through hordes of paper thin monsters in a race to complete their goal before they are overwhelmed by the Overlord’s evil powers.

As a former role player who enjoyed the more tactical combat elements of role playing games (but thinks the whole “serious epic fantasy” business is a little silly), this is a perfect alternative. Descent isn’t a short game (I think our games were around 3-4 hours in length) but there is a lot of action so the game moves quickly. I cannot recommend this as a “light alternative to a role playing game” but think it’s a perfect way to spend a few hours maxing out the stats on your hero characters and rolling a bunch of dice in attempt to defeat your arch-nemesis, the player sitting across the table from you. It’s not a game that I’ll always want to play, but when I get that dungeon crawl itch, Descent satisfies quite nicely.

Overall BGG Rating: 8 out of 10