So here's a surprise.
I sat down. I played Descent. I had a good time.
This comes as a surprise because my previous experiences with Descent were exercises in tedium. The first edition of Descent was a very, VERY slow moving game, fairly unbalanced in key areas, and prone to getting bogged down in players shopping for new items. It was a whole lot of time and effort for something could have been better in a simple D&D dungeon crawl adventure. Get some pre-generated characters, find an adventure, and go. Done.
Speaking of D&D, the recent Dungeons and Dragons board games (Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and Legend of Drizzt) streamlined the experience Descent was gunning for, making a light yet satisfying 45 minute game. Since their releases, I saw no reason to play Descent. If you wanted a meatier game, just put the effort into a hack and slash D&D romp.
Now wait a minute, the game under review here is the new Descent Second Edition. Fantasy Flight has a pretty solid rep with new editions of their own games. Descent has been a favorite punching bag of mine for so long now that it's almost with a feeling of disappointment that I say that the new edition of the game is actually pretty good. Surprisingly good.
I'd played the intro scenario twice, which frankly sucks, but playing the first full scenario with Matt was a much more positive experience. He controlled three heroes, don't entirely remember which ones, and I played the Overlord (who gets to control all the monsters and spring all manner of nasty surprises on the heroes). I like that the game gives the Overlord some freedom to choose some of the monsters they use in each scenario. The first half (scenarios are split into two separate parts) called for goblin archers, but let me choose one other type of monster that would be appropriate to the type of area it took place in. I went with cave spiders, since I've always been partial to the Mirkwood scenes in The Hobbit. The first half of the scenario was the better of the two. My goblins attacked a farm, kidnapped a slew of farmers, and were trying to get bundles of crops down to their cave. It was up to the heroes to safely store the crops away before I could do so. I managed to get two bundles to the cave before the heroes got to the other two.
The second part had my goblins bringing those farmers they kidnapped to their king, who was searching for what sounded like the typical "chosen hero" you see all the time in fantasy. I had to go to the prisons, pick up the prisoners, and bring them back to the king. When I found who I was looking for, I had to get the king to march the prisoner out of the exit. Meanwhile the heroes follow the goblins down into the caves, making it their mission to slay the goblin king before he gets away. The scenario gave me more spiders and left one choice for me to make, which I decided would be the shadow dragon. I think the dragon was a bit too intimidating for the heroes, since it seemed that Matt wan't sure he wanted to go anywhere near it. The fact that the heroes didn't really advance all that far into the cave left the goblin king with ample time to get out. He made it out with only a couple hit points left, but had the heroes gotten to him sooner, it would have been a different story.
Narrative, flavor, and theme are all very important aspects of a game to me. I typically need to be able to get into it on that level to even want to play a game at all. Yet leaving it up to flavor text to get that across is a lazy, ineffective way to do that. The theme and flavor is very generic in Descent, but I do like how the narrative is written into the goals of the scenarios. The goblins stealing the crops and running to their cave was really fun to play out, and interrogating the prisoners was a cool idea even if it lacked excitement (which I chalk up to the fact that the heroes had no involvement, leaving no tension). The story itself isn't anything you haven't seen before, but it's pretty hard not to admire how it's conveyed and carried out in the scenario design itself.
Another thing I'm liking so far is that it doesn't feel like the Overlord is more there to ensure that whoever is playing as the heroes is having a good time. Something I really don't like about the first Descent is that it often felt that the Overlord's monsters couldn't pose much of a threat to the heroes. Due to the way attacks vs. armor worked, there were times that the Overlord monsters couldn't hit the heroes. I sort of felt like that was to keep Descent in line with what D&D is, which is not a competitive game. The opposite was often true in Mansions of Madness, which put adequate power in the hands of the Keeper to decimate the heroes, but the idea of the game was not to do that, it was meant to function like an RPG that just so happened to come in a board game box. I think that idea is bullshit. Play a board game to be just that, a board game. If it's competitive, fine, if it's cooperative, that's fine, too. If you want an RPG, play one. Descent Second Edition, so far, feels like it has that right balance. The Overlord doesn't need to hold back in an effort to make sure everyone is having fun, nor do they feel complete useless. That being said, heroes being defeated isn't all that punishing, it more just slows them down. Since the one scenario I've played is about both sides accomplishing their goals before the other side can, I suppose that the slow down is enough, but I'm still not sure. I'm going to have to leave that up to future plays for now.
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