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Descent Quest Review
20 Feb 2010 23:46 - 20 Feb 2010 23:59 #55935
by kookoobah
Descent Quest Review was created by kookoobah
For metalface13:
For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a modification for Descent that turns it into a pure co-op game with some automation rules for the monsters and does away with the Overlord entirely. It’s supposed to be a mish-mash of Descent and Warhammer Quest, but I haven’t played WHQ, so for me it’s more of a solo/coop version of Descent.
Right off the bat, you should know that to play it you’ll need to either print up 4 decks of cards, or buy them off of Artscow. The mod comes with an event deck (good/bad events that replace the OL deck), a door deck (basically puts traps and other effects on doors), a dungeon/objective deck (allows you to build the dungeon one room at a time) and a monster spawn deck (spawns random monsters in new rooms). You could try playing it off of Vassal, but it’s not as fun (I should know, this is the only way I play) since it’s tedious program, and some of the cards aren’t updated – but it’ll give you a taste of DQ.
There’s also a treasure guide, a power guide and a quest guide to print out.
The mod is fun, if a bit fiddly. Descent has a touch bit too many cogs and moving parts for it to be a fast paced solo/coop experience. The combat will bog you down (since you’re rolling for the monsters too) and setting up new rooms might become a chore but that’s about it for the downtime. The rest of the time, you are running and gunning for the monsters.
The game pushes you on in ways that normal Descent doesn’t – you can’t linger around too long because the Overlord gets strong really fast, and there are some nasty events in the event deck, so you want to keep clearing the room or else you’ll be faced with a troll coming straight at your back and you still have a beastman party waiting for you up front. Since the automation doesn’t have strategy or finesse, it makes up for it with nasty events and more monsters, but the game doesn’t bog down with more monsters than you can handle (think normal Descent without the RtL spawn counter) since there’s usually just 1 spawn card per area.
Sequence of play is pretty simple – there’s a threat timer that counts down every turn. If it runs out, the Overlord gets a new power card effect. Then you roll a power die, and on a surge you draw an event card (usually nasty).
Then the heroes take a turn, then the Overlord takes a turn. When I say Overlord, I actually mean all the monsters advance and smack the heroes around.
If you want to open a door, you first explore it, drawing a door card, and after resolving that, you can spend 2 movement points to open the door.
Sometimes, the door turns out to be a monster!
You draw a dungeon card to set up the new area, roll 2 power dice to see if there’s a glyph (roll doubles) and place it in a square farthest from the exit door, then you draw a spawn card, roll to see what monsters come out, and then roll a power die to see if the monsters ambush you (roll a blank). If they do, the heroes’ turn ends and all guard orders are discarded.
Two kinds of monster spawn cards:
What I liked about it:
Forward pressure – by this I mean the game pushes you forward and if you don’t, you die.
Random dungeon – the dungeon is randomly generated, and it even splits. There’s an objective room (your quest is to kill the boss) mixed in with the 2nd half of the dungeon deck (9 cards) and if the dungeon splits, you might even have to backtrack.
I love this. Sure it’s a bit random, but not knowing if you are going in the right direction feels more thematic. Yes, it’ll add a bit more time, but since no new monsters spawn (unless there are some nasty events, which aren’t that likely as they usually only spawn one monster) it’s not a slow tedious walk back to the fork. More of a “oh shit, dead end. Let’s run!”
Solo/coop – sometimes I want to play Descent and nobody else wants to, this scratches that itch.
Tier 5 monster spawns – I hated the fact that in regular Descent you almost NEVER see golems, chaos beasts, giants, dragons, demons, ice wyrms. All the nasty big bastards that Descent has go to waste – all that plastic! Events spawn these monsters, and there’s even a chance they’re masters. The prospect of a master Ice Wyrm spawning will be enough to keep the heroes going.
Prolonged actions – The events and doors in DQ make use of the prolonged action from Altar of Despair. It adds a bit more non-combat stuff to the game, making it feel more like you’re exploring. You still have to keep pushing though, so it’s not as explore-ish as it could have been, but it adds some stuff.
Door deck – good stuff here, it makes doors a real part of the narrative than just a “spend 2 movement points here” obstacle. In regular Descent, there aren’t enough traps to make doors scary to open, but here, the doors will regularly explode in your face. The doors can get stuck too, but that’s not too much of a problem since you will want to clear out the rooms before you go to the next area, but sometimes all it takes is lone troll spawning right around the corner to make a stuck door go from annoying to dangerous.
Threat countdown – every few turns, the Overlord gets a new power card effect, faster if there are more heroes. This makes the dungeon harder and harder, and the only way to keep it from getting out of control is to keep pushing
What I didn’t like:
Tedious combat – you can’t get away from it since it just basically takes Descent combat and runs with that. The fact that you also have to do the combat for the monsters makes the game bog down during combat, but not enough to break it. The monsters go up to your face and hit you. Monsters with reach stop at 1 square away, ranged monsters at 2 squares away, and skeletons at 3 squares away. They fire and then they run away, unless they have swarm. They will divide their attacks equally among all players, but monsters with swarm will all attack the same player. Basically, you just pretend you are the overlord and you try to do best you can, except that you don’t auto focus on the weakest character.
This is definitely the weakest part of the mod. The fact the monster spawn cards spawn a substantial amount of monsters, it takes a while to resolve combat. Still, the automation rules are faster than a regular Overlord because the monsters don’t care about anything else. They run up to you, hit you and run away. They don’t care about being efficient. Their sheer number will make up for any inefficient combat strategy.
Setting up a new room – Very meh. Not too big of a problem , but since you set it up little by little, you really have no idea how the map should be oriented from the start. You’ll find yourself constantly rearranging the components on the table, and moving the map off the edge.
Little annoyances:
Redrawing unapplicable feats/skills – anything that refers to the Overlord’s threat/cards and LOS for spawning monsters is useless, since the monsters spawn right in your face (they were already there before you opened the door)
Power guide – How does the Overlord get a new power? Once the threat timer runs out, you roll the red, blue, white, 2 green, and 2 yellow dice. You count up the range and the damage and cross reference it with a power table. EWW. I hate looking up things on a table. What we do is we just shuffle up the power cards from Descent and draw a random one. Works about the same – who cares about balance? It’s a coop/solo game.
Treasure guide – When you wipeout an entire monster spawn card, you roll 5 power dice for treasure and cross reference it with a table for the treasure reward. EWW EWW EWW. The three times we rolled treasure we got: 100 coins each, 50 coins and a health potion each and 50 coins each. How exciting. What we do now is, when monsters die, they stay on the board until the end of the heroes’ turn. They block movement, but not LOS, unless they occupy more than 1 square. You can loot them for 2MP, rolling 1 dice for normal and 2 dice for master. P/E: 100 coins, surge: random treasure, blank: random potion.
New Descent expansions – will be a bitch to incorporate. As I really like this mod, I’m going to be sad when new stuff comes out and I can’t include them in the mod. Oh well.
Do I like better than regular Descent? YES. Do I like it better than the house-ruled Descent mod we play at home that barely resembles what Kevin Wilson envisioned? NO. Of course I’m biased, we like what we make.
Still, this is pretty fun, and if you’re bored with Descent, but actually like it enough to print out 4 decks of cards or muck around with a Vassal module while playing, give it a shot.
For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a modification for Descent that turns it into a pure co-op game with some automation rules for the monsters and does away with the Overlord entirely. It’s supposed to be a mish-mash of Descent and Warhammer Quest, but I haven’t played WHQ, so for me it’s more of a solo/coop version of Descent.
Right off the bat, you should know that to play it you’ll need to either print up 4 decks of cards, or buy them off of Artscow. The mod comes with an event deck (good/bad events that replace the OL deck), a door deck (basically puts traps and other effects on doors), a dungeon/objective deck (allows you to build the dungeon one room at a time) and a monster spawn deck (spawns random monsters in new rooms). You could try playing it off of Vassal, but it’s not as fun (I should know, this is the only way I play) since it’s tedious program, and some of the cards aren’t updated – but it’ll give you a taste of DQ.
There’s also a treasure guide, a power guide and a quest guide to print out.
The mod is fun, if a bit fiddly. Descent has a touch bit too many cogs and moving parts for it to be a fast paced solo/coop experience. The combat will bog you down (since you’re rolling for the monsters too) and setting up new rooms might become a chore but that’s about it for the downtime. The rest of the time, you are running and gunning for the monsters.
The game pushes you on in ways that normal Descent doesn’t – you can’t linger around too long because the Overlord gets strong really fast, and there are some nasty events in the event deck, so you want to keep clearing the room or else you’ll be faced with a troll coming straight at your back and you still have a beastman party waiting for you up front. Since the automation doesn’t have strategy or finesse, it makes up for it with nasty events and more monsters, but the game doesn’t bog down with more monsters than you can handle (think normal Descent without the RtL spawn counter) since there’s usually just 1 spawn card per area.
Sequence of play is pretty simple – there’s a threat timer that counts down every turn. If it runs out, the Overlord gets a new power card effect. Then you roll a power die, and on a surge you draw an event card (usually nasty).
Then the heroes take a turn, then the Overlord takes a turn. When I say Overlord, I actually mean all the monsters advance and smack the heroes around.
If you want to open a door, you first explore it, drawing a door card, and after resolving that, you can spend 2 movement points to open the door.
Sometimes, the door turns out to be a monster!
You draw a dungeon card to set up the new area, roll 2 power dice to see if there’s a glyph (roll doubles) and place it in a square farthest from the exit door, then you draw a spawn card, roll to see what monsters come out, and then roll a power die to see if the monsters ambush you (roll a blank). If they do, the heroes’ turn ends and all guard orders are discarded.
Two kinds of monster spawn cards:
What I liked about it:
Forward pressure – by this I mean the game pushes you forward and if you don’t, you die.
Random dungeon – the dungeon is randomly generated, and it even splits. There’s an objective room (your quest is to kill the boss) mixed in with the 2nd half of the dungeon deck (9 cards) and if the dungeon splits, you might even have to backtrack.
I love this. Sure it’s a bit random, but not knowing if you are going in the right direction feels more thematic. Yes, it’ll add a bit more time, but since no new monsters spawn (unless there are some nasty events, which aren’t that likely as they usually only spawn one monster) it’s not a slow tedious walk back to the fork. More of a “oh shit, dead end. Let’s run!”
Solo/coop – sometimes I want to play Descent and nobody else wants to, this scratches that itch.
Tier 5 monster spawns – I hated the fact that in regular Descent you almost NEVER see golems, chaos beasts, giants, dragons, demons, ice wyrms. All the nasty big bastards that Descent has go to waste – all that plastic! Events spawn these monsters, and there’s even a chance they’re masters. The prospect of a master Ice Wyrm spawning will be enough to keep the heroes going.
Prolonged actions – The events and doors in DQ make use of the prolonged action from Altar of Despair. It adds a bit more non-combat stuff to the game, making it feel more like you’re exploring. You still have to keep pushing though, so it’s not as explore-ish as it could have been, but it adds some stuff.
Door deck – good stuff here, it makes doors a real part of the narrative than just a “spend 2 movement points here” obstacle. In regular Descent, there aren’t enough traps to make doors scary to open, but here, the doors will regularly explode in your face. The doors can get stuck too, but that’s not too much of a problem since you will want to clear out the rooms before you go to the next area, but sometimes all it takes is lone troll spawning right around the corner to make a stuck door go from annoying to dangerous.
Threat countdown – every few turns, the Overlord gets a new power card effect, faster if there are more heroes. This makes the dungeon harder and harder, and the only way to keep it from getting out of control is to keep pushing
What I didn’t like:
Tedious combat – you can’t get away from it since it just basically takes Descent combat and runs with that. The fact that you also have to do the combat for the monsters makes the game bog down during combat, but not enough to break it. The monsters go up to your face and hit you. Monsters with reach stop at 1 square away, ranged monsters at 2 squares away, and skeletons at 3 squares away. They fire and then they run away, unless they have swarm. They will divide their attacks equally among all players, but monsters with swarm will all attack the same player. Basically, you just pretend you are the overlord and you try to do best you can, except that you don’t auto focus on the weakest character.
This is definitely the weakest part of the mod. The fact the monster spawn cards spawn a substantial amount of monsters, it takes a while to resolve combat. Still, the automation rules are faster than a regular Overlord because the monsters don’t care about anything else. They run up to you, hit you and run away. They don’t care about being efficient. Their sheer number will make up for any inefficient combat strategy.
Setting up a new room – Very meh. Not too big of a problem , but since you set it up little by little, you really have no idea how the map should be oriented from the start. You’ll find yourself constantly rearranging the components on the table, and moving the map off the edge.
Little annoyances:
Redrawing unapplicable feats/skills – anything that refers to the Overlord’s threat/cards and LOS for spawning monsters is useless, since the monsters spawn right in your face (they were already there before you opened the door)
Power guide – How does the Overlord get a new power? Once the threat timer runs out, you roll the red, blue, white, 2 green, and 2 yellow dice. You count up the range and the damage and cross reference it with a power table. EWW. I hate looking up things on a table. What we do is we just shuffle up the power cards from Descent and draw a random one. Works about the same – who cares about balance? It’s a coop/solo game.
Treasure guide – When you wipeout an entire monster spawn card, you roll 5 power dice for treasure and cross reference it with a table for the treasure reward. EWW EWW EWW. The three times we rolled treasure we got: 100 coins each, 50 coins and a health potion each and 50 coins each. How exciting. What we do now is, when monsters die, they stay on the board until the end of the heroes’ turn. They block movement, but not LOS, unless they occupy more than 1 square. You can loot them for 2MP, rolling 1 dice for normal and 2 dice for master. P/E: 100 coins, surge: random treasure, blank: random potion.
New Descent expansions – will be a bitch to incorporate. As I really like this mod, I’m going to be sad when new stuff comes out and I can’t include them in the mod. Oh well.
Do I like better than regular Descent? YES. Do I like it better than the house-ruled Descent mod we play at home that barely resembles what Kevin Wilson envisioned? NO. Of course I’m biased, we like what we make.
Still, this is pretty fun, and if you’re bored with Descent, but actually like it enough to print out 4 decks of cards or muck around with a Vassal module while playing, give it a shot.
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