We had a late cancellation that meant we were down to two out of five players. Sadly, this has been way too common of an occurrence. I was originally just going to cancel completely but Todd had worked hard to get Saturday night off. So Todd came over and he joined Rach and I for some pizza and a game of Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition).
I had always meant to get Descent–particularly so after moments of rather severe GM burnout–but had never had until just recently. And by just recently, I mean that very morning. Given some other plans I already had, it left me very little time to read the rules. When Todd showed up, I was about seventeen or eighteen pages into the twenty-four page rulebook and hadn’t even opened the quest book yet. When Rach got back with the pizza, I was maybe another half page in.
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for the first two quests, First Blood and The Fat Goblin, are below the break.
Nevertheless, we dived right in and we probably got a bunch of things wrong. It was fun regardless. We played through the first quest, First Blood, and the second, Fat Goblin (both encounters 1 and 2) in a few hours. The rules were quite easy to pick up and once Todd and Rach got the hang of things, they were able to win both quests…but just barely.
When I setup the board and we started the first quest, they both immediately assumed that their goal was to get their characters from the entrance to the exit and escape rather than, as I explained, defeating the ettin before too many goblins escaped. They still went defensive at first but once a couple of goblins had escaped, they took the fight to the ettin and eventually dropped him after, I think, four goblins had escaped.
After the first quest, Rach and Todd thought about playing it again with different heroes (Rach was playing Avric and Todd was playing Leoric) but decided to move on to the next quest with the same heroes. As I setup the board for this next quest, they got a little more familiar with their characters and I explained the objective of this quest.
Leoric took the lead and quickly moved forward to check out the nearby treasure. Todd commented at some point while playing that it was weird to pay a wizard type that needed to get in close. Avric, as one might think appropriate of an armored type, moved past to take up a defensive position. Then the Barghests moved forward and the goblins sprinted to the farm to start stealing crops! I mistakenly had the master goblin pick up a crop after taking two actions moving but we fixed that the following turn.
With the Barghests blocking the heroes and the heroes unable to drop either of the pooches, the goblins quickly scampered off with bundles of crop! In no time, I had snagged three of the four bundles. Then things slowed down a bit. The heroes got past the barghests (taking out one of them) and got to the last bundle of crops. Before they could move to store it, however, I was able to position my goblins and barghests to block the storage spaces. This meant that the heroes would have to take them out to save that last bundle. I believe Todd had a less than complimentary name for me when he realized what I had done and then chastised the monsters on the board for their behavior!
The heroes worked together such that Leoric took out the two goblins and cleared the way for Avric to store the bundle, ending Encounter I of this quest. With the interlude, we reviewed the rules about spending experience and shopping (rules discussed beyond the 17.5 page mark I had made it to earlier). Whether or not it was legitimate by the rules, they spent their experience then and went shopping since they hadn’t after the first quest. They each picked a new class skill and Leoric bought a new rune.
We setup Encounter II of The Fat Goblin and away we went. I picked the Ettin for my open group since I already knew what it could do rather than slowing things down a bit by having to read about a new monster. Leoric blasted the spiders, killing both minions on his first turn. Avric took out the master spider soon after. I explained that the Ettin heard the spiders’ death cries…death shrieks…death squeals…death whatever…it didn’t matter, he knew they were dead. Seeing as he had raised them from wee hatchlings, the ettin came to investigate. Once he found their murderers, I played Frenzy and he moved in for some revenge. Sadly, for me, that revenge never really came about.
In the meantime, the goblins had been taking prisoners to the torture chamber for Splig to interrogate them. There were four prisoners and one was a man named Frederick but neither I nor the other players knew which was which (tokens were randomly placed face down on the board). Once Splig finds Frederick, the fat goblin sets out to escape with him. Well, the very first prisoner he interrogated turned out to be Frederick!
The goblins and Splig immediately set off for the entrance and the heroes moved deeper in to stop them. Leoric let lose with another blast taking out many of Splig’s minions. Splig got by and moved his bulk as quickly as possible towards the entrance. At one point, Leoric was left behind and the lone goblin minion remaining used an action to close a door behind him, leaving Leroic alone in the room as Averic kept pace with Splig and the goblin minion followed.
Todd expressed a certain level of discontent with this as he knew it meant that he would have to spend an action to open the door. What he didn’t know was that I had also drawn the Poison Dart Overlord Card. When Leoric opened the door, I played it! Guess which Attribute is the lowest for Leoric and guess which one he had to make a check against…yep, Might. Leoric only has a 1 Might yet Todd still succeeded!! In fact, I played at least three traps against Leoric and Todd succeeded on every roll!!!
In the end, the heroes prevailed. Splig made it to the entrance square but he was killed before he could actually leave…even with the extra six Health from the three crop bundles the goblins had stolen in Encounter 1. It was tense and close but Leoric could really dish out some damage when he got surges on the roll.
All in all, we had fun. The game was easy to play but looks like it could be pretty tactically demanding…something good for everyone in this group to get some practice with for our regular rpg campaign. I enjoyed it more than the other “D&D type board game” I own, Castle Ravenloft. I’m going to have to give the rules a good look over (and maybe the other players will too since they are freely available online) so we get things right next time we play. I’m hoping that with the campaign play (which I still need to read about) we can use this as a potential substitute for those nights where we have late cancellations and I don’t won’t to play our regular campaign without more players present. We’ll see…we discussed a couple of other options while playing Descent as well (e.g., Todd running something, my having an alternate mega-dungeon campaign where the PCs leave at the end of every session).
Given how often we have too many players missing, we clearly need some sort of backup. That or I find more “committed” players…since I’m an evil rat bastard (I do GM after all), I’ll leave it hanging whether that’s a real threat or not. đŸ˜‰
