Descent – Part 2

I’m finding it very odd, perhaps considering my previous ‘Storyteller’ interest in the game of Descent, that there is a very odd debate on the forums for the game. Actually not one but two debates. Debates…arguments…overreaction…take your pick.

It seems, that with the new campaign system there is a way for the hero players to manipulate the game by out running the clock so to speak. Thing of Descent as a video game in that there are many video game mechanics. One of these mechanics is that the heroes can return to the main town in the middle of a dungeon run. During this trip to town they can receive some quick healing, buy some potions and return. The game it would seem presumes that at least one hero is remaining in the dungeon to kick some ass and take some names. But by the rules, all of the heroes can technically leave the dungeon, go shopping for any length of time, and return.

During such an extend shopping trip the Overlord is free to fill the dungeon with countless monsters, so the heroes would return with an uphill battle. Thus it’s quite foolish for the players to wait in town for any real length of time. Part of the strategy of the game comes from the idea that players will need to minimize their trips to the ‘mall’.

But the loophole in the campaign rules is two fold. First, while on a dungeon run, both sides have the ability to earn Conquest tokens (think of it like XP). The heroes earn Conquest tokens by exploring, looting and murdering the inhabitants of the dungeon (sweet!). The Overlord earns Conquest tokens from murdering the Heroes, with said inhabitants, and by cycling through his evil Overlord deck of cards (which is a timer for the Heroes to speed things up). Second, the game is forced into a confrontation conclusion when the total Conquest tokens (earned by both the Heroes and the Overlord) reaches 600 tokens.

Thus, some crafty (rules lawyers) players have figured out that if they are loosing badly, they can just enter a dungeon, all ‘port to town, announce to the Overlord that they are waiting for 600 turns or so to go by at which point the game hits 600 Conquest tokens (cuz the Overlord is cycling endlessly through his deck and earning Conquest) and the Heroes are magically transported to the Overlord’s Keep and battle with the Overlord’s Avatar begins. Ta da!

No, no…it gets better.

The Overlords have discovered their own rules manipulation. This is less of a rules loophole and more of a jack ass thing that Overlords who are playing to win can do.

Imagine that the focus of the game is for the Heroes to go through about 12-15 Dungeons, where both sides increase their power slowly. The Overlord puts pressure on the heroes and has a few ways to win the game premature to the heroes confronting the Avatar. The heroes need to make some tough choices and if they make the right ones, the heroes will thwart the plans of the Overlord. This should take roughly 80 hours of game play.

Or….the Overlord can teleport one of their Lieutenants to the main city of Tamalir and siege it. Once the city of Tamalir is razed (taking about 4-6 turns) the game ends. The reason why this works is because a starting Lieutenant is more than a match for the heroes. It’s expected that the heroes go through a couple of dungeons before they face a fearsome Lieutenant. But if they do go through a few dungeons first (getting the much needed loot and magic items to defeat the Lieutenant), a vicious Overlord can earn enough Conquest tokens himself to upgrade the minions of the Lieutenant so that as a whole the Lieutenant and his minions are once again too strong for the players to face. Thus they lose horribly and cannot stop Tamalir from being sieged and the Overlord wins the game.

Far be it from me to judge these Overlords or Heroes who play a game like this. But I will anyway.

To the Heroes…well…their tactic is just stupid. An Overlord should just say ‘no’. At some point the deck cycling should end or the town should kick the heroes back into the dungeon or the dungeon portal should close. It’s exploiting the build it timer of the game.

To the Overlords…okay what do they think they are playing here? If they want to use the rules to manipulate the game so that they win a game in hours which is supposed to take weeks to months to play…who are they fooling? How much of a titanic loser do you have to be to not only steal the hero’s thunder by not even giving them a chance, let alone a fair chance, but to use a cheap rules combo to win the game before the heroes can react properly to it. What is the point of ever playing with a person like this? Is this player proving something to themselves? Will they gloat that they won in record time? Will they gloat about how they crushed the other players so badly?

After reading these exploits, I feel so much better about my stance to be both a Storyguide and an Overlord in these games. I no longer think it’s an option. It should be required.

If the Overlord is being a dink, then I would encourage the hero exploit being using to trump the Overlord exploit, however. Because there is some great comedy to it. You see: when a hero teleports from a dungeon to go shopping, they go to Tamalir. The very city that the Overlord can siege (and raze) to prematurely end the game.

We enter a narrative on week (turn) 4 of the new campaign:

Citizen: Woe is us! The Overlord sends his minions to attack us. The siege is blocking our food, our water and our hope. Woe is us. Will no one help?!

2nd Citizen: No, there is no one. The Heroes are weeks away and I heard that they just entered a dungeon. Even once they leave, they will not be strong enough or experienced enough to save our city. No one can help!



1st Citizen: Can you save us?!? Can you help us?!?! Please, you must!

Heroes: Oh yeah. No worries.

2nd Citizen: Nay, they cannot help. They are in the middle of a dungeon run. And even once they are done, they still won’t be strong enough to fight the evil that sieges our city.

Heroes: Whatever. We got it covered.



1st Citizen: Pray good sirs, what are you doing.
Heroes: I said, we got things covered.

2nd Citizen: But the siege engines will not stop. We are but a week away from the walls failing.

Heroes: Trust me. This’ll work.



Heroes: That’s us.



Both Citizens: I can’t believe that worked…

Descent

I’ve been fascinated for a while with a board game called Descent: Journey into the Dark. I think that they called it that because the name Dungeons and Dragons is already used somewhere else.
Descent is a game that pits 1 player, known as the Overlord, against up to 4 other players, known…er…as the players. The players take a character and their goal is to fight they way through the dungeon to defeat the evil that lies within. There is treasure and magic items that are placed along the way. Naturally, the closer to the big evil you get (we’ll call him the end boss) the better the magic items are. Naturally. Cuz I guess…the end bosses always keep powerful health-threatening magic items close to them, packed in chests, often right outside their own personal lair. I guess all the monsters in the world are quite keen on giving the would-be heroes a sporting chance.

Regardless, the game plays out quite well. I’m surprised that I like it because I played it’s predecessor, Doom (based on the video game), a long time ago and was completely unimpressed. I don’t even remember getting that far in Doom before disliking the game. But games like Doom and Descent should have been right up my alley. Lots of little plastic figures, well designed scenarios and fun gameplay.

A game like Descent, however, seems to create two interesting schools of thought. Some people look at it like a board game and nothing more. It’s a board game where there are 4 players verses 1 player. The Overlord player can play the game to win. He uses his monsters and cards without mercy to defeat the heroes until they have lost enough conquest tokens. The Overlord wins. Muahahaha, I guess.

But there are lots of people who will look at Descent as a game that strips away the role playing from D&D and is just a straight out dungeon crawl. It is a tactical game, more so than D&D is, but it still has the fun that a D&D dungeon crawl can have. Actually, for people my age, it’s probably better. Old sckool D&D would take many sessions to perform a dungeon crawl. When I was a kid, we could play once a week if not more. So a dungeon crawl could take 1-2 months. Now, I play 1-2 per month. So a big ol’ D&D dungeon crawl could take 2-4 months of actual time. That’s boring. Descent makes it fun. It’s different, but fun.

I am most definitely a person who feels that the Overlord is there to run the dungeon but not focus too much on winning. The point is not to let the players walk through the dungeon but it’s also not to brutalize them. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve run about 12 games of Descent so far and I probably could have won 11 of them.

In the first 11 cases, I ‘fudged’ the dice. Which in this case means, I didn’t throw everything in my hand at the heroes. In most of the games I was winning anyway and I didn’t feel there was a point to making the game unfun for the players. One I was beaten quite badly and had no hope of winning but that was great because we all had fun.

I guess that’s the difference in mentality. I don’t believe that the people I invite to play this game would have fun with it, if we treated it purely like a board game. Me vs. them. Instead I think after playing it, we all realize that we play the game to have collective fun, not competitive fun. I don’t consider myself, as the Overlord, a loser in the game when the players defeat the end boss. In fact, I find it very odd that some other people online do. They have lost the game. I guess they have, if they define the victory of the game as win/lose. I find it amusing that I never once thought that’s how the game was supposed to be played. I always figured that I was there to make the players have a good time. That I was their guide as much as I was their adversary. That to win, we all have fun.

I remember playing Doom and I don’t remember all of it, but I think we were getting pounded on at the beginning and I recall that I wasn’t enjoying that part. I seem to recall that we did get further in and did make some headway but I think we were beaten in the end. I don’t really remember. I just remember that parts of it were unfun. I don’t blame the Overlord in that game, he was just as new to it as I was at my first game of running Descent. But had my initial experience to the game be more positive, like we did some serious kicking ass and felt a bit awesome, I might have liked it a lot more.

In retrospect, I’m very glad that the players I managed to wrangle into playing Descent with me stuck with it. Now everybody I play it with finds it a fun game. And I find myself careful to pace the adventure based on their success or lack thereof. A bit of bad luck on their part could allow me to easily ‘win’ the game. But I realized that I’m not running Descent to win. I’m actually running it to lose. I want the heroes to win in the end. I want it to be a very close game and one that is hard fought. But one the few games that I have won, I feel like all of us have lost. Isn’t that funny?

I now have a campaign system to work with Descent, where the players get to play the same heroes over and over again and watch them grow. I’m quick to offer my suggestions and opinions and helpful advice. I guess I could offer them nothing but hard times and win the game by playing it like a jerk. But I just can’t see the fun in that. And I doubt either would my players.

My players. That’s how I see Descent. That’s how I see most games that I introduce my friends to. Like a RPG, the people I introduce to the game are my responsibility to take care of. To give them a positive experience with for that crucial first time. Once they start having fun with it, I can try to focus on the win. But if a player is having a bad time at a game, they likely won’t enjoy it and then they won’t want to play it again. So I guess helping the players in a game is as much for me as it is for them. I’m helping them enjoy the game so that I can catch their interest in the future when I want to run games. It must be the gamemaster in me. I like to run games for other people. Descent seem to be no different, despite it’s pretence of being a board game.

Scion

I picked up White Wolf’s latest creation: Scion. They are released it in three stages: Hero, Demi-God and God. As might be gleaned from the riddle that is their title, this game is about playing the child of a god, who, if they gain enough legend, might one day achieve god-hood.

The concept is pretty sound and that’s very good…because this game only has a concept. There is virtually no follow through.

I remember a while ago being excited about another game, called Sorcerer. It was something about controlling demons via magic to do…stuff. Sweet. Sounds great. Had a friend pick it up from Gencon for me.

I got it and was entirely disappointed. It had some pretty barebones rules, some GM stuff and some essays about gaming (if you can believe that) and no setting whatsoever. In fact, the point of the game was for me, the GM, to make the setting. That was a total cop out. I don’t buy games to create the world. I buy them for the world. I most certainly don’t buy them for the weak rules, because I can create far better ones than a lot of games out there.

So I think you know where I might be heading with Scion. At least, Scion has a better concept. The Titans have awakened. The gods are in peril. The world is in peril. The gods have no time to save the world so it’s up to their kids to do it.

I love this concept. Sure do love that concept. I couldn’t wait to dive into the book and consume the juicy details within. Only problem is, they were missing.

I have to wonder if the fact that this game lacks a true setting/world because they wanted to do something very much the opposite of their bread and butter games in the World of Darkness line.

Oh you can figure out the setting and the world, more or less. There is a 40 page story at the beginning of the book that is the usual blah that most games produce. There is a lengthy 1st Adventure that is including in the back of the book, some parts of which pretty much contradict the fiction in the front. But I really am not paying good money so that I can extrapolate your setting. I am paying good money so that I can go to the GM section and read the juicy secrets. I will choose what I want and what I don’t want. But at least give me some world to use or discard.

There are the basics, given out in brief point form which one would presume is for the players. But instead I must use it as a GM to build my world from. I really find this shoddy work.

So what do they have in place for a GM? Well they have this handy dandy section on how to be a Storyteller with many tips on what makes these Epic stories different from other things you may have run. Okay…I can see this being of some value. But only to a select few. To be honest you really will end up with two types of GM’s here. Inexperienced GM’s, who will not ‘get’ what this type of section has to say or experienced GM’s who ignore this section in favour of flipping to the “Adventure Seeds” section (which naturally does not exist in this book). Because experienced GM’s know their trade or are too stuck in their routine/rut to re-read what they think they already know. What they really want to know is what this world is about so they can let it sit and gel in their mind’s eye and develop into a story that they need to run.

The rest of the book is filled with character creation, powers and rules. I won’t say it’s the worst set or rules I’ve seen. I’m sure I’ve purged the Palladium system out of my head. But it is not good.

White Wolf has a formula. Stat plus skill as a pool of dice, normally totalling between 3 and 10 dice. When this was compared to all the d20 games at the time, it was new and innovative. Now it’s pretty darn common. There is nothing wrong with this mechanic, however. When it first hit Vampire, each die that rolled a 6 or better (their standard difficulty) yielded a success. So successes were plentiful. As you watched WW games over the years, you got to witness as each one in turn slimmed down on the successes. The default difficulty became 7 with Aeon Trinity. Now the success number is 8 or better. We’ve gone from a 50% chance per dice to get a success to a 30% chance for a success per dice.

Some math nerd better than I could tell me I’m full of it, but I certainly have seen that trying to get an 8+ provides a player with wildly random results. After building a character in Vampire with 11 or higher dice to roll for their Dominate, a few lucky dice rolls from opponents with less than half my dice pool and I was beginning to think that my poor vampire was only fooling himself into believing that he could control people’s minds.

But I could live with the 30% chance per dice. If the rest of the system wasn’t so bad.

Scion uses a very close system to another popular WW game, Exalted. I never got into Exalted but it looks neat (think crazy martial art action in a fictional world). But it looks like the creators of Scion tried to tighten up the system here and there. In combat, Exalted has an opposed dice roll (where I roll for attack and you roll for defense). In Scion there is a just a defense value (DV). Okay, nice and simple. But I guess this didn’t feel like 2nd Edition D&D enough for them so they decided to have multiple DV’s for every character (Parry & Dodge and a third one which amounts to None). Sorry, I should say poorly defined multiple DV’s because there is no reason to rely on anything other than your best one unless there is an attack that denied you the right to use that DV. What are those attacks? I wish I knew because they give you some vague examples that are confusing and really just amount to the fact that you still will want to rely on your higher DV.
Oh and those DV’s change the second your character takes any action other than standing around looking bored. So the DV’s constantly get adjusted while combat progresses. Fine. Stupid…but fine. I know it makes sense. If you extend yourself with a fierce attack, you’re easier to hit. But it’s a serious pain to deal with in the thick of combat.
They also made a Soak value, which means you take less damage from things when hit. No real problems with that. Until you actually try to use the system.
See the system might work fine until you factor in the Epic stats. Supernatural stats that overwhelm and break the system. This wouldn’t be so bad if some extra thought and playtesting went into it, but…I don’t think it did.
Epic stats give you automatic successes tacked on top of what you roll. The problem doesn’t like in the Epic stat itself. The problem occurs when one character as the Epic stat and the other character does not have the Epic stat to counter.
If I hit your character and you have Epic Stamina…but I do not have Epic Strength…the vast majority of my attacks will simply not hurt you. Likewise if I don’t have Epic Dex but you do, I will never hit you in combat, while you will always hit me in combat. The moral of this story might be: Make a well balanced character, but in practice it really does mean: Everybody be the same. Everybody take Epic Strength, Dex and Stamina. And that isn’t fun.
Their sample characters are not balanced. The chick from the Asian gods can pretty much beat all the rest 9 times out of 10, because she is impossible to hit and can always hit them. She has everything put into Dex, Epic Dex. Her Epic Dex allows her to hit so accurately that her excess to hit successes can translate into damage so she may even be able to circumvent Epic Stamina.
So…basically…in the WW world: Dexterity is god. If you don’t take Epic Dex, you’ve all but crippled your character.
So…whatever. I don’t like the system. Maybe it could work better on practice than it does on paper? The answer to that is a resounding no. The system is criminal.
It is slow.
It is dull.
It is painful.
Two of these are bad enough. But this has all three . It takes a long time to conclude one attack (slow), that takes a bunch of math to figure out (painful) and ultimately, it just comes down to “I attack.” (dull) with little variation. Exalted worked because you had half a dozen bad ass maneuvers you could pull off. Scion is just…bad.
So...a great concept, a poorly executed setting and a god awful system. Scion is a titanic failure, as far as I’m concerned. I will run a game, but I gutted the system and even after one session of playing it, I’m gleeful at the possibilities (more on that in the future). Without much of a setting, I guess I am free to do whatever the hell I want. But I didn’t need to pay money to do that…seriously. As a GM, I can always do whatever the hell I want. But if I’m going to do that, I’ll use the far superior Fate system.
So I can’t recommend Scion to anybody. I will run it and then never pick it up again. Not for ideas or brainstorming. It adds nothing helpful to the world of gaming.
I guess I should say something nice: the covers are very pretty.