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.