Descent

Descent is a dungeon crawl.
I'm just going to throw that out there so there is no  misrepresentation about where this game is going. If you take a D&D dungeon crawl remove the RP aspect and give people coloured dice instead of many sided dice, this is what you have. When you buy the game you get a booklet with a campaign and a million little pieces and cards. They all have a purpose and it's not quite as tedious as it sounds, though you do need to allot time for set up. So let's start there.

In Descent one player will be the evil overlord, GM, and everyone else will be the hero's who for some reason or another are descending down into a dungeon to kill a monster while collecting as much treasure as possible. Now just stop. You can't just flip open a board for this. You are given map pieces that the overlord has to assemble for each and every scenario, I have yet to find a map set up repeat itself. That being said it takes me a good half hour to get the board set up get everyone characters and make sure everyone is equip. Bare this in mind because it would not be unreasonable to a game to run upward of three hours. That would in fact be a little on the short side.

Now once you start, unlike a GM the overlord is actively trying to kill the players, always. You don't want them to survive on any level. You can do this by spawning extra monsters and dropping traps, etc. However it's not so simple. The overlord collects tokens equal to players per round, and every overlord card, has a cost. You draw two at random unless you play a card that let's you draw three per turn, and then enact mayhem.

The players also get points. Player points are a bit sturdier. They stay around unless you kill a player. Each character has  a cost to their death. If the players loose all of their points, they loose the game. However they can also gain them back by accomplishing goals and of course they win by surviving to kill the end boss.

It really is a neat game. I personally enjoy the social interactions from tension of the players versus the overlord.  It's a fun dynamic to watch play out as people over come trouble together and strategize about the best way to thwart the overlord. However buyer beware at this point. The original Descent cost about a hundred dollars and they are in the process of releasing a second edition where they are adding in all the rules errata and correcting typos. (hehe Ogies.)

Personally I don't mind the typo's and the game is a blast though the overlord is at an disadvantage unless you have the first expansion. Well into Darkness. Don't let play time disuade you. It's a great blast for a lot of ages though I personally would recommend 15+ unless you have a really bright ten year old it is a lot to remember and you Will lose if you play too poorly.

Wishing there were more hours in a day,
Corset signing off.