Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The box for the game's First Edition
Players	2-5
Setup time	< 30 minutes
Playing time	2 to 4 hours
Random chance	some

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a two to five player high fantasy dungeon crawl published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005. Descent was designed and produced by Kevin Wilson. The game is based on an improved version of the mechanics of FFG's licensed Doom: The Boardgame. In Descent, players take the roles of adventurers who delve into underground complexes in search of treasure (the so-called "dungeon crawl"). One player takes the role of the Overlord, who controls the enemies and plays cards to hinder the hero players. Descent differs from other games in the genre in that the Overlord player's goal is to win by exhausting the other players of victory points, rather than merely to facilitate play. The Overlord's resources are limited by the rules of the game, which require him to hoard and expend "threat" points, which are generated in response to the hero players' actions, in order to hamper the other players and to bring out additional monsters to defeat them. This mechanism is very much reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings when playing with the Sauron optional expansion.

Descent is one of a number of fantasy board games published by FFG, others include Runebound and licensed Warcraft III, World of Warcraft and several The Lord of the Rings games. Descent shares the same characters with Runebound and its expansion set as well as Runewars and the card game Rune Age. The first expansion, Descent: Well of Darkness, was released on October 26, 2006. A second expansion Descent: Altar of Despair was released February 2007 and a third expansion, Descent: Road to Legend which includes campaign rules, was released in March 2008. A fourth expansion, Descent: Tomb of Ice is also available, providing additional features. Finally, the Sea of Blood expansion creates another campaign world.