Last night a few buddies and I geeked out by sitting around for 5 hours and playing the strategy board-game Descent. It was my first time playing and although we lost, I feel I got a decent 'welcome' into Descent. And, other than Dungeons & Dragons, was the first strategy game I've ever played (yes, I have never played Risk).
While I understand the appeal of the game, I didn't enjoy it as much as I do when I play D&D. Though, it's really apples and oranges considering in Descent I was a Hero and in D&D I am typically the DM. Our play session seemed unnaturally slow for a game. Each player spent loads of time saying "I could do this, or should I do this?" That's great you're thinking up a strategy, but what were you doing when it wasn't your turn? This could be the players I was with, but they had a pretty good understanding of the core system and were still taking hours of time debating the proper way to go down a hall.
The last few D&D sessions I hosted we played with miniatures but no play mats or visible indicators of walls, simply obstacles, enemies, and players. We still had a great deal of strategy involved regarding placement of characters and such and the game wasn't slowed to a halt by long spurts of indecision.
In comparison, either one of two things generally happened. Either I overly deluded the strategy in D&D by removing most (not all) walls (the players were outside for the most part), or the Descent guys were over-strategizing (or I suppose regular strategizing). To me, the game of D&D where strategy was involved but the game kept moving along is a preferred situation compared to a game that stalls on possibilities.
Although, maybe I'm just a strategy noob with 'strategy ADD'.
Print | posted on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 3:24 AM