Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Descent: Journeys In The Dark
Wargame published by Fantasy Flight Games
Authors	Kevin Wilson
First Publication	2005

Here's some copypasta from BoardGameGeek:

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a semi-cooperative game in which two to five players will take on the antagonistic roles of heroes and Overlord. Up to four players will choose characters with a wide assortment of skills and innate abilities to be the heroes who will explore dungeons in search of treasure and adventure. One player will take on the role of the Overlord and will control the dungeon's many traps, puzzles, and monsters.

The heroes' goal will be to cooperatively conquer the dungeon, seize its many treasures, and achieve other objectives as set by the scenario. If the heroes cooperate and achieve their goals, they will all win. The Overlord's objective is simply to use all the means at his or her disposal - from deadly traps and ferocious monsters - to kill the heroes. Each hero has a certain Conquest Point value to the party and if too many Conquest Points are lost through hero death, the party loses and the Overlord wins.

Descent is FFG's answer to HeroQuest, so that makes it a dungeoncrawl game. For good or ill, it's a much slower, more complicated version, basically 4e without the illusion of being a RPG.

Still, it can be fun if you have 5 hours or more to play, but if you have that kind of time to play fantasy characters bashing monsters in dungeon for phat lewt, why not just play a RPG?

The French are going nutso over this boardgame, maybe because they haven't seen HeroQuest before, or Space Hulk, or Mutant Chronicles or BrickQuest or Doom: The Boardgame or... Christ I'd rather be writing the BrickQuest article right now.