For a few years in the 2000's, weekends consisted of a prolonged playthrough of the campaign mode of Descent : Journeys in the Dark. Byrnie, Evil Matt, Aggroboy and myself would meet up every weekend and play though 1-3 of the missions. Absolutely no idea how much time we sank into it, but I remember it being nails hard, even as the power levels of the characters went up and up. We must have sunk hours into it.
With Will's permission (as he was the one who bought it, even though it ended up lliving at my house, and surviving 2 previous house moves), I'm currently getting it ready to be sold. My very first thoguht on opening up the box was "holy shit, how did we ever organise ourselves enough to even play it??". It is immense, with 25+ different card decks, hundreds of tokens, vast stacks of map parts, loads of different models (including a unique sculpt for each of the 30+ hero characters), and a small library of rulebooks (and a printed FAQ, as we clearly had some challenges). I remember it swamping Glenrosas dining room table, and later the games room at Southwood Gardens.
My second thoguht was "damn, we took good care of this!". Given a typical days gaming was a bit of Bomberman or Wii Golf, folllowed by a prolonged session, combined with roast chicken and chips, all the contents are in pretty mint condition. The boxes are a little tired, but all the cards, tokens, map parts and books are pretty much mint. We really did treat it well.
The new version of Descent (Descent:Legends of the Dark) looks like the game we always wanted...no DM role, but rather an app-driven co-op board game...though at £175 a pop, and the expansion costing another £160, I guess you need a dedicated team.
I simply didn't realise how much was in the game...in retrospect it was the same undertaking as a full roleplay campaign. Hopefully it goes to a new home where it will be played and loved again.
Comments
I looks absolutely awesome. That amount of material is definitely up the roleplaying game end of detail and commitment.
I miss roleplaying - not so much for the games but he endless banter with friends. My last games were online, which were great because we got players like Baron to join in (who lives in The Shire Of Bed's Ford) but it just wasn't the same as face to face. I miss it bigly.
One of my plans when I move up to Harrogate is to join here. It'll be about a 10 minute bike ride away, and should get me in contact with some of the nerd elements. There is also a Geek Retreat in the town centre, though that looks more child-centric.
I've not role-played for years now. I sort of OD'ed in the early 2000's...at one point being in 4 different groups that all met weekly, and went through a hefty amount of burnout. A once-a-week well organised session sounds pretty good, with options for geek weekends as well.
4 times a week is a huge amount of roleplay, Christ! The most I ever got to was twice. I do want to get back into it but under what circumstances, I have no idea.