Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a co-operative-versus-one dungeon crawler. One player takes the role of the overlord, controlling every monster, trap and villainous card, while one to four others each run a hero. Together the heroes explore tile-built dungeons, fight monsters and race to complete a quest before the overlord’s plans come to fruition. Almost every clash is settled not with ordinary numbers but with a handful of custom dice covered in symbols.

The dice & how you roll

Descent uses two families of coloured dice. Attack dice are rolled by whoever is striking; defence dice are rolled by the target to soak the blow. Rather than pips, the faces show symbols — hearts of damage, lightning-bolt surges, range values and the occasional miss.

Each weapon tells you which attack dice to roll. A ranged bow might call for a blue die plus a yellow; a heavy melee weapon might use blue and red. The colours do different jobs:

Resolve an attack by rolling the listed attack dice. If a miss comes up, the attack fails outright. Otherwise, add up the damage, check you have enough range to reach a ranged target, then let the defender roll their defence dice and subtract the shields. What’s left is the wounds dealt.

The clever part is the surge (a lightning bolt). Each surge you roll can be spent on a weapon or ability effect — extra damage, more range, a special condition like poison or stun. You choose how to spend them after the roll, so the same weapon can play very differently turn to turn.

How to play

A game is structured around a branching campaign of linked quests, though single scenarios work too. Play alternates between the hero turns and the overlord turn. On a hero’s turn they take two actions from a familiar menu — move, attack, rest, open a chest, or a special class ability — and can split them (move-and-attack, or two moves to reposition). Fatigue, spent to push extra movement or trigger abilities, recovers when a hero rests.

On the overlord’s turn, that player activates every monster on the board, moving and attacking with the same dice-driven system, and plays cards from an overlord deck that spring traps, buff monsters or twist the scenario. Both sides usually have a scenario-specific victory condition — escort this figure, hold that room, slay a boss before the exit is reached — so the dice serve a tactical objective, not just a body count.

Between quests a campaign lets heroes spend earned gold on new weapons and gear, while the overlord upgrades their deck and unlocks nastier monsters — an arms race that keeps later fights tense.

Strategy

• Match dice to the job. If a hero needs to reliably land damage, favour weapons that include the red die; if they need reach, make sure a blue die’s range covers the target before committing.
• Plan your surges. Know your best surge abilities before you roll so you can instantly turn lightning bolts into the effect that matters — a killing point of damage, or a stun that saves an ally.
• Heroes: focus fire and control space. A well-timed condition (immobilise, stun) can neuter a big monster more cheaply than trying to out-damage it. Cover objectives, don’t just chase kills.
• Overlord: play the clock, not the board. You rarely win by wiping the party — you win by running the scenario timer out. Use monsters to delay and block while your cards do the real work.
• Respect defence dice. Attacking an armoured target that rolls black defence can fizzle; sometimes a weaker foe or a surge-fuelled effect is the better target.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting the range check. A ranged attack needs enough range on the blue die to reach its target — roll big damage but fall short on range and the shot simply misses.
• Spending surges too late. Decide surge use in the moment; players often resolve damage, then realise a surge could have secured a kill.
• Ignoring the defender’s roll. Damage isn’t final until shields are subtracted — count on the average, not the maximum.
• Overlord over-committing monsters. Feeding figures piecemeal into the party gets them killed for cards and gold; concentrate threats or use them to stall.
• Wasting hero actions. Two actions a turn is precious — drifting without a plan hands the overlord the tempo they need.

Want to feel how symbol dice differ from plain numbers? Throw a handful of dice in your browser and imagine each face as damage, a surge or a shield.

Keep reading: the classic crawl Warhammer Quest.