by skullcap
I am playing descent with a group of friends, and we intend to run through the campaign. I am playing the overlord, and there are four hero players. So far, the players have been able to win every scenario. While I can certainly see some places where I have made mistakes as the OL, it is starting to feel like the game is tilted in favor of the hero players. One thing that I think may be contributing to this is that each turn, the players spend a long time calculating every possible move they can make. They coordinate all of their actions, and keep revising the plan until they come up with an 'optimal strategy'.What I am wondering is what level of autonomy I should expect the players to have in regards to making decisions about what their in game character does. Currently, all decisions are being made by committee. I think this may be throwing off the balance. In any game, if you sit there and think about it long enough, you will be able to come up with an optimal move. Having four people all working on the problem together just compounds that fact. It seems to me that people should be making their own decisions and taking less time doing it.
I think that game designers may have been assuming a greater degree of autonomy would take place than what my group enacts. One piece of evidence in support of this notion is the first half of the Castle Dareion scenario. The scenario rules state that the last player to take their turn on a given round is the one who moves the villagers. In my group, this rule has no meaning since of course the whole team is going to thoroughly discuss what should be doe with the villagers before anyone moves them. I can not see why the rules would specify a particular player to move the villagers if it was expected that the whole group would be making that decision. I have trouble thinking that this rule is simply to specify who takes care of the task of moving the physical game pieces only.
Thoughts?