In Descent: Journeys in the Dark, bold heroes brave treacherous dungeons, facing traps, monsters, and even worse dangers in the battle against evil and the search for treasure and glory. Battling over a modular game board, the Heroes and Overlord alike must use all their cunning to be victorious in this tactical dungeon-crawling board game.

PLAYERS
Two to five players can play, with one player taking the role of the Overlord and the others controlling Heroes. The Overlord player controls the dungeon, including the monsters, traps, and dark magics found there. Between two and four Heroes, controlled by the remaining players, will stand against him.

QUESTS
Each game of Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a single quest against evil. Since each quest has unique victory conditions, special rules, and monsters and a unique dungeon layout, Descent: Journeys in the Dark is an incredibly replayable game. Nine quests are included in the basic game, with more available in each expansion and from our website, both on the "Quests" (for fan-created quests) and "Support" (for official bonus quests) links to your left.

HEROES
Descent: Journeys in the Dark includes twenty Heroes, each with its own statistics and detailed plastic figure. (More Heroes are included in expansions!) Heroes have health, fatigue, and speed scores, an inherent armor value, and variable levels of skill with melee, ranged, and magic attacks, as noted on their character sheet. They also have a special ability and a total of three skill cards drawn from three different skill decks, as noted at the bottom of their sheets.

For example, Mordrog has high health (heart) but low fatigue (sweat drop). He has a high inherent armor score (shield) but a low speed (boot). He is very good at melee attacks, rolling an extra three black dice when he wields a melee weapon (represented by the three black cubes on his melee trait icon). His special ability allows him to spend fatigue freely to enhance his attacks and movement, secure in the knowledge that he'll just get it back when the Overlord tries to kill him. Finally, Mordrog, as a melee specialist character, draws all three of his skill cards from the Fighting deck.

OVERLORDS AND MONSTERS
While each Hero player controls a single model (or perhaps two in a two-player game), the Overlord controls every monster in the dungeon. As the Heroes delve deeper and reveal more rooms, the Quest description will tell the Overlord which monsters to place on the board. Individual monsters are usually weaker than the Heroes, but there are many more of them – and the Overlord can always spawn more!

Monsters come in two varieties: basic monsters and Master monsters. Masters are the Overlord's lieutenants, tougher and meaner than most specimens of their kind. They always have improved stats when compared to their basic brethren (usually rolling an extra black die when they attack, among other improvements) and often some sort of extra ability, such as the Master Beastman's Command power. It's not all bad news for the Heroes, however: Master monsters have a bounty of fiftycoins on their heads, and any Hero who kills them can reap the rewards!

Of course, the Overlord has more than just the monsters on the board at his disposal. He also has a hand of Overlord cards that allow him to cast dark spells, cast the Heroes into dangerous traps, and spawn additional monsters onto the board! In order to power his dark abilities, the Overlord will gather a resource called Threat – and unwanted cards can be discarded for extra Threat to rush out a powerful effect early.

GAMEPLAY
In Descent: Journeys in the Dark, the Heroes act as a team in their assault on the dungeon controlled by the Overlord. On their turn, the Heroes will explore the dungeon, battle monsters, and recover treasure on a modular game-board. Using a new version of the streamlined and powerful combat dice system pioneered in DOOM: The Board Game, players will roll colored dice to resolve their attacks, with range, damage, and other special effects determined at a glance.

THE HERO TURN
In a game of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Heroes can take their turns in any order, which allows them to develop and implement the best strategy for a given situation. On their turns, Heroes will either Advance (move and attack), Battle (attack twice), Run (move twice their speed), or Ready (move or attack and place a special order token). Throughout their turns, Heroes can use Fatigue to enhance their various other actions – gaining extra movement points (even if they can't otherwise move), for example, or activating a particular skill card. They can also open doors to unexplored areas, drink magic potions, activate arcane glyphs of transport, ransack treasure chests, and a host of other actions specific to the Quest or the situation. They can even return to town via glyphs and spend some of their hard-won coin on equipment, enhanced traits, or even new skills!

Let's look at Mordrog's turn as an example. Mordrog, early in the "Into the Dark" Quest, is armed with an axe and staring down two monsters: a ferocious beastman and a bow-armed skeleton. Since Mordrog's ally Mad Carthos is wounded and nearby, Mordrog wants to kill both monsters before they can finish off the old wizard, so he elects to Battle, which will allow him to make two attacks.

Unfortunately, the Battle action doesn't give Mordrog any movement points and the Beastman and Skeleton are both a few spaces away. Mordrog spends two Fatigue, gains two movement points, and then positions himself between the two monsters so he can reach them both with his attacks. (If he wanted to, Mordrog could have attacked, then moved, then attacked again, or even moved one space, attacked, moved a second space, and attacked again with the same cost of Fatigue.)

When it comes time to attack the beastman, Mordrog looks at his axe card. It tells him that it is a two-handed weapon and that it rolls a red and a green die. Mordrog picks up those dice and gets ready to roll. Then he adds three black dice, since this is a melee attack and Mordrog is very, very good at melee attacks. Mordrog rolls! This is what he gets:

Since this is a melee attack, Mordrog ignores the large numerals, which are used to count range. Had this been a ranged attack, he would have had to roll enough range to reach his target, otherwise he would have missed. Since this is a melee attack, Mordrog can only miss if he rolls an X on the red die. Next, Mordrog counts the hearts on the red and green die – he's rolled four, so he deals four damage to the Beastman. Next, he looks at his black dice. The black die showing a numeral one and a heart separated by a slash is called a Power Enhancement – it can be used for EITHER its range OR its damage, not both. Since Mordrog doesn't need to worry about the range, he adds that heart to his total, so he's up to five damage on the Beastman. Finally, Mordrog has rolled a single surge on his dice (that's the lightning bolt icon on the black die). His axe tells him that he can spend surges to gain extra damage – each weapon has a different effect for surges, or sometimes multiple different effects. In this case, Mordrog spends his surge and gains yet another point of damage – six all told to the Beastman.

The Beastman has two armor so he ignores the first two points of damage from this attack, but four points of damage still go through. Sadly for the Beastman, he only has four health, so with a mighty roar Mordrog fells the Beastman in a single blow!

Mordrog can then continue his turn and attack the (now very nervous) Skeleton using the same system, and once he's done, his allies can take their turns. When all the Heroes have acted, it's the Overlord's turn, and watch out!

THE OVERLORD TURN
On his turn, the Overlord will draw and play cards as well as activate every monster in a revealed area of the dungeon. First, he draws two cards and collects one Threat for every Hero in the game. Then, he may play Power cards and a single Spawn card, paying the required Threat for each. Power cards have permanent game effects, such as DOOM!, which causes all of his monsters to roll an extra black die when they attack. If an Overlord gets too many Power cards out over the course of the game, the Heroes will be in serious trouble! Fortunately for them, Power cards are generally quite expensive in terms of Threat.

Spawn cards are a different matter. Ordinarily fairly cheap, Spawn cards allow the Overlord to add additional monsters to the board. He can only Spawn in locations that have been revealed by the Heroes and that are out of their Line of Sight, but an unwary Hero party could find a pack of Beastmen they didn't know were there rushing around a corner to attack!

Once done Spawning and playing Power cards, the Overlord will activate every monster in his dungeon (including those he's just Spawned!). These monsters can both move and attack (and, like Heroes, they can attack at any point during their move), and they all have different special abilities that can modify these two actions. For example, the bat-like Razorwings can fly straight over rubble, pits, and even Heroes, and the deadly Manticores can attack twice in a single turn. Each monster type has unique stats, and they roll various dice in the same way as Heroes to make their attacks and inflict their damage (although most monsters are weaker than Heroes).

In addition to the rank-and-file beasts of her dungeon, the Overlord also has access to Master monsters – special elite lieutenants and dangerous shock-troopers who are tougher, stronger, faster, and smarter than their brethren. Master monsters (represented by red miniatures) have different stats from their normal kin extra special abilities – such as the much-feared Command trait found on Master Beastmen and Master Nagas.

VICTORY AND CONQUEST
Ultimately, either the Heroes will complete their campaign objectives, or the Overlord will defeat them and complete her obscene plot. Each Quest has unique victory conditions. For example, "Into the Dark" (the first Quest in Descent: Journeys in the Dark) is won by the Heroes when they kill Narthak, the giant who lurks in the final room of the dungeon.

The Overlord wins by killing all of the Heroes, but there's a bit more to it than that. The Heroes have a pool of Conquest tokens (usually five) at the start of the Quest. As they progress deeper into the dungeon they will gain Conquest tokens by opening treasure chests, activating glyphs, and completing Quest-specific objectives. The Overlord takes Conquest tokens away each time she kills a Hero and forces him to resurrect in town. If the Heroes run out of Conquest tokens, the Overlord is victorious! An evil laugh is, while not required by the rules, certainly in the spirit of the game.