As an owner and player of the current Descent, I'm thrilled to hear about the 2nd edition of Descent and the upgrade pack. While we loved the theme, concept, and general playing of Descent, but we no longer play it for one MAJOR reason, and one I beg you not to repeat in 2e. Simply put, the rules in descent are a mess!! They are vague, don't cover all situations, don't work correctly, or simply make for poor play. Worst of all, the infrequent FAQs released usually never fully addressed the problems or created new ones.

I also own FFG's Runewars, by Corey Konieczka. Do everyone a favor and follow the FANTASTIC work done with the Runewars rules, playtesting, and the follow ups on the low number of problems found with that game. We play Runewars because we like the game, but we continue playing it because the rues work and are clean and cover all situations. We like Descent but we don't play it because of the rules are vague, broken, unbalanced, and are just ... bad.

In short, make sure the rules are solid and playtest it (and the rules!!!) as much as you've done with Runewars. Lastly, any chance Cory is on the D2 team?  :)

 Just look at the cover of the shown box, it's written there: Corey is part of the Descent 2 team.

Graf said:

Looks like he's getting his fingers into all the Terrinoth pies these days.  Having at least one guy invested in the entire franchise can't really be a bad thing, so huzzah for that.  Hopefully he won't overextend himself with all the new Terrinoth games coming out these days though. =)

I'm sad though that Kevin Wilson appears to not be involved at all :(

-shnar

Excellent news on Cory being involved!!  He does great work where it's needed, producing quality rules that don't require massive amounts of interpretation, adlib, and addendum.

Finally, FFG, please release the FULL rules to the public many months before print. We can, and have, find things you cannot possibly find during playtest. We are here to help, use free resources!

shnar said:

He demoed Elder Sign at Gen Con, and when I played at his table I asked him if he was involved with this 2nd ed and he said he was.

But surprisingly, he's not listed as developer at the box. Maybe he just gave some hints from the background and did some kind of couching in order to support the new team of developers with his experience. 

Must be a strange feeling to give such a "baby" out of his hands. But maybe he just wanted to do something else after years of Descent. 

I consolidated & updated the rules a couple of years ago based on work someone else started. You can find the 1st Edition merged rulebook here: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/46083/updated-merged-rulebook That should make it much easier to find things.