Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

Timeline Update
over 3 years ago – Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 02:10:43 AM

Hello! I hope you are having a wonderful day and will continue to do so after you read this update. I promised you more info on the timeline today, so that is what I will deliver, but full disclosure: it's not great. Review processes are taking longer than expected and freight shipping is still oppressive. So let's get into it!

Previously, I had anticipated having all files submitted for proofing by this point, but that turned out to be overly optimistic. While we are in the process of proofing punch board files, there are a lot of files still outstanding. And at this point, I feel it would be most constructive to put things in perspective with the two files I think will take the longest to complete: the scenario book and the section book.

There are a lot of components in this game and a lot of progress I could report to you about, but that would be pretty tedious, and ultimately not very informative because the bottom line is that, with the progress made, I have no doubt we'll be able to get all the rest of the files in in a timely manner before these two documents are complete. So if we're going to talk about when we can start printing that final component and start assembling fully complete games to ship out to you, talking about the scenario and section books makes the most sense.

So, for further context, as I've stated before, there are 138 scenarios. Each scenario's front page goes in the scenario book, and then any additional sections needed, like new rooms or the conclusion text, are going in the section book, along with over 200 other non-scenario sections. The current page count of the scenario book is 184 (even the introduction to some scenarios requires more than one page, but this number will probably shrink a bit by the final product) and the section book page count is 197. So that's around 400 pages of maps and text that we want to get right. We've spent a lot of time making sure the gameplay of those scenarios is right, and we are now months into the process of making sure the layout and instructions are right, as well, but it is not a simple task.

Where we are right now is that a rough draft of both documents has been laid out, with a rough version of the story and rules text. The main campaign story text is fully edited and finalized, and the side scenario text is edited, but I haven't yet implemented those edits. My main concern at the moment, however, is the rules text for all scenarios, which I am in the middle of doing a deep editing pass on. I expect to be done early next week, at which point all the text will go back to the graphic designers to make a new draft of the laid out documents with a more finalized presentation.

But I expect implementing all these edits, to both the text and the layouts, could take another couple weeks. Once we get them back, ideally around the end of the month, we'll need to do another in-depth review of everything, this time looking at the actual layouts instead of text documents to make sure all the text matches up with the maps, and cross-referencing all the section numbers to make sure everything points you to where it should. This is far, far more complicated than editing a 400-page novel.

So, anyway, I expect that final review process to take another couple weeks at least, and all the while, we'll be finishing up the other files as well. At the end of the day, this puts us at least a month and a half past our last projected timeline, and, really, let's just call it two months to account for my optimism.

And I do want to take a moment to apologize for getting the timeline so wrong in the past. It is hard to see the scale of things sometimes until you get real up close, and now that we are in the thick of putting together the actual book documents, it is becoming far more clear what a large undertaking the books are. And, again, it is very important to us to get it right instead of rushing out something that is full of mistakes.

So, if we are two months behind the previous schedule, while we don't have new projections yet from the factory on what that time line will look like, we can extrapolate from the previous timeline and estimate that we may have finish copies to ship out of the factory as early as October.

But then we run into the other wrinkle: freight shipping.

I know I keep giving you vague warnings about this, but freight shipping is real bad. I don't want to commit to telling you exactly how bad it is because we don't know how things will change by October. But by all projections, what I can tell you is that doing a swift fulfillment where all 80,000 of you get your games at the same time is not in the cards. We're looking at only being able to get a limited number of containers out of China each week, which means that fulfillment could be a very prolonged process. Exactly what that looks like and the processes involved will have to wait for a future update when we are closer to seeing what we're actually dealing with.

For now, we'll just have to settle for more vague warnings from Isaac and the fact that, at this point, I can't give you concrete answer on when you will receive your game. With the way freight shipping is going, I wouldn't expect it until early next year, unfortunately. If that doesn't work for you, I totally understand, and, as always, you are welcome to request a refund by messaging [email protected].

A bummer, I know. No one's more frustrated by this whole situation than me (except maybe Price), but all we can do is keep working as hard as we can to make the game great, so when it finally does arrive, it totally blows your mind.

And since I don't want to end on such a down note, I do want to share some sweet new character attack modifier cards with some subtle changes. You've already seen the character sheets, but here is one of the Banner Spear's cards:

The main draw here (in addition to the wording being clearer than any Gloomhaven card) is that, even on complex cards like this, we've added a "+0" on the left just to make things even more clear, which can help when dealing with stuff like advantage and disadvantage.

So then we decided to go even further, and, in order to make things more consistent, we always give priority to any special effect of the card to go in the middle instead of the number:

In Gloomhaven, the push would be on the left and the +2 in the middle, but since you resolve the +2 before the push, this just made more sense on all fronts.

Of course, if there is no special effect, the number still goes in the middle, and the rolling symbol will remain on the right:

So, yeah, just something small and interesting to end on. If you need more good news, Chris has also set up our new replacement part space, and we're preparing to get a shipment of spare Frosthaven parts to him in the first container that goes out, so if you do end up needing replacement parts, we'll be able to get it out to you without delay!

So that's all I have for you today. I'll see you next time, and have a great weekend!

Broken Token organizer update
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 26, 2021 at 12:45:16 AM

Hello! Another two weeks have passed, and I am once again here to regale you with tales of Frosthaven! We're continuing to make progress on getting all the files ready, but I thought I'd take the opportunity today to let Greg Spence from Broken Token give you an update on where they're at with the Frosthaven wooden organizer.

So here's Greg! If you didn't order the organizer, there's some more update info below.

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Greetings, Frosthaven Organizer Backers!

I want to thank you for your support of this project and give you an update on the progress and state of our Frosthaven Organizer. Our original Gloomhaven Organizer has been such a big success that we were thrilled to get a chance to create an officially licensed counterpart for Frosthaven, and our goal is to make this one even better than our Gloomhaven Organizer. As we work in tandem with Cephalofair, sprinting toward the finish line, we’re marking off milestones along the way and getting ready for the final steps of the process.

First, let’s talk about design. Product design for the Frosthaven Organizer is going really well. Our design team has put in weeks of time planning how to best organize all the amazing content that’s coming with Frosthaven. It’s similar in a lot of ways to our Gloomhaven Organizer, so for those who are familiar with that product, this one will feel like meeting up with an old friend who has grown a little bigger and wiser, in the best of ways.

We’ve created several rounds of mock-ups and prototypes, and in turn tweaked and adjusted every little detail to make sure we’ll be ready for launch. It’s a beast to tackle, and we’re nearly to the finish line. The last things left to do are test fittings and final adjustments once we receive a white box copy from the Cephalofair team. It’s a great feeling to be so close to completion and seeing our design come to life. Of course we’ve been in consistent contact with Cephalofair throughout the entire process. It’s really important to have good partners for a project like this, which is a big part of why we jumped at the opportunity to work with them and support this project.

Once design is wrapped, the final step (and our next topic) is manufacturing. Like nearly every aspect of this past year, there have been challenges, and hurdles we weren’t expecting. While the design and testing of the organizer is totally under our control, what isn’t under our control is the supply of materials. Slowdowns due to COVID-19 hit the lumber industry at the same time as the demand for wood increased, and the result is an unprecedented international wood shortage, creating a lack of supply to meet the demand, and causing a tripling of wood prices for the material that’s available.

Because of this, we are considering all options available to us, with the ultimate goal to bring you the highest quality organizer and still meet our fulfillment deadlines.  Prior to the issues with the wood supply, our plans were to manufacture all units at our San Diego facility, using wood that we obtain from our distributors. Because of the severe shortage in birch plywood, we are now looking at augmenting our manufacturing capabilities with an outsourced manufacturer in order to gain access to their wood supply.

We want to be completely transparent about this decision and discuss any potential risks or concerns. Using an outsourced manufacturer carries the concern of quality, and making sure that they produce a product that is as-good, or better, than we would create ourselves.  We have been working with this company over the past 6 weeks, having them cut samples of the organizer and sending us physical prototypes to evaluate. We have been very pleased with everything we’ve seen, and any concerns we’ve had about quality have been answered.  We also pledge to back the quality of our products no matter what.  If a customer ever receives a product that is not up to our standards, we will make it right.

Additionally, the organizers produced by our partner will be made from a 3-ply poplar plywood that is very similar to the birch we use ourselves, but it is a slightly different wood species. To many people, the differences may not be noticeable at all. Poplar plywood is renowned for its durability as well as its bending strength. Like Baltic birch, it offers pale coloration. It has a tight, beautiful grain, and a consistent appearance with minor pin knots visible. It’s paintable and stainable, as well, for those who like to take their organizers to the next level.

The advantages to augmenting our manufacturing with this partner is that we will gain access to faster shipping times to other parts of the world, and shorten the amount of time it will take for us to manufacture all units needed to complete the Kickstarter.  This will help us ensure that we will not add any fulfillment delays when it comes to receiving your pledge rewards.

We want to stress that we are not making these decisions lightly, and that no decisions have been made with the goal of cutting corners or quality. If we had to wait for enough Baltic birch to be available, well, we honestly don’t know when we’d be able to secure enough wood to complete the full production run. We want you to feel confident that the final product will be the level of quality you expect from The Broken Token, and that every decision we make along the way is made with our customers in mind.

Given the changes over the past year, the reality is when we have fulfilled all the Kickstarter units of the Frosthaven Organizer, we’re going to have to increase the MSRP to account for the additional costs. So if you got in on the Kickstarter, you’re getting the lowest price for this organizer, and you’ll be getting it as quickly as possible.

So that’s the update for now. We hope this information about the small difference in the final product will cause minimal to no concern on your end. We always strive to maintain a fully open and transparent line of communication with our customers, and any time there's a change in expectations vs. reality, we want to make sure we're clearly communicating with our backers. I’m happy to answer any additional questions you may have down in the comments. As always, we'll stand behind the quality of our product.

We know Frosthaven is going to provide hours of fun and excitement for you and your gaming group. And we’re confident that we’ll deliver a quality organizer that will save you setup time and maximize your enjoyment of the game.

Thanks again for going on this journey with us. Safe travels.

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The only other news I'd like to mention today is just that the global shipping situation is still very bad, and it looks like it could remain bad well into when we're expecting to ship Frosthaven. And remember in a previous update when I was talking about how huge of a project this is and how many containers we'll need to fulfill it? Well, I think at this point, we can expect that getting all of those containers is going to take much longer than we had initially planned for.

I think we'd still run into trouble even if things started to improve now, and things don't look like they're going to improve any time soon. It's just not a great situation, and I don't have any more specifics on timing for you right now, but I just want to keep you in the loop so that you're not surprised when we do start seeing delays in shipping down the road. It's going to be a bumpy ride, so buckle up.

All right, so in two weeks, once June has ended, we'll revisit the production timeline to see where we're at, but for now, have a great weekend and stay safe!

Final Ability Cards and Mats
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 02:12:53 AM

Hello! Wow, it has been a flurry of activity over here trying to get stuff finalized, and I am tired! Gotta keep trucking, though, because that finish line is getting close.

Because of how inter-connected everything is in the game, and how many different elements there are, sometimes it feels like you're doing so much, but you don't have a lot to show for it, because you're working on those connections and making sure everything is in place. It's like we're setting up an intricate domino line, so that when we're ready, we can just knock that first one over and complete everything, one after the other.

Other times, though, you do get to knock over some of those dominoes, and it feels great, because you finally have something to show for all your work! Today, thankfully, is a day like that, because I get to show you the final versions (barring minor tweaks I'll talk about in a minute) of the character ability cards and player mats!

And I really cannot properly communicate to you how much work goes into this stuff. For instance, I started formulating cards for the Blinkblade about four years ago, taking the idea of a little Quatryl assassin with the power over time and turning it into mechanics. In September of 2017, I gathered together some people together for the first play test sessions of Frosthaven, and my friend Kaili played the Blinkblade through to retirement.

I remember he really enjoyed it and did some cool, surprising things with the class. I also remember him racing far ahead to complete a battle goal and nearly getting us all killed. The class seemed to be in a good place, but there was a lot more testing to be done. From those experiences, I developed higher level cards and tweaked others. It eventually got put to the side for a long time while I worked on other aspects of the game.

In 2019, though, we had to get the Blinkblade ready for the big announcement at PAXU. Alexandr made some fantastic art, and we made some cards and a mat based on the Gloomhaven format. We showed it to lots of people, and they all had opinions. We iterated based on that feedback, and kept doing that for a while until we started organizing official Frosthaven play testing on a larger scale (i.e. not just me at my kitchen table).

This is really where all the neat ideas of the class were forged into a hardened steel of awesomeness. Every card, every ability was scrutinized. Was it fun, was it balanced, was it thematic? It took a lot of work, but we got the Blinkblade to a place of greatness (while also doing the same thing with 16 other classes).

But there was still the graphic design! Having now experienced that process with all the classes, I can easily say that the Blinkblade was the most challenging to get right. Putting together all the information of an action - the base ability, plus the fast and slow bonuses - together in a format that was easy to read and parse and looked good was admittedly not an easy task I set up for Josh, but he definitely rose to the challenge and pulled it off!

Sorry, I have a tendency to ramble when I could be showing you cool pictures, but I'm just really proud of all the hard work that went into this stuff - not just mine, but also Josh's and Alexandr's and all the truly amazing play testers'. So anyway, let's start with the mat:

This is the introduction to your character and lets you know how to interact with it and the cards. Once you are armed with this info, then we can start looking at some cards:

See? I told you it was a challenge. But with each action essentially being two actions, we found this was the best way to convey all the important information in a readable way. If you're going fast, you simply read the center abilities with all the highlighted text on the left side of the card. And if you're going slow, do the same with the right side.

In the case of small adjustments to abilities, these fast/slow effects will go in-line with those abilities, like you can see with all of the move abilities on these cards. Yes, in the case of Blurry Jab bottom fast, reading left to right means you see the bonus before the ability text, but that's hard to avoid in this format, and it is still easy enough to parse. In the case of larger adjustments to abilities that don't fit in-line, like the top of Blurry Jab, they are brought down below the ability.

When fast/slow bonuses provide their own abilities, if there is one on each side, they share the horizontal space equally, like the top or bottom of Experimental Adjustment. If it is just a fast or slow ability on its own, then the width can be a little more variable - usually either 50% of the space if it is small, like the fast move on the top of Twin Strike, or 75% of the space if it is bigger, like the slow damage on the bottom of Blurry Jab.

Also note that everything in these fast/slow boxes is mandatory (as it explains on your character mat), so there's no need to put an extra mandatory box around element infusions and whatnot.

But wait! What's this?

Yes, certain classes can still go invisible at-will (give or take some damage). How is that not over-powered? Well, we did make a small change from the Gloomhaven rules so that the condition is more manageable and intuitive. Figures can now move through (but not stop on) invisible enemies, so they no longer act like obstacles. No more going invisible in a doorway to negate monster turns!

So at this point, I could continue talking about other classes and cards, but I think it is best to just let you explore on your own if you want.

Here are all the ability cards and mats for the starting six classes. This includes higher level cards in the back half of the documents, so be warned if you're concerned about spoilers. You've seen previous versions of a lot of these, but here they are together in all their glory, after numerous tweaks and a lot of editing since those previous versions. And you've also seen earlier versions of the mats, but these are (almost) final.

Yeah, let's talk about that "almost" for a second. As you can see, we do have rules references on the fronts of these mats, and a section reference on the back for retirement. More dominoes to get in place. We're solidifying the rule book and section book, so those numbers will be in there soon enough.

So, yeah, lots of stuff all coming together, which is good, as we need to get all this stuff to the printer. Next time, I'm sure I'll have more finalized, exciting things to show you. But for now, explore all those cards if you want, and I'll catch you later! Stay safe and be kind to each other!

Where we are with the project and a focus on perks
over 3 years ago – Sat, May 29, 2021 at 12:18:27 AM

Hello! It is Friday, and I am coming at you with the same enthusiasm as always, excited to tell you about everything going on over here. So look, I'm not going to pretend like last update didn't create a bit of a stir, but there is a lot to talk about, so I'm not going to dwell on it too heavily. It seems there were some misconceptions about what the cultural consulting process entails, and, as that is not what this update is about, I would simply direct you again to these in-depth explanations if you have any questions, and a lot of the arguments and counter arguments are also explored in an interview I did with Shelf Stories since the update.

One thing that does deserve dwelling on, however, is the ending of the previous update. In it, I made it sound like anyone who canceled their Frosthaven pledge did so because they were a racist. That was 100% not my intention at all. The whole point of hiring a cultural consultant is to eliminate casual ideas and phrases that can hurt people. Instead of being welcoming in my language, I pushed people away, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

I just want everyone to know that my main goal going forward is to do things that will make this hobby better and more inclusive for anyone who enjoys playing board games. I am also committing to having future updates with sensitive topics reviewed to make sure my intent is better communicated.

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So with that said, let's move on to the other stuff! We are fast approaching the end of May, when I said the files would begin to be sent to the printer. So before we do anything else, let's get into where the project stands as a whole.

So what is going on with the production timeline? If you want the short version, things still appear to be on schedule with each of our manufacturing partners, and we we should be able to begin shipping games out in August as anticipated in this previous update. However, there is a matter of some very real unknowns right now surrounding freight logistics, which I'll address a little later in this post.

First, let's dive into some detail with the question: Are files being delivered at the end of the month?

The answer: Yes, some of them.

We will start handing in some of our larger files that will require both the most proofing time on our part, but also the most time to print and/or dry (such as punchboards, player mats, map board, miniatures, etc), with the plan to continue to deliver files throughout the month of June. You see, there are a lot of files, and a lot of components, which all need to be manufactured on a massive scale. This will give us additional time to finish the editing and layout efforts that I'll discuss a little later.

And I just want to note what a huge undertaking getting the punchboards finished was. There are 27 of these massive things, and, for example, one of them looks like this:

So, yeah, imagine all the art and layout and die line drawing needed for 26 more of those suckers, front and back.

But there are, of course, lots of other non-cardboard elements to the game. We've got more than 900 standard cards, 1500 small cards, miniatures, boxes, sticker sheets, multiple huge books, and, well, the list goes on and on. And so to avoid just turning this all into a boring spreadsheet, let's give you some broader strokes.

First, the design and development is rounding the final corner. We're doing some final play testing on select scenarios and some of the campaign elements, I want to make one final pass on the monsters, and the dungeon randomizer decks need attention, but that's it.

Likewise, the artwork is almost all done as well. Alexandr will be finishing up the item art over the next week, and we need to make a handful of backgrounds for the character ability cards, but all other art efforts are finished.

Editing, a process that is most confidently started once the content is finalized from a design perspective, is now in full-swing. We of course want to give editing the proper time it deserves so that no mistakes make it through, but we don't expect this will take too long to complete, with multiple editors looking over the multiple different efforts simultaneously.

And then there is the graphic design and layout. This is probably what will need the most time over the next month. A lot of great work has already been finished, like the punch boards, but there are a lot of things left to be done. Many of them are small, like various card layouts, but there are a few big outstanding projects, as well, like the scenario and section books. We've brought on many new talented graphic and layout artists to help with these larger efforts, and we are already seeing great progress, so it looks like we'll still be able to pull everything together by the end of next month.

What this all means is that we'll be finalizing and sending files to the printer throughout June, largely for cards initially (and the alchemy and scenario charts, which will also require time for the glue to dry), and then we'll finish things off with the books, which will require the most time to finish, but the least time to produce. If we get everything by the end of June, this won't affect the printer's ability to get things out along the projected timeline.

But this is where I now circle back around to freight shipping. Freight shipping around the world, no matter the industry, is in crisis right now. If you back other games or projects on Kickstarter, this might not be news to you, but we are witnessing historically low availability of containers and congestion at ports and rail that are causing massive delays. This is admittedly making us a bit nervous, because, at the end of the day, we'll need a minimum 150 containers to fulfill this project (this is A LOT of containers). If things keep moving at the current pace, it could significantly drag out our freight shipping timeline by an amount of time that we can't even estimate. Of course, we have some time before that process begins, so we're hoping that things improve, while at the same time exploring as many different freight options that we can to secure container space and have the best options moving forward if these problems persist. At this point, though, it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you that there is a chance that this global shipping crisis could delay fulfillment significantly.

This is obviously not the greatest news to end on, but it's where we're at. Like I said at the start, if everything goes well, we can stick to the previously communicated timeline, but there are factors that could cause delay.

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So with all that said, let's move on to some cool content updates. Drew "Gripeaway" Penn and Dennis "Themris" Vögele are two of the very dedicated mods for the Gloomhaven subreddit and have been very helpful during the playtesting process. Drew also helped develop the Voidwarden for Jaws of the Lion, and Dennis created one of my favorite Frosthaven guest scenarios, The Dancing Iceberg. More recently, I've brought them on to do some dedicated development work for a number of different efforts on Frosthaven, and one of the key things they've spearheaded is an overhaul of the perk system.

From here, I'm going to let them take over the explanation:

Perks in Gloomhavenprovided a meaningful sense of progression for your character. The attack modifier card system was popular with Gloomhavenplayers and was something we were excited to get to work on for Frosthaven. Years of Gloomhavenplay and class analysis have revealed some aspects of the system which could be improved upon. Namely: the discrepancy in power level between individual perks within a class yielding reduced player choice, some perks being generally undesirable, and perks almost exclusively relating to attacking.

We set out to achieve four distinct goals in Frosthaven:

1. More Choice! Players should have difficult and meaningful decisions when selecting perks.
2. Stronger Perks! The average individual perk should be stronger without increasing average attack modifier deck strength compared to Gloomhaven.
3. No Undesirable Perks! Every perk you unlock should feel rewarding.
4. New Ground! Even experienced players should find something new and exciting.

Our steps for achieving the first three goals were as follows:

• Less Removal Perks. Discrepancy between the power level of individual perks naturally reduces player choice. The problem was that for most classes in Gloomhaven the baseline first perk was “Remove two -1’s”. That perk immediately began an impossible arms race in which other perks just couldn’t compete. We could significantly increase the power level of non-removal perks to compensate but that would get us to a dangerous place. So the first step is using removal perks more sparingly. On the starting six classes, you’ll only see a total of two pure removal perks and one instance of “Remove two -1’s” (on the Deathwalker, as hitting for consistent values is kind of her thing).
• Better Pure Additive Perks. While we admit that it is dangerous to significantly improve perks which only add modifiers, that’s not to say there isn’t some room for them to grow. You won’t see any more “Add two +1’s” here - instead, you could expect something like the Geminate’s “Add two +1 Push 3’s”. Making the average perk which only adds modifiers a bit better makes them more competitive choices at an earlier stage in a character’s progression.
• Many More Replacement Perks. Finally, the sweet spot: replacement perks. Strictly removing modifiers is often too good and strictly adding modifiers is frequently underwhelming, but the marriage of the two sits perfectly in the middle. Tying the two together allows us to reduce the pace at which modifier decks lose their undesirable cards while also creating opportunities to encourage players to add modifiers they might not have otherwise considered.
• Changes to Advantage and Rolling Modifiers. It is worth noting that the rules for how rolling modifiers interact with Advantage and Disadvantage have changed: “If your first draw with Advantage or Disadvantage is a rolling modifier, continue drawing until a non-rolling modifier is drawn. Then, draw one more card, ignoring any rolling icon on this card. The last two cards drawn (the first non-rolling card and the one after it) are then compared. If the attack has Advantage, apply the effects of all initial rolling modifiers and the better of the last two cards. If the attack has Disadvantage, ignore all initial rolling modifiers and apply whichever of the last two cards is worse. If your first draw with Advantage or Disadvantage is not a rolling modifier but your second draw is, still ignore the rolling icon on that card.”

As for exploring new perk design space, let’s talk about that using the example of the Drifter:

• Unique Attack Modifier Cards. Most Frosthaven classes have access to unique attack modifier cards which play into their class themes. These can interact with their ability cards or special mechanics and help make each class feel distinct. The Drifter has modifier cards which let them move the character token on one of their persistent abilities back one space. This flexible effect highlights the jack-of-all trades playstyle of the class as it can help them deal more damage, tank more hits, etc., depending on which cards you play.
• Non-AMD Perks. Frosthaven introducesperks which do not relate to improving your attack modifier deck (AMD); some of them give passive bonuses, others give once per scenario effects. We call these “non-AMD perks.” Non-AMD perks are designed to give a class access to unique effects which interact well with their playstyle or emphasize their theme. The Drifter has access to an additional hand item slot to highlight their weapons arsenal and the ability to filter loot cards to emphasize their survival skills. Non-AMD perks also give us an opportunity to give compelling options to characters who spend less time attacking and therefore aren’t as interested in improving their modifier deck.
• 18 Perk Boxes. By now, you may have noticed that something else is different: there are now 18 boxes in the perk section of a character sheet (up from 15). These “perk boxes” are now filled with “perk marks”. The rules for gaining perk marks remain the same as in Gloomhaven, so while it is certainly possible to reach 18 perk marks on a character, the goal is simply to have more options.
• Multi-mark Perks. Some Frosthavenperks require two or even three perk marks to unlock. The multi-mark perks, represented by two or three vertically-linked boxes, allow for effects that would be too powerful for a single mark and open up new perk possibilities. The Drifter’s resting perk costs two perk marks, as it can add significant value over the course of a scenario.

Non-AMD perks add new effects to track during the scenario so each non-AMD perk comes with a card to place in your active area. Here’s an example of a static effect:

As some non-AMD perks provide once-per-scenario effects, they have lost icons to remind the player of their one-time use. Here’s an example from the Banner Spear:

We hope you enjoy playing with the many unique perks in Frosthaven as much as we enjoyed thinking them up!

(Isaac typing again) And if you'd like to see more of the class perks (and masteries, for that matter, which were discussed in this update), you can find the character sheets for the first six classes here.

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So that's that. This might be the longest update I've ever written, but Drew and Dennis share some responsibility here. And that's how we're doing it as we get closer and closer to the finish line - bringing in super-talented people to help out and get this thing done!

I'll catch you next time with more cool stuff. In the meantime, have a great weekend and stay safe!

Getting the narrative right
over 3 years ago – Sat, May 15, 2021 at 05:18:20 AM

Hello! Today we're going to get right into a discussion of some news I'm really excited about. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about other stuff, but rest assured that progress is still being made on all fronts of finishing up this project, and I'll have more updates on all of that next time.

For now, I want to talk about some developments that are really going to improve the overall narrative of the game. It's a bit of a long discussion, so if you find yourself not reading all the way through, at the very least, make sure that you read the last section (starting with “And finally”) before you comment.

Alright, so last month, we brought James Mendez Hodes onto the Frosthaven team to do cultural consultant work, which I could not be more pleased about. If you have the time, I'd highly recommend watching this Shelf Stories video or listening to this episode of Ludologyhe was in, where he explains the importance of cultural consultants.

In a nutshell, he is looking through all the narrative of Frosthaven and at all of the different cultures depicted within, and he is making sure everything is internally consistent and that it isn't co-opting any real-world terms or ideas that may be harmful to players or any real-world cultures. It's not just about pointing out problems, but also collaboratively coming up with solutions that expand and strengthen the narrative. It has been an enjoyable process that not only makes the game more ethical and welcoming to a wider audience, but also simply just makes it better.

But I may be getting ahead of myself. First of all, you may be thinking, "What does real-world cultural sensitivity have to do with a made-up fantasy world?" Well, back when I first sat down to create the world of Gloomhaven, my naïve self was right there with you. My general thought process was, “I am creating my own fantasy world completely divorced from reality, and so I can do whatever I want with the peoples in this world. There's no risk of harming anyone, because it's not real.”

This is a big problem, however, because nothing is created in a vacuum. Everything we do is stamped with our own biases and influences. And while the intent may be to not harm, our biases have a tendency to cause harm anyway.

If this is all sounding a little abstract, let's talk about some specific ways in which I fell down on Gloomhaven. I think one of the most obvious ones is my use of the word “race”. “Race” has, of course, been used extensively throughout the fantasy genre as a way to group different peoples, to the point where it is just second nature. But when you stop and think about it, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

“Race” is generally not even a useful delineation of peoples in our reality. It is much more precise to classify someone's culture or ethnicity. And even if we wanted to use the term in a fantasy reality in the same context that people in our reality mistakenly do, that doesn't work either. The Savvas are sentient rocks given life by some mysterious divine force. They aren't a different race from humans. I'm not even sure the words species or genus would do the trick.

And, yeah, sure, you can just go back to the mentality that it's your fantasy world and you can do whatever you want. Maybe the word “race” has a different meaning in my fantasy reality, but the catch is that people in our reality are the ones playing and experiencing the game, and by using the term “race”, I am not only reinforcing this outdated way of delineating people, but I'm also reinforcing the idea that these delineations are so extreme – that the difference between a black person and a white person is as great as the difference between a squishy human and a pile of rocks.

And so, once I set up this idea of “races” in Gloomhaven, I took it one step further into a bad place by assigning personality and mental traits to these “races” in a blanket way, reinforcing the concept of broad racial stereotypes: “All Inox are proud and stubborn.” “All Quatryls are hard-working and helpful.” Yes, certain cultures or societies may see varying traits as virtues and foster them in their populations, but no culture is monolithic, and not all Valraths come from the same culture anyway. Not only does implying that reinforce harmful stereotypes in the real world, it's also just bad world-building.

And I think this gets at the larger point. I could go on and on about all the things I did wrong. We didn't even touch upon how the descriptions of some peoples in Gloomhaven, like the Inox and Quatryls, hew dangerously close to very harmful stereotypes of real-world cultures, because of, again, my own unconscious biases. But the point is that I need to fix them. Not only to stop real-world harm for players who may react negatively to such depictions, but also to just make the world-building stronger and more carefully thought-out for all players to enjoy.

Back when I was creating Gloomhaven, I was just blundering along, doing all the narrative myself. With Frosthaven, I have so many more resources and people willing to collaborate with me to improve the game in every conceivable way, so it was an obvious step to improve in this way as well. And like many other aspects of board game development, the process has turned out to be so much easier once I brought in a professional, I realized I really should have been doing this from the beginning. 

And it's important to note that this isn't a compromise of anything. We don't have to trade the quality of the story to make it less harmful. We can improve all things at the same time, so that this whole experience is just a win-win. There's nothing to even change mechanically – it's all narrative.  And we can do it in parallel to all the other efforts we are also working on to finish up the game, so that improving the narrative won't even delay production. All upside, no downside.

One other thing you may be asking is whether these changes to the story are going to cause Frosthaven to lose its edge. Whether it is going to soften the story in an attempt to please everyone, and that is not the case. You are still a group of hardened mercenaries trying to survive in a hostile environment. Hard choices will still have to be made, but I think “choice” is a key word here.

I've received plenty of negative feedback over the years about the ending of scenario 3 in Gloomhaven (rightfully so), and the problem there wasn't necessarily that players were inflicting trauma on children (though that too wasn't great either), but the main issue was that there wasn't a real choice. The setup for the scenario did not do a good enough job of telegraphing what was to come so that players could opt out and go down the other path if they wanted.

If you look at the history of FrosthavenI wrote during the Kickstarter, you may notice the religiously fueled colonialism vibes running rampant through it. This itself isn't an issue. This is how the main human nation behaves in this fantasy reality. But I've since become uncomfortable with how the story written in that update forces the player to opt in and become complicit in this behavior without choice. Some people may not be comfortable with that.

So we've shifted the story around so that Frosthaven is a separate entity that doesn't want to, by default, take over by force a territory inhabited by other peoples. The story is still just as rich or richer than before, and certain individuals will still come in, recruiting you to advance the colonialist agendas of the capital, but now the player has agency in how the story plays out, which is always a good thing.

And since I'm kind of laying it all out on the table here, publicly recognizing that Gloomhaven did a lot of things wrong, I would also just like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who was harmed by my ignorance in crafting that story, and I want to thank all the people who have helped me realize my mistakes in the intervening years. We all make mistakes, and the important thing is to learn from them and do our best to reverse any harm that those mistakes cause. There's more work to do in that regard, but I think making sure Frosthaven doesn't repeat those mistakes, and talking about the process openly are good first steps.

And finally, I recognize there may be some small percentage of you that will be upset by these developments. You are more than welcome to your own opinions, but voicing those opinions in the comments in a combative, disruptive, or derogatory way is not okay. I would encourage you to simply reach out to [email protected] and request a full refund if you feel strongly enough about it. We've already done that for a couple people who didn't think black lives matter, and we'd be happy to do it again for people who don't think board games should be a safe space for everyone.

If you do feel the need to comment, I ask you with all sincerity to be respectful. It is a simple thing, but it is super-important to us, and we will use all the tools we have to make sure this space does remain safe and respectful.

So have a great weekend, and I will catch you in two weeks with more cool stuff to share!