Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

Focus on map tile art and guest designer Efka Bladukas
about 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 12:29:14 AM

Hello, hello! You may notice this update is going up a little early, and that is because right now I am playing Frosthaven on TTS with the folks from Shut Up and Sit Down on their Twitch channel. You should definitely join us. At this point, I don't have much more info than that, but I'm going to lobby pretty hard to play as the Necromancer, so you all can heckle me if I screw up my publicly proclaimed favorite class. Or cheer me on - it's up to you.

Aaaand, I have other exciting content creator news! Not only is wonderful human being Efka Bladukas joining the guest designer roster, his video review series No Pun Included is also launching a Patreon campaign today. So, first of all, if you don't watch No Pun Included, you absolutely should. And then once you inevitably fall in love with it, you should consider supporting them on Patreon.

Efka was one of the first people to come to mind when I started thinking about guest designers. I knew he would do a great job, because he already has done great work on three side scenarios we created together for No Pun Included's previous Kickstarter fundraisers (one is even available to play for free). Efka is a great writer and has great ideas, so I'm looking forward to working with him again.

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All right, so what I want to do now is, instead of throwing a bunch more words at you, throw some art at you instead. You may have seen this images on the main page and in videos, but I wanted to give them their proper glory.

We got in contact with David Demaret initially to work on the map tile art for Jaws of the Lion based on the strength of his art from previous games like Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Claustrophobia 1643. He knocked it out of the park. 

And so we hired him to work on the map tiles in Frosthaven as well. Map tiles can be a little trickier than full scenario art, because they have to be versatile for numerous scenarios and augmented by overlay tiles. We haven't gotten a lot of art done yet, as Jaws of the Lion wrapped up fairly recently, but still, I think he's killing it with what he has done. 

In addition to creating new environments, David is also doing all new art for the old tiles that will be used in Frosthaven.

Some of these may be a little dark for actual play, but don't worry, we'll make sure everything is color corrected appropriately.

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All right, once again I must apologize for the puzzle yesterday. I didn't give the Red Guard enough health and had to adjust it in the middle of the day, but here is the solution when the Red Guard is able to start at the proper 10 health.

And now the Demolitionist returns! And this situation looks very familiar... How will she handle it? It probably involves punching things.

Highlight on the Banner Spear cosplay and guest designer Tom Heath
about 4 years ago – Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 02:50:11 AM

Hello to everyone! I hope your weekend went well! Yesterday we shot past the $8 million mark, which is wild, so thank you for that. We're currently the 11th most funded Kickstarter in history, and I'm sure we'll break into the top 10 before too long, which is a huge accomplishment to be a part of!

Today I wanted to turn the update over to Monica Paprocki from Geeks A Gogo, who did the Banner Spear cosplay for us at PAX Unplugged and whom we've hired to bring more Frosthaven characters to life in the future. She has provided this video to share, which I found very interesting:

If you want to see more of Monica and Geeks A Gogo, you can check out the Facebook group.

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But, of course, we also have another important announcement. Tom Heath of Slickdrips is joining the guest designer roster! Tom has been a big advocate of my games over the years and currently ranks Gloomhaven as his favorite game. Through his Youtube channel, he makes incredible videos that give people a great feeling for how to play a multitude of games. I think this is important work, especially in this current climate where it is harder than ever to get together with people to play games.

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And now I want to share with you Tatiana Quigley's final piece in her three-part series on the starting characters of Frosthaven. Here the Blinkblade is stealing some decidedly non-vegan cookies from the Deathwalker.

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#TeamAlgox is coming back! #TeamUnfettered cannot rest on their laurels!

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Finally for today, we have the solution to the tricky Diviner puzzle. Sorry if the rules on the attack modifier decks were a little unclear. Basically, if you had to draw a card after you shuffled a deck, you were doing something wrong.

 And then we return to the mercenaries of the Jaws of the Lion for a second round of puzzles. Here the Red Guard faces a truly overwhelming number of enemies. How can he possibly kill them all?

The History of Frosthaven
about 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 11:31:34 PM

All right, in the new tradition of Sunday Lore Discussions, which is not something that was planned, but I like doing it, we're going to delve into the history of Frosthaven itself. Don't worry, Frosthaven is only 5 years old, so it should take too much time.

Last week we kind of already went into the religious mandate of growth and expansion that led to the founding of Frosthaven, which occurred 5 years ago. Previous to that, expeditions had been sent north, and they had always deemed the land too inhospitable, if they came back at all. Year after year, however, the pressure to expand continued to grow. Eventually, the Merchant's Guild decided it would be worth the gamble to potentially discover untapped resources and have another port to the eastern ocean that was closer by land to the capital of White Oak. There were also rumors that the small Quatryl contingent of the Merchant's Guild lobbied heavily for northern expansion, as well, citing something about ancient ruins in the area.

And so the Merchant's Guild invested a huge amount of gold in setting up a proper outpost in the north as a foothold for their expansion. They sent 300 soldiers and workers north with 40 wagon carts full of food, supplies and building materials. Over the course of that summer, they continued to support the community with additional supplies as they built up the town. There had been a few scuffles with the native races, but they had been fended off easily.

When the winter came, the Imperial Pass froze over cutting Frosthaven off from the capital. This came as no surprise. The Guild was confident the town could survive the winter on its own. They did not expect what was to come.

Over the winter, the Algox struck hard. After a few exploratory raids when the town first appeared, they decided to wait until winter to launch their assaults. By the time the pass reopened at the end of winter, the town was in shambles and most of its residents were dead. And, more importantly for the Merchant's Guild, they still hadn't found anything of value up north. The Guild sent more soldiers and supplies north to support the town, but it was becoming a significant money sink, which did not sit well with the Guild members.

And this cycle continued for the next 4 years. The Guild would send soldiers and supplies, and then all progress would get erased over the winter. Each year, less and less was sent, as enthusiasm for the project waned. Frosthaven transformed from a symbol of hope into heavy weight, dragging down all involved. It became a place to send troublemakers and incompetents - a posting considered heavy punishment that you would likely not survive.

After 5 years, almost everyone from the original expedition was dead. The titles of "mayor" and "captain of the guard" had changed hands so frequently, few were willing to accept the responsibility. One soldier, however, who had been there since the beginning and seen all the horrors the north could conjure up, decided that something needed to be done - that real leadership was needed to keep alive everyone who was stuck in this outpost. The soldier, Satha, took over both roles and fought as hard as she could to keep everyone alive through one more winter.

When the pass melts once again, the Merchant's Guild will try one last time to breathe life into the dying outpost. But they won't try very hard. There has been too much unrest around sending any member of White Oak, no matter how incompetent, to die up in the north. They thought about sending prisoners and convicts, but that would likely be worse than sending nothing. No, their last resort is to hire a band of mercenaries - a sad collection of down-on-their-luck sellswords with nowhere else to go. And if that doesn't work, they'll pull the plug on the whole failed experiment, and leave everyone out there to die in the cold.

Scenario book structure and guest designer Lisa Smedman
about 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 03:30:26 AM

Hello! Today I want to tell you about guest designer Lisa Smedman! She is a very prolific fantasy and RPG author who also happens to be super into Gloomhaven. She reached out to us a while back about possibly writing some novelizations for Gloomhaven. And while that didn't quite happen, I was like, "Hey, you should design some Frosthaven scenarios instead!" and Lisa was totally on board for that.

Lisa has published 23 novels, including many in the D&D Forgotten Realms setting and Shadowrun. She also designs RPG content, teaches college courses on game design, designs tabletop war games, and her first card game, Merchants of the Sands, will be published soon as well! I think that definitely qualifies her to make some fabulous Frosthaven content!

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All right, so now I wanted to spend some time talking about the structure of the scenario book. In Gloomhaven, we showed you the entire map on a single page, and had text and section breaks that sometimes spilled over into a second page, but it was pretty self-contained and very space-efficient. We had 95 scenarios to display, and we didn't want to make the scenario book too giant.

I think it worked out pretty well, but there were some flaws - mainly that there were no surprises. It was hard not to notice what monsters were going to show up in the next room and exactly where they were going to be placed. You could calculate the exact number of hexes you needed to get that treasure chest before the door even opened. The excellent Scenario Viewer app solves these problems, but we also started looking for an analog solution as well.

So we started trying different things in the community-driven campaigns and Forgotten Circles. In that, Marcel advocated for a section system that did a lot of good things. We gave the players one page up front with how to start the scenario, and guidelines on when certain things happened (opening doors, time passing, etc.), what section to turn to next to see what happens and what the next room looks like. These sections were then just mixed around in the second half of the scenario book, such that when you flipped over and looked at them, any other information on the page was irrelevant to the current scenario. We were able to hide things from players, which allowed for more surprises and intricate puzzles within a scenario.

But I think it went a little too far. We hid too much, leading to some very valid criticisms regarding how much setup was required in the middle of scenarios and how much flipping back and forth between the sections in the scenario book was required. It also took up a lot more space, both because of the nature of the sections and because the scenarios were a lot more complicated. In Gloomhaven, we got 95 scenarios into 120 pages. Forgotten Circles' 22 scenarios took 64 pages. Not that that is a bad thing, but when we're talking about over 100 scenarios in Frosthaven, it is a consideration. I'd prefer not to give you a 300-page scenario book. That would be an unwieldy amount of pages.

So, we want to keep the mystery, but cut back on the unwieldy-ness of it. The first solution is just to give you all the setup information for the scenario up-front. Not the monster placements, but what monsters you need, even if they're not in the first room, all the map tiles and how they will be placed on the table, and every overlay tile you will need for the entire scenario (even doors and corridors). You'll see a larger map with the initial room, and then a smaller map of the entire layout, with each map tile clearly labeled.

It will look something like this, except this image doesn't have final art assets for anything, so don't judge that too harshly.

The other major fix, in order to combat the need to flip back and forth in the book and to cut down on the number of pages in a single book, is that we'll be splitting up the scenario book into two separate books. One book will have this first page of every scenario, so that you can always keep that open for reference on all the info those pages provide, and then there will be a second book to hold all the sections. This second book will be similar to the Forgotten Circles structure, but also keep in mind that, for the most part, these scenarios will be less complicated and require less section referencing than that. For instance, this first scenario only has one other section when you open that door (plus a conclusion section when you complete the scenario).

If you want to see more of this structure, I'll be using it in the latest community-driven campaign, which is going on now. People seem to be liking it a lot, but if you have any feedback on it while you are playing through those scenarios, let me know!

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#TeamAlgox made up some ground today, larger due to Pepe's repurposing of a Queen song, which I appreciated.

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Today we have the puzzle solution for the Voidwarden. There were a couple ways to do this one, but I didn't see a solution I liked better than my own, so that is what I am sharing.

And now today, we have a special puzzle, made by Marcel (who also designed the two Geminate puzzles and the first Drifter puzzle). It is a very complex puzzle for the Diviner, which, instead of the normal rules for having an attack mod deck full of +0s, you can see your and the monster's attack decks, so that you can manipulate them! There's a lot more to keep track of here (note that you also have an item), but the solution won't be posted until Monday, so you've got two days to figure it out.

Let's talk more about the guest design process, and welcome two new guests: the designers of Grimrock and Druidstone
about 4 years ago – Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 11:22:22 PM

Happy Thursday everyone! It's hard not to just shower you with praise every day about how ridiculously successful this Kickstarter has been, but I figure that might get old after a while. But, since I haven't said it in a while, thanks! You all are the best, and you are going to make this game the best, and I am just so happy that so many people want to experience another journey with me into this crazy fantasy world to meet robots and psychic crabs (and giant, horned yetis, of course)!

I thought I'd talk a little bit more about the guest design process today, but first, there are new guest designers to introduce! Petri Häkkinen and Antti Tiihonen are the designers of the Legend of Grimrock video game series, which both blew my mind when they came out in 2012 and 2014. I am a big sucker for old-school, first-person, grid-based dungeon crawls, and these are the best that have ever been made.

Then, when they released a turn-based tactical combat game last year, Druidstone, and mentioned how similar it was to Gloomhaven, it was an instant-buy for me and another great video game experience. Though I've never met them, I feel like we've had a conversation through our games, and so I reached out to them about guest designing and was thrilled that they accepted!

So, look, I don't want to make it seem like I am trying to sell you something, but Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2 are on sale on Steam right now, and if you love Gloomhaven, I guarantee that you will love Druidstone. So, you know, if you're looking for a way to fill some time in quarantine, well, those are some suggestions.

So what will Petri, Antti, and the other guest designers be doing exactly? Well, to start I should explain that the ordering of the Frosthaven scenario book will be very similar to the ordering in Gloomhaven. The first half or so of the book will be filled with scenarios from the main campaign - branching trees of scenarios that are unlocked in a specific order that will lead you towards various conclusions. There are 62 of these scenarios (there may be 3 additional at the end, but that's heavy spoiler stuff, so we'll ignore that for this discussion) and I have already plotted them all out. Most have been fully designed, scenario stickers have been drawn, the writing is wrapping up - everything is coming along nicely.

But Frosthaven wouldn't be complete without side scenarios. There will be quest chains unlocked through personal quests, through random dungeon cards, through events, and through various other secret means. This stuff is all very much not done, if I am being perfectly honest, but that's where the guest designers come in, at least in part. I will still have a hand in creating a lot of these scenarios, especially if they are critical to, umm, certain secret stuff, but I am depending on the guest designers to provide some cool, smaller adventures that are ancillary to the main campaign.

So, once the Kickstarter ends, and I have some time to put together a packet of information for them about the world lore and the various components and monsters in the game they'll have access to, then we'll start to work together on coming up with exciting scenarios or chains of scenarios. It will ideally be an open conversation where they come up with ideas on what they want to do in terms of mechanics and theme, and I help them figure out how best to fit it into the world and structure of the game (e.g. is it a personal quest, or a random event, or something else?). I'll also be on-hand to help with the nitty-gritty of monster placement and scenario balance if needed.

And then, once we're all happy with the scenario and how it fits into the larger game, we'll work on the other assets like the scenario sticker art and the flavor text, and that's how we make a scenario!

And so the last question is, are all of these guest designers actually increasing the amount of content you will be getting? For sure they will. It won't necessarily be a ono-for-one, where each new guest designer means a new scenario you wouldn't otherwise be getting. If a designer's idea works for something I was planning on doing anyway, I'll plug their scenario into that part of the game, but I expect a lot of the content generated will be on top of my plans. For instance, if you look at the original Kickstarter for Gloomhaven, I'd say around 75% of the content that was introduced through guest designers and the scenario design competition was extra stuff that wouldn't have been replaced by my own work if it hadn't been there in the first place.

More designers absolutely means more content, and it means better, more varied content as well. Every single one of these guest designers  is highly intelligent and skilled at what they do, and every single one of them will make the game better in their own unique ways. Each new addition to the list is a cause for celebration!

Oh, and one more thing! The next scenario of the community-driven campaign is live, so go check that out as well!

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#TeamAlgox was soooo close, but now #TeamUnfettered continues to surge ahead! Today that was mainly due to Beyoken claiming the points I promised for their Necromancer solution for the Unfettered. How will the Algox close the gap now?

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And today for our puzzle solutions, we have actual minis for the Jaws of the Lion characters! The Brute can finally rest!

The next puzzle is for the Demolitionist, another damage powerhouse. An extra note here, in case it is unclear, the top and bottom borders of the displayed map are walls.