Introducing a new pledge tier and guest designer Travis Oates!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 02:20:44 AM

Hello! After a weekend of anticipation, we are ready to launch the new pledge tier that was discussed on Friday. First of all, I want to thank you for all your comments and opinions. After reading through all of them, and ruminating on the best option, I was able to come up with something that should be beneficial for the largest group of people.

I do want to acknowledge, of course, that it isn't going to fit everyone's needs - that would have been a futile goal. Just remember that if something you want isn't in the bundle, you can always add it to your pledge in the pledge manager. Also, if you don't feel like you can pay for everything now, you can always back at a lower level and then upgrade your pledge to this bundle in the pledge manager - it will be the same price there.

So, with all that said, we're creating a bundle of Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles, Frosthaven, both solo scenario sets, all three sticker sets, and the Frosthaven Forteller narration. The price is $285, which is 33% off the total MSRP of all those items. This provides a good discount on those interested in going all-in on the game play items of the series. All Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles items will still ship in July. Because of the size of the games, there would be no savings in shipping everything together anyway.

Also, just a reminder that if you are also interested in the Forteller narration for Gloomhaven, which has the 51 story scenarios now, but will be upgraded for free to include all 95 scenarios, you can get that directly from Forteller on their website.

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And if that weren't enough news for the day, we also have a new guest designer: Travis Oates, the voice of Piglet! Travis has been voicing Winnie the Pooh's Piglet in animated features, television, and video games like Kingdom Hearts II since the mid 2000's. And if you need more credentials than that, well, first of all, PIGLET, but, okay, I guess that doesn't speak to his board game experience.

Travis also created and co-hosts the television series Above Board, which provides an entertaining and informed look at all the intricacies of our hobby in an easily digestible format. Think Top Gear, but for board games. The show hasn't aired yet (though it should be hitting later this year), so for now, you'll just have to take me at my word when I say this show is going to provide top-notch entertainment for people in the hobby, and bring in a lot of new people as well.

He's also a huge fan of Gloomhaven, which helps. He may also be providing his voice work for the Frosthaven Forteller narration, which is super-cool. Plus PIGLET.

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#TeamAlgox made up a lot of ground this weekend with more fan fiction and a lot of #TeamLurkers defecting to their side, fleeing the sinking, crab-infested ship. Can #TeamUnfettered maintain their lead? We've got a close race here, and there's still a lot of time left!

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And finally for today, we have a new puzzle. But first, the solution to the Geminate puzzle from Saturday.

The final character in this second cycle of puzzles is the Necromancer, once again bringing you a brain-burner. The only requirement here is for the Necromancer to not take any damage from attacks for four rounds. But there are a lot of nasty enemies, and they want to bring their multi-targeting friends to the party as well!

Happy Easter! Let me tell you about the Great Oak
over 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 11:56:18 PM

On this relaxing Easter Sunday, I wanted to tell you about religion. Religion in Frosthaven, that is.

There are numerous pockets of other religions on the main continent, but far and away, the most dominant religion, particularly among humans, is that of the Great Oak.

As the story goes, the main colony of humans had been living for centuries in the caves under the Imperial Mountains, too afraid to go above ground because of stories of demons passed down by their ancestors. When they finally did emerge, the first thing they saw was a massive oak tree sitting atop a hill.

They were drawn to it for shelter. They ate its acorns and the birds in its branches for sustenance. They used those branches and its children to build their homes. While under the protective arms of the tree, no demons attacked them. Life was so much better than down in the caves, and they were happy.

Naturally, they began to worship the tree and believed that it was a sentient force watching over them. They built a city around the tree, always giving it proper reverence. This city was White Oak, the capital of human civilization. And even today, the tree lives strong and is the tallest thing in the city, watching over everything around it. Its acorns are planted in every new city that is founded as a basis for a new temple to worship the Great Oak, so that it will watch over those residents as well.

Some might say that it is just a tree, but that would be wrong. Maybe it started out that way, but belief gives things power in this world. The yearning and worship of its believers eventually did call energies from other planes to inhabit the tree. And the more the energy helped the people, the more praise and worship it received, and the more the energy grew as a result. There is a benevolent force in the tree, and in all other trees planted from its acorns that are worshiped. And Keepers of the Oak, those who follow closely to its teachings and maintain the temples, can certainly wield a divine power in the Oak's name.

So what are the teachings of the Oak? Many foster a general benevolence among its followers: treat others fairly and with respect, help and protect your fellow man, and do no harm. There is a darker side to its edicts, however, mainly in those that encourage its followers to grow and spread across the continent, planting its seeds wherever they can. The humans' aggressive expansion, all in the Oak's name, has led to numerous conflicts with the Inox, Vermlings, and Valraths over the years, which has certainly gone against the teaching of doing no harm.

And so, as the human's thirst for expansion continues, Frosthaven was recently founded, resulting in even more conflict with the Algox, Lurkers, and Unfettered. A lone oak sapling sits near the center of town, desiring to grow and shelter the community. But what edicts will the residents of this new outpost follow? Will they try to make peace, or will they just try to destroy everything that threatens them instead?

See you tomorrow with more announcements and puzzles!

Get in on the action some more!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 11:50:50 PM

Hello! You are now backing the third most funded board game project in history! I am very impressed and grateful!

Before I get into new developments, I did want to give you a small update on the scenario design competition. When I announced it last week, I didn't have the stat and ability cards for the new monsters ready yet, but they are available now, so you can find a link to the Google drive with all the files through that thread. Hopefully that will make creating and play testing your scenarios easier!

And now it is time to announce a whole other design competition! More chances to have your work included in the game! I have just launched an event design competition on BoardGameGeek, where you - yes, you - can submit Frosthaven event cards. I'll pick whichever ones I feel are excellent to include in the game, and the creators of the ones chosen will all receive free copies of Frosthaven.

You can read the full details of the competition in the post, but I did want to expound upon one thing here. In the process of writing the post, I ended up having to go in depth about a number of different dynamics of the town in order to give people a better sense of the systems they could play with. I'm going to copy that discussion here as well, because I think it will be interesting for a lot of people even if they are not necessarily interested in designing events.

Events and the Town

An event can belong to one of four decks:

Summer City Deck: These events are generally good. Good stuff is happening in town and players will earn benefits.

Summer Road Deck: These events are generally neutral, leaning toward bad. But not too bad. Something befalls the players on the road, they are mildly inconvenienced or allowed to trade one thing to get a different thing.

Winter City Deck: Winter has come, and things are not great. Resources must be spent to stay alive. Threats are attacking, testing the town's defenses. Stuff like that. If player's can't ward off the calamity, they will usually suffer a loss of morale or damage to their buildings (more on these consequences below).

Winter Road Deck: Things are bad! Traveling in the winter is harsh, and any number of terrible things can happen, especially if you are not prepared.

Now let's talk about conditional consequences. In Gloomhaven, these could be tied to whether you had enough money or reputation, or had the right character in your party. Money is still a thing, though conditions can also be set on whether you have a number of a specific resource (wood, metal, hides, or herbs).

Reputation is not a thing anymore, but morale is. The mechanics of morale are still a work in progress, but, generally, high morale is good and gets you good things, low morale is bad and gets you bad things. The town also has a prosperity value, tracked similarly to how it was in Gloomhaven, and based mainly what buildings have been built and upgraded. Adjustments to prosperity should be pretty rare in events, though.

We should talk about the city's defense rating, too. A few of the buildings in town will add to this, but events can increase or decrease the rating, as well. This is often a conditional in winter city events, where something attacks, and if your defense rating is high enough, you ward the attack off, but otherwise, bad things happen.

When bad things happen in an attack, this can often result in damaged or destroyed buildings. When a building is damaged or destroyed, players typically get to choose which building is affected. Damaged or destroyed buildings cannot be used in any way until they are repaired or rebuilt. Repairing a building will cost a small amount of resources, but a destroyed building will cost whatever it costs to build its current level to rebuild. Destroying buildings is fairly rare.

And then there are the characters. With the ever-expanding cast of characters, and a desire to be able to play any character in any game, it will become increasingly difficult to keep up with a system that has conditions for specific characters, so we're changing it up. All characters will now be assigned a list of traits. Things like "strong", "tough", "intelligent", "charismatic", "cynical", "suspicious", etc. And these traits can then be used as conditionals, so that if someone in your party is "strong", you can move that rock that is blocking your path.

I'm sure the question will arise about how we plan on retroactively adding traits to Gloomhaven characters and the Diviner. For now, we are planning on releasing a list on BGG some time before Frosthaven is released, but we are working on a more widespread solution, as well.

So, yeah, I hope that gives you a little more insight into how the town will operate, and you can see that this will lead to more dynamic and interesting events with long-term repercussions. Should be exciting!

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#TeamAlgox is fighting hard to close the gap, but #TeamUnfettered is fighting back hard as well! There has been a big surge of creativity on BGG, will more awesome fan fiction for the Algox and the Unfettered. Plus a nice little Algox image encouraging us all to stay home, and a giant Unfettered.

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I realized too late that I forgot to actually link to the bonus Brute puzzle yesterday, so here is the actual link. And then here is the solution to yesterday's Blinkblade puzzle (there is also a dog, if you are a fan of dogs).

Today we see the Geminate yet again in a sticky situation. How will they get out (or at least survive four rounds)?

Let's talk about a new pledge tier, also Marcus Ross!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 01:24:24 AM

Hey there! We passed $7 million! That's ridiculous!

Before I talk about our newest guest designer, Marcus Ross, I wanted to pose a question to you. You see, I was thinking about adding another pledge tier to the project - something that would resemble an "all-in" pledge, but I wanted to know your thoughts on it. I was thinking we could bundle up Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles, Frosthaven, all the stickers, and solo scenarios, the metal coins, and the audio narration, and I'd be able to provide a solid discount on all those things together. Does this sound like something that would interest you? Would you like to see a different bundle? (e.g. Add the organizer as well? Add the pins? Remove the stickers?)

Obviously we don't want to add 50 different pledge tiers with all possible permutations. I'd like it to be just the one that will be desirable for most people and include both Gloomhaven and Frosthaven, as I think there are a significant number of people joining this campaign looking for both. So if you are in that category, let me know in the comments if you think this is a good idea and what you would want to see included in the bundle. Keep in mind that we can't offer anything we aren't already offering as add-ons.

And now let's talk about Marcus Ross, co-founder of Water Bear Games! Back when I first started designing games, I saw Marcus win the web series Tabletop Deathmatch with his game Discount Salmon, and so he has always been a board game rock star in my mind. Then I saw him after that at Geekway to the West wearing his Discount Salmon costume, and I knew this guy was legit.

Marcus has made other engaging real-time games over the years, including Beeeees! and the criminally underrated Letter GO! I am very interested to see what he will bring to his scenario design!

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#TeamAlgox is back within 100 points of the Unfettered! Activity has slowed, so now is the time to strike! Expect to see some more opportunities to gain some points over the weekend.

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Bonus puzzle! I've been meaning to post this for a while, but Reddit user InoxMindthief made a puzzle for the Brute a few days ago that I thought was clever, so I wanted to share it with you. It is only fitting since the Brute has to represent every other character class in my videos.

Speaking of, here's the Brute again solving the Drifter puzzle from yesterday.

And now I give you a Blinkblade puzzle! I wanted to do something a little different, so I decided not to put a time limit on this one, but instead give you a different restriction - you have to be at full health when you kill the demon. Enjoy!

Actor and writer Calvin Wong joins the team
over 4 years ago – Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 02:08:46 AM

Hello! I definitely want to tell you about newest guest designer and glorious individual Calvin Wong, but first!

Did you know there is a community-driven Gloomhaven campaign going on right now? "What is a community-driven campaign?" you ask. Well, let me tell you!

What happens is that I make a series of ten scenarios that play out as a linear Gloomhaven campaign you can play with whatever characters you want. Except, it's not strictly linear if you participate. You see, I don't write anything beforehand. Instead, after every scenario, there is a vote on BoardGameGeek about what will happen next. And then I take that result, and we do a road event where another choice must be made. And only after those choices are decided by the community do I create the next scenario.

Yes, I know I'm crazy. Thank you.

So I released the second scenario of the campaign about an hour ago, and you can play it and then vote on what happens next! Sure, maybe you missed the first scenario and some of the early decisions, but there are still eight scenarios left after this, and I would love it if you participate. Even if you don't own Gloomhaven, you are still more than welcome to read along and make decisions. Here is the first scenario and a Geeklist that is updated whenever new things are added.

And, finally, did you know that this is the fourth community-driven campaign? There are three more that I ran in the past that you can play if you are looking for more content. By the time this new one is done, that will be 40 extra scenarios for Gloomhaven. For free!

Into the Unknown

Capital Intrigue

The Infinite Beyond

I use these campaigns to try out wacky new mechanics and create really off-the-wall scenarios, so I hope you enjoy them. For instance, with the latest scenario released today, I had a really dumb idea about a mechanic for spawning monsters, and then I said, "Aww, screw it, let's do it and see what happens." I think it turned out pretty well!

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But listen, I have spent a lot of time not telling you about Calvin Wong, our newest scenario guest designer, and for that I apologize. Calvin is an incredibly intelligent and passionate person who writes for numerous publications about board games and video games. He was also in the movie Crazy Rich Asians!

Calvin will unabashedly tell you that Gloomhaven is not his favorite dungeon crawler because there are not enough machine guns and robots, but, well, does he know about the Unfettered? I think I'm finally going to win him over with Frosthaven. And maybe he'll be able to add some more cyberpunk flair with the scenario he designs!

Now watch this great video of him giving relationship advice and go follow him on Twitter.

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And there's one more thing I have to tell you about! Tonight at 9pm EST artist Tatiana Quigley is hosting the second of three live art shows on Facebook. For each show, she is offering her own rendition of two of the Frosthaven starting characters paired up as BFFs enjoying a fun activity.

For Tuesday's show, she had the Banner Spear and Necromancer hanging out playing Jenga. I know the Banner Spear and Necromancer don't seem like the likeliest combo, but just think of all those summons the Banner Spear can get in formation with!

Here is the art she made:

So please join us tonight as we hang out and see what she does with the Drifter and Geminate!

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All right, I successfully didn't give you a broken puzzle yesterday, so that's exciting. Now let's see if we can continue the streak with the Drifter. But first, the Banner Spear solution.

Fun fact: the Drifter was originally called the Juggernaut, but in play testing, the players said he didn't feel so much like an unstoppable wrecking ball so much as a persistent, dogged fighter. More Bruce Willis than Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Fun fact 2: the Geminate was originally called the Shifter, but when I changed the Drifter's name, the two names were too similar, so the Geminate's name got, umm, shifted as well.