Get in on the action some more!
about 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!

-

#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.

-

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!
about 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!

-

#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.

-

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
about 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!

-

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.

-

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!

-

-

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.

More stuff in the box! Character standees!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 01:46:26 AM

It's Wednesday! (In case you forgot.) I hope everyone is having a wonderful day, and I hope the following news will bring you more joy:

I've heard your requests, and I have decided to include standees for all characters in the game! So you will have your normal miniature (or two, in the case of the Geminate) in the small labeled tuck box, as usual, but you will also have a standee included in your bigger tuck box with the character tokens. So whichever way you prefer to play, we've got you covered.

I realize not everyone will have the inclination to use the standees, but I decided there was a large enough group that would benefit, that it was worth including. Also, just so we're on the same page, this wasn't a planned thing. I came to the final decision just yesterday, based on people's feedback, so thanks everyone who pushed to make the game better!

And speaking of standees, what about all those summons? As you may know, we are also including summon punch boards in the tuck boxes of all characters with summons, with unique standee artwork for every type of summon. This didn't happen in Gloomhaven because of the extra punch board costs, plus I didn't really have the budget for more artwork. Well, there's a larger budget now, so I wanted to make it work. Here's a taste of some of the amazing summon artwork Alexandr is working on.

Oh, and you may be asking, "With all these extra standees, will we be getting some more stands?" And the answer is yes! We'd even like to have them in a different color, to differentiate characters and summons from monsters. I was thinking green, but I am open to suggestions in the comments.

And if you are wondering if you can gets standees for Gloomhaven characters or summons, I'm afraid those are not options at this point. We are focusing our efforts on developing Frosthaven, but maybe some day after Frosthaven is done we'll be able to revisit Gloomhaven.

-

And if all of that wasn't enough, we also have a new guest designer to announce, Ella Ampongan! Ella is a fabulous human being who runs her Youtube channel, Ella Loves Boardgames, and is a member of the Variable Player Power podcast. She's a big fan of Gloomhaven, though she is of the same opinion as me that Gaia Project is the greatest game of all time (in case my own opinion wasn't clear from yesterday's update). I always enjoy hanging out with her at conventions, especially when we can beat Blue Peg, Pink Peg in a board game trivia quiz show.

-

Who will be the first to breach 3000 points? Could it possibly be #TeamAlgox and their new fan fiction?

-

Once again, I must apologize for the unsolvability of yesterday's daily puzzle. I cannot express how much it hurts to give you all something that doesn't work the way it should, so I am going to work extra-hard to make sure that doesn't happen again. I'm going to get up earlier and run through the puzzle one more time with a fresh perspective before I post it for everybody.

So, with that said, here is the solution to the revised Deathwalker puzzle from yesterday.

And now we have a new Banner Spear puzzle for today. It should be at least a little harder than the previous Banner Spear puzzle!

(Just a note: Injure is a new status condition that prevents characters from using items until the end of their next turn. It doesn't actually have an effect here, since you have no items.)

Two more mind-blowing guest designers
about 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 12:42:55 AM

So let's say you were to ask me, "Hey, Isaac. If you could have anybody in the world guest design a scenario for Frosthaven, who would it be?"

"Well, the designer of my favorite board game of all time, of course!" would for sure be one of my top answers.

That's right! Today brings us not one, but two more great minds: the owner of Feuerland Spiele, Frank Heeeren, and the co-designer of Terra Mystica and Gaia Project, Jens Drögemüller. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Jens in person yet, but Frank and I met a few years ago at Gen Con to discuss localizing Gloomhaven. Given that Feuerland not only publishes the best game ever, but also other fantastic games like A Feast for Odin and Crystal Palace, and Frank is a super-chill dude, it seemed like a pretty obvious choice to let them handle the project.

Now Feuerland will be localizing Frosthaven, as well, and Frank and Jens are making scenarios! Ahhhhh! It's so amazing!

And hey, did you know you could be a peer of these legends of the industry? In case you missed Saturday's update, there is a scenario design competition going on for the rest of the campaign. You could be a guest designer, too! Check out this BGG post for details!

-

#TeamAlgox has pulled ahead in the polls, but #TeamUnfettered maintains a commanding lead, due to stuff like this fan-fiction! It's not exactly accurate, but it's a fun read none-the-less.

-

Puzzle time! Here is your solution to the Geminate puzzle.

And now on to the second cycle! We're going to do another puzzle for each class, in a slightly modified order. Each puzzle will feature completely different low-level cards, hopefully giving you even more understanding of the various facets of each character.

We're going to change it up a little and start with the Deathwalker. Some things to keep in mind with this puzzle in regards to attacking from Shadows: a melee attack (no specified range) can be performed on an enemy in your own hex (since Shadows can occupy hexes with other figures), but if something says "target all adjacent enemies" that does not technically include the hex the Shadow occupies.