Founders of Gloomhaven

A discussion of stretch goals
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 05:58:10 PM

Greetings founders of Gloomhaven!

I hope your weekend has been going well! I must say that for me it has been nice to get caught up on some work and also take some time to relax after those first very busy couple of days on the project.

For instance, I got around to making a low-ink version of the print and play for the game, so you can go check that out if you want a cheap way to try out the game. Just be warned that it is not a small game, though, and there will be a lot of components to gather and put together.

The reason I am writing to you today, however, is that I want to talk about stretch goals. Now, hey, don't worry. I recognize that look on your face. The stretch goals don't want to break up with you. The stretch goals are very happy in their relationship with you. They just want to talk.

First all, though, as we approach the $300,000 goal, I have some new ones to reveal!

 We've got some new artwork for more of the prestige buildings, and also something I think will be pretty cool: alternate introductory game setups.

Before I talked to Rahdo, I didn't think anyone would only be interested in the game for the introductory game. The introductory game was meant to, well, introduce you to the concepts of the game in a more directed setting, so you would be comfortable sitting down and exploring the full thing. But then, of course, Rahdo preferred playing it just in that more controlled space, and I thought, "Well, that's interesting."

The problem with the introductory is game is that it is not very variable. Since the first half of the game is played for you, it can start to feel samey after a few plays. Yes, there is still some variability with the adviser order and prestige building offer, but if people want to just play the game for the second half, I want to give them more variability to play with.

Thus, variable setups. The setups will still have to be very controlled, though. It could never be randomized because there would be no way to retain the balance. A randomized setup would always favor one player, but I can still add a number of different controlled setups. I'm not sure how many. It is really just a limitation on the number of pages in the rule book.

And then we get to some alternate road art at $350,000. First of all, we recognized before the Kickstarter even went live that the road art needed work and we were going to change it, but I figure, why stop at making one new piece of art when we could make a bunch?

Now, I think making art for the roads is one of the trickiest bits of business with this game, because there is so much the roads have to accomplish. First, they have to be visually distinct. You need to look at the board and immediately recognize what is a road and what isn't. They can't blend in with the other artwork. If nothing else, I feel the current roads do that.

But the roads also have the tough job of communicating that they represent an 8-way possible connection, without being tacky. Now, I don't know, maybe a bit of tackiness is good, as that could make them more visually distinct, but, you know, you don't want them to be an eyesore.

I think the current roads could do better at this. I think they need to more clearly show an 8-way crossroads, especially on the diagonals, where everyone seems to be having trouble accepting that diagonals are adjacent. And then from there, we could vary the art with little wagons and people and road signs and stuff.

Now a lot of people have made other suggestions for the roads, and this is where we get into the larger discussion about stretch goals. The idea of having double-sided roads, where one side has an 8-way connection, and the other side has some permutation of a 2-way connection, for people who want their roadways to look more precise, is an interesting one. Ultimately, though, I think it would end up just frustrating a lot of people, looking for the right road, to the point where they'd just end up using the 8-way connections anyway. The roads will still be double-sided, of course, we'll just have the 8-way connection on both sides for ease of use.

There are also, of course, many suggestions about putting plastic components in the game: miniatures instead of meeples, plastic buildings instead of wooden completion tokens. This is just an aesthetic thing for me, but I'd prefer to keep everything as wood. The tendency of board games on Kickstarter is to make them big and flashy with lots of overly-produced bits that serve no function other than to look cool, and I'm just not into that. I think this game will look great with a bunch of nice, wooden bits without going so far as to look ostentatious.

And the same goes for metal coins. Because of their weight and materials cost, metal coins would need to be an add-on for the project, and I don't want to make people feel like they've got to hand over another $10 to get a complete game.

A lot of other great suggestions have come up so far, though - a double-sided main board, for instance. Even if I don't respond to every suggestion, know that I am reading them and considering them, and know that I appreciate them! I just wanted to put some of these big discussions to rest so we could focus on the feasible improvements.

And, well, gosh, I think this update has gone on quite long enough. We've got more exciting stuff coming next week, so I will see you tomorrow!

A couple of things
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 05:54:25 PM

Good day, founders of Gloomhaven!

We hit the $300,000 stretch goal, which is totally awesome, and I'll talk about that more in a minute, but first, I wanted to make sure you were aware that Heavy Cardboard is doing a new live stream of a play of Founders of Gloomhaven tonight at 8:30 EDT (roughly 3 hours from now).

You may not have been aware, but they did a live play through Thursday night, and it was going great up until their internet crapped out and they had to cancel it. It was very sad. They ended up playing through the game anyway, and posting it after the fact, which you can watch here or on the main Kickstarter page.

Edward was really looking forward to playing it live, though, so they decided to schedule a new live stream after making sure the internet wouldn't malfunction again. So go check out that live stream in a few hours. I will be there in the comments, and, if anything, it will be more exciting than their first play through, since all four of the players are now familiar with the game.

Right, so, stretch goal. I was thinking the other day, we need six completion tokens in the game, but what if I had Josh make more than six designs, and then we can all vote on which of them we like the best?

Again, these will be big, chunky, screen-printed wooden bits, as we have just unlocked. Josh will design various building shapes - shapes that won't necessarily correspond to exact prestige building shapes, since we're not going to have one-to-one coverage of the 21 prestige buildings, but they will be different architectural designs that would fit into the Gloomhaven setting.

We don't have them designed yet, but I am hoping that we'll get a poll for that up later this week so that you can have more of a say about what goes into the box. So look for that a little later on.

I think that covers all the recent developments. Should we have another segment of stretch goal idea discussions? Okay, here goes.

I've seen a lot of suggestions for recessed player boards, like what you'd find with Scythe, but I really don't think those would provide much benefit in this game. Or at least enough of a benefit to justify the cost, when we could be applying that cost to something else. You see, you are really only tracking one thing on your board: your income, and that is just a convenience thing so that you don't have to count up your buildings every time you collect income. It's not storing unique information. If you bump the table, that just means you may have to count up your buildings again.

But anyway, keep the ideas coming. I just sat down with Josh and had a talk about all the various things you have brought up so that we can make sure to improve the game as much as possible.

Have a good evening, and remember to check out the Heavy Cardboard live stream!

Solo play
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 05:38:06 PM

Hello founders of Gloomhaven!

Looks like we have almost knocked down another stretch - some more original art from Alexandr, which is super-cool. Not quite there, but I'm gonna throw out a small update anyway to talk about solo play.

A lot of people are interested in how the solo play works, and I've directed them to the rule book, but sometimes it's hard to get a feeling from words on a page, so I also arranged for Adam Smith at Rolling Solo to get his hands on a copy so he could film a solo play through for us.

Now, it looks like he won't be getting his copy until next week, so I figured I could give you a little more information in the mean time to tide you over. And since words on a page sometimes don't convey a feeling very well, I decided to shoot a video instead.

I just want to warn you that, compared to all the other very professional people who have done videos for this Kickstarter, my homemade video is going to look pretty terrible. If it offends your sensibilities too much, then just be patient. Adam's film is coming, so you can wait for that.

For those who can stomach it, I give you a play through of the first two card cycles of the solo game, complete with a breakdown of the solo rules and detailed strategy discussions. Also I should probably warn you that I am using my ugly, bare-bones prototype.

One thing I forgot to mention before I stopped recording was how the game ends. After your seventh cycle of cards, the game ends without another vote and you have to have delivered all resources to all six prestige buildings on the board or you lose. It's pretty rough!

Oh, also! I forgot to mention yesterday that I did a podcast interview with Gaming Rules! I thought it was pretty great, and you should listen to it if you have half an hour.

And that's it! Happy one week anniversary for the project!

Happy weekend!
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 05:38:00 PM

Good day, founders of Gloomhaven!

Just a very small update today! We continue to move toward that $350,000 stretch goal, which is lovely.

I really just wanted to let you know that I will be absent most of this weekend. You see, when I decided on these Kickstarter dates, the one problem was that it fell right on my 6th wedding anniversary, which was a bit of a bummer for my wife. It is actually tomorrow, so I'm dropping off the grid here in a bit to go on a little anniversary vacation.

I should be back tomorrow evening, but I just wanted to let everyone know what was going on while I'm not around.

So that's that! Have a great weekend!

400% funded!
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 01:36:35 PM

You founders of Gloomhaven have done it again!

400% funded in less that 12 hours! And with a full four weeks still ahead of us, I'm a little scared where this might end up! I mean, not really scared, but this first day has been awe-inspiring, so thanks for that.

The reason I am sending you another message this evening - the second in one day - is that we just hit another stretch goal that you didn't even know about. Some people were wondering about whether there would be eight sets of personal buildings to go with the eight sets of player tokens, and yes, that was part of the $150,000 stretch goal, too.

But now at $200,000 we are going to get individualized artwork for the personal buildings of each race. The art we have now for the houses, bridges, and gates are human themed, but with this stretch goal, which we have already reached, your race's personal buildings will look much more thematic.

Want to know what a Harrower bridge would look like or a Quatryl house? So would I, so now we'll get Alexandr to make them. I'm excited!

After that, the plan was to do some smaller goals, but, well, we have the graphic ready now so what am I doing? I'll just let that do the talking.

So, the graphic is a little non-linear, but as you can see, after $200,000 we're going to work on knocking out some smaller goals to get more alternate artwork for the prestige buildings. Basically, of the 21 prestige buildings in the game, there are eight sets of duplicates (they have different names and powers, but the art and resources are the same), along with five unique buildings.

These smaller stretch goals will allow us to make each building visually distinct (much like we've now done with the races!).

Then at $250,000 I'd like to upgrade the active player marker, which is currently a cardboard chit, to something more hefty and meaningful - a big piece of wood. What exactly it will look like, I'm not quite sure at this point. You all are moving too fast for us, and Josh hasn't had a chance to design that either, but, again, I trust him to make something cool!

And then, of course, there will be much more to come after that!

I just want to thank you all once again for giving this project such an amazing first day. I am excited to see what the future will bring, and I hope you are as well!