Let's Vote on Completion Tokens
almost 7 years ago – Tue, Aug 01, 2017 at 11:34:47 PM

Good day, founders of Gloomhaven!

So as I said in a previous update, I had Josh work on a bunch of designs for completion tokens. We need six in the game, but he has made 13 designs to choose from!

Each of these is intended to be white or black ink screen printed onto a colored piece of wood, roughly 1.5-2cm in size. Some of the designs may change slightly, due to the printer's capabilities, but there shouldn't be any big changes.

The task, then, is to decide which of these six will be included in the game. I've set up a poll on Board Game Geek where you can go vote on your favorites. I really do want your input, so please go over there and participate! The vote will be open throughout the weekend and I'll announce the winners on Monday.

A while back, I also promised some spotlights on the different races in the game. We'll start those tomorrow, so look forward to that as well!

More Stretch Goals!
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 01:01:48 AM

Hey there, founders of Gloomhaven!

Well, it admittedly did take a little longer than expected, but we managed to hit that next stretch goal. You know, the exciting one where an achievement system is added to the game? I am pretty happy about that. And the best part is that it will be balanced separate from the main game, so you can add it as an option - or not - without changing the core game rules. It is there just to add more variability to the game play.

And now I think it is once again time to start talking about new stretch goals.

First of all, at $410,000 I'm just going to stop beating around the bush and give you unique art for every prestige building. This includes theaters, luxury shops, and gatehouses, the other three duplicate buildings that hadn't gotten alternate artwork yet.

Then at $425,000, something that a lot of you have been itching for: a double-sided board with another map. When I first started designing the current map, I of course had to use the city of Gloomhaven as a template. After all, that's the game's theme. I think the current map turned out very well, and it's various features lead to interesting choices, but I've always wondered what I could do with a map if I wasn't under any thematic constraints. If we hit this stretch goal, we can find out!

Finally, at $450,000, you will notice that the graphic just says "More cardboard?" What's that about? Well, it is up to you. I have two ideas that I think will improve the game, both require more cardboard added to the box, which is a significant cost, and so I thought I'd let you all decide which one you'd rather see.

The first option is a board that tracks who owns and has access to each of the 18 resources. It won't track any spatial information like sections, as I think that would be overly convoluted, but it will essentially have 36 places to put down cubes - an "own" space and an "access" space for each resource. Using this, at a glance, it will be easier to see who has what than it would be to look down at the board. It can even be arranged similarly to the tech tree design Dylan Thurston made so it can be clear when someone is able to make an advanced resource.

The second option has been suggested a number of times by pretty much everyone who has played Baerenpark. If you are not familiar with the game, it is about placing polyominoes, and the game provides you with a number of cardboard mats to organize all the pieces so they are not lying haphazardly around the table. Again, this is just a convenience issue. It isn't needed, but I think it will make setup easier and just make the table look more neat while playing.

So, yeah, I'm not going to do an official poll or anything, but let me know what you think in the comments. Which of these would you rather see?

More Artwork
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 04:50:48 PM

Happy two week anniversary, founders of Gloomhaven!

Okay, technically yesterday was the halfway point of the campaign, but I was waiting on some new road artwork from Alexandr before I sent out another update. We'll get to that, but first I've got other new Alexandr art to show you!

Here are the Humans, who control the population resource (because there are a lot of them). One thing that interested Alexandr with this project was to flesh out the world of Gloomhaven a little more and explore the animals that dwell in it. You can see the many different animals these races have domesticated, and I love the design of all of them!

So now let's look at some roads. As I said in a previous update, these tiles need to stand out and convey clearly the idea that diagonals are adjacent. So here we have a simple 8-way crossroad:

I think the cobblestone design will really make it stand out from the other tiles, while also letting the tile serve its other purposes and look nice. We can also do a round-about design:

And with both of these designs, we can begin to vary the artwork, adding people, signs, foliage, churro stands, tea towel stands - you know, basically whatever we want. For instance, we can add a fountain!

I'm interested to hear all of your opinions on these new road tiles, so let me know what you think!

And speaking of what you think, the debate about addition or subtraction for scoring points continues! When all is said, even though so many more people advocated subtraction in last update's comments, I am still leaning toward addition. Subtraction may be more thematic, but I do think that addition will be easier to understand for new players, which is really the primary focus. The game is plenty complicated, so any way we can reduce the cognitive load on people is good.

Other than that, I will acknowledge that we have hit a little bit of a lull in funding, which is normal in the middle of a campaign. I'll just give you a little reminder that you are the best way to drive funding forward, by going out into the world and letting people know that Founders of Gloomhaven exists and it is worth backing!

Also have a good weekend!

Scoring Points
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 06:06:36 AM

Greetings founders of Gloomhaven!

Thanks for all your kind words in the last update. I had a great anniversary trip over the weekend and then came back strong on Monday with Facebook ads and a regularly-scheduled update to the Gloomhaven second printing Kickstarter letting people know about this project. Because of those things, we've raced past the $350,000 goal and are halfway to $375,000 where we will get a deck of achievement cards.

Other than that, there's not a whole lot to talk about in the update. If you are a fan of the Brawling Brothers, you can check out their latest podcast episode, where I talk to them for a while about Founders of Gloomhaven and a bunch of nonsense.

What I figured we'd do for the rest of the update, then, is talk about scoring prestige buildings. Currently how this happens is that when you connect a resource you own to a prestige building, you deliver that resource and score a large number of points that is written on the building tile. The points that you score then "trickle down," where you look at your resource building tile and pay out the points listed on that for its prerequisites to the owners of those prerequisites, who then may do the same thing for their prerequisites.

Understanding how this works is generally the biggest hurdle for learning the game, so anything I can do to help in this regard, I want to explore. The problems with this current system stem from the fact that it is just hard to track. I think Heavy Cardboard probably had the best demonstration of this where they just scored all the points, and then subtracted off for any prerequisites not owned by the deliverer. But either, way, it's not super convenient.

It also feels a little punitive and even misleading. You get all these points and then they are subtracted away. You think you're scoring 7 points, but if you don't own any of the prerequisites, you're only actually scoring 2.

Aaron Senser wrote a really good write-up on BGG of an alternate scoring method, though. One where, to take the previous example, instead of having "7" written on the prestige tile, you would have a "2," which is the amount of extra points that resource scores on top of any prerequisite point scoring. So you would score those 2 points and then just score the prerequisite resources as well without removing any points from your own total. No back-and-forth on the point track - it is all purely additive.

At least, until you consider neutral resources. For balance reasons, any neutral resource used  in the process is considered to be 2 points instead of one. When you are subtracting, this is the one thing that is easier, because you just subtract 2 from your score. If you are adding, however, you basically have to reduce the scoring player's points by one for each direct neutral prerequisite. You still end up subtracting and it is a little difficult to explain.

So, well, if you've followed all that and you have an opinion on the matter, I'd love to hear it. I'm leaning towards switching to the additive method of point scoring, but there is also a group of people who think that the subtracting method would be perfectly manageable if you had point tokens to physically distribute around the table while you were doing it. I think this would add extra costs to the game and become cumbersome or unnecessary after the first couple times you score something, but I am interested to hear what you think.

Adding or subtracting?

New, game-changing stretch goals
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 03:21:09 AM

Hey there, founders of Gloomhaven!

It looks like we just knocked out another stretch goal, which means it's time for the promised update! The update in which I reveal two new stretch goals. Both of them are game-changing in the literal and figurative sense, and I am super-excited about them. By the end of this update, I hope you will feel the same way.

But, all right, that is enough stalling. Well, except for this:

Exciting thing #1

So this first new stretch goal will come to us at $375,000. That may sound like a lot, but it is going to add a bunch of new cards to the game.

So I was talking to Jon Cox from JonGetsGames about how games of Founders where the players spread out at the beginning are generally more interesting, and so there should be a way to incentivize players to do so. We agreed that having suggested starting placements for that first resource everyone places would do the trick, but the idea of incentivizing players to act differently also resonated with me. I started thinking about incorporating a deck of achievements into the game.

Achievements would basically just offer point to players for doing specific things in the game. Things that they might not normally do in the game, and so will have to use a little bit more effort and planning. These achievements will also just be an optional variant to the game, as the game plays perfectly well without them.

How it would work is there would actually be three distinct decks of achievements. The first would be a goal that awards points to the first player who achieves it. These would be goals like, "Build all you bridges," or "Build an advanced resource in every section of the city." These would be the most difficult to balance, as you don't want the first-come, first-served aspect to give an advantage to any race or spot in player order. But I'm sure I'll manage.

The second deck would contain achievements that are scored on a specific trigger in the game - likely when two prestige buildings are complete, which happens roughly halfway through. All players who meet the condition would score points at that time. These would be goals like, "Own a tier 3 resource building," or "Have two resources delivered to a single prestige building." The third deck would be similar to the second, but would be scored at the very end of the game.

Each game, one card would be dealt out from all three decks before races are selected. Getting to pick your races after seeing these might create some imbalance in the player order, but it will lead to more diverse games, and we can adjust for that imbalance with some form of compensation to players later in the order.

I think this will add a healthy amount of replayability to the game and give heavy thinkers something else to incorporate into their plans. Achievements at $375,000! Woo!

Exciting thing #2

So now let's talk about what is coming at $400,000, and here is where I admit that I might have buried the lede a little. Because while achievements can change this game in a significant way, the next stretch goal is going to change another game.

What I want to do is include a deck of eight Gloomhaven city event cards in the Founders of Gloomhaven box. Each of these city events will correspond to one of the eight playable races.

The idea is that once your group has played Founders of Gloomhaven a couple times and you feel you are all reasonably adept at it, you decide to play a game "for real." Then, as a one-time special thing, whichever race wins that game of Founders, you take the corresponding event card and add it to the Gloomhaven city deck.

Your actions in Founders of Gloomhaven will propagate throughout history and have a (very small) effect on the events of Gloomhaven!

Now, this stretch goal isn't going to mean much to you if you don't own Gloomhaven, and the cards are meaningless to players of Gloomhaven if they aren't also a fan of Founders, but I hope this idea is at least very exciting for those of you who are fans of both games.

Now, the first question I anticipate getting is, "Gloomhaven content! Are you going to sell it separately?" And the answer is, "No." As I said before, these cards mean absolutely nothing to those who haven't played Founders of Gloomhaven. You can't just buy these cards and add them to your city event deck. That would make zero sense. Zero sense.

And I'm not trying to incentivize Gloomhaven fans to buy this game. Again, if you're not playing Founders of Gloomhaven and enjoying it, there's no reason to incorporate these cards. I just want to add something special for those of you who are fans of both games.

Now that I've fully explained both goals, I guess I can finally show you the stretch goal graphic:

 All right! I think this update has gone on long enough. Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow!