Well, I haven’t unlocked any of the game, so all this is from reading the manual, but the upgrades to the town in Kay Dee Emm almost entirely determine characters’ abilities. There’s a deck of innovation cards you draw from to determine what things the town has learned, which in turn determines what abilities and gear can be imparted to the characters. There are also buildings unlocked that fold different services and gameplay into the mix. When a character dies, the town retains the innovation or building; the upgrades are still in play. That’s how it offsets the permadeath. You still lose the character’s advancement (courage and insight, for instance, are two stats unique to each character), but the fundamentals of each character they get from the town, not just from their level or xp or gear or stats.
Someone who knows the game better can probably better describe the specifics, but the rules are very clear from the get-go that your advancement is embodied in the town, not the individual characters. It warns you that characters will die, and sometimes unexpectedly and without recourse. You can lose an important character with a die roll, without recourse, which I think some people would hate. Imagine if Gloomhaven did that! But it’s a central principle in Kay Dee Emm, that advancing the town is the goal, and the various characters are just an element of that.
Well, I’m way too early in Kay Dee Emm to show anything meaningful. But along those lines, I really do want to start doing more boardgaming videos. It’s just that I don’t have an easy way to set up the camera without rearranging everything. Waaaah, life is so hard!
I really don’t think that’s the case. I think every creature has a role and some roles are harder than others from some party configurations. All of enemies in this game suck, is what I should say, in that there isn’t a single time we placed enemies on the board and I said “oh, good, it’s only those guys”. No, all of them are challenging, and they are from the first room on. In fact, the last room is very liberating and can be the easiest if you conserved your cards, because suddenly there is no reason to hold back with your loss cards - now that we are in the last room, my Mind Thief is taking Elite figures turns away from them, exploding the craniums of their allies and damaging them with the skull shrapnel, and using a little card that let’s me attack for big damage and stun a target, and gaining life with every melee attack on top of that.
Here is an example of three creatures from a single scenario I had a picture of on my camera roll.
Giant Vipers don’t have much health, only 4 and 8 for normal/elite. But they inflict poison, one of the worst things you can have on your character. They also move pretty far at 3, and deal 2/3 damage, and will probably beat you in initiative. That’s a solid hit coming in. Their cards let them do things from leaping attacks to spitting poison. Then you also realize they have TEN standee figures, so you can find yourself swarmed in the right (wrong) situation.
Deep Terrors are horrifying. At first glance you may think they are easy to kite because they have no movement and 5/8 health isn’t a huge deal for playing in a level 3 dungeon. But they retaliate for 2 when you hit them, and that hurts a lot, and the hit pretty damned hard at 3 and 4 damage. Worse, they tend to “summon” more of them (erupting tentacles from the ground, I assume) right next to your characters. But thankfully there are only 6 standees for these and you can often run past them and get out of range, if you play smart. It’s extra nasty on scenarios where you have to clear the rooms though, and I’m well glad in this one we didn’t reveal any more (we went one of two possible paths in this scenario).
Harrower Infesters, ah! Here, you may think, aha see I told you - these are vastly more powerful than the other two enemies! And indeed they are pretty powerful, but with some caveats. First, you encounter one right away, so it’s not like they saved them for the end. And while they have a lot of health and quite a bit of base damage, they aren’t crazy fast in the movement department and they are mostly melee, so like an Earth Elemental they can be fairly easy to control if you play smart (and don’t get unlucky with like a Move +1 card being revealed or something). Second, and important to note, they only have 4 standees, so you will never have to face down too many, and in this scenario only one was ever elite at a time, and with liberal application of wounding and poison effects, he went down almost too fast as our Brute was trying desperately to score a kill for his personal quest on them.
Now, if you are asking if 1 vermling scout is as powerful as 1 harrower, no definitely not. But you won’t encounter enemies like that, you’ll encounter a mixture of them designed to be challenging but fair. You’ll face off in a room with 2 harrowers and 4 snakes, but the snakes will start in the far corner and you’ll have some time to take out one or hopefully both harrowers before you have to deal with snakes jumping and spitting on you. And every enemy will be at the same level - you won’t open a random door and face off against a level 5 “elite” harrower if you are playing on scenario level 3, either.
All the enemies in the game have pros, cons, and ways to deal with them. They are all equally nasty and equally horrible to deal with, depending on A) the scenario and B) your party make-up and C) how lucky/unlucky you get when they take their turns. Like I said before, an archer is deadly unless he draws a card that makes him look like an idiot, for instance not getting a move action and being forced to attack at disadvantage, or an earth demon can crush you with one meaty paw unless he draws a move -1 card standing still and swinging at empty air. Or if a newly revealed Harrower stands there healing (while already at full health) and otherwise not doing anything.
So while I may be overall a little off with my assessment that all enemies are equal threats, I’m not an expert by any means, I don’t think I’m as wrong in my observations as you believe me to be.
In KDM is better to think of character as (complex and evolving) resources. They are certainly the most important resource (game ends if you lose all population) and they do have a lot of individuality es gained through playing (most start the same but end sort of specialized). You also think of them as resources, since they are perishable and killable, so you find yourself reserving some characters mid game so they don’t age as much and bring them over only to important fights. Or you choose to make a character a trainer or a breeder… but most likely you will run through several character generations on a campaign. It’s the settlement the one who only grows forward and becomes more capable.
It sucks to lose a good character, as it sucks to lose a great piece of gear, but you do sacrifice them here and there and as long as there is population left you march on.
The settlement, though, grows a lot in capabilities and options it gives you during the game. Think of it as a settlement building video game. You go from 2 or 3 basic options to dozens of different things you can do on the settlement phase (you have a limit of actions you can take per phase, though, so you need to choose priorities). Games are not won on the tactical level (although you need to do ok and prioritize farming the right ingredients) but in the settlement growing and crafting phase.
Well, any prickishness you discerned came out well after the “it takes all kinds”. That was entirely teasing from an affectionate place. But it’s frustrating when a conversation gets dragged down into “the sky isn’t blue” territory. I lose patience with malk telling me characters don’t get weaker and Scott telling me there’s no variable difficulty among different enemies. I should probably let that stuff slide, but as I said, it’s like telling someone you don’t like Jim Jarmusch movies because they’re slow, and then they start explaining to you that Jim Jarmusch movies aren’t slow so therefore you have no reason not to like them. Ugh. I’d rather talk about why they’re slow, what that brings to the table, what that costs, how that compares to other movies, and so forth. So, you might be right about me being a prick, but you’re wrong about where it started.
I implemented a house rule that I don’t have to play or even own Gloomhaven to start having opinions on it, but the exhaustion from reading this thread is still tricky to deal with.
Dude, come on. I know you’ve played the game enough to know you can’t talk about characters without talking about their AI cards. Which is precisely what you did in that post. What makes an earth demon different than a bandit isn’t the way it scales with difficulty levels. In fact, until you’re playing on harder difficulty levels, none of the creature abilities come into play on those stat cards.
Characters are distinguished largely by their AI cards. You should know this.
I literally described some of the AI cards in that same post, talking about some of the key abilities they can do from deep spawn summoning more of themselves and vipers jumping and spitting to harrowers healing. I don’t think you are being very receptive to my explanation, and maybe that’s my fault, maybe I’m just not doing a very good job explaining myself. If so, my apologies. But I am not really having any fun in this “discussion” so I’m bowing out now.
Well, we all do it. But someone upthread told me I didn’t like Gloomhaven because I didn’t know how to play, and then bailed with a funny gif. A sort of drive-by “lern 2 play n00b”.
First, to be clear - and maybe this is a small distinction - I never said you are a prick, just that you were being a prick in that moment. Like I said, you were very gracious to me on your podcast, and answering various questions. Not that you need my approval or anything, but I guess I misinterpreted your intent with your comments. They just didn’t come off that way to me.
I think if everyone was sitting in a room together this would have went more smoothly. There really is truth to your, malkav’s and Scotts arguments. If you save up your high powered cards for the end, your character doesn’t feel any weaker. Yes, I agree that technically they are weaker because they have less tools, but they don’t feel weaker when you smash the crap out of the enemies.
Also to Scott’s point, all the creatures can be a royal pain in the arse depending on what they draw and the circumstances. A creature that isn’t that powerful can end up causing just as much trouble as a big dude. But again, technically I think you are right in saying some creatures are more powerful and the end rooms can be tougher if you didn’t manage your cards cautiously. There definitely have been times where we had more trouble in an early room than in a late room.
People have a tendency to get entrenched in their side of the argument when there is truth to multiple sides.
You’re asserting something that’s pretty much untrue about any RPG I’ve ever played. Some creatures are designed to be more difficult than others. That’s partly how they’re distinguished. That’s good creature design. A rat isn’t a kobold which isn’t an orc which isn’t a troll which isn’t a wyvern which isn’t a dragon. I have no idea why you’re claiming otherwise. And if you don’t believe me about the rooms becoming increasingly difficult, then have a look at the scenario generator again. It’s the basic template for every scenario I’ve played.
Also, claiming the last room can be the easiest if you save all your cards demonstrates my point about Gloomhaven exactly. The game mechanics punish you for using your abilities. Ergo, you become weaker while monsters become more powerful. And you don’t have to disprove that assertion to like Gloomhaven! You don’t have to defend it against a very basic observation about how it plays.
Ha, I wondered if you were going to try to float that excuse! Sorry, that won’t play. :)
But, look, I don’t mind you calling me a prick if I’m being a prick. You just don’t get to do it from the moral high ground.
Yep. If you don’t use your one-shot powers, you will still be able to use your one-shot powers. You have a point! :) I do realize that’s a big part of the learning curve. You don’t blow your wad in the first room and then clap the dust off your hands and proclaim victory. And this gets at what malk and others have said about the first room in the first scenario. It dumps you into a pretty extreme situation when you probably haven’t reached that part of the learning curve.
I think this just goes to show how our feelings differ on the game. I don’t see it as getting punished. I see it as getting challenged to use my cards effectively. But it’s how we each feel, so neither of us are wrong :-)
Well, I don’t mean literally. I’m talking about the game design principle of the difference between negative feedback loops and positive feedback loops. Gloomhaven leans very heavily on a negative feedback loop. Whether you call it “punishment” or “getting challenged” is immaterial.
Again, contrast this with one of my recent favorites, Spirit Island, where you get more and more powerful as you play. Whereas your dude can barely stand at the end of Gloomhaven, you’re a veritable god destroying entire cities with ease at the end of Spirit Island. That’s one hell of a positive feedback loop! That’s how most (?) games work these days because games are getting better at understanding psychology, at understanding how to engineer player experiences, at understanding that rewards are more pleasing than penalties. No one likes a stick, and everyone likes a carrot. Games have to balance this. But I feel Gloomhaven’s negative feedback loop is an imbalance and it’s one of the main reasons I’m playing other games that aren’t called Gloomhaven.
Exactly! That’s the substance of the discussion. Yet here are folks trying to prove to me that Gloomhaven doesn’t have a negative feedback loop. Urk.
It’s really three farmable monsters and 5 bosses. The bosses scale in power as you face them repeated times, but the farmable monsters are something else, with the three different levels feeling as very different encounters. There are also legendary variants, but I haven’t met any yet…
I’m so glad I jumped on the KS, not only did it give me the game at 50% off. You also get very good discounts on expansions each time the backer kit opens. So good discounts I ordered the whole first wave of expansions (the existing ones). Haven’t received them yet, but should be soon.
But I don’t really think the game needs expansions, though. There’s a lot of game in there…
I’m finding this discussion interesting and have a quick aside. In game design, a positive feedback loop is a system that reinforces itself. A good example of this is how in a racing game, it’s easier in the lead to get further in the lead because you don’t have to swerve around other cars. This is feedback reinforcing abnormality that caused it. A negative feedback loop causes a system to stabilize abnormalities. The imbalanced distribution of powerups in Mario Kart is a classic example of a negative feedback loop because it makes people ahead bigger targets and tends to bring all racers near each other.
Gloomhaven’s system are more of a positive feedback loop. If you get hit for a ton of damage, you’ll probably have to trash a card to deal with it, which puts you even further behind giving you less options in the future. A negative feedback loop would be like gaining a shield automatically if you take more than 3 damage in one attack. (Worth pointing out that in this example, I’m agreeing with @tomchick that you get weaker over time. The cards in Gloomhaven are often really situational. Having less of them means you’re less capable of dealing with a wider variety of situations. The player’s job is to figure out how to reduce those options smartly. Which I think is fun, but I can see why others don’t.)
I think what you’re talking about Tom is more about whether a player is choosing between two benefits or choosing between two penalties, and you much prefer the former. I feel like this is a pretty common conversation in Euro-board game threads. Some players really hate Stefan Feld and Martin Wallace style designs that often involve the game actively hurting the player. I think a big part of Uwe Rosenberg’s popularity is that a lot of his recent games usually involve nothing negative ever happening, just choices between how to increase your various resources. Personally, I find the fully positive games like that kind of boring and prefer when, for instance, I have to take out a loan in a Martin Wallace game and suffer for literally the entire game for it. It takes all kinds… [Intended as a joke, sorry if this ends up reading tone-deaf.]
