You could even limit communication to a set of cards you could play, like “I need healing” or “I’m going fast” or whatever. But a lot of this is to prevent the players from fanatically optimizing all their moves. If the group plays casually anyway, then there’s less need for this communication protocol control.
I don’t mind the limitation that much, but it certainly is annoying from time to time. On the other hand, consider bridge, which has even more restrictive rules during the auction…
I disagree. I have no strong opinions about communication limits in Gloomhaven, not about fuzzy rules in general (the best retreat direction rule I have read in a wargame is “in the general direction away from the enemy”).
But Gloomhaven certainly goes for the “diminish randomness” school of game design (which I have come to be wary of, sometimes die rolls have a reason to be). So using a fuzzy mechanic like undefined communication limits to work against one of the core design principles (low luck, high strategy) doesn’t seem to make the game better, just more confused. A strict communication rule would be more coherent with the overall design aesthetic, imho. But I can’t really tell since when I tried to bring people to play this with they looked at all the bits with a weird look and refused.
I strongly disagree that Gloomhaven is designed to be low on luck. There are no dice rolls, but the attack modifier deck accomplishes the same thing. Randomness is a fundamental component of these types of cooperative games. You are playing against what is basically an algorithm that is performing actions at random based on cards they draw out of a deck. I think Gloomhaven does a lot of smart things to allow players room to strategize effectively, but randomness is a key dimension of the gameplay, by design. It is an important and necessary factor.
It seems like a lot of people use apps with Gloomhaven. Is that worthwhile, or just for the hardcore? If so, any ios ones that you’d consider to have great utility?
This isn’t helpful probably, but we actually don’t use any apps. I looked at some and while they seem useful for tracking stuff, we never really had a problem tracking things as designed. It seemed like six of one or half a dozen of the other.
That’s how it works when you play solitaire. You think it’s a worse game solitaire? Frankly, it’s pretty much the exact same game, minus the arbitrary difficulty boost.
That’s not really my issue with Childres as a designer. As I said, a lot of coop games without much confidence in their design do the same thing. My issue with Childres as a designer has more to do with Forge Wars, his previous game; how Gloomhaven is based on the dynamics of exhaustion; how the interesting content is severely back-loaded; and the ungainly sprawl of components that show every sign of a designer who knows how to add something, but no concept of how to cut something.
By the way, believe it or not, I like Gloomhaven and I look forward to spending more time with it in the future (I’ve only played about six scenarios). But unlike a lot of folks who like something that cost them a hundred dollars, I have no problem also being critical of it.
-Tom
Wait, really? You’ve said you didn’t more than once. Just growing on you?
100% yes.
My group uses Gloomhaven Helper running on a laptop on the table. Everyone’s on IOS, so we can’t use the networked mode to enter initiative, but one person with a mouse or keyboard handles that.
It’s extremely helpful to have all the initiatives, hit points, status effects, and monster attacks in one easy to look at area. I’d say it saves 30+ minutes per scenario in setup, card flipping, and checking monster cards.
The only problem we’ve had with it is that objectives or escorts with HP have to be set up manually.
Yes, I do think it is a worse game solitaire. It’s more than just a change in difficulty for me. The element of uncertainty adds a whole extra dimension to the gameplay. It becomes a puzzle where each player has to make their own guesses about how the other players are going to act. This is not trivial in a 4 person game. Even if you know all of the cards your party members have in their deck, you generally don’t know which of those cards they still have available to use.
I haven’t put any money into Gloomhaven so I don’t have that issue personally. I’m playing a friend’s copy. I’m familiar with your issues with the exhaustion system, but I don’t share those complaints. I can agree that the game suffers a bit from too many components and back loaded content, but even at the lower levels the gameplay is interesting enough to me that these are smaller problems.
The hidden information system is fine, except that after a couple of scenarios you pretty much have it worked out what each character’s “fast”, “very fast” or “slow” means. I was playing as a scoundrel, and pretty much everyone understood that if I said “fast” that meant I was going first, barring some god draw from the enemies. Same with my son’s Cragheart, except vice versa: when he said “slow”, that meant he was almost certainly going last.
Agreed. It’s a little clunky. But even if you have a general idea of how fast somebody wants to go, there is still plenty of ambiguity when the ranges overlap with each other. Fast guy going slow while slow guy going fast, for example. Sometimes you will know for sure, but often you still have to make a guess. Particularly in 3 and 4 player games.
Those guesses can have serious ramifications on the outcome. There many times where turn order is crucially important to getting the results I’m hoping for. I have a strong play lined up, but I MUST go before the scoundrel or else the turn is wasted. If I can’t be sure that I’m going to get the initiative order I need to pull it off, I might go with a safer play. It’s these types of decisions that make Gloomhaven especially interesting to me.
To some extent, sure, but the issue remains complicated when characters have some overlap in general initiative profile. The scoundrel is fast, sure, but so is the mindthief and a number of unlockable classes. Etc.
I hadn’t considered this, but thinking back on our sessions I can see how the limited information has stopped me from quarterbacking a couple of our turns. I got frustrated on a couple of critical turns because I wanted to tell my partner what to do or what cards to pick, and I realized I couldn’t orchestrate his turn without getting more specific than the rules allowed. I remember thinking that I needed to chill out and let my partner play, which is a good thing in our group.
Quarterbacking is a social issue and not a game issue. I really don’t need game designers, of all people, to try to fix group dynamics for me. Me and my friends have got this.
Were you talking about me saying I like Gloomhaven? I guess it’s not really a simple “do I or don’t I?” situation. I like what it’s attempting, although I think there are games that do it far better. But I appreciate the breadth of content, the character development, and the cardplay enough that I’m looking forward to continuing with it at some point. I don’t like the way the interesting AI behaviors and character synergies are locked behind a tedious grind. A lot of Gloomhaven is padding. Right now, it’s under a ton of other games, literally and figuratively. But overall, I’d say I like it.
-Tom
I wrote a lot of other things about why the game is better with limited communication. The quarterbacking mitigation is only a nice value added.
You should just do this without a game rule that forces you to. That was one of the points I was making earlier - I don’t need a game rule that prevents quarterbacking (but otherwise just makes the game more awkward). I just don’t quarterback in co-op games.
Oh, sure, I didn’t mean to imply I was somehow contradicting your opinion. I just wanted to point out that quarterbacking is a player issue and not a game issue. As such, I don’t need a game designer trying to get people in my group to not be assholes. We’re quite capable of that on our own!
-Tom
EDIT: What @SlyFrog said.
EDIT EDIT: Also, I don’t mean to imply anyone in this thread is an asshole. A lot of quarterbacking is well intentioned. But it’s still a player problem and not a game problem.
Has anyone seen this yet?
I didn’t see it being mentioned up thread, Im very interested :)
Yes, that’s been a known thing for a while. My understanding is that it will not match the game 1 for 1 (but is the same general theme).