The digital version also leaves out a lot of the detail about special scenario rules that often feel important. The worst offender I can think of offhand was a specific boss battle where the boss would despawn and respawn in a set pattern. On the table you have easy access to the spawn location progression, but in the digital version you get none of that. Like, we were trying to figure out if there was any rhyme or reason to the spots he was spawning in on thinking it was just a random place on the board. Finally somebody looked it up and it turned out it was just a set rotation of 6 or so spots. Made the scenario much less frustrating and way more tactical to be able to plan around.
Agreed. They did a phenomenal job on recreating the game in a technical sense, but not as well at providing all the information that the board gamer got. Only affected a very few missions, but those became frustrating.
From my perspective, it felt like one of the advantages that the board gamers had was having to know all the rules of how enemy movement works. Since, you know, they were the ones that had to move the enemy pieces. I don’t feel like the computer game made enemy behavior clear like that, which I think provides real tactical advantages.
Speaking of which, how does the game handle this sort of scenario? Three tile wide hallway with an obstacle in the middle. E = Enemy, O = Obstacle, P = Players. How do the rules determine if the enemy unit moves SW or SE? Is it random or is there an order of precedence?
| _ _ _ |
| E |
| _ O _ |
| P _ P |
| _ _ _ |
Player with the lowest initiative get the focus of the enemy
I used this version of the manual on GitHub to learn how the enemies operate. There have been a few edge cases where I think the digital version gets it wrong, though I have to believe on the whole it adheres to the rules better than I would. https://github.com/m-ender/gloomhaven-rules
And if they’re tied (i.e. both at 99 doing long rests) I think you go with the one with the lowest health. I think.
This is incorrect–after initiative, there is no tiebreaker, so it’s player choice: Gloomhaven RuleBook - Page 30. But it’s so rare for there to be equally distant targets with identical initiatives (both cards, remember!) that it doesn’t really matter–outside of long rests, fair point.
FWIW the case that happens a lot more frequently than the one @KevinC outlined is this:
E
. .
A B
The enemy E, with, say, move 2 attack 2, focuses on player A (due to lower initiative, say). It can move into either of the dots with one move and be adjacent to A (it’s a hex board, remember, which is hard to draw here). By the board game rules, the players get to decide which of the two the monster moves into, as there’s no reason to preference one or the other. So if player B has a melee attack, they can move the monster to the right hex, and then B doesn’t have to use a move to get into position, and vice versa if B has a ranged attack.
Oh yeah, 100% agree, this was insanely frustrating. Even the little stuff like “add a curse to each player’s attack deck as a scenario effect”. How the hell are you supposed to know that perk is worthwhile if you never see this?!
We don’t have any other games. ;) We could invest the money and effort into a new game, but the real investment for us is the time when the kids are in bed and we don’t have some urgent task or other that needs attention. And it’s not worth the risk that we won’t like the game, when we already have one we’re happy to play. (FWIW, competitive games don’t really work that well between us. Maybe a couples counselor could help with that, but, yeah…)
Thanks, I couldn’t remember the rule. I actually had it happen this weekend when playing JoTL (both characters doing long rests).
Spirit Island. Great for couple, can be done solo, has no competitive mode, is challenging, requires brain use. If you can grok Gloomhaven you can definitely handle Spirit Island imho.
Thanks for the suggestion! Someone at work was actually talking about how much they love the game and were definitely going to get suckered into their latest Kickstarter. I will definitely add it to the list, though right now we haven’t even started Frosthaven yet…
Gloomhaven Second Edition is in the works - balance patch but apparently reworking a lot of the lore so probably all the scenarios too? Main thing for me is whether it will be digital…then again I haven’t gone back to the it in a while so maybe I’m not in a rush?
Haha, my buddies and I have been playing GH around once a week for over a year now, and we just hit this scenario and were like, “what the fuck, man?” Absolutely terrible, terrible scenario design for the digital game.
Yeah, there are several places where key information is either omitted or hidden. It’s otherwise a very good adaptation; it really feels like it just wasn’t play tested by people who weren’t very familiar with the board game.
Yeah, we have been really enjoying it overall. This is a group that used to play D&D together regularly in college, and a little bit off and on since. This is a nice, structured way to hit not quite the same spot, but close enough for government work when kids and distance make true roleplaying a bit untenable.
So how much of the board game will the video game spoil if I’ve never played either? Because I’ll probably go digital first. Unless I shouldn’t.
It’s the same game so, most of it? There are some exclusive paths in the campaign and you’ll have a bunch of level up cards you don’t take for each character you play, so there will be a fair amount of stuff you won’t experience in one playthrough.
Thanks. I was wondering if there were mostly-new campaign materials in the electric one.
There is an entirely separate mode (guildmaster, I think it’s called) which doesn’t appear in the board game, along with a bunch of character tutorials. These share characters with the campaign so it’s not entirely spoiler free, but you do at least avoid the story.
Guildmaster mode is quite different to the real campaign though: the scenarios are mostly much shorter which makes them easier and significantly changes the balance of loss cards. This could easily get you into bad habits for playing the campaign later.
Most importantly though, the digital edition automates enemy movement, which has some very complicated rules. Understanding and exploiting these rules is a key part of playing the game well enough to beat the hardest scenarios. So if you’re going to start digital I recommend reading those rules thoroughly, watching the enemy movement, and trying to understand why they moved as they did.
Purchasing the digital version prompted me to give away the giant box of stuff that is Gloomhaven. Playing solo, there was just no need for it anymore, and weren’t computer games designed to remove all that rule keeping from our brains?
But sadly I found it way too hard, even on the easiest skill level, and the fun went away (much like the board game). I stopped playing after a few games into the campaign and never went back. The diminishing card thing became tedious, and a lot of times too much of a perfect puzzle to complete.
It is hard! Definitely not a fun little DnD romp; more like a less grim Darkest Dungeon. The chief things, I think, to know about enemy movement is that they’ll always go for the closest player, and if two are equally close they’ll go for the one with the lower initiative. If those are tied, it might be random? I’m not sure.