Good day! We are in between Thanksgiving and PAXU, doing a lot of shuffling around and traveling, so I don't have a big update for you this week, but we'll get into a couple things. Most notably, we've received some physical proofs from the factory to go over, a lot of which will happen when we're all together at PAX. A full report of that will be coming, but you can see a few images down below.

Also, I know there has been some concern in the comments over tariffs. For US backers not in the know, our president-elect has promised to raise tariffs on imports, which has the potential of increasing our costs. This is something our industry as a whole is concerned about and getting questions about, and we will have to figure out the best way to move forward as events unfold over the next few months. It has never been our intention to go back to backers asking for additional money, and we'll be doing everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen here either. We can absorb some costs, but there are a lot of unknowns at play here, and a lot of things out of our control, so we can't make a definitive statement at this time. We'll just have to update you as things develop and we get more information.

If you didn't notice the graphic, we're finally done with 100% of the art and graphics, and have officially entered the production stage! As said above, this currently involves reviewing physical proofs. Below are pictures of components we currently have, but more will be arriving on Wednesday so we can all review them together at PAXU.

We have received and approved 12 new miniatures physical samples and 7 digital modifications since last update. Final production line Gloomhaven (2nd Edition) Mercenary miniatures have also been approved for mass production alongside the rest of the game components.

From Danielle:

I’ve seen at least one person asking a couple of times about the adventure that’s included in the core book, and playtesters have asked about the structure for adventures in the future. So today, I wanted to talk about the themes of Gloomhaven, how we structured the core adventure, and how we plan to structure adventures in the future.

First, I need to talk about the themes for Gloomhaven and what parts of that we want to emphasize with the RPG. 

Dark Fantasy: Gloomhaven is set in a fantastical world with many uncomfortable and oppressive elements to sometimes evoke horror. Gloomhaven is not a horror game, but the players may sometimes find their mercenaries in terrible situations, forced to do terrible things, or fighting against horrific antagonists. 

Gray Morality: Evil and morality are choices, not a feature of birth or even environment. You portray mercenaries who must work within these gray moral lines, and often face complex moral quandaries which could lead them either way. 

Irreverence: Gloomhaven is a game of consequences. That doesn’t mean the setting is grim, or so dark that there is no light. Gloomhaven strives not to take itself too seriously, and holds an irreverence toward some of the darker fantasy tropes, applying dark humor and outright absurdity.

Reluctant Heroes: Your mercenaries have personal goals, and risking life and limb doesn’t always serve those goals. Mercenaries are also beholden to the factions who fund them. Players must navigate a balance between their mercenaries’ personal goals, their faction’s goals, and successfully finishing the job.

Semi-Cooperative: Your mercenaries are all part of a crew, but that doesn’t mean they are always aligned on every aspect of a mission. They each belong to different factions who may want different things, and sometimes those things are in direct opposition to one another.

The core book campaign hooks the mercenaries into the action with a simple mission request. Go clear out a bandit camp, report back to the Shields. Of course, when they get to the bandit camp, there’s more to discover there. I’m not going to reveal the entire storyline and plot, but we’ve built in ways for the story to diverge based on character actions. The adventure is structured in a series of scenes with notes on where to go next depending on how the mercenaries act, what they choose, and how things go.

The Gloomhaven RPG is set a short time after the events of the Gloomhaven board game. We want to draw in players who have played the board game and give them a sense of what the city looks like after intense political struggles, assaults on the city, and some power vacuums that need filling. We have chosen a canonical ending for the board game (even though there are definitely more endings that are each equally valid) just so we have a sense of how to explain the current state of the city. The adventure in our core book explores a power vacuum, and what happens when someone tries to fill it.

We have another adventure planned as part of a starter box that we intend to use as a smaller introductory mission, with fewer branching paths, to lead up to the events of the adventure in the core rulebook. If you don’t ever play through it, you won’t be missing a ton, but it does explore some of the political fallout from the events of the board game between the Merchant’s Guild and the Shields.

In the future, I want to have two adventure structures: introductory and advanced. Introductory style adventures will be similar to what you’ll see in the core rulebook. They lead GMs on a scene-by-scene basis through a story, accounting for various branches and endings depending on mercenary choices. These will have several branching options, but if we give too many, they start to become unwieldy. Advanced adventures will present a bit of a sandbox with a set of events and situations at a tipping point. The adventure will lay out the situation, give advice for how to get the mercenaries engaged with them, ways the events advance with or without mercenary interference, ways they escalate, and how they resolve depending on what the mercenaries do. These adventures will likely include a lot of moving parts, subplots, side characters, and interconnected story threads. They will be written in a way to allow GMs to utilize as much or as little of complex features to tell their own story around these important events.

Also, for those still anticipating art, here are a few new pieces I got in.

                                         

If I haven't said it enough yet, we are out at PAXU this weekend, so come say hello if you are also in attendance.

You can sign up for RPG sessions through the PAX app, or just come by room 104A to check it out. 

Or stop by booth #2827 where we'll have merch, a new Buttons & Bugs promo scenario (which will also be available on our website after the show), and lots of cool people to talk to.