Good day! And the final day of the campaign! This has truly been a unique experience for all of us at Cephalofair Games, and I hope you had a good time with the Gloomhaven Grand Festival. Whether you watched a lot of streams, or worked out the puzzles, voted in the polls, or just backed for $1 and moved on, I hope you enjoyed doing so, and will continue to have a good time when you receive what you pledged for.
So just how will we go from running this grand festival to delivering you your stuff? Well, it will be a process, but a process that we are very familiar with. Once the campaign ends, we're going to transition to an update every other week on Fridays, just to keep you abreast of the goings on as we move through completing the various projects. Initially, these will probably focus on Buttons & Bugs, as that is the first thing we are working on getting out the door (in addition to the Frosthaven reprint and playsurface books). And then we'll move on from there!
So you can expect the next update for this project to arrive July 28, and then we will also be working on opening up the pledge manager some time the week following that. If I'm being totally honest, we all need a bit of vacation after this. It was an intense experience preparing for this thing and then running it, and now we've got a long road ahead of us. But we'll get it done!
All that's left now is to give you a recap of yesterday's streams and tell you what's coming up for today, so let's get to it.
Bright and early yesterday morning, Drew, Dennis, and I got together for a final Gloomhaven: Second Edition play, and even though we were tackling one of the most notoriously hard scenarios in the game, it went pretty well! Of course, the new version of the scenario was a little easier, but it was still no joke.
And today? Well, we decided to close things out by just rerunning all four gameplay videos of the Old School RPG. We started at 6am PST, and it will be running up until 4pm PST, when Price, Ruel, and I will hop on one last stream to play some Buttons & Bugs, chat, and watch that final number go up. If you're looking for a place to share in the excitement of those final hours, this will be where it's at!
And that's it! I will say it once again that it has been an experience writing these updates for you everyday. And while I'm looking forward to getting my life back, I also just want to thank everyone once again for joining us for this festival and participating in whatever way you did. I won't catch you tomorrow, but I will catch you next Friday, the 28th, for a post-vacation run-down of where we're at. Until then!
Good day! And welcome once again to all the new backers! We have passed the $4 million mark, a full 200% funded, which is stupendous! Thank you to everyone for joining us on this journey!
We've got another smaller update today as we prepare for the last 48 hours. The project will end at 6pm PST on Wednesday, so we're getting ready for one last push!
No streams yesterday, but we have Jamie Daggers coming back on for one last miniature painting stream from 1-4pm PST today.
And, then of course, we have a new Cragheart puzzle at the bottom of the page. This will be the last puzzle of the campaign, rounding out the number to 12: two for each of the starting classes. In case you missed any of them, I've compiled them all into this folder for easy reference. Thank you to Drew and Dennis and all the play testers who helped create these puzzles. They were all very interesting, and also thanks to MadMullet for hosting the puzzle discussions on BGG every time!
Lastly for today, we have a Cragheart preview from Drew and Dennis. This is the last of the starting classes to highlight, but we'll have another locked class preview tomorrow. Here's the preview:
Today we’ll take a look at the updated Savvas Cragheart in Gloomhaven: Second Edition.
First let’s reflect on the Cragheart in the first edition.
The Cragheart was a burly sentient rock who could do a bit of everything. They could deal damage in melee, from range, and heal. They generally had pretty strong values on their abilities but were held back by their limited movement and poor initiative. Their most unique mechanic was the ability to manipulate the battlefield by placing, moving, and destroying obstacles.
So what did we want to address?
As with Silent Knife, this class required no broad changes. They had a number of lopsided level-up choices and had a stretch of levels where card after card was “top loss action, bottom move action”, which was a bit lacking in terms of variety. While they could deal effective melee and ranged damage, because their ranged damage was good enough, they had little reason to lean into the melee side of things, especially given that poor movement and initiative often make being a melee fighter more challenging. Finally, their obstacle theme really only took off after level 4.
So let’s see what changed with the Cragheart in Gloomhaven: Second Edition:
Note: Graphic Design on these cards is incomplete.
Effective obstacles sooner - When Gloomhaven: First Edition players think of the Cragheart, one of the first things to jump to mind will be playing around with obstacles. It was a shame to have such a fun and unique mechanic locked behind a higher level, so we added more effective tools sooner for those who want to manipulate the very earth beneath their feet.
Better melee support - While melee and ranged attack abilities were balanced against each other in the first edition, that often didn’t account for the added cost of going into melee, especially given that the Cragheart is anything but nimble. We increased the power level and payoff for melee attack abilities to make playing a more melee-oriented Cragheart appropriately rewarding.
We hope you enjoy this slightly more polished stone.
Thanks again to everyone for making this happening, and I'll catch you again tomorrow!
Good day! We're in the last 48 hours now! This campaign has lasted a full month at this point, and we've sent a lot of information your way over that time! I figured, instead of filling out an update with yet more information, it would be good to take a beat and provide you with an organized way to view all the valuable posts and videos from all those previous updates. So today, it is time for lists of links!
But before we get to that, I've gotta tell you about all the exciting stuff we've got planned for today.
First of, the dread time has come for Drew, Dennis, and I to play scenario 72, the most notorious scenario in the original Gloomhaven. Did it get better? Will we survive? We'll start playing at 8am PST, so you'll just have to watch to find out.
And then, as with every Tuesday, you can join me at 4pm PST for a Fireside Chat. I'll be talking with Price about running this campaign, and the next steps once the time is up.
Then right after that at 5pm PST, we have a very special extra RPG live play for you from Good Time Society! We really wanted to show off the slick functionality of the Gloomhaven RPG digital tools from Hero Lab and Roll20, so we brought GTS on board for another play featuring Josephine McAdam as the GM, and Lexi McQueen, Phill Correa, and Kate Elliott as the players.
And if that isn't enough, we've even got counter-programming for you. At 6pm PST, I'll be jumping on Twitch with Brambeard Gaming to (possibly?) finish our Gloomhaven Digital campaign.
We'll start off with our most popular offer, Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs. We announced this tiny solo version of Gloomhaven halfway through the campaign, and it was a big hit! Here are the best places to find out more about it:
The announcement trailer, of course, which I can't share often enough because I love it so much.
And then out big game announcement last month, a complete rework of the game that started it all, Gloomhaven: Second Edition. This was helmed by Drew and Dennis, and they made sure to give you a plethora of information about it.
A marvelous playthrough with the Good Time Society.
Finally, who could forget the reprint of Frosthaven, which is also available during the campaign? And possibly more exciting - the Frosthaven playsurface books!
Phew, that's a lot of stuff! And there's still more to come! Be sure to check out all the great streams we're kicking off today, and we'll see you tomorrow for the last day of the campaign!
Hi everyone! Quickie update from us today, since a few cool things have happened in the last 24 hours 🤘🏼
New Pledge Levels!
Reminder: Share for our Lore Blooper Cards
World Building and Breaking Livestream today at 2:30PM ET
You want it all?
You've got it all! The CONJURE and DEVOUR tiers are here! The new CONJURE Pledge Tier is perfect for anyone who already has The Story Engine Deck and Deck of Worlds and wants to pick up the new decks, accessories, and collectibles to fill out their collection. 👉🏽 Find out more here.
The DEVOUR Pledge Level, on the other hand, is for newcomers who are ready to go all-in with The Story Engine. This tier includes everything in the CONJURE Tier, along with The Story Engine Deck and Deck of Worlds, all 15 of their respective Expansions, and all 12 Story Engine Boosters. You'll also get all three playmats, since you'll be getting our Tell Your Story and Build Your World mats with our Weave Your Lore mat to complete the set.
This is the tier for you if you've never purchased one of our products and want to get caught up on everything you missed. The DEVOUR Pledge Level is the best price we've ever offered for our entire collection, so you don't want to miss this opportunity!
Wanna see the prompts that didn't make it? Help us spread the word! We'll release a FREE outtake PDF if 500 backers share the BackerKit campaign before we end on Friday, and we're almost 20% of the way there already!
Every backer gets us closer to another stretch goal, and we will make fools of ourselves (in writing) to provide a little extra incentive!
TODAY we'll be live at 2:30pm ET! We'll be joined by special guest Jordan Shiveley, who will be helping us build a new world - and then demonstrating how you can use Lore Master's Deck to break that world to unlock a better story!
You'll be hearing from us lots this week! The countdown is on to our Wrap Party this Friday, starting at 9PM ET! Bring your confetti poppers! 🎉🎉🎉 See you soon!
We will release an add-on expansion for connecting The Story Engine Deck to Deck of Worlds, completing the Bridge Expansion Trio. We will also release a collector's Bridge Expansion Set Storage Box to hold the complete set.
Goal: $400,000 reached! — We did it! This project reached this goal!
Our Lore Master's Deck campaign passed $400,000 overnight - and that means we've unlocked our final Bridge Expansion! The Story & World Bridge will officially ship with our CONJURE and DEVOUR pledge tiers, and is available as an add-on for anyone who wants to complete their card collection!
Getting to $400,000 means that you've unlocked all of the cards we had planned for this campaign. We can still add awesome link tokens to the deck (along with some other goodies) so keep spreading the word to help us run up the score!
Who wants to see a snake deity get chased by a God-reviewer critic?
Right this minute, we're live with artist Megan McKay who is bringing her amazing, adorable art style to create doodles in live-time with the community based off prompts from Lore Master's Deck. Join us now on the main page!
We will release an add-on expansion for connecting The Story Engine Deck to Deck of Worlds, completing the Bridge Expansion Trio. We will also release a collector's Bridge Expansion Set Storage Box to hold the complete set.
Goal: $400,000 reached! — We did it! This project reached this goal!
We will release an add-on expansion for connecting The Story Engine Deck to Deck of Worlds, completing the Bridge Expansion Trio. We will also release a collector's Bridge Expansion Set Storage Box to hold the complete set.
Goal: $400,000 reached! — We did it! This project reached this goal!
Good day! I think we had a little bit of trouble getting the last Old School episode to stream yesterday, so if you didn't see it, you can find it here. I talked more about this series of videos, but if you're looking for something to watch today, I think the whole series, which you can find here, is a good option.
And since there's not much else to go over today (we won't have any new streams) I figure I'd take the opportunity to give you a quick recap of the story going on with the polls, which is just a little choose-your-own-adventure story where you all vote on what happens next.
The protagonist is a Harrower Music Note, who had city guards arrive at their house (presumably for stealing fruit?), so they put them to sleep with a song, stole their money and clothes and then tried to escape. They ran into another group of guards and try to masquerade as one to get by using a guard's uniform, but that didn't go so well, and they lost the guard uniform in the escape. They then headed down to the Sinking Market to lay low with their friend Dash, a Quatryl Mindthief, who is using mind control technology to make seagulls dance in a musical performance. They agree to supply the music, but they are now having trouble booking a gig at the local music venue, the Brown Door.
All very exciting stuff, and, like the rest of you, I have no idea what will happen next, but I'll try to get the story wrapped up by Wednesday when the Backerkit campaign ends! Catch you tomorrow!
Good day! We're coming up on the final weekend! There's not too much going on, but we will have the latest episode of Old School going live tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll just be gearing up for the grand finale of the Grand Festival.
Plus, we've still got some stuff for you today. At 10am PST, Price will (finally) be talking to Chris at Brushwood Minis about painting Gloomhaven minis. You'll probably hear some tips and tricks and insights there. We had a couple false starts on getting this scheduled, and I may have announced it early in a previous update, but the conversation is finally happening!
And then at 4pm PST, stop in for the Friday Fireside Chat! Today I will be joined by Satire again, but a different iteration - this time with Joe and Alexander. Joe handled the writing of the entire main story for Gloomhaven: Second Edition, so we'll probably talk about that a fair bit. We'll try to keep it spoiler-light though.
The highlight from yesterday was the Gallant Globlin's play of the Gloomhaven RPG. The story was great, and the cast was a lot of fun, so check that out if you're interested:
Drew and I also got up to some Gloomhaven: Second Edition shenanigans yesterday. We did a nice, breezy jaunt through a crypt with Two Minis (me) and Triangles (Drew). I think the biggest news there is that we agreed that Drew's next and final game, which will be happening 8am PST on Tuesday, will be Drew, Dennis, and myself - the whole crew - playing the new version of the most notorious scenario, 72. At +1 difficulty. So we'll see how that goes.
It's Friday, so there is of course, a new puzzle down at the bottom of the main page. This is a challenging one for the Mindthief, designed by MadMullet.
And I am pleased to also now present you with another class preview from Drew and Dennis. This one is for Three Spears, which was one of the most extensive overhauls the classes got. Still very much the same feel (minus the infinite stamina), but with lots of new actions and mechanics. Since it is a spoiler class, I'm just going to link you over to the BGG thread, but it is definitely worth a read!
So, admittedly, I am running out of things to highlight for you in these updates, but I figured I'd just tell you about what I was doing yesterday, which was editing files for the reprint of Frosthaven and the printing of the Frosthaven playsurface books.
Now, Frosthaven editing is a little boring. We're just compiling the list of typos and quality-of-life improvements that have been coming in from everybody playing the game, and making sure those all get fixed. There's nothing major or game-breaking at this point - all the major errata can be found on our website or the BGG FAQ thread - and there also aren't any balance changes, but we want to do all the little things to make the game as good as possible.
But, anyway, what I thought could be interesting to show you is a little deeper look at the playsurface books, which I've also been editing in conjunction. So here is the spread for scenario 0:
And here's a PDF version, since it's so large, it's hard to see the details without zooming in.
Most scenarios will require 2 or 3 pages, but there are a good number that require 4 pages, as well, so there will be 4 books to accommodate that. It was important that each book only supply one page per scenario for a number of reasons:
First, we didn't want people to have to play over the spiral binding, like in Jaws of the Lion. It just provided too much extra complication and annoyance, and it's an easy fix to just split the books further.
Second, there would be a height issue if you try to do 2-page spreads across the same book. This is less of an issue in Jaws of the Lion because the page counts are smaller, but each of these books is around 100 pages. If you've got a 2-page spread on the first page, that's a one page height on the left and a 49-page height on the right, which get's pretty wonky. With each book only supplying one page, you can just fold them over, and so each one has a 50-page height, and there's no disparity.
Also using 2-page spreads can be limiting spatially, so you end up laying things out suboptimally and wasting space.
So we've got three pages on three separate books composing the scenario layout. A table of contents will direct you to what the main page of each scenario is (the page with the introduction and map layout), and then that page will tell you what other pages from other books you will need to grab, and how to lay them out to make your map. You may also notice small tabs on the edges of the pages that also help you to setup the pages correctly by matching up the tab on the corresponding page.
You'll also notice that all the text for the scenario is also in these books, so you will not need either the original scenario book or section book to play the scenarios if you have these. You've got all the introduction text under the main banner, then any door that supplies additional text will have a little arrow pointing to that text, and then the conclusion text will be elsewhere in the spread, but the scenario goal will helpfully direct you to it.
Also, the scenario key is much shorter, since, for the most part, you don't need overlay tiles! Stuff that doesn't usually get moved or removed is printed larger on the maps so that you don't need any additional components, while stuff that is more interactable, like traps, has a smaller icon for you to put an overlay tile on top of (much like Jaws of the Lion). So the scenario key only needs to tell you about monsters and the interactable stuff like traps and treasures. And if you're playing a class that can interact with the typically non-interactable terrain, the books will also come with a supply of tokens that you can place on the maps to indicate if something is no longer there.
Now, I could probably talk forever about all the different unique scenario rules that provided a host of unique challenges in translating them to this format - varying layouts depending on which way you go, larger scenarios that actually required 5 pages, disappearing and shifting map tiles - but I won't. I will just say that you can rest assured that we solved all the myriad of problems through some creative ingenuity (mostly on the part of the layout designer, Aaron), and if you're curious about a specific scenario, you'll just have to get the books and see for yourself.
And on that subject, if you are interested in picking these books up, you can add them to any pledge as an add-on when you're checking out or in the pledge manager.
Cool! So I talked about that for longer than I intended, and I need to get this update shipped out, so I will leave you there. I hope you have a great weekend!
Good day! Another short weekend update for you today. First, I want to highlight the two great streams we had yesterday. Chris from Brushwood Minis joined Price for some chill painting and conversation about the minis and painting the minis and all that fun stuff.
Then I had a nice time with Joe and Alexander from Satire for the Friday Fireside Chat to talk more about the main narrative of Gloomhaven: Second Edition, general lore, and the prospect of tiny people from Buttons & Bugs now living in the Gloomhaven world.
And today, we have the grand finale of the Old School RPG play at 4pm PST! Where friendships are betrayed, and the command of the flight of drakes hangs in the balance! We hit a good stopping point, but the wagon is still far from delivered, so I'd love to keep this campaign going after the Backerkit campaign ends, but we'll see on everyone's availability.
The goal of the Old School RPG was to give you all a more conventional long-form RPG play experience that would be closer to what you'd be likely to see playing it yourself. While all RPG groups are different, we wanted to capture the vibe of four normal friends just hanging out and playing the RPG. I personally think we accomplished that goal pretty well, and so I strongly encourage you to watch if you're looking for a better idea of how the game will play with your own group.
And I want to thank Adrian, Alice, and Jon for joining me on the adventure. This was a last-minute idea I had, but all three of them didn't hesitate to jump on board this crazy train (yes, that was a reference for the group). And, of course, a huge thanks to Ruel for producing the show and translating our chaotic energy into something watchable for everyone else.
Livestream schedule update: upcoming streams on worldbuilding/worldbreaking, live-drawing lore prompts, and a huge wrap party marathon stream
Gen Con update: we'll be in booth block 1237 next to Nomnivore Games
New Community Goal
We want to pull out all the stops in our final 5 days, so we've created a new Community Achievement.
If 500 backers share our project during the final 5 days using the share button from our new Community Achievement, we will release a free PDF Master of Lost Lore Expansion featuring outtakes from the main deck!
We just added 16 more cards to the main deck, making the deck a whopping 300 cards with 2,400 cues and billions of potential combinations!
Next up: unlocking the Lore Master's Journal and Story-Bridge Expansion!
Going 🔴LIVE in 1 Hour
At 2pm ET we'll be discussing how to create great tabletop RPG settings with game designer Connor Alexander (Coyote & Crow) and artist Eren Angiolini (ArtVenturing Guild, Justice League, Critical Role)! We'll also be using the deck to quickly live-create a setting and discuss what aspects would make for the best basis for roleplay storytelling.
You can also check out our panelists' original tabletop creations live on Kickstarter and BackerKit.
Eren's Arcane Compendium of Characters: Take the story into your own hands, with this system-agnostic deck of TTRPG characters at https://bit.ly/arcanecompendium
Connor'sWolves: Pledge the latest game from Coyote & Crow currently on Kickstarter. Learn more and back it at https://bit.ly/3Oe2kCV
Livestream Schedule Update
We have so many great streams happening this week!
We'll have The Story Engine at Gen Con as part of booth block 1237! Find us next to Nomnivore Games, the creators of the tabletop RPG EMBERWIND (from whom all of our beautiful box art comes)
That's all for now! We'll see you live in 1 hour to talk about tabletop RPG setting creation!
For this achievement, we'll release a free PDF expansion of 60 outtake lore cards. Click below to visit our sharing portal with quick share buttons and further details.
For this achievement, we'll release a free PDF expansion of 60 outtake lore cards. Click below to visit our sharing portal with quick share buttons and further details.
The moment has finally arrived! I've just started the "smoke test", which will send out backer surveys to 5% of you. This is to check there aren't any errors with the survey. Once we've seen that responses are coming in ok, we'll send out the survey to everyone else, so whichever group you're in, you should get your survey in the next 48 hours.
Completing the survey is required to unlock your digital downloads, so please fill it in at your earliest convenience. Once you've completed the survey you should automatically receive the download link for Wreck This Deck PDF, along with digital versions of any add-ons you've purchased, within 24 hours.
In order to release the PDFs, we have to lock orders for shipping - this is what triggers the download links to be sent out. This will mean you can't amend your order or update your address. If you need to add anything to your order or amend your address, just reach out to us or Backerkit and we can fix it.
This also means we'll be ordering the print zines in the next week or so, and shipping will commence soon after. I'll update you again when shipping starts!
Thanks once again for supporting Wreck This Deck - we're really excited to share it with you.
