Hey ! There is a lot going on around here. I'm going to do my best, as always, to not be too salesy in this message, but I do want to let you know, in case you weren't aware, that there is
a BackerKit campaign happening right now for all things Gloomhaven. In fact, we just hit the halfway point and made a huge new announcement. But first, let me talk to you about walking, because I didn't know learning to walk would be this hard. Not for me, of course, but my son. He's been really getting into it over the last month or so and loves to take
my hand and go walk everywhere, but he still seems very far from having the confidence to do it on his own. We started off with me holding both hands, of course, and it had to be outside,
because he was just too comfortable crawling everywhere inside. So outside became our walking area, and eventually we got down to only using one hand (I tricked him by having him hold a stick in the other hand and he soon got used to it). So now I'm trying to figure out how to trick him into holding no hands, but also I don't think he's quite there yet. He still stumbles a bit and needs my support. We should probably start with just getting him to stand on his own, which he could definitely do but doesn't have the confidence for either. And really, at the end of the day, I'm trying not to stress about it too much, because, like, it's not like he's not going to learn to walk. He'll get there eventually, and in the mean time, walking around a park holding my son's hand is just a peak dad experience
that I don't want to give up any time soon anyway. Oh, you wanted to hear about that announcement? Yeah, sorry, you gotta just sit through the dad talk first. That's how this works. Okay, fine, I'll get to it. Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs! That's right, we're adding a whole new game to the BackerKit campaign, but don't worry - it's super-small and will only run you $15. It is an all-new Gloomhaven experience that comes in a small box of just 100 cards (plus a few other components). It's a solo game with a streamlined ruleset that features the starting six characters from Gloomhaven. It is to Jaws of the
Lion what Jaws of the Lion is to Gloomhaven - we've made it even more compact and more accessible! Buttons & Bugs (it is so hard for me to use an ampersand and not spell out "and", but that's the way it is!) is based on the award-winning Gloomholdin', designed by Joe Klipfel, and we've also brought on Nikki Valens for further design and development to get it to where it is now, which is some place pretty awesome. I think it is going to resonate with a lot of people looking for a faster
Gloomhaven experience that you can play pretty much anywhere and by yourself. I also had a lot of fun writing the story, which is comparatively
light and silly to go along with the lighter gameplay and colorful artwork. Since we're shrinking down the game, it only made sense to shrink down the mercenaries as well. The story finds your solo character on the receiving end of a nasty shrinking spell, and they must fight through all sorts of miniature threats on an adventure to regain their former size. And so the really silly thing is that this game is just one of the many, many things on offer during our crowdfunding campaign. I know I've talked about them before, but I just want to go through everything one more time for you. In addition to Buttons & Bugs, we've got: Gloomhaven Second Edition! This is a complete overhaul of the original game to essentially bring it up to the quality and standards we set with Frosthaven. If you want a full list of everything that has changed, you can find that in
this update, but, yeah, it's more-or-less everything. I am super-excited for this to soon be the default version of Gloomhaven, because it is better in every regard. Gloomhaven RPG! This is what I have spent most of time working on over the last year or so (in between teach my son useful skills), and I think it has turned into a wonderful product. Like,
Gloomhaven itself was inspired by wanting more meaningful combat in RPGs, and so now, finally bring that combat system into an RPG to have that tactical experience alongside coming up with stupid stories with your friends - it's the best of both worlds. Miniatures of Gloomhaven! Do you need over 600 miniatures to replace every monster, boss, and summon you will ever encounter when playing Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, Forgotten Circles, or Jaws of the Lion? I don't know, "need" might be too strong a word, but it certainly
would be pretty cool, and we've got you fully covered on that front. Or, you know, you can mix and match in case you don't need all 600. Froshaven
reprint! In case you missed it the first time around or know someone else in your life that could use the heaviest board game box in the world. The extra exciting thing about this is that we are also offering play surface books for Frosthaven as an add-on. This means that with four large 100-page books, you can play all the Frosthaven scenarios just as you would in Jaws of the
Lion - with minimal setup directly on the pages themselves. We are also planning on releasing these type of books for Gloomhaven Second Edition, but that won't be part of this campaign. So,
yeah, that's what I've been up to. One of the major initiatives we've been pushing for the BackerKit campaign is to be streaming something every single day, which has been a lot of work, and I want to give a big shout-out to Ross Thompson, Cephalofair's marketing manager, for organizing all the different content we are coming out with, and Ruel Gaviola, the Gloomhaven TV
producer for this campaign, making sure every stream goes off without a hitch. We've got gameplays and discussions of everything we have on offer. I sit in front of my fireplace twice a week and just have casual chats with people. And I've even got my old high school D&D group back together to run a low-key campaign of the Gloomhaven RPG for people. You can find all the videos on the various pledge pages of the campaign or Cephalofair's YouTube channel. Okay,
so that's enough marketing, yeah? It's just that this crowdfunding campaign has been dominating my life for so long now, it's hard to think about anything else. In that sense, I'm glad I've got a little kid toddling around to keep me somewhat grounded. I also got to go out kayaking yesterday because of the holiday, which was nice. And, hey, let's be honest. I've been playing a little Tears of the Kingdom, too. Not much, but I am very slowly working my way through it and having a blast. I hope you are having a blast in your own life, and I will catch you next time on the other side of this monster of a campaign. Surely my son will be walking by then, right? |
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