I was separating boulders from bushes and then realized they were the front and back of the same terrain tiles. Cardboard standups of Shambling Undead and Bandit Archers were spilling over onto piles of Gold Pieces and little markers displaying a skull and crossbones. But before I knew it, my rather large table space was completely covered, cluttered, and confounding. Maybe after organizing the pieces, the rulebook wouldn’t be so daunting.
#Yass gloomhaven how to#
Perhaps by spending some time breaking out the hundreds of small cardboard pieces and larger map tiles, I would gain a better sense of how to proceed.
#Yass gloomhaven manual#
The standard modifier deck? Not to be confused with the character specific modifiers, which were also separate from the Bless and Curse modifiers? The manual dropped me in the deep end and told me to start paddling.Īdmitting I was making little progress with the rules, I decided to change course. But as I dug deeper into the details, it just got more confusing.
Of course, most of it was going over my head, but I was just starting out, right? Surely it would make more sense soon. I started with the rulebook, dutifully reading, getting the lay of the land. The colorful paper and cardboard, the intriguing drawings, the weird symbols-somehow the ink and glossy paper even smelled mysterious. The box was packed so tightly that it hissed as the top slid off. When I peeled open Gloomhaven for the first time, I was immediately overwhelmed. Imagine someone who enjoys the occasional nature hike suddenly deciding to climb a mountain, or a novice snorkeller attempting to dive the Great Barrier Reef. My approach was that of a curious tourist. Undertaking Gloomhaven offered a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between tabletop games and their digital cousins, and to highlight the elements that distinguish one from the other. Having always opted for the automated convenience of videogames, the thought of venturing into a more hands-on kind of space intrigued me. The guy working the booth said, “It’s basically an analog videogame.” Its creator, Isaac Childres, once wrote, “I wanted to create a simple dungeon crawler that could be played without a game master but still feel like a free and open world with campaign play.” For a boardgame, Gloomhaven does promise some distinctly videogame-esque features: the ability to be played single player or as a cooperative group, complex enemy AI, upgradable character classes, and a persistent world that changes based on your actions. Its giant box really stood out in the little section set aside for tabletop games. The first time I saw Gloomhaven, I was at a videogame convention. Jeremy Andriano puts down the controller.
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