Yes, but now there is a new cat in the rubble.
3 Likes
For campaign games, we’ve been thru Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion, and probably about half way thru Frosthaven. I’m not against campaign games, but to be honest, Frosthaven was just too much, taking most of our gaming time for (in my opinion) not enough reward. Every mission (and this is true of Gloomhaven too) was usually a slog. Not a fan of the card system either, having to nurse your best cards til the end.
Otherwise, co-op games are great! Our favourites would be:
Cthulhu: Death May Die, always a wild ride!
Dorfromantik, we like the discussion of where to place tiles. Ok, there’s no way to “lose” as such, but you can still have good and bad games.
Project ELITE, another wild one! Real time dice rolling, it’s so cool. My one complaint is that people can’t see your awesome rolls (like they can in DMD).
Ghost Stories, it’s awesome, but so hard. We used to at least get to the Big Bad most games, but lately we haven’t even been getting that far. It’s still fun, but would be nice to get a win.
Micromacro Crime City, something a bit different, look for crime across a huge map
Eternal Decks, my favourite game of 2025 so far. Play cards, gain the Eternals, win the keys!
6 Likes
And it’s hidden the can of petrol it used.
Campaigns are tricky I think. The more the overgame is a thing in its own right, the more you can play it well or badly enough that the setups it gives you for the undergame just aren’t interesting to play. (I’m thinking for example of Battletech, which I believe now supports scales from interstellar war right down to Conscript Bob hiding behind a ruined wall with his rifle.)
2 Likes
I forgot Legacy of Yu - that’s a campaign game I enjoyed a lot and look forward to playing through again!
3 Likes
I also feel fond about campaign games. I played through base Gloomhaven twice. I really enjoyed the way it was a resource management euro with some random exciting combat elements and hung on the adventure theme. The story wasn’t scintillating but I thought it was well done for allowing the rest of the game to flow. So again, while I’m bored of it now it’s probably among my favourites I’ve played. Too Many Bones is in a similar spot. I liked that the campaign was completable in a session. Less good of a game but there were interesting puzzles.
The next game I think of with campaign games is Expedition to Newdale. It’s not a great game but it’s decent enough. I like some aspects of what it did with some of the premises of Oh My Goods. It has some wonky balance between the types of buildings and chains though. More so than the og card game. I did play around 10 games of it while going through the campaign and no regrets. Exploring the scenarios and having things open up and get introduced was fun and encouraged us to play it regularly across sessions and all 3 of us were eager to do so.
So I suppose this brings me on to Betrayal Legacy. When I was young and Betrayal at House On The Hill was new I remember the wave of excitement that ripped through the club about it. It was played every week and was the game people would arrive to play. Sure it was wonky but the theme was cool and when it hit the tales remaining in peoples minds after were recounted and cherished. Times change and so do tastes so the wonky nature of the game will always have annoyed certain people. I think people who complain about balance of scenarios always think their game could only have gone that way and is representative of that scenario’s design completely. The thing with the random generation means the same scenario can be good or bad depending on all the factors of layout, dice rolls and which events hit which character. Betrayal Legacy doesn’t and cannot make the game satisfying on all scenarios for all players. What I found though was the short and one sided scenarios were less annoying as they at least added to the overall campaign and being a chapter in a bigger narrative felt like less of a waste of time. One scenario after the reveal the bad guy won eliminating all 3 other players, one each turn. It was however fine as most of us found it funny and how it sat in the overall narrative allowed that to feel like an important if dull and short scene in a film. I think very fondly of my games of Betrayal Legacy as a result. With it being a campaign we did things like research popular names in the time of the setting. So when people were first leaving europe en masse for what was to become the USA. (Most men in England at the time were called Johnathan ~75%). I doubt that would have happened without it being a campaign. The owner high on tue enthusiasm bought Betrayal at Baldurs Gate and that managed 1 play before being dropped. I think this shows how much Legacy elements added for us.
So with campaign games what do I like about them? It seems the justification of time going in for extra details getting a pay off. I like the impetuous to keep getting together with a group of friends and build some sort of shared narrative and memory together. Failing that I like to explore a same technical and tactical/strategic space together with the chance of an injection of novelty as we go along. I also like playing the same game in succession and having an excuse for me in my head for that. Maybe some roots are in Necromunda being just about my favourite game as a warhammer type kid so nostalgia helps.
One of the things I don’t like is they’re probably now in my past. The main chances of them being in my future are either if the kids get in to them in 10 years or so or if retirement happens in a pre apocalyptic setting and if there are good ones and gamers to play them in my orbit.
6 Likes
We began playing Pandemic Legacy 1 with a group and ended it by playing 2 hands each.
It came at a time (almost 10 years ago) when our regular RPG group was falling apart and our gaming habits changed a lot. People’s jobs and kids were keeping them ever busier at that point in life (our late 30s) and so maybe I associate campaign games with those reduced gaming opportunities.
But now I got an RPG group again and maybe at some point when things settle a bit more (certainly my past decade was an incredible one in terms of … everything … looking back I see how midlife crisis is a thing), we will find space in our lives for more epic games and more epic campaigns… (mostly I am thinking Gloomy and Frosty here)
7 Likes
Well I’m having kids and my job is getting busier just now so I’m guilty of messing up my groups gaming currently. So no more campaign games for us. Strong possibility of lots of Fresh Fish though.
6 Likes