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“We wanted to introduce new mechanics and roles, but still be true to the original canon - so you won’t see the small but technically skilled Quatryls as tanks, or Aesthers forgetting their innate ability to manipulate the elements.” “For the characters, it was important to all the creators that they fitted with the races that Isaac created,” Sims stresses. The Orchid Chieftain brings a new riding ability to the summoner, for example, while the cannon-ringed Quatryl Bombard can fire projectiles with a delayed explosion. The 11 new characters in the set similarly recall those in the main game, but introduce new gameplay ideas and twists on top of the existing classes. “Narratively, I wanted to give people definite choices but maybe with fewer options so players always knew what they were supposed to be doing even if they'd not picked the game up for a month or so.” (Spoiler: The story opens when the party are approached in a tavern by someone shifty.) “That means that it takes place in areas that are familiar to fans of the original, and follows the same tropes. “From a story point of view, the idea we always had was that we wanted it to be immediately recognisable to Gloomhaven fans,” Eisenbach adds. “The overriding aim of this expansion was 'more Gloomhaven', so we wanted to keep it faithful to the original,” says Sims. The story includes a number of nods to the original Gloomhaven, as well as a cameo from a new character - revealed by Childres - set to appear in Frosthaven. The Crimson Scales includes 66 brand new scenarios - including 11 single-player quests - that are written as a continuation of the story and world of the original game, along with 120 smaller events players can encounter in the city or out on the road.
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(Interested players can also download the whole thing for free and print it at home.) The project’s website also offers standees or 3D-printed miniatures - or the accompanying STL files - for the expansion’s new characters.
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It’s been very much a team effort.”Įventually, The Crimson Scales garnered enough fervour among the community that its creators decided to produce a physical print run of the fan-made expansion, offering the $119 set on a not-for-profit basis to abide by Childes’ Creative Commons licence. “Many, many people have been involved in the hundreds of hours of testing that each character has received. “From that point, it just snowballed we originally had four scenarios, but we kept having fun and we had more stories to tell. “Motti had commissioned some art and it seemed like it would be wasteful not to bring it to as many people as possible,” Sims says. Watch on YouTube Watch the Dicebreaker team take on Gloomhaven DigitalĪs the ambitious project continued to grow, the team tapped up Gloomhaven illustrator Alexandr Elichev to commission original artwork for the game’s cards and components, including 100 new items. The motivation largely came from the Gloomhaven community though as we started to post characters on BGG or TTS, people would give really nice feedback and ask if they could get a printed version.” “However, as Frosthaven got delayed, and the pandemic gave some of us more free time, we had an opportunity to do more.
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“It was originally intended to be a bit of fun and to be released online as either a print-and-play or on a Tabletop Simulator mod,” recalls Nick Sims, an accounting software salesperson by day who joined the Crimson Scales team to help write the expansion’s story. The custom creations go through their own in-depth playtesting process among other players, including testers for the game’s upcoming sequel, Frosthaven. Gloomhaven creator Isaac Childres released the original game’s assets under a Creative Commons licence, allowing creators to make and share their own creations for free.Ī number of fan-made characters and scenarios created by designer Motti Eisenbach - known in the Gloomhaven community as boardgame613 - were woven together by a story, which continued to expand into a fully-fledged expansion with brand new character classes, items and more. The Crimson Scales grew out of a community Discord server where fans of the 2017 dungeon-crawler would post custom-made content for the board game, including homebrewed scenarios and characters. A hugely ambitious fan project for Gloomhaven has blossomed into a staggering expansion featuring dozens of new scenarios, a fresh cast of original characters, artwork from the board game’s illustrator and a blessing from its creator, Isaac Childres.
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