Gloomhaven thoughts and virtual applicability

Hi,

I have a friend who wants to play Gloomhaven with me. We are going on a camping trip together and want to make it our nighttime activity. 1-2 hour scenarios are perfect for this but the campaign is not. I’m interested in the community’s thoughts on Gloomhaven (we are both new) and whether we could continue our campaign virtually as we live in different states.

Are you suggesting that you are considering taking the physical version of Gloomhaven out for a hike, because if so, that sounds....problematic? It's cumbersome (to put it lightly) and filled with pieces that are just asking to get lost in the wilds.

Yeah Gloomhaven in a camping trip sounds like a mess. It’s not the longest game, but the setup and the number of components is pretty complicated, so I’d say avoid bringing it on a camping trip. Even Jaws of the Lions is a complicated set-up.

Yeah, I have heard that the game takes a very long time to set up so it might not be the best choice for camping. Can't go wrong with a couple of Magic decks or a chess set though!

While I agree that taking Gloomhaven anywhere sounds like an absolute nightmare, I can at least confirm that there are very good Tabletop Simulator mods for Gloomhaven that my group have used to carry on from where we left off physically since the pandemic started last year.

Gloomhaven is way too big for a hike, but I am sure with a tablet, one of the apps which replaces a lot of enemy combat components, and a lot of dedication and Tetris Grand Mastery to bag up the necessary stuff in a tight way you could do it. But it's still a bear of a game with that in mind.

If you're willing to organize spreadsheets or databases for game/world/character info, and one of you is willing to set up cameras to screenshare board states and enemy movement, then you can play it across states, but it may be more difficult due to the asymmetrical nature of the player characters/their decks. Plus that requires a lot of effort and space that most of us won't have. I'd not recommend it (had to abandon a campaign that was set up in a similar way after a player fell out of love with the system...) but any massive campaign game is liable to fall apart before completion, isn't it?

If you desperately do want a physical Gloomhaven for a camping trip, pick up Jaws Of The Lion instead. It has a smaller box, and a much smaller table footprint (no map tiles as the maps are just in the campaign book) so it will be so much less of a hassle to play. Plus the campaign is a quarter of the length and less varied but still interesting, and you are much more likely to finish it. Plus if you move onto Gloomhaven you can integrate the characters and other components from Jaws Of The Lion.

With that being said, make sure you still have a decent size fold up camping table if you do follow through with any Gloomhaven camping plan.

Gotta agree with others here that Gloomhaven might be a bit much for a camping trip. The digital version is in early access on steam though and the roadmap says that it should hit 1.0 in Q2-Q3, so it might be worth it to just wait for that.

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet but Tabletop Simulator has an absolutely stellar and officially endorsed Gloomhaven mod. My crew lives in 2 different states and recently completed the main story and are now working our way through JOTL. While it's not exactly the same as sitting across from your friends and playing it's pretty darn close. It would take some initial extra setup if you wanted to replicate where you are in your current campaign but it's absolutely doable and I can't recommend it enough.

Haha! I should have clarified. We are going “camping” in a 28 foot travel trailer. So days of hiking and fishing and nights of sitting. So I thought a good board game would be a good way to pass the time in the trailer since we won’t have access to any other entertainment.

As mentioned by others I’d recommend jaws of the lion as a perfect starter to the Gloomhaven game. It’s self contained, has a much smaller footprint in terms of time required to set up and put away plus uses virtually all the rules of the big box.

As for virtual, check the module in the vassal engine.