Explaining why Gloomhaven is not a substitute for an RPG?

[Suzerain]

Background: I've got a group of very dear real-life friends that are into board games and to a lesser extent TTRPGs. Now, I don't actually play TTRPGs with them as they seem mainly to want to play D&D 5th, and I prefer no RPG to bad RPG. People seem to believe that I dislike it because it's rules-light (technically true, I suppose, but I'd prefer "rules-incomplete" as a more accurate description). We've had discussions on that front and it really isn't going anywhere, as they're stuck on 5e for whatever reason. We even own other books (frustratingly enough, 3.5 core is among them) but I digress. The point is that these people are aware that I feel 5e is a total failure of an RPG.

Enter Gloomhaven. I'm looking forward to playing it, should be a fun little series of tactical games. But because it's technically possible to roleplay while playing Gloomhaven, they've been insisting on pitching it to me as scratching my RPG itch. How in hell do I explain to them, in a short and convenient way, that it's not about how complex or simple the rule system is, but rather about more ephemeral things like actual rules to interact with the world outside of combat, interesting decision points, and the ability to drive narratives in a more sandbox-y way? I feel like I'm coming up against a bit of a wall in my own ability to express these things.

[OgreBattle]

Gloomhaven is a very rules heavy board game, but isn't a tabletop RPG in that...

The event cards give binary results. Either we run from a bear or take damage fighting it, there's no option for luring the bear away with a swarm of rats, or luring it into an exploding trap. If you do have events interact with cards and stamina then it negatively impacts game balance as reaching zero stamina ends the dungeon run.

The stamina mechanic is the heart of Gloomhaven, but takes away from role play elements. I thought stamina only counted down during combat, I thought I could take a short rest between opening doors, that part took me out of the "this is a role playing game on a board" mindset and more into "This is a board game with a set pace"

I've enjoyed... House on Haunted Hill? That board game where you build the haunted house via tile deck exploration. That one felt more like an RPG in the sense of "play these specific roles in a horror story"

I think leveling up and multiple sessions actually hurts the roleplay element for me in Gloomhaven. Arkham Horror and so on (haven't played but heard good things) have a beginning, actions, and finale.

[pragma]

You're looking for Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and there's a legacy version now that might have even more RPG seasoning to sate your preferences.

[erik]

Betrayal at Balder's Gate is maybe even better than Betrayal at House on the Hill. You could role play it a little bit but it's pretty game directed as there's not much room for meaningful fluff.

Arkham Horror is pretty fun. You could role play and each character even has a backstory which can help. If playing I heartily recommend someone download an app that can serve the function of the location cards. Saves you a lot of wasted time from shuffling the location decks constantly and frees up a good amount of table space.

[Krusk]

Arkham horror can slip in as a kind of rpg. Wife and i spent a few months playing on saturdays and churned through most of the big bads back to back with the same gameboard + most expansions. We got some good roleplay elements out of the different characters and approaches. (When someone died we grabbed a new one randomly to keep going). Did a sort of escalating doom scenario, where even though we beat one threat the next was just around the corner.

Its also not realy an rpg, because i cant say “fuck that merchant i kill him and take his stuff to save the town”.

Its also important to remember the old adage about AH. Youll love the first game. When you play the second you will realize you did everything wrong. The second wont be as fun. The third game will be where you realize you almost never play the same way twice. Or simply, its complicated as shit, and getting it mostly right is probably better than playing right.

[Mord]

There might be no difference at all between an "RPG" and "a tactical minis game with a scenario book and a persistent cast of characters with level progressions," but I think the differentiating factor for RPGs is collaborative storytelling.

Gloomhaven is not an RPG because Gloomhaven does not offer players narrative agency that they can use to create a shared story that belongs specifically to them. Players cannot exercise creativity to explore unexpected or undefined interactions to expand the world beyond what is printed.

Gloomhaven has a campaign book that offers choices between scenarios, but if something you might like to do isn't printed in the book, you can't do it. Likewise, in combat, characters do what the cards say they can do and nothing else. Not all RPGs have character creation, so it's not a disqualifying point, but Gloomhaven doesn't have that either. What you get is a boxful of characters, you draw a retirement condition card, and that's how it is.

Arkham Horror, Descent, Betrayal at etc., and Pandemic Legacy are also not RPGs for basically the same reason, though I think that players getting invested in and attached to board game tokens reflects a great job done by the game designer. Legacy games are different enough from both normal board games and RPGs that they deserve to be identified as their own thing.

[Foxwarrior]

So Gloomhaven is more like a tabletop version of a CRPG really.

[Orca]

If they're not accepting the obvious argument (that you can't do anything not specified in Gloomhaven's heavily prescribed ruleset) you may just have to show them by doing.

BTW, Eldritch Horror is an improvement on Arkham Horror as a boardgame.

[brized]

How in hell do I explain to them, in a short and convenient way, that it's not about how complex or simple the rule system is, but rather about more ephemeral things like actual rules to interact with the world outside of combat, interesting decision points, and the ability to drive narratives in a more sandbox-y way? I feel like I'm coming up against a bit of a wall in my own ability to express these things.

Ask them about how you do things unique to TTRPGs in Gloomhaven.

What's the system for social interactions with NPCs? Can you:

• Convince a minion to look the other way, or even join you?
  Interrogate/cross-examine a captive to get secrets to slip?
  Convince a warlord that his motivations are misguided or wrong?

Is there anything in the rules to adjudicate those scenarios? Or is it just magic tea party? What in the rules indicates someone is good or bad at persuasion in general? What indicates which situations make it harder or easier to persuade someone? Are NPCs written with goals? What about motives behind the goals? How do you find out if an NPC can be bribed, threatened, tricked, or persuaded into doing something you want? What kind of bribes, threats, tricks, rhetoric are effective or counterproductive? When?

Can you join the "bad guys"? What happens then? What in the system supports that approach?

What about going to areas not already laid out in the game? Is there any framework for generating new locations, NPCs, items, etc.?

---

That's just what came to mind for me. What separates TTRPGs from board games and CRPGs for you? If they can't explain how Gloomhaven's rules cover those unique TTRPG features, that should speak for itself.

[K]

One of my RPG friends had a baby two years ago, so the rest of us have been doing Gloomhaven until she can rejoin the group.

We started RPGing again last week, and its been a welcome relief. Gloomhaven can tide you over for a while, but any boardgame is going to get tiring after a while.

[Chamomile]

BTW, Eldritch Horror is an improvement on Arkham Horror as a boardgame.

The Arkham Horror LCG is also quite good, although it is a money sink in the way that the board game is not, because you need to buy a new deck of cards for each individual scenario, rather than getting like six per expansion.

[Antariuk]

BTW, Eldritch Horror is an improvement on Arkham Horror as a boardgame.

The Arkham Horror LCG is also quite good, although it is a money sink in the way that the board game is not, because you need to buy a new deck of cards for each individual scenario, rather than getting like six per expansion.

The problem with Arkham Horror, at least for 2nd edition, is the risk of the game escalating into a massive clusterfuck you can't resolve within the time limits most people have for an evening of gaming. That problem is of course directly tied to the number of expansions used and if you have someone experienced in the group, but it's there. And much less so in Eldritch Horror, which in regard to using board games as a TTRPG replacement has the whole Indiana Jonesque vibe of fighting bad guys in exotic places around the globe going for it.

[jt]

Is there a procedure for upgrading a dungeon crawler into an RPG? I like Imperial Assault a fair deal more than I like any version of D&D combat. Do you just bolt a skill system onto it and call it good enough? Is something else missing?

(Bonus question: My favorite one of these is actually Catacombs. Is the answer different for that?)

[Username17]

One of my RPG friends had a baby two years ago, so the rest of us have been doing Gloomhaven until she can rejoin the group.

I unironically love that you use that description for her.

-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

Is there a procedure for upgrading a dungeon crawler into an RPG? I like Imperial Assault a fair deal more than I like any version of D&D combat. Do you just bolt a skill system onto it and call it good enough? Is something else missing?

(Bonus question: My favorite one of these is actually Catacombs. Is the answer different for that?)

Well, if the skill system is wacky and expansive enough I guess. I don't know the games you're referring to (my board game knowledge is not nearly as encyclopedic as my computer game knowledge), but they're probably also lacking some mechanism for transitioning to and from conversations with the monsters. And the combat balance might be totally thrown off by the players getting to be creative about how they enter rooms.

[Iduno]

Is there a procedure for upgrading a dungeon crawler into an RPG? I like Imperial Assault a fair deal more than I like any version of D&D combat. Do you just bolt a skill system onto it and call it good enough? Is something else missing?

You'll want to be able to answer both "how do I do things outside of combat, that are entirely non-combat-related?" and "how do the things I do affect the dungeon crawler parts?".

Also, people will want to be able to use social powers on enemies, and will want to use the crafting system no matter how bad/non-existent it is.

[jt]

Transitioning into combat is just a roll for initiative, no? If so, all of that except crafting sounds like stuff you can cover with a Risus hack. Or a FATE hack. Or copy pasting D&D 3.5's skill chapter in and adding an initiative skill.

I don't know the games you're referring to (my board game knowledge is not nearly as encyclopedic as my computer game knowledge)

Imperial Assault is a pretty straightforward dungeon crawler (In SPAAACE. Star Wars space specifically). It has some fancy rules to balance the adversarial GM and to maintain the pace while doing a whole mission in dungeon crawly mode. But it also has reasonable enough combat mechanics that get to a similar pool of decisions to D&D combat while taking fewer rules to get there.

Catacombs is a series of disconnected D&D-themed skirmishes, so it'd be even easier to port. In Catacombs your character is represented with a little wooden disk, and instead of rolling dice to see if you hit or something boring, you flick your disk at the enemy. If you hit, you hit. Move-actions are flicks that don't do damage. Ranged attacks have you placing a tiny disk depicting an arrow next to your character and attempting to hit the enemy with that instead. Positioning is much more subtle because it's not discretized at all, but you don't have to get out a tape measure or something because flicking. Lots of combat maneuvers are resolved via physics ("Can I hit this guy then hide behind this pillar?" "I dunno, can you?"). And misses and fumbles are hilarious. It's brilliant, but it is a very silly kind of brilliance.

I made a roguelike based on Catacombs-like mechanics, if you want to see what this looks like in a video game.

[Foxwarrior]

Flicking your token to navigate the deadly minefield that is idle chitchat with the nobility. Flicking your token up a ramp for jump checks?

Hmm, I think I like Disk Game more than Pinball Dungeon, the enclosed space makes your moves more... plannable?, the collisions seem to be less elastic, and it's less ambiguous about whether your move will actually eliminate an opponent or not. Too bad you didn't make an AI for it.

[jt]

I also considered using a different dexterity game like Jacks for skill checks. The thing about disks that isn't as nice as dice is that, while you can probably come up with a fun shot scenario for any situation (get through in $STEALTH_SKILL flicks without touching anything to avoid waking the guards!), a lot of those scenarios need physical setup. There's no quick disk check.

In case it's not immediately obvious, Untitled Disk Game has online multiplayer. If you get someone else to open it at roughly the same time, it'll put you into a match against each other. (If you're really into it, there's a deck builder. But if you ever want to go back to random preconstructed decks, you need to delete local storage.)

[Suzerain]

Thanks all, good pointers. I think it's partially come from an inaccurate description of the game to the purchaser by a friend of ours. Said friend claimed "there's as much RP in Gloomhaven as you bring to it", which... I mean, that's patently ridiculous on the face of it. I can RP as a robber baron in Monopoly if I were ever to make the mistake of playing the game, but that doesn't make it an RPG. After making that point, I think there's agreement that no, it's really not the same thing. Now if only I could find a way to participate in an RPG other than 5e as a player with these guys, I'd be set.