Gloomhaven: Adding a Perilous Twist

If you’re up for a bigger challenge in Gloomhaven, you might want to consider introducing permanent death. This option will amp up the danger, as any character who falls below one hit point will permanently bite the dust instead of just getting exhausted. Even if a character can’t continue due to lack of rest or cards, they will still linger on the board and remain a prime target for monster attacks. Unable to take any actions, they’ll essentially become a sitting duck with a monster magnet sign on their forehead, with a monster focus score of 99. At the end of a failed scenario, any surviving characters can press on, while those who didn’t make it have to find their own way to the afterlife.

When a character dies, everything that belonged to them is returned to the box. Any items they had are put back into the city’s supply, and all the money they had is gone. Their personal quest card is shuffled back into the deck, and their character sheet is taken out of the game. If this happens to you, don’t worry. You just have to create a new character to keep playing.

A Different Way to Play: Random Dungeon Deck

Instead of playing a scenario from the Scenario Book, you can choose to play a random dungeon. This won’t move the story forward, but it can help your character gain more experience, money, checkmarks, and progress on their personal quest.

When you enter a random dungeon, you’ll encounter three unique rooms filled with monsters that you must defeat. The twist is that you won’t know what lies ahead until you open the door to the next room. To set up each room, we use a room card and a monster card, both chosen randomly from their respective decks.

Let me explain what a room card includes:

• A noun title is used to give the full title of the room when combined with the adjective title on the monster card.
• The room setup includes a graphical depiction of the map tile(s) used, along with twelve numerical designations indicating where elements of the monster card are placed during setup.
• The room setup may also include obstacle overlay tiles that need to be placed. If there are not enough specific overlay tiles, you can use a similar overlay tile of the same type instead.
• When it comes to designing rooms in a dungeon, there are a few important details to consider. For example, you need to decide where players can enter or exit the room, as well as what types of entrances and exits there are. These entrances and exits should always be located near the puzzle connection on the tile.
• If this is the first room of the dungeon, players have the freedom to place their figure on any empty hex within two hexes of the entrance. But if there are multiple entrances in the first room, players can collectively decide which entrance to start from.

Here’s a simplified and rephrased version of the text:

The room in the back of the card has two types of entrances and exits – A and B. When players leave a room through an A exit, they have to enter the next room through an A entrance, and the same goes for B. If the entrance of the top room in the deck doesn’t match the exit the players used in the previous room, the top card is thrown away until a matching entrance type is found. If a room has two exits, players can choose either one, but the unused exit becomes closed. If a room has two entrances, players have to use the entrance that matches the exit from the previous room.

When a new room is revealed and set up, there can be penalties depending on the room and difficulty chosen. We usually start with no penalties in the first room, a minor penalty in the second room, and a major penalty in the third room. But you can change the number and severity of the penalties as you like. You can even have major penalties in all three rooms if you want! If the penalty in the first room targets the character who opened the door, you can choose who it targets. If the penalty references the previous room, nothing happens. The specific map tile(s) used to create the room are important.

• Adjective title h: When you combine this with the noun title on the room card, you get the full title of the room.
• Designations for the twelve numbered spaces on the room card i: Each monster has designations for a two, three, and four character game, just like the normal setup for a scenario.
• Descriptions for any treasure tile contents j: Treasure tiles in a random dungeon won’t have anything important to the campaign, but they can have lots of helpful things for you.
• Designations of trap types k: If you see the red damage symbol l, it means the trap will hurt you.