welcome to camp telophase

Our first Gloomhaven game was last night. It took 3 hours, of which the first 1.5 was reading rules, 1 was playing the actual scenario while also reading rules, and the final .5 was putting all the billions of tokens and stuff up again while contemplating all the rules we didn't actually get around to reading. In a normal situation, it's the sort of thing we'd just leave out until the next time we played, but we have CATS. Playful CATS. Who are VERY INTERESTED in the billions of tokens and stuff the humans have been staring at and moving around for the past who knows how long.

Friends of ours with a giant house converted an offshoot of their main bedroom* into a gaming room with doors, and that would be a useful thing to have IF WE DIDN'T HAVE A CAT WHO CAN OPEN DOORS.

*Their main closet is large enough for a king-sized mattress. We know this because when they host the annual LAN party/get-together, they put the mattress into the closet to sleep on and convert the remaining portions of the main bedroom into about 2/3 of the LAN gaming setup. The now-game-room was because their bedroom used to be the sort that had a seating area.

ANYWAY. As we were setting up, myrialux read rules, and read rules, and read rules, and eventually I said "Why don't we just start to play and look up rules any time there's a question?" and he agreed because otherwise the entire session was going to be setting up, reading rules, and tearing down.

We played, and looked up rules, and at times got tired of looking up rules so agreed in those cases to do what seemed more-or-less sensible and look the rules up later. (We both believe that the point of a game is to have fun, and the rules are meant to be bent, broken, disregarded or made up in ways that allow the players to have fun. If you are not having fun something is broken and it's not the player.) Anyway, we figure that we'll internalize the various rules, or at least internalize when we need to look the various rules up, over the course of the next several scenarios.

Not talking specifics of the scenario because it'd be spoilery. I play a Brute (if you've played Dragon Age imagine a 3-horned Qunari whose religion is not the Qun but instead hitting things; well, hitting even more things than Qunari generally do). My Brute is not named "Murderface," the expected thing, but instead is named "Tiny" because he and his workmates have a really basic sense of humor. myrialux is playing a Spellweaver whose name is something like "Ethernya," but I can't be bothered to go into the other room to find out how myrialux spells it.

Tiny did a lot of bashing. He's good at that. Ethernya did spellcasting, and ended up having to rest a lot and exhausted herself near the end (quote from Tiny, "You rest. Tiny got this."), and we don't yet know if that means the game is perfectly balanced so that she uses up her spells and gets exhausted right at the end of the scenario, or if we're screwing up somehow and discarding more cards than we're supposed to. The answer to that lies in more rule-reading. Or at least rereading the rules we already read and immediately forgot. Tiny also jumped on the loot chest and looted it for himself because Ethernya stole the kill that was his scenario goal. XD (Hey, she managed to reach her scenario goal.) (You get private goals at the beginning of each scenario.)

When we were putting it all away, I found the party sheet and filled it out with what we did (i.e., finished the scenario and previous to it, losing one reputation in a bar fight). It asked for our party's name. myrialux was tired and cranky and we were both being badgered by cats whose evening feeding was ONE HOUR OVERDUE which means they were in danger of expiring THEN AND THERE so he said he didn't care and left it up to me. I was not feeling especially creative and cast my eye over the table for inspiration.

Which is why our little mercenary troupe is Tiny and Ethernya, the Pen Crabs.

Anyway. Verdict: entertaining and fun when we were actually playing, but it will take a few more sessions to be ale to play without going "Uh, what does this thing mean?" five times per round.