Had to choose between Gloomhaven or Pandemic Legacy for our Friday group

My group of 4 meets every Friday at this coffee shop downtown and we were stuck on what to play next. I pushed hard for Gloomhaven because I heard it had this huge campaign and I love dungeon crawlers. But my buddy Mike kept saying we'd never finish it and that Pandemic Legacy Season 1 was tighter and had a clear ending. We went with Gloomhaven and honestly after 6 months we've only gotten through maybe 15 scenarios. It's fun but the setup takes forever and we keep forgetting rules. I feel like we could have finished two campaigns of Pandemic by now. Has anyone else dealt with a game that just drags on too long for your group's schedule?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_dixon26d ago

Oh man, I totally get that feeling of campaign fatigue! One thing nobody brings up is that Gloomhaven actually works way better if you treat the cardboard monsters like a game of chess instead of a roleplaying campaign. We started writing down our rule mistakes on sticky notes and it cut our setup time by like 20 minutes once we had a cheat sheet. Honestly though, for a group that meets once a week, I'd rather pick something with a built-in timer because even great games can feel like homework after month four.

david_stone26d ago

That sticky note idea from @angela_dixon is solid. I used to think writing stuff down was a waste of time, but tracking rule mistakes on notes actually cuts our setup time a lot too. We ended up with a whole stack of them by the third session. Simple fixes like that make a huge difference for a weekly group.