This weekend the guys got together to hold the first official Board Meeting of Side Room Games. Most of our planning efforts have been through email and messaging so we thought it made sense to get together to discuss business. And… Mike just got Gloomhaven in the mail so it made sense to get some “research” in and start a campaign. ?
On the Gloomhaven side, that game is a magnificent beast! Without question the biggest board games I’ve ever seen. We started off watching the extremely helpful how to play videos on the Cephalofair website; if you’re about to start a campaign I’d highly recommend checking them out. I went with the Brute for our party and my inexperience as a “tank” in an adventuring party was quickly discovered. Opening the door to the second room and seeing 6 baddies I just assumed I could jump in and start crushing dudes. I was immediately met with volley of arrows from the 3 archers in the back of the room, turning me into a meat pincushion. After losing me so early in the scenario, the rest of the party was slowly overcome and we failed miserably.
You would think such a rough loss would poorly color my judging of the game, but it didn’t. I loved it! I loved the fact that your decisions mattered and if you did dumb stuff you were going to pay for it. I loved the need for general planning on how to approach new rooms and villains. I loved the fact that the hidden goals and motives allow you to grow & mold a character into more than just stats & cards. And the story that gets told through the components as well as the gameplay was very cool. We’re itching to get a second crack at the first scenario; hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.
On the business side, we’re still feeling out what the core responsibilities are going to be for the founders. I have ideas on where folks fit, but we’ll be working out a partnership agreement soon to formalize the roles and officially forming an LLC. Be on the lookout for future posts on how to do this, as well as any how-to’s/issues we ran into.
We also had an initial handful of submissions for game designs. A few of them seem promising so we’ve reached out to the designers to get more info and some video pitches with more details on how the game flows.
And finally, lots of questions on the 54-Card Design Contest that kicks off on December 1st. Check it out on BGG if you’re interested in entering a design, playtesting and providing feedback, or just seeing what happens. I know we’re stoked for it and I can’t wait to see what folks come up with.
Until next time!