So, I talk a lot about Campaign Games. My number one game of all time, Gloomhaven, is a campaign game. Tainted Grail, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, Aeon’s End Legacy, Pandemic Legacy, Sword & Sorcery, all of these are campaign games. And there are so many more out there than that, I have ISS Vanguard, Etherfields, Oathsworn, Chronicles of Drunagor and more coming from Kickstarter, so that begs the question, what do I look for in a campaign game?

What is a Campaign Game

Before we get into what I look for, let’s talk about what a campaign game even is. I use that term a lot and you can see that I have legacy games as campaign games as well. But a campaign game, in the board game hobby, is a game that takes you through a progression from game to game. This could be a narrative focused progression, it could be a character leveling progression, or a mechanics progression. But the idea being that as you play through all of the games, when you are have completed the progression you have experienced the full game.

So you can see that there is some flexibility in how those games work. I even have legacy games because while something like Aeon’s End Legacy and Pandemic Legacy have story, others like Charterstone are still story elements but the story doesn’t progress the campaign of the game. that is the mechanics.

What Do I Look For in a Campaign Game?

This is a pretty big question as to what I look for. Because there are a lot of different things but there are things that you can look for and that I do look for.

1. Story
2. Character progression/leveling
3. Interesting Combat Mechanics
4. Depth of Play
5. Ease of Play

Story

This is always going to be the first thing I look at. Not because the story has to be perfect, but if it looks bad, I’m out. Story matters a lot that it interests me. And that it gives me some choices. A great example of this is Tainted Grail. That game is all about the story, and not only that, there is a lot of story that can be pushed through. We have pieces and choices in the story that we’ll never see because of what we’ve already done. And while some of them, Gloomhaven, for example, have less branching story, there is enough to be engaging.

Character Progression

The next thing that I want is character progression. How do I level up my character in particular. In Gloomhaven, adding in a card each level was really interesting. It gave me a choice as to how I could hand build and create the style of character that I wanted to play. It also limited how much I could change that. Early abilities didn’t ever go away, sometimes, but it was a balance as you’d switch cards out. On the flip side, while Sword & Sorcery unlocked interesting things, a lot of the time the starting powers or cards you took were the same ones you used, so the progression wasn’t as interesting

Interesting Combat

This is one that I’ve realized matters a lot to me. I don’t just want to roll dice. Again going to Sword & Sorcery, you had a select few abilities and you’d just be chucking dice mainly. The decision space was limited. I liked Gloomhaven’s combat better because you not only were managing your use of cards. Basically something that makes more of a choice as you take actions or pull stuff back. This can also fall into action selection or things like that, the game needs to have a bit of a tactical and interesting mechanical feel to it for me generally.

Depth of Play

Next we have depth of play, and I’ll say that Ease of Play being the next one, this might be a bit confusing. The idea here is again, like the interesting combat, I want to have interesting choices to make. Whether it’s how I go about combat, make choices in the story, whatever it might be, I want interesting choices and interactions to happen. I want to have options that create interesting and unique combos or moments in the game that you need to think about. Not complexity for complexities sake, but moments of cleverness.

Ease of Play

On the flip side, I want the basics of the game to be fairly easy to understand. I think when you get down to it, Gloomhaven isn’t that bad. Most of the things you do are play down two cards do the top of one and the bottom of the other. So while these games are generally going to have a lot of set-up, the basics of what is being done in Gloomhaven is quite straight forward. Now, these games are still more complex to play than most, but I don’t think as horrible as most people think looking at the size of the box. It’s more that it takes time to get to the table and pack back up.

How Many Does It Have To Hit?

What I mean by this is do I need a campaign game to have 3 of these 5 for me to get it, or 5 of 5? There is of course going to be no magical number. But I do prioritize some of the others, the story is definitely the one that I care about most. Again, I don’t need an amazing story, though with the standard provided by Tainted Grail, I’m definitely going to judge games more.

I’d say almost the order I put them in matters the most. I’d maybe move combat up slightly above character progression, but character progression, depth of play, and interesting combat often are all tied together. Basically, for those, I want more decision space than just rolling dice.

Let’s Do An Example

So let’s look at the most recent campaign game that I’ve back, Chronicles of Drunagor. This game I’ve obviously talked about a lot and I compared it against Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread not long ago, you can find that here. But let’s hit on all five of those different areas:

Story

The game seems like it has a fairly generic story. The heroes are trying to drive back the darkness or at least figure out what is causing it. This seems like a story on the same level that Gloomhaven has. Not that exciting but not that bad.

Character Progression

Characters level up between each scenario, I think that there are something like 17 different scenarios. That’s exactly what I want. I want interesting and consistent character progression. It sounds like sometimes you can skills, sometimes you get weapons, but you’re leveling up a lot.

Interesting Combat

This is probably the area where it’ll be the most interesting to talk about. You have your basic movement each turn. But then you are activating abilities. To do that you place a cube of a matching color onto an ability. When you’ve done that and are out of cubes, you need to pull them back. When you pull back cubes you get cursed and you cover up one of those spots to place a cube. So there seems like some interesting challenges in how the combat and abilities will work.

Depth of Play

See above, no really, see above. But beyond that there are some interesting things. There is a book where you get to make choices based off of images that you’ve seen. I also think that it’s interesting to see how the door system works. When you come to a door, it gives you more story an tells you how to set-up what’s going forward. Not sure that it’s the deepest game play outside of those cubes, but that is the cool focus of the game.

Ease of Play

This might be the biggest area of concern for the game. But I do think that the ease of what you do with the cube combat and then rolling a die, that isn’t difficult. The things like setting up the terrain, pausing mid scenario to open and door and do all of that stuff. The house keeping of the darkness as it spreads, all of that’s going to be a lot of work.

I am hoping that overall with game that it’s easy enough to get into. I don’t love the idea of stopping in the middle but that cube combat/action system is just very intriguing. And I know that one of the complaints people had originally was that the story was a bit too linear. It sounds like with this second crowdfunding that changing up the story to make it less linear and the new stuff will offer more choices as well. Overall, it definitely hits on what I want in a game.

Will This Work For You?

That’s a great question, different gamers will like different things. But I do think that it’s a good framework as to what to look for. Now, you might have a dedicated gaming space where you can leave a big campaign game set-up all the time. I don’t, if I did, I’d probably be less worried about the ease of play piece and the set-up that is within that.

But know your type of gaming. Sword & Sorcery, which I’ve harped on a little bit for things I don’t like, is a good game. It is just a bit simpler. And for some gaming groups, especially getting into dungeon crawlers and campaign games, it’ll be an amazing fit. It’s knowing what will work well for you as a gamer but also for the group you’re playing with.

What is your favorite campaign game?

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