Announcing Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game
Gloomhaven is Expanding Exponentially
Cephalofair Games, crowdfunding publisher of the record-breaking board games Gloomhaven and Frosthaven, is pleased to announce our latest project set in the same high fantasy, high strategy world we all love.
Last year Cephalofair announced plans to crowdfund a fantasy miniatures line to complement our catalog of boardgames – providing highly detailed sculpts for each of our in-game enemies, bosses, and summonable creatures typically represented by 2D cardboard standees and tokens. Now, we’re excited to reveal that we’re planning so much more than just miniatures with our brand new product—Gloomhaven: The Roleplaying Game!
Unlike other RPG systems reliant on dice and set character build structures – Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game will continue to uphold one of Cephalofair’s core mission statements – to “minimize randomness and reward player savvy”.
"This is the Gloomhaven Role Playing Game, which takes the Gloomhaven world and puts it in your hands – the hands of a “Gloom Master”. We are giving you the tools and the lore to create your own stories – in Gloomhaven and the surrounding world. And it will be available right alongside the miniatures in April, 2023.
We're creating a robust skill system that makes interacting with this newly expanded world and uncovering its mysteries always engaging. And when you run across a situation that can only be resolved with weapons, well, the Gloomhaven combat system will still be there to make sure that is always interesting as well.
But this isn't just the board game with a GM. First of all, we've opened up the playing field to allow for any class and ancestry combination. You can be an Inox Spellweaver, an Orchid Cragheart, or anything else, and both classes and ancestries have their own set of cards so that you can create a truly unique ability set.
And this newly developed system integrates card management into the role-playing experience. That's right, we've added a third skill check action to these cards, which lets you perform great feats out of combat, but also opens up a new dimension in combat, letting you swing from chandeliers, kick through walls, or even convince the bad guys to stop fighting.” – Isaac Childres, Designer/CEO
Not only does the Gloomhaven Role Playing Game take place in the same exciting world as Cephalofair’s board games – but it is actively being designed to be cross-compatible with all of our previous board game releases. As Cephalofair COO, Price Johnson, explains:
“We want our community to feel like each big-box campaign board game they’ve invested in, is able to function as a sort of Gloom Master tool kit, to be able to craft your own adventures using map tiles, enemy standees/miniatures, tokens, overlay tiles, and more. You can also just pick up the core Gloomhaven: RPG sourcebook and its accompanying card set and play without having owned a single one of our past titles. Mercenaries of all experiences and playstyles are welcome in Gloomhaven: The RPG!”
Earlier this year, Cephalofair was fortunate enough to recruit BJ Hensley to our team as our Director of Art and Graphic Design bringing with her 15+ years of experience spearheading product development, editorial management, design, and production across a tremendous range of RPG industry products.
We are incredibly thrilled to now share that BJ is additionally lending her leadership and expertise as the RPGs Creative Director, helping launch this brand-new chapter of world building artwork, design, writing, and storytelling that we’re all eager to explore and share with our fellow gamers.
“From the first time I encountered Gloomhaven, it felt like a product that could easily bridge the two worlds I love—board games and RPGs. I’m honored to be invited to play in Isaacs’s sandbox, and I look forward to sharing the amazing content all of these wonderfully talented people are creating with the Gloomhaven community.” – BJ Hensley
Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game is coming to Backerkit’s new crowdfunding platform in April of 2023, alongside hundreds of miniatures for use across our various products.
More information can be found on our Backerkit landing page.
9 Responses
Patrick McIntyre
I don’t think I need 600+ minis, but I would be interested in all of the ones for Jaws of the Lion. Buying these sets separately makes the most sense to me. I don’t own the others.
Rubens
It’s always great to see more Gloomhaven content. Is there any information on what countries you’ll be shipping this?
Toptv25
Thanks for sharing the post, really help me a lot
Dave
Can’t wait! Played through Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion with friends last year, started Frosthaven the other week, and I’m going through Gloomhaven again, but this time on PC. As a big DnD and Star Wars RPG fan, I’m super excited for this.
Stuart
This is all very exciting. We are deep into Gloomhaven at the moment. Some decent UK distribution would be good for all these goodies. Even if it has to be through the dreaded Amazon UK
Backcountry164
I hope there’s going to be a playtest. Without a good idea of how this system is going to work it would be a hard back.
Marie-Pier Rémillard
I need une🙂
Anya R
This is extremely exciting. I was fortunate enough to complete the whole box with the same group all the way and as soon as this news came out the same energy of the hundreds of collective hours we poured into the game came back. Very much looking forward to this
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GLOOMHAVEN RPG: Designer Diary 11
Mike
December 18, 2023
Might as well get in on the RPG craze, but then it doesn’t sound like this is an RPG so much as a mod-builder. If there is no GM, even an AI GM, it’s not an RPG.