Good day! It may be the weekend, but we're still over here working to give you more exciting streams.
First of all, I am super excited to tell you about the Gloomhaven RPG LIVE event from Game Con Canada with RealSmith. This will be an epic one-shot adventure with Jason Azevedo as the Gloom Master, and a cast of Luis Carazo, Deborah Ann Woll, Noura Ibrahim, and Joel Augé. And it will be live on the Mega Stage at Game Con Canada in Calgary at 2pm PST today. You can watch it live on the main page (where I will also be hanging out in the comments) or on Youtube.
But not only that, at 4pm PST, Dennis and I will be sitting down with Silver Medal Tavern from the Tabletop Live Network to play some Gloomhaven Second Edition. So we've got you covered on both fronts!
Dennis also joined me for a fireside chat yesterday, where we shared a lot of behind the scenes stuff on Gloomhaven: Second Edition, and I had a good time. You can watch that here. And if you're looking for insights and discussions on the Tinkerer puzzle from yesterday, you can head over to this BGG thread.
I am also happy to hear good reports out of Origins (we're at booth 1200!). Fans are having a great time with the RPG, and of course Monica Paprocki is crushing it with the cosplay, as always.
So I'd like to spend the rest of this update giving you a preview of the new and improved Tinkerer from Gloomhaven: Second Edition. I'll turn things over to designers Drew and Dennis:
Note: Graphic Design and art on this mat is still work-in-progress.
So, what made Tinkerer tick in the first edition?
With their large hand size, the Tinkerer had tools for most situations in the form of unique and varied loss actions. They specialized in dealing with conditions: inflicting negative conditions on enemies and empowering allies with positive conditions. They had a strong focus on supporting allies, with access to heals and card recovery abilities. Finally, they had a mostly-forgettable trap subtheme.
So what did we want to change?
Most significantly, Tinkerer simply needed a tune up in terms of numbers, especially on cards past level 1. We also wanted to highlight the cool gadget theme of the Tinkerer. And we either had to cut the traps, or make them better and give you slightly better tools to use them.
Let’s see how Tinkerer works in Gloomhaven: Second Edition:
Note: Graphic Design on these cards is incomplete. They will have card backgrounds like the Frosthaven class cards. Enhancement Field and Teleportation Pad will have tokens with unique art.
So what did they require?
Better healing: Healing was traditionally in a bit of a strange place in Gloomhaven. Healing was and is an effective use of actions outside of combat, but in combat it has historically been a bit of a trap (especially top action healing). This has been difficult for many newer players to adjust to because traditionally healing in combat is a valuable aspect of parties in RPGs or dungeon crawlers. Accordingly, in Frosthaven and GH2e, healing (especially on top actions) has been improved overall to allow more flexibility for people who want to play a combat healer. And the Tinkerer, the Gloomhaven class most synonymous with healing, has been given some of the best of it.
More variety of support: Tinkerer supporting has never just been about healing, but many of the other support effects fell flat. Flamethrower bottom was useful but didn’t have an initiative to match the effect. Disorienting Flash did too little, especially relative to its level. We’ve buffed effects like these, while also providing new takes on traditional avenues of Tinkerer’s various support effects.
Gadgets with unique tokens: Tinkerer has always been represented as doing everything they do with various mechanical gadgets. So why not give them some actual contraptions they can place permanently on the map to give them their own unique, low-complexity mechanic that fully represents their theme.
Better traps: While keeping the use of traps on Tinkerer completely optional, we wanted to both provide better payoffs (in the form of better traps themselves) and better tools to utilize them for anyone who did want to play with Tinkerer’s traps.
We hope you enjoy this new take on the classic Quatryl Tinkerer.
And that's it from us for the day. Be sure to check out the great streams we've lined up and have a great weekend!
