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A legacy game is a variant of tabletop board games in which the game itself is designed, through various mechanics, to change permanently over the course of a series of sessions.
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A legacy game is a variant of tabletop board games in which the game itself is designed, through various mechanics, to change permanently over the course of a series of sessions.
Game designer Rob Daviau claims to have come up with the idea at a work meeting after jokingly asking why the murderous characters in Clue are always invited back to dinner. Realizing that each new game resets, Daviau thought about what it would be like if everyone would remember who the murderer was, and he pitched the idea of a Clue legacy game to Hasbro.
While that idea was rejected, Daviau was later asked to use the mechanic in a new version of Risk . Risk Legacy was released in 2011 and was his first game to use this format. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Daviau followed up with an award-winning [5] Pandemic variant, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, which was released in 2015 to positive reviews and praised as a leap forward in modern board game design. [4] [6] [7] Daviau continues to develop legacy games and co-developed a mechanic, the Echo System, [8] to retain permanent changes through subsequent games in a franchise. [7]
Daviau cited his work on Betrayal at House on the Hill (which was later adapted into a legacy version) and Trivial Pursuit: DVD – Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition as predecessors to the legacy idea. The latter was designed in such a way that pre-programmed games sorted the cards by difficulty. This caused some vocal backlash as the game was perceived by many to have a more definite end than other versions. [9]
Legacy games are designed to be played over the course of a campaign, usually with the same players, and permanently change over time. [3] [10] As such they have been compared to tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons . [11] New rules can be introduced as the campaign goes on, allowing for the game to expand both mechanically and thematically. [7] Games can use the expanding campaign as a mode of storytelling; Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 uses a three-act structure to tell its story. [4] Daviau describes legacy games as "experiential" in contrast to traditional games, which are "repeatable". [12] He compared his legacy games to that of a concert where you "buy a ticket for an experience" [13] while Haoran Un of Kotaku describes the idea as "avant-garde performance art". [11]
Legacy games break certain covenants that players expect from traditional board games. [14] Permanent, physical changes can occur to components based on game outcomes and player choices. [2] For instance players might be instructed to write names on cards, place stickers on the game board, or destroy some components. [11] This causes each copy of the game to be unique at the end [3] and has earned the legacy genre criticism in that there is a finite amount of replayability. [7] [13] Some games have been designed to be replayable with refill packs or non-permanent stickers while others are still playable with the final permanent changes once the campaign is over. [15]
| Title | Year published | Notes | Refs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk Legacy | 2011 | [16] | |
| We Didn't Playtest This: Legacies | 2012 | [17] | |
| Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 | 2015 | [16] | |
| SeaFall | 2016 | [16] | |
| Gloomhaven | 2017 | [18] [19] | |
| Android: Netrunner - Terminal Directive | 2017 | Expansion | [20] |
| First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet | 2017 | Individual campaign | [21] [22] |
| Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 | 2017 | [23] | |
| Charterstone | 2017 | [15] | |
| Centauri Saga: Abandoned | 2018 | Expansion | [24] [25] |
| The Rise of Queensdale | 2018 | [26] | |
| Ultimate Werewolf Legacy | 2018 | [27] [28] | |
| Betrayal Legacy | 2018 | [29] | |
| Aeon's End: Legacy | 2019 | [30] | |
| Zombie Kidz Evolution | 2019 | Children's game | [31] |
| Machi Koro: Legacy | 2019 | [32] | |
| Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated | 2019 | [33] | |
| The King's Dilemma | 2019 | [34] | |
| My City | 2020 | [35] | |
| Vampire: The Masquerade - Heritage | 2020 | [36] | |
| Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 | 2020 | [37] | |
| Zombie Teenz Evolution | 2020 | [38] | |
| Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile | 2021 | [39] | |
| Frosthaven | 2022 | [40] | |
| Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar | 2022 | [41] | |
| Wildtails: A Pirate Legacy Game | 2022 | [42] | |
| Sagrada Legacy | TBA | [43] | |
| Capt'n Pepe Treasure Ahoy! | 2023 | Haba Children's Game |
Days of Wonder is a board game publisher founded in 2002 and owned by Asmodee Group since 2014. Days of Wonder distributes its games to 25 countries. It specializes in German-style board games and has branched out to include some online games. Days of Wonder has published games in several languages including English, Dutch, French, German, Russian, and Greek. Days of Wonder was co-founded by Eric Hautemont, Mark Kaufmann and Yann Corno.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a board game published by Avalon Hill in 2004, designed by Bruce Glassco and developed by Rob Daviau, Bill McQuillan, Mike Selinker, and Teeuwynn Woodruff. Players all begin as allies exploring a haunted house filled with dangers, traps, items, and omens. As players journey to new parts of the mansion, room tiles are chosen at random and placed on the game board; this means that the game is different each session. Eventually the "haunt" begins, with the nature and plot of this session's ghost story revealed; one player usually "betrays" the others and takes the side of the ghosts, monsters, or other enemies, while the remaining players collaborate to defeat them.
Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. Pandemic is based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region. The game accommodates two to four players, each playing one of seven possible roles: dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations expert, contingency planner, or quarantine specialist. Through the combined effort of all the players, the goal is to discover all four cures before any of several game-losing conditions are reached.
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Matt Leacock is an American board game designer, most known for cooperative games such as Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert.
SeaFall is a board game designed by Rob Daviau and published in 2016 by Plaid Hat Games. SeaFall is a game of colonial era exploration which uses a legacy format, meaning the board and components change during each game, creating a different game each time and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The game is played by 3–5 players, each of whom takes on the role of a province taking to the seas after a long dark age. Players explore the game board with their ships, revealing islands and other surprises. The game contains 430 entries in a Captain's Booke, a journal which is read in sections when players trigger in-game events called milestones. The story contains about 15 games' worth of content, with each game taking about two hours to play.
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Rob Daviau is an American game designer known for creating legacy board gaming.
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The second one is strictly a legacy campaign – you will use its components only once.