by Justin Bell

I spent most of the last few years turning down opportunities to review legacy and campaign games. However, I turned that idea on its head at this year’s edition of Gen Con by picking up not one, not two, but SEVEN games that fit the description of a sizable tabletop investment.

So, I added the following games to the “bag of hauling” in Indy: Regicide Legacy from the team at Badgers from Mars, Mountain Goats: Legacy and Enchanted Ivy (both from Allplay), Forbidden Legacy (Gamewright), Encyclopedia of Monsters (Scorpion Masqué), Codenames: Critical Roll Adventures (CGE), and Mini Rogue: The Council (a roguelike from Nuts! Publishing that features a campaign).

Part of why I jumped back into these types of games is that magical moment when you first open the box. Is there anything better than that first moment, when you start a new campaign game, and you are greeted by the large red “STOP!” sign warning you to not open the presents inside too early?

“Oh, man, that’s heavy,” someone said when they picked up the box for Regicide: Legacy. “What’s inside that thing?”

Campaign games offer such a thrill of discovery. Even I had to admit that opening the Regicide Legacy box was quite a surprise; for the uninitiated, the base game of Regicide is a simple deck of cards. Yes, the deck is a very cool, well-illustrated set of cards…still, it’s a deck of cards, in both simplicity and weight. (The simplicity melts away when you lose for the 20th time in a row.)

Picking up the Regicide Legacy box—just lifting it up!—got my mind rolling on what sorts of secrets were inside. The box cover features characters in silhouette; are there minis in there? Poker chips? 12 separate decks of cards for the 12 “challenging missions” described in the BGG listing?

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m excited to see what treasures are inside. Additional games that have campaign and legacy elements have arrived after Gen Con, such as Buried Memories, which features one-off plays augmented by unlockables hidden in sealed envelopes.

Hmm…am I suddenly back into campaign games?



I like the idea of campaign/legacy games quite a bit. In fact, during COVID, I spent a lot of time seeking out campaign experiences while I was locked down and looking for something to build on during quieter gaming times at home.

But even before COVID, the only consistent struggle I have faced during my 40+ year tabletop career appears when I try to line up a new campaign. That’s because of the people.

Locking in a group to play the exact same game a few times can be a disaster. Playing the same game 10-12 times? From a logistics perspective, this is a nightmare. Aligning the stars using a Doodle poll to confirm availability? Frightening.

But when I have been able to marry the bodies to a consistent schedule, some of these play experiences have been incredible.

My plays of Pandemic: Legacy Season 1 became my definitive campaign experience. The highs, the lows, the thrills of discovering something new in the next chapter of that game became requirement viewing. For years, we had one of the character cards on our refrigerator, a reminder of memories past. Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated came very close to taking the top of the mountain for me, and somehow we had a group of four players who completed the entire game across just a few gaming sessions. The surprises were great, but the extension of the core game across a funny story became a model I consistently sought out.

Charterstone also fit the bill, as a game that lived on my kitchen table for a few nights while we worked through all the fun unlocks that box provided. Freelancers: A Crossroads Game was so funny my kids quoted some of the app’s dialogue from time to time. More recently, we did the first five chapters of Little Alchemists, and I was thrilled to find the kids so engaged across the total experience. Even though we didn’t see everything in the box, seeing the majority was still a nice surprise.

Like many others, I did a three-game arc of…Arcs: The Blighted Reach, another exceptional campaign experience that took note of how hard it is to get people to play the same game a bunch of times. So, the design of that campaign includes just three sessions, so across two game nights I joined two members of my review crew to take it down. Like those other successful campaign experiences, The Blighted Reach created real memories at the table, things that I still laugh about today.

Beyond these seminal moments, the last few years of playing campaign games have often ended badly. In fact, I find nothing less satisfying than getting a commitment from a group, then learning the (initial) rules for the game and setting up the scheduling for the next few weeks of a new campaign game.

You get the first play session in, maybe a second…then, “it” happens.

“Justin, listen…I just got staffed on a new project in Tuscaloosa,” they’ll say, with texts peppered with sad face emoji. (I’m not an emoji guy.) “Go ahead and swap me out for ____: Legacy, cause I don’t wanna hold you guys back.”

A second of your four-person group suddenly gets flaky, less reliable than she’s always been. “My friend Sally’s in town this Tuesday; I can’t make it for ____: Legacy this week. But I know the game is a ‘swap in, swap out’ situation, so you guys will be fine without me. I’ll be back next week, promise!” One week turns into four, and you now remember that Sally’s the one who bails on you for other activities all the time, making you quietly question Sally’s place in your life.

Earlier this year, the team at Horrible Guild offered me a review copy of The Queen’s Dilemma, a campaign game I badly wanted to try. But I knew it would be a challenge to get a group together in Chicago around the time that I wanted to table it: late spring even, right around the time that gamers start ghosting me for more pleasurable activities, like…summer, nice weather, beach vacations, and the annual summer gaming snooze before things pick back up after Gen Con.

There weren’t tears in my eyes, but I knew it was the right move to pass the offer to another reviewer. “I’m sure someone else has a group,” I said, and I’m still interested in seeing the game for myself. But that takes a lot of planning, and human beings are tricky.



Here’s why I love campaign and legacy games again now: I have at least one standing group in place. That group is my family.

At Gen Con, I picked up those games above with abandon. “Are you sure you’ve got a group for this?” the publishers would say.

“Yep,” I said. “My son will play anything, and now all these games fit for him and the other folks at home. I’m good.”

We did nine of the 15 chapters of Encyclopedia of Monsters in about a week. Mountain Goats: Legacy was originally a three-chapter plan…the day before this article was posted, we finished the sixth of ten chapters. Regicide Legacy is kicking up plays this week. Enchanted Ivy hit the table as soon as I got back from Gen Con; a solo-only campaign is an easy win for me, and I did the first three plays in about 80 minutes. Forbidden Legacy’s first play was completed the day before this article went up. Mini Rogue’s campaign attempt already took place. Codenames: Critical Role Adventures will hit the table in October, along with Buried Memories.

Even though it is not technically a campaign game, I’ve already gotten a handshake agreement with a partner for this fall’s plays of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. (I’m even brushing up on the video game to get ready.) I’m told Cozy Stickerville is something I would enjoy. I’ll try to convince the publishers of Stonesaga that I’m the right man for the job.

I’m aggressively hunting campaign and legacy games that will fit both at home and with hobbyists in my play groups. At home, we are always looking for ways to keep kids off of tablets. If a game is both fun AND gives us a chance to keep them coming back to a good story, we are in. My wife picked up a copy of Mindware’s Ziggurat last year, and across a six-chapter campaign, we dove headfirst into another adventure.

Experiences like this are why I love coming back to this game format again and again. Publishers: keep ‘em coming!