Meet the project manager hauling the Gloomhaven RPG across the finish line

When Cephalofair announced a tabletop RPG adaptation of their massively popular (and physically massive) Gloomhaven board game series, I was admittedly skeptical. The intentionally tiny board game Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs made sense as a solo distillation of the original’s combat loop. But an RPG? Creator Isaac Childres sold both Gloomhaven and sequel Frosthaven on mechanical complexity, cooperative play, and enough sheer content to choke a grizzly bear. Could he produce instead a tabletop roleplaying game that cultivates collaborative storytelling? Would it simply feel like an annotated session of the board game?

We first saw the Gloomhaven RPG at PAX Unplugged in 2022, its reveal complemented by a stage demo showing off in-progress mechanics and very silly cosplays from all involved—including Childres! Meeting with project manager Danielle Lauzon at Gen Con 2024 revealed that little of that presentation has survived in the book that will soon arrive at the printers. They told Rascal that, behind the scenes, the Gloomhaven RPG struggled to find and maintain an identity beyond reflecting its iconic bifurcated ability cards and hex grid maneuvering into theater-of-the-mind play. 

Lauzon was brought in as a fixer, the outside talent that would lead the design team out of the forest so that they could once again recognize individual trees. While still clocking hours as a project manager on Onyx Path Publishing’s Exalted line, they are cleaning out Cephalofair’s house and ensuring that the book produced on the other side is worth the $5 million in crowdfunding fans pushed across the metaphorical bidding table.