What to Play After Gloomhaven

November 10, 2024 11:06 AM

My brothers and I are just finishing up a (online) Gloomhaven campaign. What should we play next?

- Must be an online game with a full digital version ( not really interested in tabletop simulator things).
- Doesn’t have to be a board game port. Could be a straight up video game.
- Must run on an aging Mac.
- Ideal game would (like Gloomhaven) lend itself to discrete sessions of a couple of hours each, but would have continuity and growth and an advancing story over multiple sessions.

posted by Prunesquallor to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)

We switched to Baldur's Gate.
Which I am enjoying, but it is more video-gamey than board-game-y. It also is easier to play for too many hours, so, fair warning.
posted by nat at 11:33 AM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

(also I'm told there is some gore, but I guess I haven't gotten to those parts yet, and maybe that's not a problem for you)
posted by nat at 11:34 AM on November 10, 2024

Divinity Original Sin 2 or Baldur's Gate 3.
posted by ellerhodes at 1:03 PM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

If you're asking that it run on an ageing Mac, are you sure it would be up to Baldur's Gate 3? I mean I'm not certain of the differences but my middle-aged Lenovo laptop certainly wasn't up to the job.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 2:33 PM on November 10, 2024

Actually, retracting Baldur's Gate 3. Maybe Divinity Original Sin 2 (or the first one) might run? Wildermyth could be a good option? I am not close enough to the Mac landscape, but these are the games that would come to mind that are tactical RPGs w/ progressions and generally friendlier to multiplayer.
posted by ellerhodes at 3:57 PM on November 10, 2024

If you have fast and stable wifi, NVIDIA GeForce NOW allows you to play Baldur's Gate 3 on a Mac, even an old and aging one (apparently back to MacOS 10.11 and the 2009 product line) for ~$10 a month. In my experience it runs decently, though having a fast and stable wifi connection (ideally ethernet) is essential.
posted by yaj at 4:28 PM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

I'm in the same boat, and am putting another vote for Wildermyth (having played that on my own). I'm also curious to hear what others suggest, especially for people who aren't interested or able to play anything requiring fast reflexes.
posted by canine epigram at 8:31 PM on November 10, 2024

Yet another vote for Wildermyth and Divinity Original Sin 2, especially Wildermyth, as it is episodic, can be stopped at any time, etc. The procedural storytelling is also incredible (plus they got a couple of encounters written by Ursula Vernon somehow, something that blew my mind). Divinity Original Sin 1 is good, but really pales in comparison to 2. Plotwise they're unrelated, set hundred of years apart.

BG3 is great, but I don't know how well it'd handle an aging Mac.

It also looks like OwlCat's games (Patherfinder Kingmaker, Pathfinder War of the Righteous, Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader) are mac compatible. I bounced hard off of Kingmaker, haven't tried War of the Righteous, but had an absolute ball with Rogue Trader (which gets into the insanity of the 40K universe while being honest about just how much of a fascistic shitshow (to steal a line from John Scalzi) the imperium is).

All of the above have turn based combat. If you don't mind going even more video gamey, all of the old D&D games should also be good for both systems, although they are all realtime combat with the option to pause. A partial list: Baldur's Gate 1, Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2.
posted by Hactar at 1:40 AM on November 13, 2024