Daniel (@dungeondive) previews a prototype of Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns, and accepts the “Mass Effect on your tabletop” comparison — including literal cut scenes between the tactical missions. He places it in a lineage he’s discussed before: designers who grew up on video games now making tabletop ones.
The legacy elements are impermanent — dry-erase and repositionable stickers — so a campaign can be reset. Characters carry dossiers tracking scars, personality traits in four colours that convert into spendable tokens, and running relationship scores with NPCs that feed back into the campaign.
The card system draws most of his interest. Each ability has a cooldown number and is played onto that slot, returning to hand as the timer ticks; damage arrives as cards that clog those same slots, and a character with every slot full falls unconscious. He explicitly prefers this to Gloomhaven’s permanent card loss, comparing it instead to Tales from the Red Dragon Inn. Every action also rolls dice that can add movement or shields on top of the guaranteed card effect.
Interacting with doors and consoles runs a bag-draw mini-game where successes bank across turns, so the party can cooperate on one lock. He is frank in closing that he probably won’t back it — three campaign books is more game than he knows he’ll play.
Is a reversible legacy campaign the best of both worlds, or does removable permanence lose the point?