When I played Gloomhaven with my late best friend during the pandemic (one of the reasons why the early lockdowns felt like a paradoxically idyllic period), we used blu tac to temporarily affix the stickers to the relevant cards because the stickers felt too permanent (I know there’s reusable sticker sets, but we didn’t have thought). Unfortunately he died in 2021 of COVID.

Some months later, when Frosthaven finally turned up in the mail, I packaged up Gloomhaven to give to a friend. As I peeled off the blutacked stickers from cards, I realised that I regretted how our anxiety had caused us to not properly engage in the legacy component of the game. The person I was gifting this to also was close to my late best friend, so I was deeply sad when I imagined an alternative world in which they and their local friends would be seeing the marks that we had left on the game, like the enhancements on the Spellweaver and Cragheart’s cards. Sure, not sticking the stickers on properly was probably better for resale value, but I tend to not sell stuff anyway, because I find it overly taxing in executive function — I prefer to gift stuff on if possible.

That’s the bitter part of the story, and the sweet part to temper the sadness is that I feel like I understand legacy games much better now, and when I get a chance to play Frosthaven (one of my local friends has a difficult to schedule around job at the moment), I will stick those bloody stickers with enthusiasm this time. I will always cherish the memories of gaming with my late friend, and I don’t need to have physical artifacts to demonstrate that. However, this time, I’m not going to let a nebulous prospective future distract me from properly engaging with the game on its terms.