This is a Stand-Alone game. This is NOT an Expansion for Gloomhaven.

Founders of Gloomhaven is a competitive tile-placement, worker placement, city-building game where each player controls a fantastical race working to build the city of Gloomhaven and gain influence over its residents. This is a stand-alone game set in the same universe as Gloomhaven. The events, however, take place hundreds of years before Gloomhaven and depict the original construction of the city.

In Founders of Gloomhaven, players will use worker-placement mechanics to place resource buildings on the map of the city, use these resources to create more advanced resources, and then deliver them to proposed building sites to earn influence. An individual player, however, cannot do everything on their own, because they can only import a small number of resource types, depending on their race. To create more advanced resources, they will have to work with other players.

The game also features an auction mechanic where players will vote at the beginning of each round to determine what new building proposals come out and where they are placed on the board. Players can even add workers to their vote to increase its strength, but they should be careful. Workers added to the vote cannot be used for the rest of the round, and the more workers a player bids, the worse position they will get in the turn order.