Question 1

What is a legacy board game?

Accepted Answer

A game that **changes permanently** as you play a campaign — stickers are applied, cards are destroyed, rules are rewritten in the rulebook, and the board is marked. The changes are irreversible by design, and that is the entire point.

**How it works.** A legacy game is played as a **campaign** of linked sessions, frequently a dozen or more. Outcomes in one session alter the game itself for every subsequent one. Sealed boxes and envelopes are opened when triggered, introducing new components, rules and story. **Some instructions require you to tear up cards or write on the board.**

**Why the destruction matters.** It makes consequences real. In an ordinary game, everything resets afterwards, so no decision has lasting weight. In a legacy game, losing a character or a location is permanent, which changes how players weigh risk in a way that no scoring system reproduces.

It also produces genuine surprise — the designers can withhold entire mechanics until a later session, so the game you finish is not the game you started.

**Where it came from.** *Risk Legacy* introduced the format in 2011, and *Pandemic Legacy* established it as a major design direction, receiving unusually high critical acclaim.

**The objections, which are reasonable:**

**It cannot be replayed** once the campaign is finished, which for a relatively expensive product troubles many people.

**It cannot easily be sold or lent on**, which matters in a hobby with an active second-hand culture.

**It requires a committed group** for many sessions with a consistent set of players, which is genuinely hard to arrange.

**Missing a session** creates continuity problems.

**How designers responded.** Several legacy games now include a **reset kit** or a post-campaign standard mode, so the game remains playable afterwards. Some use **erasable** or reversible components rather than destructive ones, preserving the campaign structure without the permanence — which arguably loses part of the effect while removing most of the objection.

**Campaign games** more broadly — with persistent progression but no destruction — have become common, and are frequently a better fit for groups that cannot commit.

Question 2

What is the difference between a board game, a wargame and a tabletop RPG?

Accepted Answer

What the players are doing — competing within fixed rules, simulating a conflict, or collaboratively telling a story — and each carries different expectations about winning, length and preparation.

Question 3

What happens to Olympic venues after the Games?

Accepted Answer

It varies enormously, and the record is mixed enough that "legacy" has become one of the most scrutinised claims in the bidding process. The failures are well documented: purpose-built venues for

Question 4

Why do some sports ban certain equipment?

Accepted Answer

Because equipment can shift the balance between athlete and technology, and governing bodies intervene when the performance gain begins to look like it belongs to the manufacturer rather than the

Question 5

How does a board game actually get published?

Accepted Answer

Either by pitching a prototype to a publisher, or by self-publishing — and the two routes involve completely different work, risk and reward. The traditional route: Design and prototype, starting

Question 6

What does a sports governing body actually do?

Accepted Answer

It writes and enforces the rules of a sport, sanctions competitions, and represents the sport internationally — sitting in a pyramid structure that runs from a global federation down through

Question 7

What is deck-building in games?

Accepted Answer

A mechanic in which acquiring cards during play is itself the main decision — you start with a weak, identical deck and construct a better one as the game progresses, and your deck's improving

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