# Isaac Childres - Maker: Board game designer - Houses: Cephalofair Games - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/isaac-childres/ > A physics PhD who gave up the lab to self-publish board games, then crowdfunded Gloomhaven, a massive campaign dungeon crawl that spent more than five years as BoardGameGeek's top-ranked game. **Why it matters:** Childres's Gloomhaven brought the long-form campaign of a tabletop RPG into a cooperative board game with no game master. Its success, and Frosthaven's record-setting Kickstarter, marked the peak of the crowdfunded 'big box' era. ## Quick answers **Who is Isaac Childres?** A physics PhD who gave up the lab to self-publish board games, then crowdfunded Gloomhaven, a massive campaign dungeon crawl that spent more than five years as BoardGameGeek's top-ranked game. **What is Isaac Childres known for?** Isaac Childres is best known for Gloomhaven. **Why does Isaac Childres matter to fantasy and games?** Childres's Gloomhaven brought the long-form campaign of a tabletop RPG into a cooperative board game with no game master. Its success, and Frosthaven's record-setting Kickstarter, marked the peak of the crowdfunded 'big box' era. ## Life Isaac Childres is an American board game designer and the founder of [Cephalofair Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/cephalofair-games/). His company biography says he was headed for a career as a physicist and completed his PhD before deciding that designing and publishing board games would be more fun, a decision he says he has not regretted. According to the same biography he is based in Lafayette, Indiana. His birth date and other details of his early life are not on the public record. ## Work Childres founded Cephalofair in 2014 to self-publish his first game, *Forge War*. He began developing his next game around 2013 and worked on it seriously from 2015. He named [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) as the main influence and also cited fantasy video games and films: [Final Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy/), [Diablo](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/diablo/), [Willow](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/willow-film/) and [Labyrinth](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/labyrinth-film/). The goal was to make a board game feel like a long roleplaying campaign. The result was [Gloomhaven](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/gloomhaven/). One to four players control mercenaries in a grim fantasy city and play through a branching campaign of 95 scenarios, fighting on hex maps built from modular tiles. Combat has no dice. Each character class has its own deck of ability cards, and each turn players choose two cards and use the top action of one and the bottom action of the other. Some cards are lost for the rest of the scenario, and a character who runs out of cards is exhausted, so every scenario becomes a race against a shrinking hand. Luck comes from a small attack-modifier deck that players improve as they level up. The campaign uses legacy mechanics: stickers change the map, sealed envelopes and boxes open when conditions are met, and characters retire when they complete personal goals, unlocking new classes that were hidden in the box. Seventeen classes shipped with it. Monsters are run by simple card-driven AI, so everyone plays on the same side and no one has to be the game master, the role [HeroQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/heroquest/) and [Descent](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/descent-journeys-in-the-dark/) had given to one player. A 2015 Kickstarter raised $386,104 from 4,904 backers. After strong reviews of the first printing, a second campaign in April 2017 raised about $4 million from more than 40,000 backers. The retail game went on sale at a suggested price of $140. Gloomhaven won six Golden Geek awards for 2017, including Best Overall Game, and the Origins Award for Game of the Year. It reached No. 1 on BoardGameGeek's user rankings in 2017 and stayed there until February 2023. Around 120,000 copies had been sold by August 2018. Childres and Cephalofair then built the game into a franchise. *Forgotten Circles* (2019) added a class and scenarios. *Jaws of the Lion* (2020), a smaller, cheaper standalone with a tutorial campaign, was aimed at new players. Asmodee Digital and Flaming Fowl Studios made a video game adaptation, which entered early access in 2019 and was fully released in 2021. The standalone sequel *Frosthaven*, set in a northern outpost, launched on Kickstarter in 2020 and raised almost $13 million from more than 83,000 backers, then the most for any game in the platform's history, until [Brandon Sanderson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/brandon-sanderson/)'s Cosmere RPG passed it in August 2024. Childres also revised aspects of Frosthaven's story and setting to address cultural bias. *Gloomhaven: Second Edition*, with revised scenarios and classes based on years of player feedback, followed in 2025. ## Legacy Gloomhaven is often seen as the defining game of the crowdfunded "big box" era of board games. It showed that players would pay premium prices for a huge box and spend months on one campaign. It took the [Dungeon-Crawler Board Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/dungeon-crawler-board-game/) from HeroQuest's family evenings to something close to a tabletop RPG campaign in cardboard, complete with character growth, a branching story and a persistent, changing world, without needing a game master. Its card-driven combat and campaign structure have influenced many later campaign board games. The game also connected media in both directions. A design inspired by D&D and Final Fantasy became a video game in turn, and its record-setting sequel helped show that [crowdfunding](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/crowdfunding-tabletop/) could support independent publishers on a very large scale. ## Facts - He earned a PhD intending to become a physicist, then decided designing board games would be more fun. - He founded Cephalofair Games in 2014 to self-publish his first design, Forge War. - He named Dungeons & Dragons as Gloomhaven's main inspiration, along with Final Fantasy, Diablo, Willow and Labyrinth. - Gloomhaven uses no dice: each player plays two cards a turn, using the top half of one and the bottom half of the other. - Gloomhaven held the No. 1 spot on BoardGameGeek from 2017 until February 2023. - Frosthaven's 2020 Kickstarter raised almost $13 million from more than 83,000 backers, the most-funded game campaign until 2024. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia: Gloomhaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloomhaven) - [Cephalofair Games: About](https://cephalofair.com/pages/about) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.