Top 20 'Session-to-Saga' Campaign Board Games to play for a Story That's All Your Own in 2025 - Goh Ling Yong
Ever finish a board game and feel a slight pang of sadness? The adventure is over, the pieces are back in the box, and the shared story is complete. While a single-session game is fantastic, there's a special kind of magic reserved for games that don't just end—they evolve. These are the games that turn a casual game night into a recurring, can't-miss event. They transform a simple session into a sprawling saga.
Welcome to the world of campaign board games! These aren't your average roll-and-move experiences. They are multi-session journeys where your decisions have permanent consequences. You might add stickers to the board, tear up cards, unlock secret boxes, or watch your characters grow (and sometimes perish) over dozens of hours. The story becomes uniquely yours, shaped by your group's triumphs and failures. It's the closest you can get to living inside a fantasy novel or a blockbuster sci-fi series, right on your tabletop.
Here on the Goh Ling Yong blog, we believe that the best stories are the ones you create yourself. So, we've scoured the shelves and explored countless worlds to bring you the definitive list for 2025. Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or just looking to dip your toes into deeper waters, here are the top 20 "session-to-saga" campaign board games that will give you a story to remember for years to come.
1. Gloomhaven / Frosthaven
It's impossible to talk about campaign games without mentioning the titan. Gloomhaven (and its even bigger successor, Frosthaven) is a fantasy epic in a box. You play as a band of hardened mercenaries in a dark, persistent world. The core of the game is its brilliant card-based tactical combat, where every decision is a tense puzzle of positioning, initiative, and resource management.
The "saga" part comes from the world itself. Between brutal dungeon crawls, you'll make choices that add new locations to the map, trigger unexpected side-quests, and alter the prosperity of the main city. Your characters gain experience and new gear, but they also have personal quests. Once completed, they retire, permanently leaving the game and unlocking a brand-new character class for the group to use. This cycle of discovery and retirement is what makes a Gloomhaven campaign feel truly alive.
- Pro Tip: Don't get too attached to your first character! The retirement mechanic is one of the game's best features, constantly injecting novelty into your campaign. Also, use one of the many helper apps to manage monster stats and initiative—it's a lifesaver.
2. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
This is the game that launched the "legacy" genre into the stratosphere. It takes the familiar, cooperative gameplay of Pandemic—working together to cure diseases plaguing the globe—and turns it into a heart-pounding, year-long campaign. The story unfolds over 12-24 sessions, each representing a month of the year.
What makes it a masterpiece is the way it subverts your expectations. You will be instructed to tear up cards, write on the board with permanent marker, and open sealed boxes containing shocking new rules and components. Your successes and failures carry over, creating a world scarred by your choices. Cities that fall into chaos will be harder to manage in the future, and characters can gain permanent scars or even die.
- Pro Tip: Play with a consistent group. The emotional impact of the story is much stronger when you experience every twist and turn with the same people. And trust me, you will make mistakes. Embrace them; they are part of your story.
3. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
If you want a game that feels like a dark, sprawling, open-world RPG, look no further. Tainted Grail is a story-first survival and exploration game set in a grim re-imagining of Arthurian legend. The world is being consumed by a strange, encroaching force called the Wyrdness, and it's up to you and your flawed heroes to find a way to stop it.
The campaign is delivered through a massive, beautifully written storybook. Every location you visit presents you with branching narrative choices, difficult moral dilemmas, and skill checks. The core gameplay loop involves managing your resources (health, energy, sanity) as you explore the map, fight twisted creatures, and unravel a deep, mature mystery. Your choices have a profound impact, locking you out of certain paths while opening up others.
- Pro Tip: Keep a journal. The story is vast and complex, and taking notes on characters you've met, clues you've found, and quests you're tracking will make the experience much more immersive and manageable.
4. Sleeping Gods
Sleeping Gods offers a unique and wondrous campaign experience. You and your friends play as the 8-person crew of the steamship Manticore, lost in a strange sea in 1929. To get home, you must explore this bizarre new world, interact with its inhabitants, and collect totems to awaken the gods.
The game's genius lies in its atlas-based system. The world is contained in a spiral-bound book of maps, and as you travel, you simply turn the page to a new, interconnected area. The storybook presents you with quests, challenges, and narrative encounters. It’s a true open-world sandbox. You can follow the main plot or get lost for hours just sailing around, seeing what you discover. The campaign is designed to be played over multiple sessions, with a clever save system that lets you pack it all up in minutes.
- Pro Tip: Don't be afraid to wander off the beaten path. Some of the most memorable moments in Sleeping Gods come from stumbling upon a strange island and getting wrapped up in a completely unexpected side-story.
5. Arkham Horror: The Card Game
This Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight Games is one of the best narrative experiences in any format. You take on the roles of investigators in H.P. Lovecraft's eerie 1920s New England, delving into cosmic horrors and ancient conspiracies. The game combines card play, deck-building, and RPG-style storytelling into one seamless package.
Each campaign is a series of interconnected scenarios. You build a deck that represents your investigator's strengths, weaknesses, and assets. Between scenarios, you use the experience points you've earned to upgrade your deck, adding more powerful cards. The story remembers your choices; characters you save might help you later, and locations you fail to investigate could have dire consequences down the line. The sheer volume of available campaigns means this game can become a long-term hobby.
- Pro Tip: Your first deck will be bad, and that's okay! Part of the fun is learning the system and refining your character's build over the course of a campaign. Start with the revised Core Set, which has everything you need to get going.
6. The 7th Continent
Inspired by classic "choose your own adventure" books, The 7th Continent is a game of exploration and survival. You are an early 20th-century explorer who has returned from a mysterious new continent with a deadly curse. To save yourself, you must return and find the source of the affliction.
The game is played out on hundreds of sequentially-numbered terrain and event cards that form the continent as you explore it. The gameplay is challenging; you must craft items, hunt for food, and solve environmental puzzles, all while managing a shared action deck that also serves as your life force. When it runs out, you lose. A clever save system lets you pause your adventure at any time and resume later, making it perfect for a long-form saga.
- Pro Tip: Meticulous mapping and note-taking are your best friends. The continent is huge, and remembering where you saw a specific plant you now need for a potion can be the difference between life and death.
7. Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile
Oath is not a legacy game, but a "generational" one. It tells the story of a fantasy land over multiple games, with the winner of one session setting the starting conditions for the next. The victor doesn't just win; they shape the future of the realm, adding and removing cards from the world deck and changing the victory condition itself.
One player takes the role of the Chancellor, trying to maintain their rule, while the others are Exiles trying to usurp them or fulfill a secret ambition. The game creates a continuous, shared history for your group. You'll remember the time a player won by controlling the most territory, plunging the kingdom into an age of militarism, or the time a cultist secretly gathered followers to win, changing the land's focus to faith and conspiracy.
- Pro Tip: Embrace the history. Oath is less about winning a single game and more about contributing to an ongoing narrative. Lean into the role-playing and remember the "history" you're all creating together.
8. Scythe: The Rise of Fenris
For those who already love the masterful engine-building and area-control game Scythe, this expansion transforms it into a full-fledged campaign. The Rise of Fenris is an 8-scenario campaign that introduces a compelling story, persistent elements, and a wealth of surprises you unlock as you play.
The beauty of this expansion is how it weaves a narrative through the solid mechanics of the base game without bogging them down. Each scenario adds new twists, modules, and objectives. The campaign is resettable, so you can play it again, and all the new components can be used in regular games of Scythe once you're done. It’s the perfect way to breathe new life and an epic story into a modern classic.
- Pro Tip: It's best played with a group that is already familiar and comfortable with the base game of Scythe. The campaign jumps right in and assumes you know the core rules.
9. ISS Vanguard
From the creators of Tainted Grail, ISS Vanguard takes the same epic narrative philosophy and blasts it into space. This is a cooperative sci-fi adventure about exploration and discovery. You are part of the crew of the first human vessel capable of deep space travel, tasked with investigating a mysterious signal.
The game is divided into two main phases: managing your starship and its crew, and landing on strange alien worlds. The planetary exploration is a dice-based puzzle where you use your crew's skills to overcome dangers and make incredible discoveries, all narrated through a logbook and a fantastic companion app. It captures the feeling of a classic sci-fi show like Star Trek, full of wonder, danger, and tough choices.
- Pro Tip: Diversify your crew! When you land on a planet, you'll need a mix of science, security, engineering, and recon specialists to handle the wide array of challenges you'll face.
10. Descent: Legends of the Dark
This is the modern evolution of the classic dungeon crawl. Descent: Legends of the Dark is a fully cooperative, app-driven adventure game. The app handles all the bookkeeping, monster AI, and storytelling, freeing you up to focus on the tactical combat and character development.
The game is a visual feast, featuring stunning 3D terrain that you build as you explore. Your characters aren't just collections of stats; they have personalities and backstories that evolve as the campaign progresses. Between missions, you can craft new weapons and armor, and the app presents you with story choices that have a real impact on the narrative. It’s a slick, accessible, and deeply engaging saga.
- Pro Tip: Take your time to explore the maps fully. The app often hides secret rooms and optional encounters that can reward you with extra loot and fascinating story tidbits.
11. My City
Proof that campaign games don't have to be massive, complex beasts. My City is a family-weight, competitive legacy game designed by the legendary Reiner Knizia. At its heart, it’s a polyomino tile-laying game, where players are all trying to develop their own personal plot of land.
The campaign is told over 24 short "episodes." In each one, a new rule or scoring objective is introduced. You'll add stickers to your personal game boards, permanently adding new features like wells, churches, or gold mines. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch your little city grow and change over the course of the campaign. Once you're done, the reverse side of the boards can be used for a standard, endlessly replayable version of the game.
- Pro Tip: Don't stress about winning every single episode. The campaign is structured to help players who fall behind, ensuring everyone stays competitive and engaged until the very end.
12. The King's Dilemma
This is less of a game and more of a narrative engine. In The King's Dilemma, players represent the noble houses that form the king's council. In each round, a dilemma card is drawn, presenting the council with a problem facing the kingdom. Players then debate, bribe, and negotiate before voting on how to resolve the issue.
Every decision you make has consequences, shifting the kingdom's resources and triggering new events in a sprawling, branching story. You'll be placing stickers on the map, signing a chronicle of your reign, and opening envelopes that could change everything. All the while, you're secretly trying to advance your own house's agenda. It's a game of politics, betrayal, and consequence that creates an unforgettable shared history.
- Pro Tip: Lean into the role-playing. Create a personality for your House and stick to it. The game is at its best when players are making decisions based not just on mechanics, but on their character's "beliefs."
13. Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
What happens when you mix one of the best deck-building games with the hilarious fantasy world of the Acquisitions Incorporated D&D podcast? You get this gem. Clank! Legacy takes the fun press-your-luck mechanics of the original and weaves them into a hilarious and surprisingly engaging 10+ game campaign.
You and your fellow players are new interns at the world's premier fantasy adventuring franchise. You'll go on quests, build up your franchise headquarters (by adding stickers to your own section of the game board), and make choices that permanently alter the game. The writing is top-notch, filled with humor and charm, and the legacy elements are integrated perfectly into the core Clank! experience.
- Pro Tip: Read everything out loud! The flavor text on the cards and the storybook entries are genuinely funny and add so much to the atmosphere of the game.
14. Star Wars: Imperial Assault
A classic "one vs. many" dungeon crawl set in the Star Wars universe. One player takes on the role of the mighty Galactic Empire, controlling stormtroopers, Imperial officers, and iconic villains like Darth Vader. The other players form a team of elite Rebel operatives, undertaking daring missions against the Empire.
The campaign book links these missions together into a branching narrative. The outcome of each mission matters—if the Rebels succeed, they may gain valuable intel or allies. If the Empire wins, they grow stronger and closer to crushing the Rebellion. Both sides gain experience and credits between missions to upgrade their abilities and gear, leading to a fantastic sense of progression and an escalating arms race.
- Pro Tip: For a fully cooperative experience, the official "Legends of the Alliance" companion app can be used to control the Imperial forces, allowing everyone to play together as the Rebels.
15. Aeon's End: Legacy
Aeon's End is a brilliant cooperative deck-builder where you play as powerful mages defending the last bastion of humanity against terrifying, otherworldly Nemeses. The twist is that you never shuffle your deck; you simply flip your discard pile over, giving you a high degree of control over your card order.
Aeon's End: Legacy takes this fantastic system and uses it to tell a story of your mages growing from novices to masters. Over the campaign, you will add stickers to your character sheets to unlock new abilities, add powerful cards to the market, and face Nemeses that evolve and change from one battle to the next. It’s an excellent way to learn the game and create a truly unique set of mages.
- Pro Tip: Communication is everything. Talk through your turns with your teammates to coordinate your spells, creating powerful combos to take down the Nemesis before it overwhelms you.
16. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
If the main Gloomhaven box seems too intimidating (and it is, for many), Jaws of the Lion is the perfect on-ramp. This standalone game is a prequel campaign that brilliantly teaches you the core rules over its first five scenarios. It uses a "learn-as-you-play" approach, gradually introducing new concepts in a manageable way.
Despite its smaller box and price tag, this is a full-throated Gloomhaven experience. You get four new, fascinating characters and a 25-scenario campaign with the same tight, tactical combat and branching story choices. All the scenarios are played out in a spiral-bound book, which dramatically cuts down on setup time. It's one of the best-designed introductory products ever made. As my good friend Goh Ling Yong says, "It's not 'Gloomhaven-lite,' it's 'Gloomhaven-smart.'"
- Pro Tip: Start here! Even if you plan to tackle the big box games eventually, playing Jaws of the Lion first will give you and your group the solid foundation you need to succeed.
17. Roll Player Adventures
A unique narrative choice in the campaign space. This game is a sequel to the dice-drafting character-creation game Roll Player. You import your characters from that game (or create new ones) and take them on an epic, story-driven adventure.
The core of the game is its 11 interconnected adventure books, packed with over 400 unique encounters and 15 different branching story paths. Skill checks and combat are resolved not just by luck, but by manipulating your pool of dice in clever ways, just like in the original game. It's a fantastic blend of puzzle-like mechanics and "choose your own adventure" storytelling, with your character's stats and alignment truly mattering.
- Pro Tip: Actually play a game of Roll Player first to create your characters. The feeling of taking a hero you personally crafted on this grand adventure is incredibly rewarding.
18. Betrayal Legacy
This game takes the chaotic, B-movie horror fun of Betrayal at House on the Hill and stretches it across a multi-generational campaign. You play as different families exploring the same haunted house over several decades, from 1966 to 2004.
As the campaign progresses, you'll uncover the dark history of the house. Each game, one of you will become the traitor and trigger a "haunt," but these haunts are now tied into an overarching story. The weapons you use will become family heirlooms, passed down to the next generation. The rooms you explore will gain history. It adds a compelling narrative thread to the beloved chaos of the original.
- Pro Tip: Keep a "family tree" for your chosen family. It adds a wonderful bit of flavor to track how your characters are related and what heirlooms they've passed down through the decades.
19. Mechs vs. Minions
From an unexpected source—Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends—comes one of the most polished and fun campaign games out there. Mechs vs. Minions is a cooperative game of programmatic movement. Each round, players simultaneously slot cards into their "command line" to program their mechs' movements and attacks for the coming turn.
The campaign is a 10-mission story that is both funny and challenging. Each mission comes in its own sealed box, containing new components, rules, and objectives that build on the last. You might be escorting a school bus, destroying minion spawners, or fighting a massive boss. The production quality is off the charts, making it an incredible value and a joy to play.
- Pro Tip: The programming can lead to hilarious chaos. Don't be afraid to laugh when your perfectly planned turn goes sideways because a teammate accidentally pushed you into a fire. It's part of the fun!
20. Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread
Looking ahead to 2025, Arydia is one of the most anticipated releases in the campaign game space. From the designer of the sandbox classic Xia: Legends of a Drift System, this game promises an open-world fantasy adventure with a focus on freedom and exploration.
Arydia features an innovative progression system where your actions, not just combat, shape your character's growth. The world evolves around you based on a "role-playing index" system, reacting to your deeds and changing over time. The game uses a bag-building mechanic for combat and skill checks, and exploration is done via beautiful, index-card-sized map tiles. This is shaping up to be the next great tabletop saga.
- Pro Tip: Keep this one on your radar. Given the designer's pedigree for creating amazing sandbox experiences, Arydia is poised to be a must-play for anyone who loves epic, player-driven campaign games.
Your Adventure Awaits
The beauty of a campaign game is that it's more than just a product; it's a commitment. It's a promise your gaming group makes to each other to meet up, to continue the story, and to build a shared history one session at a time. The tales of heroism, narrow escapes, and hilarious failures will become the legends you talk about for years.
So, clear some space on your shelf (and your calendar), gather your most reliable friends, and pick a world to get lost in. Your own personal saga is waiting to be written.
What are your favorite campaign games? Are there any you're excited to play in 2025 that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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