Dynamic Objectives and Champion Progression Inside a Single Game

Board games with character progression usually put the growth between sessions. You finish a scenario, you level up, you come back next week stronger. That works well for campaigns and badly for competitive play, because it means the first game and the tenth are different products.

In-match progression solves this. Everyone starts equal, everyone develops during the session, and the arc happens in ninety minutes instead of six months.

What board games with character progression need to get right

It has to be earned, not scheduled. If everyone levels on a timer, progression is pacing rather than a decision.

The routes have to differ. Multiple ways to earn advancement means players can pursue growth in the style that suits their character.

It has to be contested. If two players can pursue the same advancement without interfering, you are playing parallel solitaire with a shared timer.

The upgrades have to change behaviour. Plus one health is pacing. A new action is a decision.

A worked example

Trials of MAYA, out on Gamefound September 8, 2026, runs progression entirely inside the match.

What is Trials of MAYA?

Trials of MAYA is an expandable card-driven arena combat game. It combines three genres: MOBAs, classic 90s tactics games, and TCGs without booster packs. It plays 1 to 4 players in 60 to 180 minutes for ages 14 and up, with nine asymmetric champions across five game modes.

Multiple objectives stay open throughout the game, sitting beside the arena, and different objectives reward different playstyles. A champion built for aggression and one built for control are not chasing the same card.

The pacing rules make it competitive. Each champion can complete one objective card per round, and the first champion to complete a non-starter objective takes the full reward, with later players receiving less. So there is a live race, and committing to an objective is a bet that you can get there first.

Completing objectives pays XP, and XP buys four different kinds of upgrade: increased maximum health or defence, a permanently higher energy gain, new skills that give your champion additional abilities, and extra trait symbols, which widen what your champion can do with the cards it already has.

Skills branch. Each one eventually develops into one of two second-level versions, so two players piloting the same champion can end a game with different tools.

Every upgrade lasts for the rest of the game and changes what your champion can do. Player Elimination, writing after multiple plays, described what stacked upgrades do to the closing stretch in three words: “late game is nuts.”

Rulebooks and public metadata are on BoardGameGeek, the full breakdown is on the official page, and there is a Tabletop Simulator build.

Why this matters for replay value

The reason in-match progression is worth seeking out in board games with character progression is that it multiplies your roster.

If a champion is fixed at setup, nine champions give you nine experiences. If a champion develops along different paths depending on which objectives you chased and which skills you branched, the same nine give you considerably more, and two games with the same character can end up somewhere different.

It also means a session has a shape. The early game is about establishing position and picking a growth route. The late game is about executing with tools you built. That arc is what stops turn thirty feeling like turn three with bigger numbers.

Elsewhere

Gloomhaven does the between-sessions version extremely well, with retirement and personal quests. Oath carries state between games in a way nothing else quite matches. Guards of Atlantis II does in-match levelling in a tabletop MOBA context.

If you want the arc without the commitment of a campaign, in-match progression is the version to look for.

Follow or back Trials of MAYA on Gamefound.