TOPIC: True Dungeon 2015 Thanks and Thoughts

To start with, thanks to Jeff for creating and nurturing True Dungeon, thanks to all the Volunteers who work so hard and so passionately to put on a great event, and to the great group of players and fans who enjoy it each year!

I did four runs this year, including our Mercenary run with Raven, and we had a wonderful time on all of our runs! Throughout the runs, we had a great mix of experienced players (including players that had played every single year) and several brand new or second year players. We had DM's that were very experienced, and a DM for whom we were his very first group on his very first day, and all were great! We only had one issue with a manager on one run, but didn't let it bother us.

Things I really liked (in no particular order):

* House Steele - my entire group got a real kick out of that, it was wonderful!

* I really liked that we were able to use our melee weapons on the monsters in all the rooms. It was really enjoyable to not have to go to ranged weapons because of various reasons. Even the only hitting the Mind Flayer 50% of the time didn't bother me, at least we were able to use our weapons of choice.

* As always, Dave Radtke did a wonderful job with token transmuting, and it is always great to be able to chat with Dave during the transmutation process, he's terrific!

* It was wonderful to once again have Fritz be part of our group on a Dungeon run, and take photographs of the run. Fritz is a great photographer and a great friend! Getting the photos from Fritz of the run is always one of our post-GENCON highlights.

* I liked how nearly all of the puzzles involved teamwork to solve. Like many groups (probably most), we have a mix of really outgoing and assertive people and those that are a bit more withdrawn, and for some puzzle rooms it is an easy dynamic to fall into where the more assertive ones jump in and solve the puzzle while some members just stand and watch. This type of puzzle room involves everyone which I really appreciate.

* The monsters and puzzles seemed lower tech than in some years, but were still extremely enjoyable. My group really enjoyed the surprises, like the clue in the entryway that shot out a jet of air at you when you got close to it, and the mushroom that jumped out at you. It would be great to have more interactive things like this in the future.

* Our Mercenary run with Raven and Kim's group was great, and my apologies again for forgetting to turn in the coupon for the Bard Troubadour card - I guess you don't hire Mercenaries for their brains!

* I enjoyed seeing all of my True Dungeon friends, both old and new!

* The puzzle at the entryway to the coaching rooms on the Sable Gauntlet side was great, and I REALLY appreciate that Jeff on a couple of different occasions took the time to point it out to me and encourage me to solve it. It really means a lot that with everything going on at GENCON Jeff took the time out to do that, and that he created a puzzle that really only affected a couple of people.

* I like the fact that the DM's for the most part took our word that we had certain tokens without having to pull them out to show constantly. It did help that we were able to capture more info than ever on the party cards this year, including healing and damage bonuses for spells and the Eldritch 2 item Set ability. The DM's were all very friendly and professional. We miss having Stu as a DM, but it was great to see him briefly during one of our rooms.

* The passageway to the coaching rooms were really neat, it was a great atmosphere and a great way to get into character as we started our Dungeon experience.

* The volunteers in the exit room and the treasure token pull boxes were very professional and moved things along very quickly, which was greatly appreciated!

* The difficulty levels in the puzzle and combat rooms seemed very appropriate for Hardcore, at least for our groups. There were a few combats that we ended pretty quickly, but most of them went almost the entire time. Most of the puzzles took a large percentage of the time as well. We weren't running really short on time, and we also weren't standing around for 8 minutes after solving the puzzle. Well done! I will say that the damage level in the Mind Flayer room was surprisingly high, after we all took 1/2 of our HP in damage at the start of combat, he killed one of us in the first shot each time we fought him. Fortunately, Jason as Cleric and me as Druid had massive healing abilities.

* As always (not counting the Smoak years), True Dungeon was one of the top highlights for my entire group! I'm hopeful that I can get several party members to do all four Dungeon variations next year. All of the new players (including my Cousin John) were hooked and will come back for more True Dungeon!

Constructive suggestions:

* As others have mentioned, it is often annoying when you hit the exact situation you'd bought tokens for, and they don't work. Our prime example this year was the Salamander room. When we hit her, we took fire damage. I'd outfitted our whole group with Shirts of Shielding a few years ago, so I was really happy we'd finally get some use out of them. But, it turned out that the fire damage didn't count as Retribution damage, I'm not sure why. I am thinking of swapping out the Shirts of Shielding for shirts that are more likely to be useful. I do understand the challenge Jeff has though, to give us tokens which seem cool, while at the same time not let them short-circuit the adventures.

* There were a few treasure rooms where we thought we'd solved the room, but didn't get the Treasure Stamp because we didn't solve it well enough (like the puzzle on the floor room). I'd kind of figured that as long as we solved the puzzle in time to get one person across successfully it would count as success, but we found out after we were done that we'd had to get all but one person across successfully. I do understand the rationale in the speaking mushroom room that it would be pretty easy for each member to just take a bite from their mushroom to see which one worked. I'd just suggest that for treasure stamp rooms, make the success/failure criteria pretty simple, so that you avoid situations where people think they solved the room but don't get the stamp.

* The treasure in the boxes seemed relatively unexciting this year. We did get one UR out of about 350 picks for the group, but the only non-monster/rare/uncommon tokens we got other than that were uncommon completion tokens and Ducks of Doom. It would be neat to at least get a few of the lesser transmuted tokens mixed in, or some neat older tokens (I'd much prefer that those found their ways back into the treasure boxes than get recycled). Of course, perhaps our draws weren't typical.

* It would be great to have much more signage in front of the entrance to the ballroom, shouting out to the world that the awesome True Dungeon adventure resides within. As it was, we'd probably have never found the entrance if we hadn't been directed to it.

* Along the same lines, at the photo op area at the front, instead of just a wall to stand in front of with a sign to hold, it would be MUCH cooler to have an actual prop monster to stand around for the photo, or even a life-size photo of a monster to stand in front of. I understand that you don't want to give away the monster from the current year, but even reusing a prop monster from the previous year would make a MUCH more exciting photo, and would also be a really cool thing for people to see when they enter the room.

* I still don't agree with the policy to not allow photos in the rooms, if you finish early. Surely the DM's could direct the group into "non-spoilery" photos in most rooms. And I really don't think many (if any) GENCON attendees are scouring the internet looking for True Dungeon spoilers - there's just too much to do at GENCON for that. Plus, the ban isn't enforced 100%, which can leave a really negative taste in someone's mouth when they are told they can't take a photo, and then see a bunch of photos online after GENCON.

* It is always a bit sad to see all the non-current year tokens from transmuting get tossed into bins for recycling. It would be great for some of the better tokens to find their way back into treasure boxes, or maybe get turned into some sort of token packs for sale (10 packs of past-year tokens might be a cool alternative for new players). Or maybe the Treasure Map tokens could be resurrected and the older tokens could be put in those treasure boxes. Perhaps it's just not economically viable to reuse the older tokens and maybe it's cheaper to just print new tokens, but it would be neat to see those old tokens (at least the better ones) get used instead of destroyed.

* I was talking with some friends, and we were remembering how neat some past rooms were, like when you were going down the hallway and you suddenly had a choice to either jump into a closing doorway or keep going forward. The passageway for the Halfling rogue is another example of that. It would be fun to have more things like that which added an element of surprise instead of the standard room / hallway / room / hallway / etc.