TOPIC: Dungeon Etiquette and Bad PC Behavior

We also need to remember that we also are entitled to enjoy our experience... we also paid that amount to play, but a balance is definitely needed...

I enjoy working with people I don’t know to see how they think through the puzzles and find solutions.

Your story sounds all too familiar as some friends of mine shared a similar experience in both of their runs last year at Gen Con. It soured them for a bit but they're over it and playing again this year.

I have over 50 runs under my belt and in that time I've run with a-holes only a handful of times. And during each of those handful of times, with everyone being adults, steps were taken to mitigate the a-holery.

So I'd say while it's annoying when you're spending a significant amount of money to play TD, your experience is far from exclusive to TD. And as others have suggested, I don't see warning signs about etiquette achieving your desired result.

Finally, if you're here on the TD forum, you're halfway to finding a good group of people to run with in the future. Take advantage of it so you don't have another bad experience.

Matthew Hayward wrote: In short: many more people are going to complain about their ruined TD run with jerks on Reddit than they are about their ruined $2 Pizza Pirates of Zombie Town board game with jerks.

The sheer volume of True Dungeon tickets sold also has something to do with it. TD sells over 8,000 tickets per year, whereas PPoZT will sell, what, four? So even if 99% of runs go smoothly, that's 80 people that get stuck with bad runs and post about it on Reddit or Facebook.

You never hear from the 7,920 people that had a great time.

Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

James J Krot wrote: Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

Tpk’s are different than I think what people are talking about. A good GM can work with a room full of ghosts, I’ve seen it several times. One issue causing individual who ruins the experience for nine others, or some subset of ten players and seven GMs plus coaches and NPC’s is a different story.

So my kerfuffle causing quandary machine was curiously searching and stumbled; does the fact that there are “beginner dungeons” change any of the posted about concepts for GenCon? Good player experiences are still important for all, I’m just wondering if folks expect a different etiquette experience from the N series than the retro game as players though?

James J Krot wrote: Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

chain lightning cast in water?

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

James J Krot wrote: Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

chain lightning cast in water?

And spell surged to boot.

Harlax wrote:

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

James J Krot wrote: Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

chain lightning cast in water?

And spell surged to boot.

Paladin sacrificed himself to save both of us for 1 round but we still died as i had already used my action that round so couldn't heal.

Part of what made that run was the sheer unintentional consequences of it, no thought was given to what would happen from the spell. Also by that point all of us had i believe ran that dungeon at least once and we've all ran a multitude of times. That wasn't our one and only run of that dungeon/con which i think magnifies the frustration for a few folks. The ones that play once and have it 'ruined'.

Matt wrote:

Harlax wrote:

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

James J Krot wrote: Honestly have actually tpked my entire party on a run so I feel people would have the right to be more upset at me then others but it was in all good fun. I can understand that people get maybe 1 run a year and get upset at someone ruining their experience.

chain lightning cast in water?

And spell surged to boot.

Paladin sacrificed himself to save both of us for 1 round but we still died as i had already used my action that round so couldn't heal.

Part of what made that run was the sheer unintentional consequences of it, no thought was given to what would happen from the spell. Also by that point all of us had i believe ran that dungeon at least once and we've all ran a multitude of times. That wasn't our one and only run of that dungeon/con which i think magnifies the frustration for a few folks. The ones that play once and have it 'ruined'.

It was the first time time through for me it was surged and I put a rare dust on it as well.

On a 3 man nightmare run, Kolixela almost killed himself and our healer with Chain Lightning... In room 2.

Eric McGlohon wrote:

Picc wrote: Don't take this as an attack or dismissal or anything, but we get this post or one like it every year. The vets on here are not the ones causing the problems. For the most part we are very sensitive as to how we are viewed by newer players. In most cases we usually keep to our own groups as to not spoil anyone fun. In the cases where we do find ourselves in mixed groups we tend to try to let first timers take the lead.

I'm not trying to accuse anyone here -- I'd expect the experienced players to behave well. But I'm hoping to have a discussion on how to improve the situation I'm seeing. -- If this isn't the right place to have this conversation, where is? [not rhetorical]

It is a reasonable question and concern to raise, but it is really difficult to control the behavior of everyone running all the runs. I agree with Chad that getting rid of the Treasure Stamps helped. I've experienced the same things you're mentioning, including a couple of times with people from the forums, where they may have answers to puzzles (or incorrectly think they have answers to the puzzles) and shared those answers before the group has a chance to finish it. Or, some players may pretty aggressively move to solve puzzles or win combats without involved all the rest of the players, being more focused on solving the room as fast as possible than with making sure everyone is involved and enjoying themselves.

One answer is to find a group of people you enjoy doing runs with, and try to do runs with those groups every year. And if you do experience someone behaving badly, you can try to avoid groups that that person is on. There is an effort every year on the forums to put teams together. I almost always run with my same extended group of friends, but the times that we have done runs with others, we've had very mixed results. Some have been wonderful experiences, and a few have been really terrible.