TOPIC: Dealing with "wandering" Treasure Enhancers

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

The easiest to solve/defeat room of course.

Cavor wrote: Some things you might not be thinking about:

• When you catch someone without their TE tokens, what are you going to do?
• As the tokens currently are, there is no way to ensure that they are not used on multiple runs.
• If you force people to place the tokens in a non individually possessed bag, you are taking possession and are responsible / liable.
• The fostering of a secondary market makes the selling / lending / renting of tokens inherent

1. I think Jeff has an idea what to do about anyone without their TE tokens. We as a community do not need to worry about that.

2. No one has suggested TD take possession of the tokens, in fact Druegar said TD would not be doing that so not certain why we would need to think of that.

3. This plan is not to stop "wandering" TE's not any of the things you brought up.

It’s a tricky problem.

Any technological solution will likely be expensive and add possible points of failure.
I don’t know about other people but personally I don’t think I'd be comfortable with surrendering my expensive tokens for the duration of the run even if they were locked into some kind of case. It feels like that may be asking for trouble of a different kind.

A mid dungeon audit is going to suffer from all the same problems as an end of dungeon audit in the treasure room.

And just to throw an extra curve ball at it, I know there have been situations where extra treasure has been assigned in the coaching room as a customer service gesture by the higher ups. Such gestures might not be possible depending how we restrict things.

We also run the risk of bad customer service anytime someone can't produce the tokens that were marked on their card. For example someone loans out treasure enhancers in the coaching room, does the run but has to leave part way or has another run right away so they get their treasure and go. It could leave a sour taste with whatever player had been equipping said tokens but is now implied to have been up to something.

End of the day any system where the tokens are not constantly being physically verified can be exploited. And any system were they are will be cumbersome.

About the least exploitable system I can come up with is going back to the old way of having coaches mark off which slots TEs take and having the treasure room personal be the ones who calculate treasure. This comes with its own problems though in terms of exit room slowdowns and additional training for the people manning those desks.

Given Jeff already asked us to play nice, and apparently we didn’t, it might just have to be a problem we live with unless we want to take some truly draconian steps to track players and tokens. Bad apples I guess.

Joshua Long wrote:

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Exactly, that is why the audit should be done before and after the dungeon.

Druegar wrote: Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

That makes it more difficult. If that is the case perhaps having a security bag is a better option then.

I know there is the worry of losing it. But I would assume something that valuable people would be more responsible with it. One could possibly even do the equivalent of handcuffs to the bag and a person to make sure they are not lost.

An audit was supposed to be done before and after at TDC, but it didn't work. Even if the checks are done before and after, that doesn't stop someone from taking the tokens after they are checked before, and handing them back to the group before they are checked after. And potentially doing that with several simultaneous groups.

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

I'm advocating an in-dungeon check, as it's the only semi-foolproof option I've seen now that we know an 8th room before or after isn't an option. We know from experience that checking in the coaching and/or epilogue rooms doesn't work. Checking in the Training room would have the same problem that the Coaching and Epilogue rooms have, it's easy for someone to step out of it to hand off the tokens after the check.

I haven't seen the Dungeon design, so I couldn't say which room you'd take minutes away from. But, I'd say one room should be designed so that it should be able to be solved in less than 12 minutes, leaving a few minutes for the token check. Or maybe a room where the rest of the group can be working on the puzzle while others are getting their tokens checked. It does seem like it would work best in a puzzle room than a combat room.

Mike Steele wrote:

Joshua Long wrote:

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Exactly, that is why the audit should be done before and after the dungeon.

Druegar wrote: Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

That makes it more difficult. If that is the case perhaps having a security bag is a better option then.

I know there is the worry of losing it. But I would assume something that valuable people would be more responsible with it. One could possibly even do the equivalent of handcuffs to the bag and a person to make sure they are not lost.

An audit was supposed to be done before and after at TDC, but it didn't work. Even if the checks are done before and after, that doesn't stop someone from taking the tokens after they are checked before, and handing them back to the group before they are checked after. And potentially doing that with several simultaneous groups.

I guess it wasn't made clear about the security bag.

If it can be opened by anyone then yes the scenario you just mentioned can happen.

However, if it can be locked and then unlocked by an approved person in the epilogue then that scenario can be stopped.

Picc wrote: It’s a tricky problem.

Any technological solution will likely be expensive and add possible points of failure.
I don’t know about other people but personally I don’t think I'd be comfortable with surrendering my expensive tokens for the duration of the run even if they were locked into some kind of case. It feels like that may be asking for trouble of a different kind.

A mid dungeon audit is going to suffer from all the same problems as an end of dungeon audit in the treasure room.

And just to throw an extra curve ball at it, I know there have been situations where extra treasure has been assigned in the coaching room as a customer service gesture by the higher ups. Such gestures might not be possible depending how we restrict things.

We also run the risk of bad customer service anytime someone can't produce the tokens that were marked on their card. For example someone loans out treasure enhancers in the coaching room, does the run but has to leave part way or has another run right away so they get their treasure and go. It could leave a sour taste with whatever player had been equipping said tokens but is now implied to have been up to something.

End of the day any system where the tokens are not constantly being physically verified can be exploited. And any system were they are will be cumbersome.

About the least exploitable system I can come up with is going back to the old way of having coaches mark off which slots TEs take and having the treasure room personal be the ones who calculate treasure. This comes with its own problems though in terms of exit room slowdowns and additional training for the people manning those desks.

Given Jeff already asked us to play nice, and apparently we didn’t, it might just have to be a problem we live with unless we want to take some truly draconian steps to track players and tokens. Bad apples I guess.

I'm curious why you think a mid-Dungeon check has the same problems that a pre or post Dungeon check would have. A mid-Dungeon check doesn't give the party the opportunity to hand off the tokens to another group, like a pre or post Dungeon check would have.

I'd say if the group doesn't have the Treasure Enhancing tokens they have written down during a mid-Dungeon check, that shows a problem with that group, not a potential customer satisfaction problem.

Cavor wrote: A low tech way to do this is to number the tokens

Since TEs are not currently numbered, this solution would violate the "The retention method needs to be practical" caveat as mentioned in the first post.

Cavor wrote: have someone write down TE start times and crunch the numbers at a later time.

The goal is to prevent inappropriate treasure gain, not to learn about it after the fact.

Cavor wrote: When you catch someone without their TE tokens, what are you going to do?

Alter their treasure pull count.

Cavor wrote: As the tokens currently are, there is no way to ensure that they are not used on multiple runs.

That's why this thread was created.

Cavor wrote: The fostering of a secondary market makes the selling / lending / renting of tokens inherent

That doesn't mean TD needs to make it easy.

Mike Steele wrote:

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

I'm advocating an in-dungeon check, as it's the only semi-foolproof option I've seen now that we know an 8th room before or after isn't an option. We know from experience that checking in the coaching and/or epilogue rooms doesn't work. Checking in the Training room would have the same problem that the Coaching and Epilogue rooms have, it's easy for someone to step out of it to hand off the tokens after the check.

I haven't seen the Dungeon design, so I couldn't say which room you'd take minutes away from. But, I'd say one room should be designed so that it should be able to be solved in less than 12 minutes, leaving a few minutes for the token check. Or maybe a room where the rest of the group can be working on the puzzle while others are getting their tokens checked. It does seem like it would work best in a puzzle room than a combat room.

As someone who likes the puzzles more than the combat seeing the puzzles degrade due to an audit is not a welcomed suggestion. Would be the equivalent of saying "o yeah just make one of the combats easier such that it shouldn't take the whole 12 minutes or need the complete attention of the DM." to someone that likes the combat more.

It should be equal opportunity if you are truly suggesting degrading a room. To make that so it should be a flex room between the two mirrors of the dungeon. (The room that swaps depending on if you are combat or puzzle.)

Joshua Long wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Druegar wrote: To those advocating for an in-dungeon TE check: In what room should we take away several precious minutes of combat/puzzle solving?

Adding an 8th room to the dungeon for treasure checks is not an option.

I'm advocating an in-dungeon check, as it's the only semi-foolproof option I've seen now that we know an 8th room before or after isn't an option. We know from experience that checking in the coaching and/or epilogue rooms doesn't work. Checking in the Training room would have the same problem that the Coaching and Epilogue rooms have, it's easy for someone to step out of it to hand off the tokens after the check.

I haven't seen the Dungeon design, so I couldn't say which room you'd take minutes away from. But, I'd say one room should be designed so that it should be able to be solved in less than 12 minutes, leaving a few minutes for the token check. Or maybe a room where the rest of the group can be working on the puzzle while others are getting their tokens checked. It does seem like it would work best in a puzzle room than a combat room.

As someone who likes the puzzles more than the combat seeing the puzzles degrade due to an audit is not a welcomed suggestion. Would be the equivalent of saying "o yeah just make one of the combats easier such that it shouldn't take the whole 12 minutes or need the complete attention of the DM." to someone that likes the combat more.

It should be equal opportunity if you are truly suggesting degrading a room. To make that so it should be a flex room between the two mirrors of the dungeon. (The room that swaps depending on if you are combat or puzzle.)

I was only suggesting puzzles instead of combat, because it's easier for 8 or 9 people to start work on the puzzle while the others are getting their tokens checked than it is for 8 or 9 people to start doing combat while the others are getting their tokens checked (rotating in and out for both puzzle and combat as others get their tokens checked).

jedibcg wrote: 2. No one has suggested TD take possession of the tokens, in fact Druegar said TD would not be doing that so not certain why we would need to think of that.

Multiple people have suggested this. Any bag method, other than individually possessed, is TD taking possession, even if a player carries it.

I think of it like this: if I wanted to share TEs across multiple runs, where would I least want to have to do the switch?

There's no gatekeeper on the coaching rooms. Nothing stops TEs from roaming in and out. If you're trying to stop cheating, checking there is the least effective, because it is arguably the easiest place to cheat.

The training room is more secluded, less in-and-out traffic. If you want to check anywhere, I'd do it after training as people are walking past the trainer into room 1. Few people with URs spend a large portion of their training time actually training anyway. We stand around and chat. This is the next-to-last place I'd want to try to do a swap.

Checking in rooms 1-7 makes little sense to me, as you're eating up time people actually use. Even though it's the hardest to cheat in, it's also the most impact on non-cheaters, so let's not.

Checking in the epilogue room is more effective than checking in coaching, but less than at the end of training. There are still crowds of people milling about, so not hard to pass things off without being noticed.

Joshua Baessler wrote: We could also change where we review TE's.

Instead of verifying them in the coaching room, they could be verified only in the epilogue room.

It would still leave a little wiggle room for someone to share their TE's with the group behind them, but it would drastically limit the opportunities to pass off to other groups like in the coaching rooms.

Since we can be in the coaching room for nearly an hour, that's a lot of overlap with all of the other starting times.

If TE's were only checked in the epilogue room, there is only the risk of passing them off to the group behind or ahead.

It wouldn't eliminate it entirely, but it could put a huge dent in it.

Yes, this, plus one last bit to hopefully prevent sharing in the epilogue room...each dungeon should have its own seperate epilogue room (this would be good regardless, i have often ended up with the xp code from the wrong version of a dungeon), and once a player shows TE tokens and gets treasure, they immediately leave the dungeon, no reentry.
The idea is that each token can only leave the epilogue room once and then must go back through the dungeon again, so tie together the audit/getting treasure to leaving the epilogue room.