TOPIC: Well...I'm back. New 2013 Event Details!

Thank you all for your patience this past 6 weeks as I have been away tending to the GREAT demands of my real job -- running Dwarven Forge. It has been an exhausting 18-20 hours a day grind, but it was well worth it! We put a lot of very cool and very cheap [url=http://http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dwarvenforge/dwarven-forges-game-tiles-revolutionary-miniature]3D miniature terrain[/url] into the hands of gamers everywhere.

Well, now I'm back and ready to kick some TD butt! I am really excited about all the great improvements we have made this year to the event.

TD will be completely immersive once you enter the doors of the Exhibit Hall. All the admin and Coaches will try to stay in character as much as possible, and you will get your own Training Room inside a big inn at the edge of a dark forest. Players can show up 50 minutes early if they want to enter their private, well-lit room to start to prep for their adventure.

TD, for the first time ever, has a full staff of volunteers! And what's more, is that we were able to select the best Coach and DM candidates, and they have all committed to extensive video training starting this month. Our new volunteer recruitment and retention program, while expensive, has been well worth the expense.

TD, for the first time ever, will keep the immersion intact when you leave the XP Desk. If you choose the optional fun, you can spend your Treasure Coins at a few different places inside the forest village. You can draw treasure tokens at different merchants who might have a different assortment of tokens. You can try your hand at a carnival type game, or you can speak with an NPC. They might have helpful information for your next adventure, or they might send you on a mini-quest inside that next adventure.

In short, we have re-tooled TD so that it is as immersive as possible from start to finish - while utilizing the best trained and motivated volunteer staff TD has ever enjoyed. It should make for a wonderful event.

The bad news? Well, all of this does not come without some additional costs. We were forced, at the last minute, to raise our ticket price. For the past four years our ticket price has been $38 or $40, but this year it will be $44. True Grind will remain the same $28.

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New Adventurers' Guild Benefits!


Because of the feedback we received from players, we have changed the benefits of what an Adventurers’ Guild Button will gain you.

Bag Check: Anyone with an Adventurers’ Guild Button can use the AG Bag Check service located at the start of the event to check one item per AG button.

VIP Access for You AND Your Party: There will be a cool VIP area in the heart of the storyscape area that can only be accessed by AG members after they have ended a TD event. They must show their AG button to gain admittance, and they may take up to nine other non-AG members (from their current player party) into the VIP area with them. There they can raise a toast to the victory (bar service will be located nearby), divide up treasure, and recall their recent grand exploits. Due to limited sitting, the party can stay up to 30 minutes after the end of their adventure, and they all must sit at the same table. Times printed on wristbands will be checked for compliance.


Thanks again for all your patience while I was away in Kickstarter land. It was a fun time, but I am really glad to be home.

MORE EVENT DETAILS HERE

Event Details link is broken . . .

Sad to see the price increase 2 weeks before reg, but oh well.

Is True Craft gone?

Thanks for the kickstarter, I will enjoy the terrain!

darkangel866 wrote: Event Details link is broken . . .

Sad to see the price increase 2 weeks before reg, but oh well.

Is True Craft gone?

Thanks for the kickstarter, I will enjoy the terrain!

The link is fixed. Thanks!

The price increase was a decision delayed by all the Dwarven Forge Kickstarter work. I am sorry for the late notice.

While a separate Truecraft event will not be available in 2013, much of the fun of the event has been folded into the end of every two-hour adventure. When you emerge from the XP Desk with your Treasure Coins in hand, you will find yourself back in another area of the starting village. If you choose to record XP and receive any applicable Treasure Coins (some do not), you can spend these Treasure Coins at a few spots inside the village. You can draw treasure from different merchants who have different treasure assortments, you can try your hand at a carnival-type game, or you can speak with an NPC to obtain information for another adventure. Perhaps you can even gain a mini-quest to be completed during your next adventure. Note: No unique tokens will be available this year via these mini-quests.

pretty darn awesome, I regret trading my AG badge away now.

Hi Jeff,

Welcome back, and thanks for all the new details.

I'm sorry to see the price go up to $44, I hope that isn't a deal-breaker for many people. I've about got our parties together, I'll have to get back with everyone and make sure they still want to participate at $44. I'm sure your new immersive environment will be incredible, and I'm glad you have a full slate of volunteers! Maybe the price will go back down next year now that you have made that initial investment in the settings for the Inns.

Thanks for including the Hardcore Level! I think that with the power gap continuing to grow between Nightmare and Normal, it was needed. I was hoping to see some dedicated Hardcore Level slots, but I understand if you want a year to see how many people want to play it.

Perhaps you should mention for all slots not listed as Nightmare, the default mode is Normal, and you can only play Non-Lethal, Hardcore, or Nightmare if all 10 party members agree.

Maybe you should have a paragraph explaining the survivor/ghost buttons. Early in the article you say "Players who survive will receive cool "Survivor" buttons themed especially for the module" and then much later under Participation Buttons you say "For the two-hour adventures, anyone playing on the "Non-lethal" setting will receive the Normal participation token, but no Survival button can be earned". Those two pieces of info should be listed together, probably under a Survivor Button heading.

Regarding the Survivor Buttons, are there no "Ghost" buttons this year? I think they are a great idea and would love to see them continue. Also, while I understand why you don't really earn a survivor button if you play non-lethal, I still think it would be a good idea to give them one. Those are probably your newest players, and giving them a nice keepsake like a survivor button is just one more way to enhance their experience and want them to come back. I don't think the Survivor Buttons are valued so highly that anyone will be playing non-lethal just to be assured they get one.

You mention under the AG Buttons that there will be a dedicated area where "There they can raise a toast to the victory (bar service will be located nearby), divide up treasure, and recall their recent grand exploits." I hope that there are still tables and seating and bar access for those that don't have AG Buttons, as there was last year, even though you aren't guaranteed a seat like you will be in the VIP area. Even non-AG Button holders might like to raise a toast to their success

Will you have any more details on the "different merchants who have different treasure assortments"? I'll choose to do my token draws with the merchant with the box of Ultra-Rares I'm guessing maybe one mix includes monster ingredient tokens and the others don't, perhaps one might be more spell-caster aligned and another might be aligned to fighter classes? Or perhaps one might specialize in antiquities, and will have tokens from past years in their treasure assortment? That might be a way to reuse a bunch of tokens in your vaults from past years, as long as they are the same mix of rarities.

Thanks again for all your hard work in preparing for another great year!

Mike

Brad wrote: pretty darn awesome, I regret trading my AG badge away now.

My thoughts too, I wish the AG Info had been set at the start. If I'd known I could bring all my party members in with me I'd have kept mine.

Jeff, the XP description still contains the line:

Note that the two versions of “Draco-Lich Undone” are considered the same adventure because they are similar. The highest XP available for Gen Con Indy 2012 is 4,000 XP

This should probably be updated.

It seems screwy to me that Hardcore would have the same XP. If we're going to do tiers, then it should fall between normal and nightmare. You have to incentivize these things, especially because TD has a common interest in keeping the token hunt going. All you're going to do in the long term is slit your own throat if there isn't a batch of people willing to spend on tokens for increasingly small incremental gains.

To me, for anyone interested in XP (which is probably the majority of the hard-core players), they will feel compelled to play the level with the highest XP. If you make hardcore have less XP than Nightmare, you might as well not even introduce Hardcore because you will probably not have anyone playing it.

I see it as having three real tiers, beginner (non-lethal), standard (normal) and expert (Hardcore and Nightmare), so I have no problem with both expert levels having the same XP.

Plus, Nightmare gets twice as many participation tokens, and since the +1 Level Ring uses Participation tokens as ingredients, playing Nightmare gives you the huge bonus of being able to keep your Rare participation token and still have your uncommon participation token to use in the recipes. I think that alone will have a lot of people playing Nightmare, as well as the special Nightmare-only Survivor Token.

Thanks for the info. So truecraft is incorporated into the treasure token system which could make the treasure tokens more valuable

Any new news on the GT run? Other than be there at 6pm?

Also after the run I know that a AG pin member can take his party to the Hall, but will also the AG pin memeber be able to enter the hall normally before a run? Will there be a place set aside for us with the pins to go and sit and relax?

Mike Steele wrote: Plus, Nightmare gets twice as many participation tokens, and since the +1 Level Ring uses Participation tokens as ingredients, playing Nightmare gives you the huge bonus of being able to keep your Rare participation token and still have your uncommon participation token to use in the recipes. I think that alone will have a lot of people playing Nightmare, as well as the special Nightmare-only Survivor Token.

Yes I can see the Nightmare double participation tokens will be huge with the plus 1 level ring. In that reguards you would have to spend 88 dollars to do two hardcore runs to get the same amount of participation tokens as one Nightmare run.

SEM1347624 True Dungeon 101 8/15/2013 13:00

SEM1347625 True Dungeon 101 8/15/2013 13:00

SEM1347626 True Dungeon 101 8/17/2013 10:00


So TD101 has 2 classes at the exact same time on Thursday? Just checking.