TOPIC: Thoughts on 5 rooms

I play two kinds of runs at Gencon, because I genuinely love and enjoy both:
1. pre-arranged Epic runs of veteran players with all our fancy tokens. Vibe: we're here to be challenged!
2. casual pick-up groups where I randomly buy a single ticket, join whoever's there, choose last from the classes nobody else wants, and run a build that is appropriate to the difficulty setting. Usually these runs are Normal difficulty with new players, once in a while it's a more experienced group who wants to try Hardcore, this year I got one of each. Vibe: we're here to play a cool game and have fun!

For my Epic veteran runs, the reduction to 5 rooms was a bit of a letdown as expected: sweet, this dungeon is awesome so far, I'm ready for room 6! Oh, wait...

In addition to being only 5/7 of the fun, this devalues tokens: for example, why bother equipping gear to cast extra spells when there aren't nearly enough combat rounds to use up the spells I have?

But here's the thing: for casual runs, it felt *perfect*. Everybody seemed to be having a great time, the dungeons were well designed and the room 5 combat felt like a satisfying conclusion, and of course I can't deny that for most people a two digit price beats a three digit price by a psychological mile.

So here's what I personally am hoping to see next year:
- ditch the 4-room format, it's not much different from 5 anyway
- several 5-room dungeons for $98
- one "True Dungeon XL" premium 7-room dungeon for $128, so those of us who crave that level of challenge can get our fix

Going to throw this out again... Run as GenCon, but also introduce special runs: TD-Ironman - 10 room or even 15 room runs.

Run all 5-room dungeons back-to-back-to-back without another coaching, no spell refresh, etc. Minimum level being Nightmare.

That way the casual players play the 5-room, but the vets get a challenging experience.

Honestly, as an established player, I never really felt threatened during the 5 room dungeons. The game isn't really designed for 5 rooms, when 5th level and tokens are involved.