TOPIC: 2019 GENCON True Dungeon Feedback & Thanks

We had a wonderful True Dungeon experience, by far the highlight of GENCON for everyone again! I'll probably post in more detail later, but here are some of my initial thoughts.

We did each of the three main Dungeons one time each, one per day Thursday - Saturday. The Coaches, Trainers, DMs, and all of the Volunteers throughout the Dungeon were all fantastic and a joy to be around. Kim was great in the Epilogue area! Thanks to everyone who made the True Dungeon experience this year so wonderful!

The monsters - both Animatronic and costumed - were top notch! Maggie and the lady with swords were especially great, as were our guides in various Dungeons! I was amazed at how well Volunteers acted out various roles, they must have been both very skilled and very well rehearsed. I loved how the Blight came back to life, and in order to keep it dead the final time I said I was hugging it in my Fire Elemental form and the DM had me hug the monster in "real life" to accomplish it, and the volunteer playing the Blight did a wonderful job in acting that out.

The combat rooms seemed very balanced (I think we're getting overpowered a bit for Hardcore though) and nearly all of the puzzle rooms were fun - even some that we missed we figured out how to do them, just didn't complete them in time. The sound wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped for even with the improvements, but we REALLY appreciated having the monologue in a couple of rooms posted on the walls to read - I'd recommend doing that 100% of the time.

We had several new players this year, all of whom had a great time. One was Finn (the son of my friend), and the DM's did an especially great job of making the experience great for him, including one Combat DM that emphasized how Finn landed the killing blow on the monster. Kim did a wonderful job at the epilogue room of making it a special experience for everyone!

We did all of our treasure pulls (nearly all of which were "50" or "20" sealed bags) at the Epilogue room because they never had any Treasure Chips to do the pulls in the entrance area. All of them were very underwhelming except for one "50" bag on the final day, The pulls other than the good "50" bag got maybe 7% monster bits, 5% relic fragments, and the only pulls of note other than that were an Oil of Bismuth, an Aragonite, and a Belt of the Mage. The other "50" bag made up for it though, we got both a UR Lute of Fury and the Legendary Lute (the only Legendary token we've ever pulled).

I really enjoyed the special areas in the Epilogue Room for group photos after the Dungeon, and that the volunteers were always happy to take the photos. We got great group photos after each Dungeon run, they'll be great keepsakes!

It was great running into some of my favorite True Dungeon people, such as Dave Radtke and Stu, and getting to talk to them a bit. I was sorry I didn't run into Jeff Martin this year, it's always great to be able to tell Jeff in person what a great job the team is doing.

In the "constructive criticism" category, it would be great if a way could be found to have more Women's bathroom facilities within the True Dungeon area. Some of the women in our group were pretty unhappy there is only a small family bathroom available to them with only one stall, and a waiting line. It added some salt to the wound for them that the Men's restroom is a repurposed Women's restroom.

Thanks to my wonderful group of friends who make playing True Dungeon worthwhile! Thanks to all the Volunteers (both in front and behind the scenes) that made this year's True Dungeon experience so wonderful!

Thanks!
Mike

Another thing I liked this year were some restrictions. In the room that restricted Melee, it was a fun complication having to slide with our offhand (leading to some Princess Bride quotes of course) rather than just not being able to use melee.

In the Swamp room, none of us had Free Action (I haven't outfitted the Relic Beads yet). I'm glad we didn't have Free Action, because it was fun having a party member sucked into the mud and having three of us spend a turn pulling them out, and we totally role played it.

Mike Steele wrote: Another thing I liked this year were some restrictions. In the room that restricted Melee, it was a fun complication having to slide with our offhand (leading to some Princess Bride quotes of course) rather than just not being able to use melee.

In the Swamp room, none of us had Free Action (I haven't outfitted the Relic Beads yet). I'm glad we didn't have Free Action, because it was fun having a party member sucked into the mud and having three of us spend a turn pulling them out, and we totally role played it.

I was a fan of the change to non-dominant hand for slides on the melee restriction. It made things interesting without leaving players unable to interact. I definitely liked this change.

Mike Steele wrote: Another thing I liked this year were some restrictions. In the room that restricted Melee, it was a fun complication having to slide with our offhand (leading to some Princess Bride quotes of course) rather than just not being able to use melee.

In the Swamp room, none of us had Free Action (I haven't outfitted the Relic Beads yet). I'm glad we didn't have Free Action, because it was fun having a party member sucked into the mud and having three of us spend a turn pulling them out, and we totally role played it.

+1

I would also like to add that it was nice to hear the DM in the room for our run actually make a point that anyone who had "Free Action" was unaffected. It's one of the few times on normal where it felt like our decision to equip items that granted Free Action (Defender set, Pantaloons of the Underdark) actually had an effect in the game.