TOPIC: Combat vs Puzzle Demand

I wish I'd thought about it earlier to try and watch which sessions filled faster than others, but I was wondering if combat runs fill faster than puzzle runs.

It seems like more organized groups tend towards combat (at least on these forums) and just watching the forums looking for groups, combat seems to come up more.

Wondering if the data matches my small sample observations.

If you check out my thread about the number of tickets left you'll see it is pretty even. With combat slightly more popular and lycans slightly more popular than g
olembane.

I was looking at the remaining tickets available earlier, and noticed that there were a much higher number of Golembane runs available; the incidence of Golembane puzzle runs was by far the highest. In all but one or two cases, every full run (10 tickets) that was still available was a Golembane puzzle run. I'm really not sure why that is.

To your comment--yes, there seems to be a strong inclination toward combat runs, as the most experienced players tend to have a lot of tokens, and tokens are (usually) most useful in combat settings. That said, some do prefer puzzle runs--one of my friends would do nothing but puzzle runs if he could. I still drag him along on combat runs, though.

This year makes absolutely no sense compared to past years. The pattern that's been established has been puzzle always sells out faster than combat but this year it was the reverse. When I mentioned this to Eric he suggested that it's the Smoak effect finally wearing off after 3 years. After the fustercluck that was Smoak, duffers and newbies avoided combat like the plague figuring they had no chance to survive. That memory is fading with time and so we're actually returning to the pre-smoak days where there was a bias toward combat runs going first.

It also feels like there was some sort of memo that went out where people were told that Lycans was the good adventure and Golembane bites. Maybe this is just a thematic situation where people prefer werewolves to steampunk, but it was almost impossible to find full lycan combat runs yesterday in good timeslots.

The large amount of Golembane tickets left on Thursday is probably due to the fact that this is part 2 of the story and most people would want to do part 1 first.

Adeya is right. If you want Lycan try Sunday and Golemnbane try Thursday.

Maybe that's just experience working against me then. I realized ages ago that part I and part II really make no difference in TD. The story, such as it is, is pretty encapsulated and you don't neither info nor theme really travels between the runs. Really, I tend to think of them as concurrent adventures in my mind, sort of like when we had the tower of greyhawk above and below.

Maybe Jeff should go back to concurrent adventures if it is adversely affecting ticket sales. Golembane Is all kinds of available on thursday, and Lycans is all over the place on sunday.

henwy wrote: Maybe that's just experience working against me then. I realized ages ago that part I and part II really make no difference in TD. The story, such as it is, is pretty encapsulated and you don't neither info nor theme really travels between the runs. Really, I tend to think of them as concurrent adventures in my mind, sort of like when we had the tower of greyhawk above and below.

Agreed, but newer players might not realized that and the advertising literature does call it part 1 and part 2. So I can see why the trend might develop.

I'm new. And I assumed order would matter somewhat, so I made sure I got the two sessions in order.

David Harris wrote:

henwy wrote: Maybe that's just experience working against me then. I realized ages ago that part I and part II really make no difference in TD. The story, such as it is, is pretty encapsulated and you don't neither info nor theme really travels between the runs. Really, I tend to think of them as concurrent adventures in my mind, sort of like when we had the tower of greyhawk above and below.

Agreed, but newer players might not realized that and the advertising literature does call it part 1 and part 2. So I can see why the trend might develop.

I was noticing the same. Jeff, please stop calling them one and two.

I think though there are of us that do care about the story arc and therefore knowing which one is first is important.