TOPIC: True Dungeon 2013 Experiences

Harlax wrote: Things I wondered on the way home...

If I had been carrying two potions of polymorph viper could our druid have slithered into the tree, returned to normal, handed the egg out, polymorphed again and slithered out?

Then I thought the dryad probably would have freaked at the sight of a viper with her precious egg.

I would assume no. Using the gnomish flying pack to fly in and get it was ruled a no-go, since you couldn't go inside at all.

Nimble wrote: I never did bump into Raven this year, though a GM in one of my runs asked if I had paid my rogue taxes, which of course I know nothing about.

Not to worry my good friend. We charge only a modest interest rate of 100% compounded yearly on back taxes. Tis much cheaper than the Barbarian's charge, they always want an arm and a leg! They don't even ask if you can afford it.


Or... Perhaps you can partake of the great feats of community service necessary for our standard level of survival. Sadly the role of guild distraction has become a permanent effect for me.

Until either I am slain outright by someone searching for someone else in a case of mistaken identity or promotion you shall just have to barter your own way into the good graces of The Raven's Flock.


-Herring the Red.

Robert Thomson wrote: Using the gnomish flying pack to fly in and get it was ruled a no-go, since you couldn't go inside at all.

Yeah, in one of my runs we had a guy up on another guy's shoulders, trying to reach in (after sufficient reminders of waiver signing), only to have the DM say the little fey inside shocked his hands and prevented any reaching inside.

Those who tried to use the Fizzy pack and/or Potion of Leaping Attack on the Will 'o Wisp were also denied. It's pretty frustrating when tokens which are used in interesting and believable ways are flatly denied simply because those potential uses were not anticipated. Though, I suppose we can't expect every DM to be experienced and quick enough to come up with responses to unexpected player actions, while at the same time making sure that by doing so the puzzle or combat isn't completely bypassed.

The Potion of Leaping Attack and the Fizzy Lifter would not have worked in the egg puzzle room due hem being useable only in combat. They also are ruled to only let you go straight up and down. I am okay with them not allowing the person on shoulders only for safety reasons.... people could get hurt very easily in that situation.

I am on the fence with the Wisp being attackable with the Pack or Potion due to the way the room was described. I went through the room 3 diff days and was told the ground was marshy and if you attempted melee, you got stuck in quicksand. That would at least negate the Potion. With the pack only letting you go straight up, you would have to get into close range, and again be subjected to the quicksand

We used the Fizzy Jet Pack on one of our runs to fight the Wisp.

I forgot to mention that I got to play Telestrations with Barry (volunteer for setup/tear down and DM for at least one room on one of my runs) one night after TD as well. Barry may come off and a big mean bear. But he was a hoot to play such a silly game with.

Here's how my two runs went. I might not have the exact order of the rooms in each side correct.

Thursday 11:25AM Lycan’s Afoot - Puzzle

The room with the werewolf:
We had no particular difficulty with this fight. The three people on watch when the werewolf attacked weren’t able to do much to it, but were able to wake everyone else to fight on the next round. We defeated the monster in a few rounds, and nobody got turned into a lycanthrope.

The room with the egg in the stump:
There were two eggs in the stump, and no indication of which one we should lift. (No treasure chest in the room when we ran) We decided to try the larger blue one first, and try the other if we got the first one out in time. After several failed attempts we were able to raise the blue egg high enough for someone with long arms to reach in the top and grab it. That surprised me - halfway through the room I was sure we were going to fail. This kind of multi-person physical challenge is very hard for an unorganized party of people who don’t know each other to solve.

The room with the broken branch:
We had to use someone’s iphone as a reflective surface to mirror-reverse the clue since the water surface was foamed up and not at the right angle anyway. We figured out that the reflection of the note probably read “Graft Lilac Stem”, but nothing we tried would solve the room. I still don’t know what the proper solution was.

The room with the stream and the boards:
One of the blocks was out of place when we tried this room, which made the puzzle impossible to solve. The DM didn’t notice us writing that branch off as a dead end, so we didn’t realize that we had skipped the correct route until there was too little time left to solve the room. There really should have been some marking on the floor where the stones were supposed to be so it would have been easier to tell if the puzzle was in an unsolvable state.

The room with the will-o-wisp fight:
We didn’t have much trouble with this one. Most of the group had some form of ranged attack, and although the wisp was really hard to hit we managed to bring it down in a few rounds. I got to use my Double Barreled Blunder Cannon, missed every time but at least I didn’t damage myself.

The room with the ropes:
We didn’t figure this one out, wasted too much time carefully measuring the ropes against each other to determine if they really were all the same length. In retrospect I think I know what the solution was, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

The last room, with the pairs of potions:
We never realized that the statues were related to the puzzle. Instead, we decided that we had enough hit points and healing left to just brute force the solution. This turned out to be really easy since the solution in our case was to pick the left side potion in each pair. I don’t know if that actually was the solution, or if the DM just decided to give it to us since we had missed the clues.


Saturday 11:51AM Golembane - Puzzle

The first room, with the power globes that came out of the walls:
This was a fun and fairly easy room. One of our party ran up and pushed the glowing red button as soon as we entered the room - normally a terrible idea, and we took damage as the ball fell out of the hole and hit the floor, but it showed us what to do and let us get started on the puzzle early. We had a few wrong guesses when placing the balls, but were able to solve the puzzle with time to spare.

The room with the genie:
We weren’t sure if this might be another room where the preferred solution was to avoid combat, so someone went up to talk to her. Then she started blasting us. Combat was over fairly quickly.

The room with the table full of gears:
One of our group was a coach who had seen many groups go through, and she told us the gear table puzzle was super easy and we’d get it in a few minutes. This probably jinxed us, we failed the room. In retrospect we probably had too many people working on it at once, everyone getting in each other’s way and working at cross purposes.

The room with the table covered in icons and the following quiz:
Here we had good group organization, had each person pick a segment of the table to memorize. We only got 8 or 9 of the quiz questions right, but the penalty for getting a question wrong was minor and you didn’t have to get them all right to pass the room.

The room with the power globes on pedastals and the guardian construct:
Easy enough room. Killed the guardian construct in a few rounds, then rearranged all the globes to solve the room. By this time we knew which symbol was which energy type pretty well.

The room with the big fight against the gnome and his construct:
We had no major problem with this fight. I got to use that warhammer that does extra damage against constructs, and critted with max damage on the last round of combat.

The last room, with the switch puzzle
We were fairly lucky on this one. Our first guess at a solution (based just on the clues in the wall riddle, not any of the other clues in the run) got 8 out of the 10 correct. We then carefully changed just two of the switches at a time, watching the green lights to see if we were getting closer or further away, and got the correct solution after a few tries. Cool animatronic, but they pulled it back behind the wall after the first round of combat - was it sharing time with the combat run or something?

I took my treasure pulls from the monster parts bucket, and got crap equipment as a result. It sounds like I should have pulled from the equipment bucket instead.

Andrew Lindsey wrote: Saturday 11:51AM Golembane - Puzzle

The room with the genie:
We weren’t sure if this might be another room where the preferred solution was to avoid combat, so someone went up to talk to her. Then she started blasting us. Combat was over fairly quickly.

I was GMing that room when you went through. Now that the Con is over, I can tell you that there was 2 win conditions to that room:
1) Trigger combat with the Genie and "kill" her.
2) Trigger combat with the Genie and deal sufficient damage to her chains to free her (accomplished by actually sliding weapons (or spells/scrolls that required a slide) onto the depiction of the chains on the combat board.)

What's difference you ask?? The amount of damage required. The chains had 1/4 the HP of the monster.

Our group hit the chains both combats. The first run our ranger ( first time playing TD) slid a bumped two other tokens right on the chains, it was pretty amazing. The second time I bumped another token into the chains, both were over fast.

ian ferguson wrote:
I am on the fence with the Wisp being attackable with the Pack or Potion due to the way the room was described. I went through the room 3 diff days and was told the ground was marshy and if you attempted melee, you got stuck in quicksand. That would at least negate the Potion. With the pack only letting you go straight up, you would have to get into close range, and again be subjected to the quicksand

I disagree with but can see not letting someone use boots of water walking to get over the river because it bypasses the entire puzzle but disallowing a leap attack or lifting pack attack on the willow wisp just seems wrong. Your not bypassing anything, those two items are designed to allow you to melee a ranged mob which is what the wisp was. I'm going to have to assume that one was a mistake on the part of the DM as I just cant wrap my brain around it any other way.

Picc wrote: I disagree with but can see not letting someone use boots of water walking to get over the river because it bypasses the entire puzzle but disallowing a leap attack or lifting pack attack on the willow wisp just seems wrong. Your not bypassing anything, those two items are designed to allow you to melee a ranged mob which is what the wisp was. I'm going to have to assume that one was a mistake on the part of the DM as I just cant wrap my brain around it any other way.

I had a somewhat similar experience with the Wisp. I used a Pouch of Tulz/Potion of Leaping Attack to get a pair of melee attacks off as a Ranger... as I setup to slide a second time, I was told that the potion had worn off (nothing was said it being a terrain issue) and I had to use Ranged attacks.
Confused, I double checked PoLA on Token DB and verified it should have lasted the entire combat. The GM told me after combat he had goofed and it was in the module that PoLA was not supposed to work in this room (though he failed to expound on why, due to the 1 minute warning sounding).

I believe Adeya said she was able to use her boots of water walking to get accross, but the rest of her team needed to solve the puzzle. The leaping potion and fizzy pack do say combat. Now if someone had a working scroll of fly. I would think it would work.