Overall this year was awesome. Ran with a lot of people I enjoy sharing TD with year after year and some new ones that I was able to match a forum name to face.
Both dungeons this year were cool, although I do have to say Golembane Puzzle was my favorite. I loved the balls in the walls room and the switch puzzle in particular. On the Lycan side, I also enjoyed the final puzzle.
The runs in general were very good. Our first run (Golembane puzzle) was a little shy on players (I lost one to GT and I was never able fill the last 2 spots). On our last designated Nightmare run, we only had 7 of the tickets. CmmdrWorf had 2 of them and the final ticket was somebody I have seen before but do not know their name or handle (if they are on the forum). This final person was the first challenge to Tobin being paladin and did not want to give up, trying everything from "I'm level 7" (which so was Tobin and once you are over level 3 it doesn't matter) to "I have a Holy Great Sword"). Tobin ended up victor mainly because he arrived first.
On one of our runs, we picked up two newbies from the floor and helped them run Hardcore. We even "loaned" (translation - showed) our extra Amulet of Wonder and Horn of Plenty which resulted in one of them drawing a Girdle of Frost Giant Strength. They had a blast and one of them took out the magnetic field and figured out how to disable the force cage (which had become rather annoying).
Our final run of the con was also a small bit bumpy in that a few people didn't show (one sent a replacement), but we still managed to have a good time.
The biggest disaster this year was the XP desk. Fortunately we had enough runs that we managed to get credit for the max XP, but even though the data was written on pieces of paper, two of the runs didn't make it to my experience list. They were eternally out of treasure tokens and we had to wait for them to refill (one of the downsides of so many treasure enhancing tokens).
Tobin couldn't pull monster trophies to save his life, but I managed to pull 2 of each with one extra on my first attempt. At that point, we switched over to the ultra rare / combat box. We pulled a couple of Rings of Heroism, a couple of Girdles of Frost Giant Strength and I even pulled a Horn of Plenty. A great haul compared to any previous year.
Now for my comments / suggestions overall....
1 - I concur with people who mentioned that the tree egg puzzle was not well designed for anyone with difficulty stooping. It also isn't easy for anyone who is wearing a costume that either impedes that level of flexibility or would potentially get very dirty on the floor. In contrast, the rest of the puzzles work well for most groups. Another problem I have with the tree egg puzzle is that even if you have the right strategy, the group may not have the dexterity to pull it off.
2 - I like the person's suggestions that the party card have what is needed to enter the exp into the computer and as long as we keep it to the RUBI number only, it would not add a significant amount of time to the coaching room. This would definitely speed things up. I also think that going with slips of paper instead of the treasure tokens would make that process faster, just as accurate and save the cost of making treasure tokens. As it turned out, the problems escalated to the point where these were done anyway at times.
3 - If you are going to have a designated monster trophy box, it needs to be seeded heavier with monster trophies. Someone shouldn't pull 45 tokens and not get a single monster trophy.
4 - Reduce the amount of situational tokens. I didn't actually go through to see if it was heavier this year, but as a coach I saw a *lot* of situational tokens on new players. When I finish with recording their info, they ask "what can I put away" and it is very distressing when so many of their tokens have a potential use in the adventure but are not recorded on the party card and you can only let them put a handful away. Sometimes only one. If you haven't run the dungeon yourself, you won't know what situations can arise and can't rule out things like traps or shock damage or fire damage. I had one person who admitted her short term memory wasn't the best and she was particularly worried about forgetting she even had the token. Another flat out said that it was BS how much they had to keep track of and asked me why we even have a party card if so much of it isn't on there. I had to suppress a comment since as coaches we are under the gun to record what we do and each year it seems we have more to record. I'm not saying get rid of all situational tokens, but we should keep them to a minimum particularly in the common and uncommon arenas. I doubt many people remember to use them anyway in the heat of the moment.
5 - Lighting needs to be improved in the coaching hallways. We had the very nice signs up to identify which room was which run, but anyone with low light issues would never have been able to read them.
6 - Overall the new coaching setup was awesome. Having a stool and being able to move freely within the U to collect information made this year amazing for the coaches. Although there were a couple of rooms where lighting still wasn't optimal, it was worlds better than last year. The new mats were a bit of a mixed bag though. While simpler for the customers to relate to, it did undo some of the improvements made to organize the enhancement types for easier recording. Having only two charm slots and three ioun slots did confuse some people. There is space on the mat for at least the remaining 2 ioun slots and perhaps the final charm slot. To aid in recording and to identify that someone was ready for recording, I had the players gently rotate their mat to face inside the U. This worked great and I would recommend to anyone who did not find a good method.
7 - The lighting in the training room should be improved. Those with low light issues were having problems seeing their items they were memorizing and the sliding board was often rather dark. We need to make sure there is a spare chair always for the trainer.
8 - The cleric bead board every year presents problems where multiple beads fall off during the event and the trainer has to keep track of them or the customers won't have one or more of the beads to memorize. The purpose of having the physical beads is to allow for tactile memorization, but having that many clerics feeling the beads continues to weaken its connection to the board. We may want to entertain a new strategy for the beads. Perhaps attaching them to a board similar to the bard and druid boards, but have them attached with a strong cable.
9 - Backboard issues on some of the sliding tables. One in particular was not functioning at all and tokens went flying into the hall where the table was stored.
10 - Consistency amongst GMs continues to be a problem year over year. This year, it was the lilac room and the water crossing rooms on the Lycan side and the gear room on the Golembane side that saw the most inconsistency. I'm wondering if perhaps having a trial dungeon run during training may help. Either that or do some mystery shopping.
Perhaps we can meet up in person next year =) Thanks again for participating in Team Synergy this year! 
