TOPIC: New Moon Festival 2013 True Dungeon Review :-)

My gaming group, New Moon Festival, ran three Dungeon runs this year, two Golembane and one Lycans Afoot, all combat and all hardcore. There were six of us that did every Dungeon this year, with the other four slots filled by different friends each run. Our overall impression was that this year's Dungeons were among the best ever, we all had a fantastic time, and we're already looking forward to next year! I'll go ahead and break down some comments into specific areas:

Volunteers: Without exception, all of the Volunteers were amazing! Everyone was helpful, friendly, and all of the volunteers in costume or working the monsters did a fantastic job! And I did appreciate that I didn't have to pull out the various tokens we used every single time we used them, as that often used up a significant amount of time in the Dungeon when we did. I enjoyed talking with Dave during token transmutation, and Stu was a blast as always!

True Dungeon Photography: We were again blessed with Fritz coming along with us to take photographs on one of our runs, and Kim came with us also this year which was great! As always, we had a fantastic time with them coming along to share our experience, and Fritz took some amazing photos, I can't wait to get them on CD. Fritz, you're the best!

Sets: This was one of the best years ever for sets! Even though Jeff had the option of just reusing the Dungeon walls from last year, instead we got the super-cool mechanical walls with the pipes and gears and everything!

Monsters: The monster costumes were fantastic, both the Volunteers in costume and the more animatronic ones. The boss monster with the little gnome hanging on a chain was a particular favorite, some of our party members said they enjoyed that more than the Troll earlier (which was so good it could have been an animatronic from Disney).

Puzzles: In some past years we found the puzzles to be especially frustrating, with pretty obscure solutions. This year we enjoyed all the puzzles, even the ones we didn't solve! I especially appreciate the ones that require everyone to be involved (like room 1 of Golembane). In any group of 10, you will naturally have the more dynamic members and the ones that hang back more, and I really appreciate rooms that get all 10 party members involved and having fun. Well done!

Combat: We thought the level of difficulty on Hardcore was very appropriate for our group - thanks for adding that additional difficulty level, Jeff! We won all but one combat (the one where the forcefield came down), but for many of them we were right up against the wire to win. The combats were fun and exciting, and our Bard did a fantastic job of singing fun songs and helping everyone have a fantastic time. The Volunteer who was working the Boss Monster on Saturday night told us that ours was the most fun group he'd seen all GENCON, which we really appreciated

Treasure: MANY thanks to the generous individual who turned in their Artifact Token so that we all could have special Token draws! And thanks to Jeff for being willing to put so much awesome stuff into the treasure boxes! We did a LOT of draws and got lots of great stuff, much of which our group will use, and many other items that I'll trade or sell to get tokens we can use. I actually would like to see the Treasure Boxes in the future made a bit more exciting than normal - certainly nothing like this year, but more than usual. Maybe a UR every 50 draws or so, and maybe a higher amount of the non-relic transmuted tokens mixed in.

XP Room: The delays in the XP room didn't bother us as much as it seemed to others, but we did run into significant delays as the volunteers had some difficulty finding some of our party members in the system. But, the volunteers were very pleasant and helpful during the process, and I'm sure that it will run more smoothly next time. I did notice that some participation tokens were running out, perhaps they could be stocked more fully next year with more than anticipated being needed just in case. If there are extras, they can be put into the treasure boxes for the next year.

Friends: One of the best parts of True Dungeon is the community, and I was really happy to see in person many of the great people I communicate on the forums with throughout the year. It was great to see Chad, always great to see Raven, and so many others that I've either known a long time or just met recently.

Party: I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of my favorite True Dungeon related events of all time, which happened this year. My friends that I run with every year threw me a surprise party at Hard Rock Café this year, in thanks for the coordination I do for our events and for providing all the tokens for the group. It was a fantastic party, coordinated by my great friend and Bard Supreme Jeff Howard, with an amazing "Horn of Mike" cake (I have photos although I'm not sure how to post them), a photo album my friend Haley made that many people contributed to, and other fun surprises! It was an extremely touching and wonderful party with the best friends a person could ever ask for!

In summary, we enjoyed every single aspect of True Dungeon this year! Our thanks to Jeff, and to every single Volunteer that helped make the event possible! This year was one of the best ever, and I'm sure next year will be even better!!

In the spirit of always striving to be better, I thought I'd list a few possible areas for Improvement:

* Maybe have some place on the party card where we could note that we had specific high-demand tokens (masterwork thieves tools, Ektdar's Tinkering Tool, Bracelets of the Zephyr, etc) so that we don't have to pull the tokens out repeatedly, slowing down the game action. This year was much better than last year in that respect.

* Either allow photos in the Dungeons, or have some place outside the Dungeons designed as a photo-op as a keepsake - maybe with the True Dungeon logo and year, maybe with a couple of prop monsters from past years. It is in True Dungeon's best interest to allow people to take some super-cool photos of their experience, that will both help them stay enthused about future runs and help influence others to play.

* Ranged combat is at least as effective as melee combat now, so please stop penalizing melee combat to try to get people to use more ranged combat. Or, include some rooms where ranged combat isn't possible, and everyone has to use melee (maybe high winds which makes ranged impossible).

* The areas outside of the Dungeons seemed a bit dead this year. I would suggest having a bar / arena fight between two groups of 10 players, like we had two years ago on the Gold Ticket Run. It could be with generic tickets, or maybe from special invite tokens in the treasure boxes, etc. It should require just one volunteer and a combat board or two, and if designed correctly would require little prep time. It could even serve as a tutorial for both the combat and for the use of tokens, especially if each person got one or two preset tokens to use. It would be a really fun activity to do, and it would probably get a crowd of people to watch.

* One comment which I also had last year, is to make the entrance more exciting and inviting. Have a big True Dungeon banner above the door, maybe props or posters on either side of the entrance, and something mysterious and inviting beyond the entry drawing you in.

The orb fight in Lycan was Ranged only and the angel fight in Golum was Melee only so there was a fight that made everyone Melee.

I agree there needs to be better signage outside in the hall.

archmage78 wrote: The orb fight in Lycan was Ranged only and the angel fight in Golum was Melee only so there was a fight that made everyone Melee.

I agree there needs to be better signage outside in the hall.

Interesting. We were never told in either angel fight that it was melee only, we had characters use ranged in both with no penalty.

We tried to use ranged when fighting the Genie (is that what you mean by angel?) and were told that the strong winds blew our arrows off target. (The DM was considerate enough to hand back the +1 ammo used, rather than count it as consumed).
I remember the DMs applying this pretty consistently on our runs, and thinking "Cool, a non-ranged combat. Nice to see that for a change."

Yes the genie room sorry. Played it twice and both times Ranged was a no no.

Excellent review. I was pleased to be able to accompany your group on one of your runs. Your group was indeed a very fun group and the approach that you took to both combat and puzzles was nice to watch. Everyone seemed to be having a good time which is the important part.

I agree with the need for listing 'special effect' tokens on the card. Maybe they can just be listed on the back, then initialed by the coach?

ian ferguson wrote: I agree with the need for listing 'special effect' tokens on the card. Maybe they can just be listed on the back, then initialed by the coach?

Please, please no.

I understand that players don't want to have to pull out those tokens in the dungeon, but seriously, that happens only now and then.

Asking the coaches to list every special effect token - where there are more special effects every year, and sometimes multiple effects per token - will mean Coaches need to spend 10+ minutes PER PLAYER to get everything listed. Multiply that by 10 players, and you need an hour and 40 mins in coaching. Currently there's only 24 minutes allotted... during which Coaches are also supposed to help players pick appropriate classes if they haven't yet, explain tokens as required, and answer the party's many questions.

As a coach, I try to tell people "You can put all your tokens away now, but keep your weapon tokens close to hand and know where they are at all times. Other tokens you might need to show to the DM for situational things, so know where they are, but they don't need to be immediately accessible.

/agree with Raven. I don't think I could get the party card filled out in the time avalible for an even midway equipped group if I had to mark all the situational stuff (and I suspect GMs wouldn't have time to check through it even if I did)

Kim Lindgren wrote: Excellent review. I was pleased to be able to accompany your group on one of your runs. Your group was indeed a very fun group and the approach that you took to both combat and puzzles was nice to watch. Everyone seemed to be having a good time which is the important part.

Kim, we really enjoyed having you along on our first run, thanks! We aren't the most organized group, but we make up for it in enthusiasm and fun

I want to know why some people can have photos taken while other cannot in the dungeon. We tried to get one on our sealed deck run (in a corner away from any monster/puzzle) and were told we couldn't. Then I see some people had their own personal photographer running with them in the dungeon. Please keep it consistent.

Rafiq

I think what Raven said is good advice too. Our coach said something very similar on both of our runs. It took a wee bit of sorting to find the right tokens in each room but that was part of the fun. Imagine if you had to search your bag in the midst of battle for the one particular scroll, healing potion, etc. People are still getting knocked around why you try and find the item you need. It adds flavor I think and a bit of planning ahead of time to reward perhaps those that organize well