TOPIC: Picc's Rambling Review 2013

First impressions: The storyscape was greatly enhanced this year. Lightning still needs to be addressed somehow but I loved the village quality it had especially towards the back where the adventurer’s guild was situated. Can’t wait to see how this develops next year when were on an airship. My only fault to the entire storyscape experience would be that I missed true craft and hope it can make a return in some form or another. The red stone npcs and mini quests added a depth to the environment that I really enjoyed. I would even go so far as to suggest adding a greeter npc who could direct people towards their adventures in character (I saw a lot of people asking where to go at the volunteer desk).

Coaching rooms: These were great and worked amazingly for moving groups through honestly I can’t say enough good stuff about this method for queuing players. The wondering npcs that visited the coaching rooms really made my con too. Last year my wife missed out on true craft due to a busy con schedule so it was great to have an npc pop in to play up the storyline aspect of things. I know volunteers are usually in short supply but if there is anything that can be done to increase this kind of thing next year please do. If nothing else it was great to have newbies ask what gold was for and to be able to say they may be able to gain valuable information from the npc’s prior to their adventure.

Training rooms, Again I really enjoyed the addition of npcs here. It was really cool to be able to have the mechanical prep rooms tied into the narrative.

Lycans campfire ambush, I liked this room. It was a good way to throw us into the action and a nice way to make use of the horn of alert. The dice was also a nice unexpected twist for a room a lot of us were able to infer was coming from the tokens. My only criticism was that the npc clue “Lycans are attracted by fire and scared of water” seemed to imply we would be better off without a campfire but the actual room had benefits for building and standing near the fire (which was a really cool prop). I understand only a fool would take every rumor they trade for a bottle of rum at face value but I was surprised the first room proved first rumor false. That said there was some mumbling in the party about never trusting the town drunk and everyone seemed happy even though the rumor was false. I rate this room an 8/10 for fun and flavor

The cursed egg room, Wow just wow this room was night and day. I went though it twice and groaned when it was in combat as well as puzzle. That said this one was 100% down to party dynamic. The first time I did it the group was mostly newbies with no clear leader and we had no chance. At the 1 minute mark we still hadn’t gotten the egg off the ground so I just went over the dryad, asked what the push was going to be and handed over a lot of healing items. I was all set to complain about this room as impossible until my second run at it when the group I was with just jelled we had the egg out on our first try with 5 minutes to spare and that was with only seven people working on it (our group ran short handed). I give this room a 6/10 fun and fair but really really group dependant.

Heal the tree (puzzle): I liked this room. It was a solid puzzle, I was a little disappointed we couldn’t use the mirror token to read the message since it was in print this year and doing so wouldn’t have granted any real advantage. I had a lot of players ask what their gear was for in the coaching room and it seemed like this room would have been a perfect place to let them feel creative for using some of it. That said I loved the puzzle and it was really cool to have the a “multi room” interaction with the dryad. I give this room an 8/10 would have been a 10 if gear had been allowed to be used and the water in the fountain hadn’t been so bubbly which made using the reflection hard.

The grabber (combat): I didn’t like this room at all. Typical combat, no worries there. The your friends are trapped in the monster don’t hit them and ambush mechanics were fresh but it seemed like the immune to surprise or free action should have played into not being captured or held by the monster. Despite everyone in the party having both those abilities the DM just grabbed one player per round, rolled a d20 for damage (no attack roll I could see) and rendered the character unconscious at 1 hp from massive damage. I didn’t think TD had unconscious rules and d20 damage with no to hit felt a little excessive. By the time we downed the monster it had done near a hundred damage taking 4 players from full life to “unconscious”. Honestly the punishing nature of this room on Friday night leads me to wonder if it was handled correctly but water under the bridge. I rate this room as a 3/10 one point for a cool monster, one for a cool ambush, and one for general ambiance. All in all though my group unanimously agreed this room was the least fun of both dungeons.

The river: Loved this puzzle, 10/10. Failed once and Succeeded once but what made this room shine was that we knew what to do right away. The challenge wasn’t so much in figuring out how to do cross it was in actually crossing. I also want call out the Saturday night GM for this room, whoever you were you rocked. The descriptions of the river and explanations as to why various forms of cheese wouldn’t work to bypass the puzzle were quick and believable if you have the chance to get this guy back to volunteer again next year do it.

The wisp: This room was fun, I was a little tweaked that some of our characters who melee attacked the wisp the first round were stuck in the quick sand for the remainder of combat despite having boots of free action. Again it seems like walking out of the muck would be the textbook definition of what boots of free action are for. Considering the number of people who went through with free action from the ioun stone this year it seems like a large missed opportunity to not allow them to use the effect in a situation like this. The GM we had on Saturday night also mentioned there was a note about potion of leap attack only working for one round that seemed to conflict with the tokendb entry (gotta love smart phones). Anyway all that said this was a fun combat. It was clever and I enjoyed watching our wizard figure out he had to use a specific spell to overcome the wisps immunities. Over all I rate this room an 8/10, cool effect, clever variation on a ranged mob, generally positive reviews from my friends.

The rope puzzle: This room seemed confused, the puzzle was fair and interesting but by Saturday night the ropes were a bit loose. That said what killed me here was our inability to look at the spirits. I get why from a story line perspective but I come to TD to look at the cool rooms and monsters, a monster you can’t look at seems a tease. Also not sure if the black light runes were fae or not but if they weren’t again it seems like that might have been a good opportunity to make the earcuff useful even if the table only said don’t look at the ghost or something similar to what the GM just told us we knew. Over all I give this room a 7/10

The womping willow (combat): This was another great room. I’m not sure if we solved it right (didn’t have a clue about the monsters shocking secret) but we limped through thanks to our rangers heroically sacrificing herself in epic single combat with the tree. The tree looked great and the combat was fun, not much to say about this room other than that it easily maintained the high quality I’ve come to expect from room 7s. Over all I give it an 8/10, it did a wonderful job of ending the run on a high note.

The Twelve pairs (puzzle): This was great puzzle but IMO it had one major issue, we hit on the solution right away and burned our way through to position 7/12 on our first pass at the answer after which we reset and worked our way back around to 12/12 when our very tired wizard misheard the instruction and put forward the wrong bottle (despite us all yelling the correct answer at her, she died). At this point we thought we had it but the 1 minute bell sounded and the GM told us we would not have time to go around the table again so we were all dead. That didn’t sit well, the puzzle was cool, but it didn’t seem right to TPK the group due to lack of time to play the required sound effects. That said it was a GM call and the last room, we all still felt like we had solved it so I give this room a 7.5/10. Would have been higher but you know TPK.

XP: Not much to say here that hasn’t already been said it was a mess, that said I want to give a special shout out to the people who were running XP this year. You faced a unique set of circumstances and technical challenges and you did great. I shudder to think what would have happened if you guys hadn’t been there, so once again despite any complaining you hear you guys ROCKED IT.

Treasure: What can you say here other then THANK YOU to whoever donated their recipe to make treasure legendary this year. I accept what was done in the spirit it was intended and personally I’m grateful but I know others who feel like their investments may have been thrown under the bus a little so my only comment would be if there is ever another irregular treasure situation again please try to have some signage explaining the situation. Treaure cat 10/10.

Golem bane: I loved the techno walls, hope we get to see those backdrops again.

Power cells: I loved the first room, again it was one of those puzzles that was easy to figure out in principle but got everyone involved and put the work into the actual solving. This was a great team building exercise to start the dungeon. The only thing I would have done at all differently would have been a prompt of some kind to press the button (not that you really need a prompt to get someone to push the shiny candy like red button) 9.5/10 for this room.
The Genie: This was another great combat room with a puzzle twist and the actresses playing the genies on Friday and Saturday night both stole the show 10/10 for this room.

Pillar Mechanic Robot (puzzle): This was neat, and I bet the guy in the mask was dying but he did a great job. The micro combat was an unexpected but fun thing to find on puzzle side and it did a good job of eating up just enough time to make the relatively simple piller/elemental type puzzle that followed seem challenging with the time remaining. That said I could see this room having caused greef if people didn’t remember the powercell symbols for the first room. Still 7/10 it looked great and was a lot of fun.
Furnace monster (combat): Typical combat room, “cool” monster it was nice to have a room that was just a simple combat as a bit of a breather. 6/10

The gears: This was another great puzzle that quickly involved everyone and put more focus on finding the solution then discovering the method. I hope we see more puzzles like these. I didn't get a chance to ask since we solved it before it became an issue but I wonder if irrodencet spindle would have worked to counter the poison gas. In either case 9/10 for this room, cool puzzle, cool props, great ambiance.

Memory squares (puzzle): This room was great, we broke the board into rows and had people memorize their sections. Which were directly opposite to the row order in which the questions were asked. A simple puzzle but another great team building exercise, I also enjoyed how it built on the elemental symbols used in previous rooms and how puzzle damage was handled on a per question basis. 8/10

Force field statue: I didn’t even know there was anything special about this combat until the GM told me our pali had knocked out the force field on his fist slide. That said it was cool and the statue looked great. I really enjoyed the weapons sticking gimic (everyone had 3 weapons at the backup and it was great to have over planning pay off for once XD) 8/10

Cogwind: Another great monster, I thought this guy was the last room for the dungeon and I had lost count. In any case he looked great and the GM ran him well, he managed to drag out combat a lot longer then I think it really had to go by daring us to hit the little gnome (which we missed several times before finally just dpsing down the golem).
The Switch puzzle, I took issue with this room. It was a great ending for puzzle and made sense from a story line perspective but a lot of my friends (myself included) were a little disappointed to see our combat run end with a puzzle rather then a pitched epic battle. As we walked into the room we here half expecting the golem to come smashing back through the window or something. The puzzle itself was fair (though waiting for the green lights ate up a lot of time) and I didn’t really like being told there was a secret clue that most people were incapable of finding (the implication seemed to be it was in the ebook but I could be wrong on that one). All in all the room looked great, I loved the window effect and the puzzle itself, there was much cheering when we cracked it but again in the future if at all possible please try not to end a combat run with a puzzle (especially not one tied to a treasure stamp). For puzzle I give this room an 11/10 (the glados voice was amazing) for combat I give it a 5/10.
Ducks, I loved all the cool duck action this year. A friend asked on the way up what was with the weird duck tokens and I warned him to never touch a duck in a dungeon. He didn’t get it, he grabbed a decoy someone had left behind and spent some time quacking. On the way out I was going to say I told you so but he beat me to it and told me to “shut up, quack”. I love that this was a player driven thing side ways supported by the TPTB, most of my friends saved their ducks to bring back next year, IMO this is the kind of thing that makes TD special.

Grind: Loved it, the GMs were amazing, and two rooms/splitting the party was clever and unexpected, I hope you guys have the resources to do multi room grinds again in the future.

Closing thought: Over all I really enjoyed this year despite some logistical hiccups. I want to thank everyone who put their time and effort into making TD memorable again this year. There are still some issues that need to be address (lighting and lack of outside signage being amongst the biggest in my mind) but over all it was a great show and I know I’ll be back with an even bigger group next year. So in closing thanks again to everyone involved you really deserve it =)

Over all fun rating this year 8/10