TOPIC: NIghtmare Mandate - Beating an almost dead horse

I had this experience as well last year. We want to pick up an extra run close to GENCON and Sunday Nightmare Puzzle was sitting there with 8 tickets on it. So I grabbed 4 of them, knowing we were geared well enough (at least for Nightmare puzzle, I hoped). But I told my son at the time, I bet we end up with inexperienced players in this run. We were fine with running this on a lower difficulty, if that was the case.

Sure enough, we showed up and 2 guys were there. They weren't really equiped for nightmare, but definitely had the gear for Hardcore. They had also run multiple times on the weekend and were game for trying Nightmare even if they were undergeared.

Then the rest of the party show up, a really nice family, 2 had played before, 2 first timers. Not more than a token or 2 between them. When we explained this was suppose to be a Nightmare run, they seemed a bit confused by what that even meant. We all agreed to downgrade to Hardcore and shared some tokens with them. Then went and had a great time! We were fine with this as we considered this an extra run. But...

Lesson: Set your Nightmare runs on the forums.

Another thought - maybe no more Nightmare listings in the schedule, just Normal and Hardcore. People always have the option to adjust the level in the coaching room.

As much as I hate to admit it I just don't think public nightmare runs are really reliable. Were always going to have people who don't know any better wondering in if only because they don't know any better.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Another thought - maybe no more Nightmare listings in the schedule, just Normal and Hardcore.

The dedicated Nightmare slots were, IIRC, to allow solo players a chance to get the coveted Nightmare XP and Nightmare completion tokens, without needing to score a full slot on registration day, or be part of a forum-made Nightmare group.

Now that Hardcore mode gives both the Rare level completion token AND the Nightmare level XP, I suspect that most completionists would be fine with dedicated Hardcore slots instead of Nightmare.

when players get placed on waiting lists do they get told about nightmare runs?

Raven wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: Another thought - maybe no more Nightmare listings in the schedule, just Normal and Hardcore.

The dedicated Nightmare slots were, IIRC, to allow solo players a chance to get the coveted Nightmare XP and Nightmare completion tokens, without needing to score a full slot on registration day, or be part of a forum-made Nightmare group.

Now that Hardcore mode gives both the Rare level completion token AND the Nightmare level XP, I suspect that most completionists would be fine with dedicated Hardcore slots instead of Nightmare.

Based on what everyone seems to be saying in this thread and my own experience, I don't see how there is, in actuality, such a thing as a dedicated Nightmare run.

If randoms can walk in, say "I want to do Normal" and then the run becomes Normal, that means there is no such thing as a "Nightmare Run."

The fact is that the GenCon signup system allows anyone to pick up any tickets they want. To say that people should just buy all tickets in a time slot is ridiculous because you could create a Nightmare run anytime by doing that.

If the only way to play Nightmare is by arranging it on the forums, that's fine. But it should be understood that that IS the only way to make it happen. Because it seems like there isn't a good option otherwise at the moment.

Agreed, unless True Dungeon makes some change so that Nightmare slots are indeed guaranteed to be run on Nightmare mode, as designed.

To be clear, I believe TD enforces the "nightmare is nightmare" rule as it is. No change to the way TD operates is required on that score. The issue is one of practicality. In every case I know, the prepared players agreed to dial it back because they weren't able to outfit a bunch of random newbies and coach them through their first game at Nightmare. Sounds like those who tried pretty much died, as you'd expect.

So faced with certain doom, the veterans are gracious and agree to run on normal. If even one vet objected you'd have a NM party leaving a string of character corpses through the dungeon.

It seems like going with dedicated HC runs where the party can agree to ramp up , and where it's easier to help an unprepared newbie who wanders in, will create fewer disappointments than dedicated NM slots. Unless you can find a way to prevent NM tickets from getting into the hands of clueless innocents. Which I don't think you can without getting GenCon to be all fascist about ticket sales.

David Harris wrote: When we explained this was suppose to be a Nightmare run, they seemed a bit confused by what that even meant.

I've seen this several times. The majority of people just sign up for stuff.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Unless you can find a way to prevent NM tickets from getting into the hands of clueless innocents. Which I don't think you can without getting GenCon to be all fascist about ticket sales.

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to buy out groups ahead of time. Labeling them as Nightmare on the GenCon ticket site may not be a fool-proof method, but it does seem to reduce the buying frenzy for those runs, and thus may make it easier to buy out the run.

The problem there though becomes that those are the runs that are most likely to be left open towards the end so they are also the most likely runs to be picked up by people who are grabbing them as an after thought. And while its tempting to say you signed up for nightmare so that's what it'll be I don't think anyone wants to argue about difficulty in the coaching room or get newbies slaughtered their first time out. Even if you can gear out an entire group nightmare is a little of an unforgiving place to learn your character.

Catching up on some posts. I've had bad experience with nightmare runs two years in a row. I will no longer sign up for them. Over half the players were newbies each time and their excuse was that this was the only run with open slots. I didn't force the issue.

Buying up entire slots is not a viable option for me, since there are usually very few full slots open by the time I can get into the system and then there is no guarantee I can find 9 other friends at that specific time able to do the run.

Team Synergy is the absolute best option and without them I wouldn't have been able to participate in nightmare runs. So thank you again to those wonderful organizers.

I think organizing nightmare runs on the boards is probably the best option. They can continue to list dedicated nightmare runs in the schedule, but I'd be interested if they have any statistics on how many of those runs actually ended up being run as nightmare.

I think adding hardcore was an outstanding option and allowed me to finally convince my friends to do something more than normal. They loved it and I don't see us going back to normal,although I'm still not sure they'd do nightmare. Maybe some day. In the meantime, I am still hoping to rely on Team Synergy.

Agreed. Many of those last-minute slot-fillers are newbies.

I guess one could say "well, it says Nightmare, but that won't be definite until everyone who shows up agrees, so unless you buy out the whole run don't say we didn't warn you".