TOPIC: True Grind Feedback

I never got the chance to do Grind at GenCon this year.

I figured I already destroyed Incognito's ego enough at WYC during the Epic Grind.

Ro-gan wrote: I never got the chance to do Grind at GenCon this year.

I figured I already destroyed Incognito's ego enough at WYC during the Epic Grind.

That just leaves more room for the id and superego....

There was a group that did Epic Grind at GenCon. They were less prepared than your WYC Grind party, but were able to win, mainly due to the timely use of a Wish Ring!!!

Snakeeyes0217 wrote: Really enjoyed the Lovecraft characters and I'm not just saying that because I make retro-style toys of them. Our party did reverse the brain swap. It took 3 or 4 tokens but I wasn't involved so I don't know which ones. This happened on Thursday night.

Yup, that was me that fixed it. I was about to use a single scroll on one of the players when raven hinted that that might leave me with a brain and body but no correct body and brain to put them with. Luckily Aaron had an item, which i could use in the same round as my scroll because of the AoW, to fix the brain swap for both players at the same time.

kurtreznor wrote:

Snakeeyes0217 wrote: Really enjoyed the Lovecraft characters and I'm not just saying that because I make retro-style toys of them. Our party did reverse the brain swap. It took 3 or 4 tokens but I wasn't involved so I don't know which ones. This happened on Thursday night.

Yup, that was me that fixed it. I was about to use a single scroll on one of the players when raven hinted that that might leave me with a brain and body but no correct body and brain to put them with. Luckily Aaron had an item, which i could use in the same round as my scroll because of the AoW, to fix the brain swap for both players at the same time.

Yeah, Raven was a lot more proactive in providing hints on how to solve those dilemmas than I was.

If asked, I would indicate that there was probably a way to cure that ailment, but I would leave it up to them to figure it out. In contrast, Raven would give some pretty strong hints on how to resolve that issue.

Incognito wrote:

Ro-gan wrote: I never got the chance to do Grind at GenCon this year.

I figured I already destroyed Incognito's ego enough at WYC during the Epic Grind.

That just leaves more room for the id and superego....

There was a group that did Epic Grind at GenCon. They were less prepared than your WYC Grind party, but were able to win, mainly due to the timely use of a Wish Ring!!!

I tell you, there will never be an Epic Grind... or any Grind... like that one at WYC. Everyone was in sync and you were on your game that evening. The fact all of us went out to celebrate afterwards is proof of that. That Epic Grind was something for the books.

Incognito wrote: Yeah, Raven was a lot more proactive in providing hints on how to solve those dilemmas than I was.

If asked, I would indicate that there was probably a way to cure that ailment, but I would leave it up to them to figure it out. In contrast, Raven would give some pretty strong hints on how to resolve that issue.

I don't think I outright *told* any groups how to solve certain difficulties they faced, but yeah - I know I did drop hints when parties were actively looking for solutions. Perhaps I was the "nice" DM compared to Eric


I was also (I am aware of this) the slower DM.
Several of my runs ended in TPK due to time-out, and I wish I could have been faster running that final combat.. or even the rooms before it, to get to the final room faster. A lot of you still would have died, but it's more satisfying (to me, at least) to have a solid death than wonder if you could have taken the monster out if only you'd had 2 or 3 more rounds.

Thank you very much to those groups who were patient with me as I was getting my feet under me for the first couple runs; for those who were understanding when I hunted for the right Boss Monster board (Eric gave me a list, but boards often got shuffled and weren't in the right places) ; and for those individuals who played on Eric's shift as well as my shift, and didn't complain, "Well, he ran it differently."

I'm hoping next year we'll get the Grind module out to the DMs & Assistant DMs a little sooner, have more time to run questions past Eric, and perhaps even do a dry run with our whole crew during volunteer training.

I've got a few other comments/feedback thoughts about Grind, but I'll post them after I've had a full night's sleep.

So - what were all the end bosses for grind?

I think based on the art they were Chtulu mythos gods, and I think I identified based on the pictures:

Ammutseba (cloud with stars)
Cthulhu (Human body with octopus head and wings)

Did anyone identify the other four? There was something on the whiteboard about Hastur.

Also - was the brain swapper Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg?

As with the others that have come before, I really enjoyed True Grind at GenCon. Great mix of monsters. Great job by the DMs. And, as always, it paid off to equip some lesser used tokens.

Really liked having the whiteboard hanging up, so we knew which room we were in, something that is often easy to lose track of.

Really really really really liked the space we got. I cannot emphasize that enough. Please try to keep that much space in the future, so we players can move around each other without tromping over each other.

Having the gate doors and the lava were really nice atmospheric touches as well.

Not a huge fan of the traitor mechanic, as one traitor could effectively negate a large part of the remaining party. Did find it amusing that we did more damage to the evil creatures when attacking the traitor though since they wanted to protect the traitor.

Loved getting dropped when the flying creature on the 3rd table died, and Kirk gleefully telling me that I was taking 560 falling damage, and then avoided thanks to psychic feather fall.

Incognito wrote:

A huge thank you to: Eric, Raven, Brad and Kirk! Excellent job!

And Shelly too! For the morning and afternoon runs, Brad and I ran the Grind on one hour centers while Shelly did the Player Coaching. (In the evening it was just Raven and Kirk but they were able to manage it with 1.5 hour centers).

Extreme embarrassment.

Shelly did an excellent job coaching! She knew the party card backwards and forwards.

Definitely had fun this year...and will always remember the brain swap on the Paladin that was protecting the Elf Wizard.

Ro-gan wrote:

Incognito wrote:

Ro-gan wrote: I never got the chance to do Grind at GenCon this year.

I figured I already destroyed Incognito's ego enough at WYC during the Epic Grind.

That just leaves more room for the id and superego....

There was a group that did Epic Grind at GenCon. They were less prepared than your WYC Grind party, but were able to win, mainly due to the timely use of a Wish Ring!!!

I tell you, there will never be an Epic Grind... or any Grind... like that one at WYC. Everyone was in sync and you were on your game that evening. The fact all of us went out to celebrate afterwards is proof of that. That Epic Grind was something for the books.

As Rogan said The WYC Epic Run was far better organized and will likely never be topped. Although One of my fallen friends, the Druid Sherriffus Bartusus Did slay two (2) elder gods [although Mongo does not count well]

Matthew Hayward wrote: So - what were all the end bosses for grind?

I think based on the art they were Chtulu mythos gods, and I think I identified based on the pictures:

Ammutseba (cloud with stars)
Cthulhu (Human body with octopus head and wings)

Did anyone identify the other four? There was something on the whiteboard about Hastur.

Azathoth
Cthulhu
Hastur
Nyarlathotep
Shub-Niggurath
Yig
Yog-Sothoth

Also - was the brain swapper Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg?

No, that was just a Mi-Go!