TOPIC: Sealed Adventure Feedback

I ran with my group on one of the Friday night sealed runs. First off, it was awesome! We didn't start playing TD until 2015, so the adventure was entirely new to us. We would all love for the older adventures to pop up as sealed events just to experience the adventures we skipped at Gen Con past.

We had 4 kids in the group (I'm guessing from 8 to 12 years old) in the group, and 6 total people who had never run true dungeon before - it was fun to see everyone enjoy a first TD run! We managed to solve all the puzzles, which I wasn't sure we would be able to do.

The only downer was that we had to run 2 characters nearly naked through the event, as we picked up a large number of GP items in the sealed packs.

Some feedback / suggestions are:

1) Create a redemption mechanism so we get the booster packs in the room. For example, when you sign into the event, you get a token / paper voucher that says "good for 1 sealed pack for Vipers Pit". You exchange that for your pack - that removes any temptation for people to "cheat" the system and sneak in different tokens.

2) Either use sealed specific packs for sealed events that don't have GP items (better chance of no one having to run without gear), or use the redemption mechanism from suggestion 1 to allow 1 or 2 extra packs per person in the sealed.

3) allow a difficulty higher than normal, if suggestion 2 could be implemented in a reasonable way. In the run we did, we wouldn't have gone with a higher difficulty with so many new people, but we did talk among ourselves and thought it would be fun if we could get a full run of 10 people together to buy a 30 pack of tokens and try a hardcore run.

Endgame wrote:
2) Either use sealed specific packs for sealed events that don't have GP items (better chance of no one having to run without gear), or use the redemption mechanism from suggestion 1 to allow 1 or 2 extra packs per person in the sealed.

You probably didn’t realize it, but you weren’t as naked as you thought. The party cards have minimum numbers on them so that unlucky players are deemed to have some armor and whatnot. Any tokens you pull will override those numbers.

3) allow a difficulty higher than normal, if suggestion 2 could be implemented in a reasonable way. In the run we did, we wouldn't have gone with a higher difficulty with so many new people, but we did talk among ourselves and thought it would be fun if we could get a full run of 10 people together to buy a 30 pack of tokens and try a hardcore run.

Viper was specifically designed as an introductory adventure for newbies, so was made to be as unattractive to veterans as possible. “Sealed deck” was there to keep Treasure Enhancing tokens out, and prevent vets from overwhelming the new players with overpowered equipment. Otherwise, the vets would have soaked up all the cheap tickets and there’d have been very few left for folks like you and your family. And encouraging anyone to run it multiple times would limit the number of new people who could try it at a discount.

The good news is you can certainly implement your plan in one of the other dungeons. Obviously it won’t be as cheap...

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Endgame wrote:
2) Either use sealed specific packs for sealed events that don't have GP items (better chance of no one having to run without gear), or use the redemption mechanism from suggestion 1 to allow 1 or 2 extra packs per person in the sealed.

You probably didn’t realize it, but you weren’t as naked as you thought. The party cards have minimum numbers on them so that unlucky players are deemed to have some armor and whatnot. Any tokens you pull will override those numbers.

Ahh, no, we had no idea. We made sure we outfitted the kids with gear first, and then just thought we were running a few characters naked. Any chance of providing a character mat that lists the baseline gear or some common tokens or other visual notification on the character sheets in the prep room to represent the baseline gear?

Brad Mortensen wrote:

3) allow a difficulty higher than normal, if suggestion 2 could be implemented in a reasonable way. In the run we did, we wouldn't have gone with a higher difficulty with so many new people, but we did talk among ourselves and thought it would be fun if we could get a full run of 10 people together to buy a 30 pack of tokens and try a hardcore run.

Viper was specifically designed as an introductory adventure for newbies, so was made to be as unattractive to veterans as possible. “Sealed deck” was there to keep Treasure Enhancing tokens out, and prevent vets from overwhelming the new players with overpowered equipment. Otherwise, the vets would have soaked up all the cheap tickets and there’d have been very few left for folks like you and your family. And encouraging anyone to run it multiple times would limit the number of new people who could try it at a discount.

The good news is you can certainly implement your plan in one of the other dungeons. Obviously it won’t be as cheap...

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Excellent point! I didn't think about actually running one of the other adventures as sealed. It would be a fantastic way to do something like N2 and N3 at Gamehole con - since we've done it once, why not try it the second time as a sealed event?

Endgame wrote:

Excellent point! I didn't think about actually running one of the other adventures as sealed. It would be a fantastic way to do something like N2 and N3 at Gamehole con - since we've done it once, why not try it the second time as a sealed event?

Sealed runs are things folks do for fun when rerunning the dungeon. or Dagger runs or only rare and lower or uncommon and lower. or with only 7 tokens or with 5 people. there are a lot of different themed runs that have came out over the years to get more enjoyment when playing a second, third fourth or time the same dungeon.

Endgame wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Endgame wrote:
2) Either use sealed specific packs for sealed events that don't have GP items (better chance of no one having to run without gear), or use the redemption mechanism from suggestion 1 to allow 1 or 2 extra packs per person in the sealed.

You probably didn’t realize it, but you weren’t as naked as you thought. The party cards have minimum numbers on them so that unlucky players are deemed to have some armor and whatnot. Any tokens you pull will override those numbers.

Ahh, no, we had no idea. We made sure we outfitted the kids with gear first, and then just thought we were running a few characters naked. Any chance of providing a character mat that lists the baseline gear or some common tokens or other visual notification on the character sheets in the prep room to represent the baseline?

Yes! If you look in the grey AC boxes on the party card, there are two black numbers in the top left. That’s the base AC. The smaller is for Level 4 characters, and the higher is for Level 5 who have a little more DEX.

But, on the lower right is a darker-grey number. It’s easy to miss, but it’s the minimum AC for 4th Level. For example, Paladins have a base AC of 11, and a minimum AC of 14.

You can see the entire party card in the Coaches Guide under “Resources” on this website.

Our group found ItVN much less appealing than N1-N3. Of course, the production levels aren't intended to be the same, but the biggest problem was the room that removed four adventurers for only two to be recovered.

Having been through a similar experience a long, long time ago, not only was I not threatened to the level of the rest of the group but I also see it as the nature of the challenge. But, I also understand how unappealing it is to have nothing to do for two more rooms because of something difficult to deal with and difficult to recover from. I was wondering if perhaps an illusory version of the challenge was going on since it did have to do with a goddess known for deceit, but alas.

Having 2018 tokens used for a 2014 dungeon could be sort of interesting in some cases, but it really didn't seem like a good fit in key ways. I wonder if a similar dungeon should just include some basic gear that can be doled out in the coach's room that would be relevant to the dungeon, by which I mean gear tokens (e.g. chalk).

I enjoyed it far more than the rest of my group, but, then, it was an ultrarare opportunity to play druid again and it was amusing to have one more spell to cast going into room 7 ... Resistance.

The idea of (partially or completely) fixed equipment with a sealed pack payoff at the end sounds like something to consider for intro adventures.

Re the gold I your starter packs. I recall one year in the past where there was a roaming npc's selling rumors for gp in the training rooms, maybe something like that could be arranged for future sales runs with an npc's gear merchant, just a thought.

a NPC gear merchant would have been awesome, and I think new players would appreciate the gear more than the gold.

I pulled the party card and looked at it - it seems that each class is essentially outfitted with a basic piece of armor or two. Would it be possible to write that on the player card after the description of the class, as it would have cleared things up for pretty much everyone in the room?

For example:

Cleric description
Heal...
Buff...
Stuff...
Things...

Starting Equipment:
Cleric Half Plate +2 ac
Cleric Shield +1 ac
Mace 1 to 6 damage (token redeemable from coach assistant)

Is it too much to ask to provide a basic / common weapon? All of the common hammers in the packs pretty much made sure everyone had something they could use, but I'm not sure it works out that well every year for common weapons...

Ian Lee wrote: Our group found ItVN much less appealing than N1-N3. Of course, the production levels aren't intended to be the same, but the biggest problem was the room that removed four adventurers for only two to be recovered.

Having been through a similar experience a long, long time ago, not only was I not threatened to the level of the rest of the group but I also see it as the nature of the challenge. But, I also understand how unappealing it is to have nothing to do for two more rooms because of something difficult to deal with and difficult to recover from. I was wondering if perhaps an illusory version of the challenge was going on since it did have to do with a goddess known for deceit, but alas.

Having 2018 tokens used for a 2014 dungeon could be sort of interesting in some cases, but it really didn't seem like a good fit in key ways. I wonder if a similar dungeon should just include some basic gear that can be doled out in the coach's room that would be relevant to the dungeon, by which I mean gear tokens (e.g. chalk).

I enjoyed it far more than the rest of my group, but, then, it was an ultrarare opportunity to play druid again and it was amusing to have one more spell to cast going into room 7 ... Resistance.

The idea of (partially or completely) fixed equipment with a sealed pack payoff at the end sounds like something to consider for intro adventures.

What room removed 4 adventurers? I can only think of one, and we found a mirror right away and only temporarily lost one party member.

Endgame wrote: Is it too much to ask to provide a basic / common weapon?

Not at all. In fact, coaches have a pile of common weapons to hand out to players who are unlucky enough to not have any in their starter packs.

If your coach didn’t offer you any, then it was either an oversight, or you had a new coach who didn’t know better.

Endgame wrote: What room removed 4 adventurers? I can only think of one, and we found a mirror right away and only temporarily lost one party member.

I imagine it was room 5 (medusa). We had 2 turned to stone, but could only bring back one, so I'm guessing you could bring back 1/2 of those stoned?

Ian Lee wrote: Having 2018 tokens used for a 2014 dungeon could be sort of interesting in some cases, but it really didn't seem like a good fit in key ways. I wonder if a similar dungeon should just include some basic gear that can be doled out in the coach's room that would be relevant to the dungeon, by which I mean gear tokens (e.g. chalk).

...

The idea of (partially or completely) fixed equipment with a sealed pack payoff at the end sounds like something to consider for intro adventures.

As a combat DM from Viper this year, I would just add to this that the room description had special notes on several types of equipment, none of which were (as far as I can tell) even possibilities in the 2018 packs.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Endgame wrote: Is it too much to ask to provide a basic / common weapon?

Not at all. In fact, coaches have a pile of common weapons to hand out to players who are unlucky enough to not have any in their starter packs.

If your coach didn’t offer you any, then it was either an oversight, or you had a new coach who didn’t know better.

They certainly did when they ran the demo at PAX South 2017 (they also allowed anyone to use any weapon).

For Viper, players were allowed to use throwing hammers as melee weapons. but I did still have a few players with no weapons at all. (A small minority, maybe 1 player per 4 teams, and usually a wizard/bard with better things to do with their rounds anyway, but still.)