TOPIC: Sealed Adventure Feedback

Brad Mortensen wrote: 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.

There's a third option. At the start of the con, we (Viper Pit coaches) were explicitly told NOT to hand out freebie weapons. That changed sometime Friday, and we started giving them out again.

Andrew Knoll wrote: At the start of the con, we (Viper Pit coaches) were explicitly told NOT to hand out freebie weapons. That changed sometime Friday, and we started giving them out again.

Part of the challenge with a sealed pack run is that you run the risk of not having ideal equipment. That said, once we became aware that running without a weapon was way too burdensome, we adapted.

Singsalot wrote: For Viper, players were allowed to use throwing hammers as melee weapons

That is always allowed, and is not specific to Viper. They are compound weapons and can be either melee, or thrown.

I only had 2 groups where I was short on weapons to get all the melee classes equipped. By then, as mentioned, the rule was changed and we were allowed to give commons. There were a few Rangers who were happy sliding a bow and didn't have any melee weapons. And many Wizards didn't either, but they usually had wands/scrolls as backups in case they ran out of spells.

Also Viper was made easier throughout the weekend. On Thursday there were very few survivors from what I heard.

Jeff321 wrote: They are compound weapons and can be either melee, or thrown.

Oh wow, dunno how I missed that.

So, should DMs ask players, or should the players mention, or should DM just go with best bonus, or default to melee?

Singsalot wrote:

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.)

On Thursday we were told sealed is sealed no gimmy weapons for viper, on Friday after the initial success rate was reportedly rather low we were allowed to offer gimmy weapons again. That said there truly wasn't much need, only a handful of parties actually needed more weapons. One or two groups saw the gimmies as a way to upgrade and requested things like 10 shortbows (which we didn't do) it those were rare.

If we do sealed again I kind of hope we print some custom packs that contain an entire parties worth of fixed gear set for the party, ie the room reset kit would include a bag of lights, 10 character cards, and a fixed bag of 12 always the same preset weapons. If that were the case we could even preprint the partycard and just let people spend longer in training.

As I recall, the original intent of making it “sealed” was to make it newbie-friendly and unattractive to veteran players.

No treasure enhancers (to prevent farming), no suitcases to intimidate new players, just a 10-pack to avoid overwhelming new players with too many choices, and just a single completion token to discourage collectors. There may have been other considerations, but those were the main ones I recall.

There was talk of prebuilt characters but it was deemed too simplistic, because it cut out the decision-making and swapping, and eliminated a core component of the experience. Random meant the group got to start to cooperate and work as a team in the coaching room.

Brad Mortensen wrote: As I recall, the original intent of making it “sealed” was to make it newbie-friendly...

Well I think it had the opposite of the intended effect. Go read the Gencon subreddit for the recent 1-2 TD threads. I know reddit loves to bash TD but I think most newbies played Viper Pit expecting a friendly run and got soul crushed. A lot of their criticism is valid, honestly.

I ran Viper with my wife Saturday night, I’m not sure how much it was tuned. We are experienced players (3 years) and I wanted to experience a sealed token run. We had one volunteer who was a veteran, and essentially 7 newbies. Right off the bat I was a little off put at 2 eldritch damage every couple minutes you didn’t solve a puzzle. Devastating for a tokenless run but the puzzles weren’t as hard. My party figured out not to stare at that one boss but not the slide trick. Half the party had to make saves. One noob turned to stone and was visibly upset the rest of the run that he had to sit out. Luckily we decided to focus the priest in room 7. 8 points of damage a turn to a failed save left many people at 2hp but somehow we beat them with only the one death. It was refreshing to use every spell on my party card. Us veterans decided to fill classes and let the rookies pick, they left all 5 spell casting memorization classes, so we did Druid/Cleric/Bard. Used every healing spell and needed all of it.

We had a lot of fun, but a couple of bad rolls ends the run. I can see these TPKs and no synergy with 2018 tokens put off a lot of newbies for TD, which is super unfortunate

Flik wrote: We had a lot of fun, but a couple of bad rolls ends the run. I can see these TPKs and no synergy with 2018 tokens put off a lot of newbies for TD, which is super unfortunate

I recall an announcement they were going to modify Viper to be compatible with the 2018 token set. That obviously fell through the cracks.

I did meet a family that was stoked. Two ran Viper, then the other three joined them on one of the Nx runs. They’re super excited and plan on trying to volunteer and play at Pax. So not everyone thought it was terrible.

But I can see why anyone who got waxed in room 5 with no way out or around it would feel cheated.

This was the first newbie dungeon since the first year in 2003, AFAIK. If they do another newbie dungeon next year, I’m sure they learned a lot this time. And maybe instead of normal, they run it on non-lethal in case something goes wrong so that no one sits out more than part of a room.

Jeff321 wrote:

Singsalot wrote: For Viper, players were allowed to use throwing hammers as melee weapons

Also Viper was made easier throughout the weekend. On Thursday there were very few survivors from what I heard.

I can attest to this. I was the DM in room 5. On thursday we had alot of deaths and almost 1 TPK. On Friday we were told to make it a little easier and after that never had more than one or two deaths in my room, per group.

Brad Mortensen wrote: So not everyone thought it was terrible.

Oh I didn’t mean to imply that. 9/10 players in our group had a great time. But I think new players expected it to be extra nice and I thought normal Viper Pit was way harder than normal N1-3. This caused some salty people voicing on the reddit. I hate reading that because this game is awesome.

Some people said they did N1 afterwards and that’s the only reason they will run TD again. I agree it’s a way better experience and I don’t think I’d recommend Viper Pit to any new players over N1-3.

We were told after defeating medusa that we were that particular's DM's only party that had suffered zero losses exiting the room. If that is true I wonder how few won the final combat. We were only playing with 9 because of a no show (I told you I get at least one every year). All nine were alive entering the final room, but only 3 or 4 of us survived and if they was one more round of combat I think even the fighters and barbarian would have died.

I am confused regarding players being totally removed due to petrification from the Medusa.

We were literally the 3rd run Thursday morning, so I'm assuming nothing had been changed yet. We had two players petrified. There are obviously no stone to flesh scrolls or anything in the 2018 set.

So, our DM roleplayed it (like good DMs do!). She encouraged us to search the room after the Medusa was defeated. Low and behold in the box in the corner we find some scrolls of stone to flesh!

I feel this should have been par for the course, and am surprised to hear that future DMs simply let players be permanently removed from the dungeon in such a fashion. That's very unfortunate. I would hope that in the future mechanics such as these would be adjusted or that DMs would be instructed accordingly.

We also wiped in spectacular fashion on the last boss when we took 10 AoE per round for two rounds. But even with a party of over half newbies we thought it was hilarious being so summarily destroyed.