TOPIC: Thornbarb Pass appreciation

Thank you to everyone involved in putting on VTD2A! The hosts, coaches, DMs, NPCs, golems, epilogue, and app programmers were all wonderful. Thanks also to everyone who is/will be packing up and shipping our loot. I enjoyed V1 a lot, but am even more impressed by V2. I agree that V2 reflects improvements over V1. I’m looking forward to V2B and to the rest of the V series. Thanks again to all.

Agreed, I had a great time. I think in some places the difficulty may have been over-tuned a little, but it definitely feels like things are really getting dialed in and makes me excited about V3.

Since the CGI harpies were mentioned and kept forgetting to mention it, the one suggestion I would have would be to knock the volume back a little from where it was for them in future versions. I was using speakers set at a volume that was comfortable to hear everything else in the Zoom call and the harpy shrieks were uncomfortably loud. I actually took to hoving my finger over mute during that room so I could avoid the sound and I feel badly for anyone who wore headphones.

Overall though, I'm really enjoying the evolution of the virtual experience and heartened to still be running into brand-new players to the game-I know in-person is better for random newbies, but it's nice to see that there are still some being brought in. I hope that, whenever we return to being able to meet in-person, there is still the opportunity to do virtual runs throughout the year. As much as I love going to cons (and actually just started expanding what cons I attend, at least in part because of TD), it's a lot easier to pack a bunch of TD runs into a virtual weekend for me when I don't have to worry about travel, lodging and wonder what events and people I'm missing when I spend 75% of my waking hours dungeon crawling.

Shout-out to the golem from the 5:48 Sunday night run. Hands down the most fun run of the weekend with the golem going along with all our crazy shenanigans from chugging the booze straight from the tap, to finding random screwdriver for combat, to hopping on the room 7 npc shoulders...a very enjoyable run ♥️

Thank you to everyone involved in putting on VTD2a! Jeff, Lori, Mike Naglee, the coaches, DMs, NPCs, golems, epilogue, and the app programmers were all wonderful.

Thank you also to Druegar for all of his posts on tokens and clarifications ahead of time. (Jeff--Druegar will get some salsa too.)

Thank you to everyone who is packing and shipping the loot. also to everyone who is/will be packing up and shipping our loot.
The newest version of the app is great and much more realistic. It is much harder to roll a crit. I love having all of the consumables available and the stats easily visible.

I enjoyed VTD1a immensely, but was even more impressed by VTD2a. Everyone is getting better and better at their roles and VTD2a had many improvements over VTD1a.

Lastly a shout out to Mike Naglee for another great performance. (Jeff--Mike will get some salsa too.) I had a great time this weekend celebrating Jeff Spud Lunsford's birthday and playing TD. Great job everyone and I am looking forward to the rest of the VTD series.

As I'm not enthralled by splitting off similar threads, few thoughts on V2:

1. I vastly prefer V2 to V1 as a dungeon. The narrative made far more sense to me, though it wasn't until I heard the intro the second time that I caught a bunch of it. The puzzles weren't particularly better or worse to me, though my groups really liked the second puzzle room - I thought V1's puzzles were solid. The combats were more interesting.

2. Mechanically, the die-rolling system was much more interesting. The app add-ons make ti more engaging, especially being able to stay in VTD mode continuously. I don't know the stats behind the scenes, but the combat mechanics we could see were better, though there maybe should be more variation in damage type relevance.

3. Visuals. I don't have a problem with animation, especially when it's entertaining. Reminds me of the big screen in last year's dungeon with the animation. The first room, though, as my friend who works on models likes to point out, has the wrong perspective. V1 and V2 both had rooms where things that were supposed to be threatening were made to look small. Having the golem crawl around is probably not worth a $10 price hike, so maybe some elevation of props in the rooms. Variation in outdoor scenes helped.

4. I'd rather not have to speculate about multiple paths. While we are making some changes to try to make it easier to jump a later run if we like the dungeon more than expected, maybe we just plan ahead of time in the future for multiple runs of same weekend.

Thanks to everyone who is making this happen. The monthly cadence is pretty good during a time when I don't even get together in person with friends still.

V2 is a clear improvement to V1 in my mind and even just keeping to this standard makes more runs tempting.

Just want to agree with the above that this was a great refinement on the format introduced in V1! I also appreciated the weighted hit tables that made crits seem special again and the fights a bit more tense. Many more misses this time around.

One subtle thing that I saw and loved:

Thanks again for the great runs! Can't wait until November to explore the new room and paths I didn't take!

jedibcg Banjo 42 Lover wrote:

Picc wrote:
I'd like to see them integrated more. Cutting to or overlaying a monster is cool, but it would be cooler to see various background elements we could not achieve in real life green screened into the video. A bridge over a chasm for example could be a lot cooler if green screen were used to make the chasm look bottomless for example.

I understand that, but I disagree. If I want a cool looking video game those are out there. I have always been impressed with the physical creations of sets and monsters of TD. That has been part of the draw for me. To see the creations of Jeff and Co. I understand I might be alone in the desire to see let digital creations and accept if digital is the way things are going for the V series, I just have a preference for the the non-digital.

I do t disagree, I want to see the real stuff too, just tastefully embellished with special effects. I think something like a virtual chasm embedded in a real set with green screen would take me out of the adventure less then say the harpy overlay, or cut to yeti.

In terms of the how, I think it could even be accomplished with the zoom virtual background keyed to a specific color. Just seems like low hanging fruit is all.

Doesn't seem too expensive to record a couple people in costumes and loop for a multimonster room, especially as a background like, say, when you have three monsters. A loop would be much closer to physical feel.

Ian Lee wrote: Doesn't seem too expensive to record a couple people in costumes and loop for a multimonster room, especially as a background like, say, when you have three monsters. A loop would be much closer to physical feel.

I recall a monster (ghost?) presented as a loop projected onto a sheet, or something similar.

Arnold wrote:

Ian Lee wrote: Doesn't seem too expensive to record a couple people in costumes and loop for a multimonster room, especially as a background like, say, when you have three monsters. A loop would be much closer to physical feel.

I recall a monster (ghost?) presented as a loop projected onto a sheet, or something similar.

They did that in the "I want to summon my husband's ghost so we can insult him" room in Abyssal last year. I thought it worked well.

Also the snake monster thing.

Brandon wrote: Shout-out to the golem from the 5:48 Sunday night run. Hands down the most fun run of the weekend with the golem going along with all our crazy shenanigans from chugging the booze straight from the tap, to finding random screwdriver for combat, to hopping on the room 7 npc shoulders...a very enjoyable run ♥️

So you were part of the group that upset the room 7 npc!