TOPIC: VTD 2B Post Event Thoughts

As I didn't see another thread for post event thoughts.

HD seemed to work fine. Thought body was pretty easy to see. Hallway looked good until it became repetitive, but, at that point, I just looked at my character data or whatever. Speaking of aesthetics, on one run, there was an overhead shot of R-1 that maybe looked very artificial and didn't seem to be intended, but I liked the bright look more as it had better contrast. Then, if you time it right, you can go from that shot to a dark shot when the combat begins to emphasize something is happening that is more dramatic. In general, I prefer bright in rooms to dark as bright pops so much better.

The decision tree on rooms I thought worked well. Sure, you could short yourself a rare, but having the decisions at the end made adjusting to how the party was faring easier. I liked the R-7 rooms better than the R-6 rooms.

The more I thought about combat across the entire dungeon, the more I liked the variety of what was incentivized. The one thing I feel is arbitrary, though, is when weapon type matters. While it may be interesting to swap between commons to get a more suited weapon type, high end play doesn't lend itself to changing what weapon you use, thus arbitrary.

It didn't seem like puzzles got any harder on Epic Weird than Nightmare. I think R-7 could have easily been made harder in two ways. I'm not sure if R-4 was different on EW from NM in terms of optional effects as our group spent too much time trying to help the one person who hadn't done the room to go through all of the optionals, but I could imagine if there weren't differences that there easily could have been, like roll a d20 or making a save to see if you get a good or bad effect instead of knowing what sort of effect you would get; actually, if going to be Weird, could compare a d20 roll against Intelligence to see what happens.

Volunteerwise, everything went well. Our group was too distracted to understand the bonus volunteer's presence.

This was the best one yet. Every iteration of VTD seems to get more polished. I'm really grateful for everyone who was involved.

I liked all the little things that weren't necessary to advance but frowned the role play and immersiveness. Easter eggs are fun and reward multiple play through.

Special mention has to go to the harpy NPC. She was the highlight of the run for me.

HD was very hit or miss for me for my 5 runs across all 3 days, some runs it was great and others was so bad that i had to turn it off in order to see the AC bar.

RM 7 puzzle was a bit of a miss on day 1 due to lack of color discerning (i have a color blind member in my main group and this caused some issue.

Nice to see tangible improvements, the closed captions was very welcome for those of us with audio issues or who read better than they hear.

Requests:

Please an extra 10min or so b4 coaching and epilogue. Too many times in a pug over the course of VTD there's been hey who wants to borrow what (not everyone uses the forums/Discord) and after a run i truly look forward to post run critique and hanging out discussing/catching up with folks. I love TD but the folks i meet while playing is a big reason i keep spending the money that i do on tickets. This is very much a quality of life improvement request for me.

Please update the FAQ on how VTD mode works on both TDcharactercreator and the phone apps. Had to walk several friends through how to both find the zoom link (no more emails) and how to enable VTD mode on their devices. An updated FAQ with screen shots is warranted i believe.

Room # in the overlay, I got into the habit of reminding party members 'hey click next room'. This also could be served by updating FAQ. I kept looking at the '2' in the top right corner and forgetting that this is the dungeon # not room #.

For TDcharactercreator VTD mode under Damage, can we please have a NONE under type, i know i had some HP miscalculations over this as i had DR applying when it really shouldn't have, or is this coded into a specific room?

Katrina/Harpy did excellent as always. No real issues otherwise.

Lastly under the please please pretty please can we get some sort of True Grind? Really miss the full combat/grinder element and running an different build and seeing how to survive.

Looking forward to V3a/b.

My only real gripe was how room 5 was handled.

It's impossible to sleep in full plate armor, you have to remove it.
You would generally expect anyone wearing actual armor to remove it for sleep with the possible exception of the Monk and Wizard.

A person on watch who hears something approaching the camp and does not alert the party has failed as a person on watch.

I would greatly preferred to see room 5 give the current watch a single pre-initiative action, which should include alerting the party. And having players be given the choice of entering combat without their armor/shield for round 1 or to delay 1 or 2 rounds to "gear up"

Having half the party be removed from combat by the story is not a fun place to be.

Having a single in game token completely negate this (minotaur horn of alert removes the encounter delays) is not a good feeling if you don't own one.


I hope if a similar situation is created we are given a choice to play at a penalty or give up combat rounds to remove the penalty. It'd be more engaging and place the risk/reward choice in the player's hands.

I liked room 5.

You do have a point about the armor.

A cheap alternative to the Minotaur Horn is having three Scrolls of Instant Awakening, which instantly wake the caster when a monster enters the area. Bard, Cleric, and Druid can each use, so that's three shifts if you split those people. The scroll-woken person spends his/her action waking the rest of the party. Of course a minotaur horn works far better if you have one, but three scrolls cost just $1.50.

Over all we had a good experience. We ran both of the V2s twice and enjoyed it enough that I was watching for any returned tickets that would have fit in our availability for the this past weekend lol.

The harpy was probably our favorite combat. As always, it adds some flare to the dungeon when you can interact with the volunteers playing the monsters, and she was so vibrant and engaged that it made the computer generated monsters feel a little flat in comparison.

My one complaint on V2 is multiple times over the course of the runs we did we were shuffled directly out of the room upon completion (we ended up in that long torch lit tunnel for five minutes on one run...). I understand needing to move on, but there were multiple times where we finished something quickly and ended up in those looping transition scenes before we could even make the suggestion to explore the room. And I know we missed a LOT of little Easter eggs and hidden things. In V1 it didn't feel like we were getting shuffled out as fast, so we got to interact more with the volunteers and our golem, which made the experience so much more enjoyable.

At the end of the day though that is the only complaint I have. The puzzles felt like a good balance for a digital run, the combat was fun. We are looking forward to V3.

R1 Nothing to write home about. Combat. Semi-interesting mechanic of retribution damage based on how hard you hit them in melee on at least on of my runs. When we lost the golemn's feed the DM was able to put up a static image of the room which was a nice addition.
R2 I liked this puzzle over zoom. I think in person it would have needed something more. The rogue clue was bad, imo. When we played the first time through we literally combed the room for a bit looking behind every banner and in various corners.
R3 The live harpy was great on most runs, I don't understand the choice of fake legs versus her having costume legs but it didn't take away from her performance. There was 1 run I was the volume was a bit too loud making it hard to hear over the DM, but it was remedied quickly once we mentioned that we were having trouble hearing the DM over her. I have already mentioned before about how I don't care for the digital animations in the dungeon various times. I would have preferred cheesy analog things put in front of the golemn's camera, but that is just me.
R4 I fine puzzle room in digital and probably in physical as well. Can someone tell me if the rogue clue had something other that pointing out the commas on the bridge because that is all I could come up with.
R5 After finishing the combat I wish there was some time spent looking at the door, but most often we were put into transition. That is disappointing since time was spent on being the prop that we saw for all of 5 seconds. The yeti's animation was decent, but someone in a suit busting into the room would have been more entertaining than the loop.
R6 combat more animated monster. Nothing to write home about. It did look digitally cool, but was not impressive, imo.
R6 puzzle. This puzzle I feel was the worst over digital and not certain how it could have worked in physical. There just wasn't much for multiple people to do. Maybe physically everyone needed to remain connected to someone while holding the rods in place would have added an element of difficulty as people move around to place rods. I don't. My least favorite puzzle on 2V though.
R7 combat. Nice to have an NPC and real monster again. The addition of the harpy from R3 was a nice bonus to tie it together even if I didn't care for the animation. I could not convince any parties to just attack her though. I did throw fireballs at her at least 1 time.
R7 puzzle. I think the lighting could have been better in this room as it did make colors difficult to see at times. Perhaps we could have asked the golemn if a particular pedestal had a golden top, but we didn't think of that at the time. This would have been interesting as a physical puzzle though I don't know how you convey the information for a limited time. It worked over zoom. Odd how twice through groups I was on had no issue but one time it seemed like we just couldn't get the right clues together to start. I blame the group not the puzzle.

jedibcg banjo number 5 wrote: I have already mentioned before about how I don't care for the digital animations in the dungeon various times. I would have preferred cheesy analog things put in front of the golemn's camera, but that is just me.

I hadn't seen this comment on the fourms before, and it took me three VTD2 runs (and talking about it with other players) to understand how I felt about it.

My opinion is that TD isn't a Video Game Company, and the digital animations made VTD seem more like a video game.

To me, TD is an immersive real world adventure--not a video game.
With the Virtual version of VTD, I love the concept of looking through a golem's eyes at the adventure, and it's worked well.

I don't have any issues with the animated graphics (or looped video) in transitions between rooms.
However, I think it would show TD's strength to have an NPC in a suit or even just a mannequin in a suit.

jedibcg banjo number 5 wrote: R4 ICan someone tell me if the rogue clue had something other that pointing out the commas on the bridge because that is all I could come up with.

The clue had the words "point" and "piton" which are anagrams to help with drive that clue home.

Andy Strassmann wrote: A cheap alternative to the Minotaur Horn is having three Scrolls of Instant Awakening, which instantly wake the caster when a monster enters the area. Bard, Cleric, and Druid can each use, so that's three shifts if you split those people. The scroll-woken person spends his/her action waking the rest of the party. Of course a minotaur horn works far better if you have one, but three scrolls cost just $1.50.

I believe there is also a rare chainmail +5 torso armor that negates awaken from sleep penalties.

I think the issue with the room 7 plates could be easily resolved with a small plaque on each one indicating it's color.

I think a combination of the lighting and the camera used was making it very hard to discern color.


I'll second the dislike of animated creatures. In all cases I would have preferred a dude in a costume or a stand in statue over the animated clips.

The 3 harpies was cool and the actress did phenomenally. I honestly would have preferred her to have two harpy plush toys on her shoulders to indicate her sisters. Ham it up a bit.

Also that harpy screech is PAINFULLY LOUD if you are wearing a headset. It's pretty bad even through speakers.

jedibcg banjo number 5 wrote: R4 I fine puzzle room in digital and probably in physical as well. Can someone tell me if the rogue clue had something other that pointing out the commas on the bridge because that is all I could come up with.

The "EXCEPT SNAG A RAM" plaque was added after the first day; before that, the only clue you had about anagrams was the piton/point rogue clue.