TOPIC: Reviews and feedback

So I really enjoyed the dungeons overall this year, and had fun with most of the rooms. My wife and I did 13 TD runs this year (Yes we cut back from last year) and we were witness to quite a bit of postive things as well as a few negative.

Viper (Combat/Puzzle)
- Room 1 - We enjoyed the puzzle but like quite a few the split push damage was timed every 3 minutes so we felt that if they want to do this they split it at the 6 min mark, and then 3 and 1.5 if they want to do push damage that way. We ended up the first time taking 12 points of damage in nightmare by solving it in 9-10 minutes. After that we told people that it was timed and we needed to solve it fast and explained that the pillars could rotate, or first started by rotating a pillar. We also "solved" it once when 8 players had done it, by bowing and pushing the snake symbol in secret and let the others players solve it in their own time so we didn't just take the auto time damage.

- Room 2 - Standard room, made us think their was a trap...

- Room 3 - Egg Room - Was not solved on the first nightmare because the gold paint on the egg didn't show up with the yellow lights, the next run we found they had repainted the egg to make the "Golden Door". The eggs could be touchy, but all was good, easy to figure out to spiral out to the left (sinister being the key word), but without a golden egg marked where we could see it, it was a guessing game.

- Room 4 - Combat - Very nicely done with the portal/scarcoughus as we figured it out round 2 and then after one melee we used range.

- Room 4 - Puzzle - Didn't get it, first time we went in there was no clue, just 2 ropes. Second time we got the blue lights and spelled out SPE before time ran out, figured it was SPEACH not SPEAR. Never did the room again (only 2 puzzle runs)

- Room 5 - Everyone loved the sand but certain DM's were very picky on the amount of blood, and how closely the symbols matched. This was very annoying, as we finished once with 3-4 minutes but once at the buzzer during some technical difficulties.

- Room 6 - Medusa room was great! The NPC loved to taunt us and touch our shoulder and even took her scarf and rubbed is against my neck until I told her, "Not going to work honey, my wife is here", she asked who my wife was and without missing a beat my wife said, "The one that just hit you in the face with her sword!". Was really good times except when we went with a family with 2 little girls. Stoned the whole family and we scrimped 4 tokens to get them restored but if we had not brought them it would have been a real downer for the family.

- Room 7 - Great room, staff damage might have been a bit high, very inconsistant with Ioun Stones, and drow could backstab someone if they saw them coming. No way to prevent seems cheap to me, including using dust of apperance in the room. Mr Wiggles was great, and we beat him down!


Zephyr

- Room 1 - time on the puzzle should be looked at for the damage because we all had seen the room once and were 5 seconds from solving it before we took damage.

- Room 2 - inconsistant, we had a nightmare run that needed only 2 parts, then our next hardcore needed 3. We were able to do nightmare runs after this and get all three parts but only because we helped a bit (didn't give out answer but told them what we needed to do as far as piping).

- Room 3 - Easy combat

- Room 4 - took one round of misses to figure out the forcefield and then was easy combat.

- Room 4 - Puzzle - The puzzle was easy to figure out but didn't know what the shapes did, until we got a DM's explaination.

- Room 5 - Combat - Finally figuring out it was taking 1/2 damage from anything but blunt was a bit annoying but we changed weapons and worked through it.

- Room 5 - Ball light - worst puzzle of this year, please take that out and blow up that mess. We failed it once because the DM didn't know the solution and couldn't prove that our last outter light was working. Next run of it it was "Dim" and we solved it. Brute force method sucks.

- Room 6 - Pipes - Once we dedicated myself to directing and my wife to counting we were able to beat this 3 out of the 4 times we tried it. It was something you needed to assign people sides, and then number the hoses so you could back out inproper solutions. There was one solution that you ran out of hoses before you could finish it so we made sure to connect one hose to the exit first then work through the combinations.

- Room 7 - We ran into very inconsitantcy in this room, and found out there was some tinkering with HP of the wyverns during the CON. It started out way to easy and so the Wyvern were bumped to 500hp which we did defeat once, but the other time we ran out of time. By the end of the CON it was set at 200-250 and we breezed through it in two rounds on nightmare.


Overall was a great year, the inconsistance and no way for new players to deal with being stone were the 2 CON's of this Con.

Alvis wrote: Although we beat the shielded monster, we nearly failed from the group in front of us being allowed to go over by 4 minutes.

what, What, WHAAAAT!?!
That's awful! I'm really sorry that happened to you. Can you provide any specific information about your run? Day, time, and whether puzzle or combat would be helpful. Feel free to PM me if you prefer. I can pass it on to the appropriate parties.

Druegar wrote:

Alvis wrote: Although we beat the shielded monster, we nearly failed from the group in front of us being allowed to go over by 4 minutes.

what, What, WHAAAAT!?!
That's awful! I'm really sorry that happened to you. Can you provide any specific information about your run? Day, time, and whether puzzle or combat would be helpful. Feel free to PM me if you prefer. I can pass it on to the appropriate parties.

PM sent.

Thoughts/concerns:

1) I didn't understand the use of the yellow/orange lights this year. One of the major complaints from past years has been poor lighting in True Dungeon (mostly in the common areas and coaching/training rooms). This only exacerbated that issue. Plus, the orangish light really washed out certain details in the dungeon. I know that personally, the old-style rogue boxes were considerably harder because they are black and copper in hue, and the yellow-orangish light made the stylus (also copper-tipped) blend in with the rogue box, making it hard to see where it was in relation to the sides of the groove.

2) Push damage over time is fine, but it needs to be made clear by the DM that it's the result of taking too long, not that you did something wrong. Our group got confused on at least one occasion in "Into the Vipers Pit (puzzle)" thinking that we'd done something wrong in a puzzle and been punished for it, which made us waste time trying to figure out an issue that didn't exist.

3) There were only two Rogue boxes in "Into the Vipers Pit (puzzle)". Aren't there usually three?



Praise/shout outs:

1) Shout out to Raven for running the Rogue's Challenge again. Thanks for bringing the atmosphere! I was present for someone nabbing an UR!

2) DMs seemed generally well-trained and friendly this year. This isn't usually an issue, but it's worth praise each and every year.

3) The token pull room was infinitely better this year. Great job on that.

4) The puzzles were fun, and none that I did came off as frustrating.

5) The Medusa was well-placed in "Into the Vipers Pit." She had sufficiently low HP that it was unlikely the entire party would get petrified. And it was the 2nd to last room, so those that got petrified didn't spend a ton of time on the sidelines. Plus, it presented an interesting choice for groups who only had one or two people memorizing the wall plates needed to solve the last room; do they abstain from combat with the Medusa to preserve their knowledge, or risk petrification?

True Dungeon needs that threat of failure to be exciting. Things like death and petrification happen, but should be balanced against maintaining a fun run for everyone. I think that was executed exceedingly well this year (and I say that having finished "Into the Vipers Pit" as the handsomest statue that ever existed).



Suggestions:

1) DMs should be given some "filler" fluff to fill the time for puzzles or combats that end early. Some of the rooms this year seemed a little sparse. With the addition of a little more environment, the DMs can encourage exploration of the room after the puzzle/combat is over, adding an air of mystery....even if there's nothing to find!

Furthermore, in dungeons that have ongoing clues that are obviously going to be needed later in the dungeon (such as "Into the Vipers Pit (puzzle)", why not hide a few of them? Make a search of the room a requirement, but don't make success in the final room dependent on finding the hidden clues, just easier. Maybe finding the hidden clues will yield slightly less trial-and-error, and thus less damage taken.

Either way, as one-round kills in combat become more and more of a reality, it would be nice to have something to do with he remaining 10 minutes in a room.

2) Give the party card to the party when they arrive in the coaching room. We can fill out a lot of our own info before the coach arrives; all the coach needs to do is verify it.

3) Make subclass cards available at the sign-in table. Having to go to Volunteer HQ (which is outside of the dungeon area) feels a bit awkward, and I had an issue where there was no one at the desk to redeem my RoSP usage for almost 10 minutes. That's a long time to wait for runs that start every 12 minutes.

Alvis wrote: On the whole I thought TD was great this year. I did two normal runs, both combat.

Zephyr:
Although we were combat, there were a lot of (in my opinion difficult) puzzles. Some were for treasure, which was frustrating. We managed to not get a single one in time, although we were on the right track. We were very close in room 1 (the light table with "power cells"), but the so-called clue in the rogue's box threw us severely off track. [Something about each block that connects directly to a cell must have a straight line down the middle, which didn't exist.]

I also am curious to see the solution to the puzzle part of the last room. Our DMs couldn't even get the gauges to turn green.

Although we beat the shielded monster, we nearly failed from the group in front of us being allowed to go over by 4 minutes. 1/3 of our time was gone...hard mode!

Viper:
This was one of the best adventures we've done. Great puzzles, great effects, great animatronics. Bad time to forget a scroll of Chain Lightning.

My only complaint with Viper was the epilogue staff. The lady doing the tokens insisted that the HoP gives you a grand total of 6 pulls (for three stamps). "But 3 times 3 is 9". "No, six".
"Three pulls per one... three + three + three...". "Six", she insisted, "I have a flow chart".
We shrugged and went with it.

This is the actual room 1 Zephyr puzzle clue:

“The first tile coming off of a fuel cell has a single line down its middle.”

It does not say that the line goes all the way across the tile - even if you interpret it that way, you can see very quickly that there are no tiles like that, so you can focus on the tiles with a single line in its middle that could connect to a fuel cell. I watched many groups in that room, and I didn't see any parties have a problem with the clue. I'm sorry it caused some confusion.

Nimble wrote: Thoughts/concerns:


2) Push damage over time is fine, but it needs to be made clear by the DM that it's the result of taking too long, not that you did something wrong. Our group got confused on at least one occasion in "Into the Vipers Pit (puzzle)" thinking that we'd done something wrong in a puzzle and been punished for it, which made us waste time trying to figure out an issue that didn't exist.

Good point. If that is the situation again, I'll try to make sure DMs pass that along (time damage vs fail damage).

Nimble wrote:

Angela Melzak wrote:

Nimble wrote: Our genius group decided that the Rogue Assassin (yay RoSP) was the closest thing we had to an evil character, so I got the honor of bowing before the "Obviously Going To Bite Your Face Off" snake statues.

What was the answer to that room, we tried a Rogue as well.

The answer was "put the person with the highest HP on their knees." Because someone's getting bitten.

I (as the paladin) got thrown to the snake to see what would happen if we *really* didn't follow directions.

The result? Stupid Rock Viper clanged off my nice shiny 32 AC and left a scuff mark...

bpsymington wrote:
I watched many groups in that room, and I didn't see any parties have a problem with the clue.

Well, CJ Heintz said the same thing as me just a page or two earlier and you said the same to him. So I know I'm not alone!

It was apparent to our group that it was time damage.

jedibcg wrote: My last group pretty much refused to bow to the snakes. Instead the druid cast detect poison. Then he cast Neutralize Poison, that was enough for the DM to start combat and no one got bit.

That's a brilliant idea!

Raven wrote:

jedibcg wrote: My last group pretty much refused to bow to the snakes. Instead the druid cast detect poison. Then he cast Neutralize Poison, that was enough for the DM to start combat and no one got bit.

That's a brilliant idea!

Our druid cast neutralize poison on the construct after it hit one of us for 5 physical and 5 poison. Thus halfing the damage it could do, but it died that next round.

I also wanted to give major props to the collector who returned some Boots of the Marauder tokens once they had run out. Made my day to be able to transmute those. I'm still excited about them.