TOPIC: Reviews and feedback

I want to start off by saying how much I appreciated all of the hard work and effort it takes year in and year out to make True Dungeon a reality. Needless to say this was my first year and I was super excited about it. I signed up for the 9:24 am Sunday Zephyr Combat and the 12:27 Sunday Viper Puzzle with five of my friends and counted down the days until GenCon.

The introduction went well enough. I was with several experienced players and some other first timers and we were all eager to start. When we entered the training that's were things started to go south for me. The trainer mentioned that if you were allergic to latex to NOT touch the pipes because they were made of latex. I unfortunately am one of those people who are allergic and I was happy for the warning. Now I didn't think anything of it because I thought these "pipes" were just wall decorations/room garnishments and not pivotal to the story, boy was I wrong. We get past the first room by solving the circuit and enter the second room with you guessed it PIPES! I did what I could to help but for the most part I had to stand by watch my group try to solve the puzzle and passed the time by chatting with the female NPC we started the adventure with, who by the way was awesome in her character. Thankfully we were able to get past the room successfully. In my mind I am thinking "OK I couldn't help but at least we passed it and surely there won't be another pipe room". We got passed the next 3 combats with no issues and then came room 6. You guessed it another friggen PIPE puzzle.

This was incredibly frustrating for me since now I had to effectively sit out 2/7 rooms of my first TD experience. This time around I told the DM that I couldn't touch the pipes because of my latex allergy and he gave me a sorry about your luck response and told me "I could be the switch man". This time the lack of an extra set of hands cost us the room.

The last room was very cool for me because I was the rudder person and once I got the hang of it was successful at keeping the ship level.

In the epilogue room it didn't get much better because they had somehow run out of "I survived" pins. I was very confused by this because they should never ever run out of them. There should always be enough made to cover the theoretical max amount of possible tickets available. This should not be that difficult since there is always a finite amount of tickets. Now they tried to make it right by giving us an extra pull from the treasure box so that was nice.

In summary for my first ever TD run I did not get to participate in 2 of the 7 rooms and did not get the infamous "I survived" button.

Afterwards I was pretty upset and was put in touch with the Director who was there (his name escapes me) and he spoke to me about my concerns. We spoke for several minutes and I expressed my dissatisfaction but also my thanks in telling me about the latex pipes. If they hadn't I would have spent the rest of GenCon in an Indianapolis hospital. He concluded by telling me that he wanted to make it right and he "wanted to make sure I came back next year" so he gave me 1 ($8) bag of tokens. Now I am thinking if he really wanted me back next he should have given me some sort of voucher for next years con.

I was so pissed by this point for everything that happened and the director essentially blowing me off I sold my 12:27 ticket.

I would very much like to discuss this with Jeff Martin and if he reads this I encourage him to reach out to me.

Now I want to say a big thank you to the female NPC who we started the adventure with. She is the only reason I am considering coming back next year because her character was so cool. If anyone knows who she is please let me know so I can send her a personal thank you.

My understanding is that a batch of the survivor buttons was crushed in shipment. Unfortunate, but the staff compensated for it by giving an extra treasure pull. More than fair.

Based on my experience with the first pipe puzzle in Zephyr, there was not enough room for everyone to hold a pipe and a real need for someone to keep count of the elements.

The second pipe puzzle was more of a problem for you, I will concede. You could have monitored some of the ports for air flow, but the way we had to move the pipe quickly would have created a hazard for you. But someone did have to push the button. Or was it a switch?

I'm not a big puzzle person. I enjoy combat the most. I just prepare myself with potions of healing for the push damage I have come to expect. I was part of several awesome puzzle solving teams this year, so I enjoyed assisting with their brilliant direction.

Hey, I'm a dwarf fighter. Point me to a head to crack.

As for the buttons we heard the same thing. It sounds like it was a last minute problem.

Wish I had known. I had a few extra ones this year I'd have been happy to provide to a player who didn't get theirs, would assume other forumites feel the same.

galandros wrote: Negatives:
*Too many props were malfunctioning. I saw a column from Viper lifted off with no effort in the first room (someone thought we should move 4 of them to the four corners). A couple of the eggs stopped lighting up. The blood effect was not working. Not sure that I like trying to add more electronics to the dungeons when they are not working.

I agree that this is a problem that they could address better.

I did a Sunday run and by then, many of the props and room mechanics were not working any more (at least I got to see them on Saturday). While I understand things do break down, there should at least be contingencies, backups, or redundancies to ensure that people playing on Sunday get the full experience.

Another thing I encountered was a situation where it wasn't that the gizmos (the circular ball thingy) was not working. But that the DM either didn't know how to operate it or refused to have anything to do with an iPad. If a DM does not have the technical capabilities to handle a given room, they should be reassigned to a more appropriate room.

*Consistency. Did not enjoy failing a puzzle that I had solved earlier. Did not enjoy toxic gas failing to work when it worked earlier. These types of things should be more carefully worked out up front so that the design is tight and ready for Con weekend.

It sounds like you did the adventure first on Normal level (and your solution worked) and then on Hardcore (where it didn't). You do know that higher difficulty levels sometimes require more specific solutions right? And so the "answer" on an easier difficulty may not often work on a harder difficulty?

Incognito wrote:

galandros wrote:

*Consistency. Did not enjoy failing a puzzle that I had solved earlier. Did not enjoy toxic gas failing to work when it worked earlier. These types of things should be more carefully worked out up front so that the design is tight and ready for Con weekend.

It sounds like you did the adventure first on Normal level (and your solution worked) and then on Hardcore (where it didn't). You do know that higher difficulty levels sometimes require more specific solutions right? And so the "answer" on an easier difficulty may not often work on a harder difficulty?

For that puzzle I heard there was only one correct solution based on the clue (a left handed spiral starting at the middle and ending at the golden keyhole), but that other solutions were accepted on normal and non-lethal so long as they reached the correct end state.

FatalDrakkon wrote: All in all, I had a good time but I thought I would share that experience with you guys. I am still going to come back next year, I'm still going to keep running dungeons as often as I can but sometimes, you just have a bad experience and you want to share it. I don't want people to lose their jobs, I don't want people to feel like they need to apologise. I just want DM's to remember that at the end of the day, True Dungeon should be about the positive experience for the players. Without the players it would just be a bunch of people hanging out in a haunted house. Everybody likes good feedback but everybody remembers the bad feedback. It's just the way customer service works. I always do my best to make my players feel welcome and that they enjoy my room. Just some food for thought.

Kudos for the positive attitude.

My very first TD experience (back in 2006) wasn't so great either. We faced the Fireballing Dryder and unfortunately the Cleric in my party would only heal his friends.

Fortunately, I did not let that negative experience stop me from continuing to play and I am very glad that it did not!

Brad Mortensen wrote: The new XP system is great. Those who don't care can wander off, those who do can enter their own whenever they have time.

Eh, the system still has its issues. It is entirely on the "honor" system which makes Nightmare XP readily accessible to anyone who wants to claim it. So someone who went on Non-Lethal gets the same code and can still claim to have Nightmare XP. To me, that cheapens the entire point of XP.

Putting the store into the inn lobby was a good way to save space. It should stay, but it needs better signage. A lot of people assumed there was no store this year. If Shelly hadn't been working one of them, I'm not sure I'd have realized they were there.

Agreed. It was very non-obvious. Didn't realize there was a store until the last day (even though I was a volunteer!).

I got the sense I would have really liked ZC 7 if I had any clue about what was actually going on. And maybe we missed some exposition since we started so late. One of our party said that the four people running the controls made all the difference, but *shrug* I'll take his word for it. Maybe if they'd failed and bad stuff happened I'd have understood why they were making a difference. I'm waiting for YouTube and the modules to explain what that was all about. All I know is, I was shooting wyverns. Or possibly one wyvern. And my ears hurt when it was done.

The first time I did it, I had no idea what was going on. And had to ask someone about it after the adventure.

The second time, we killed the wyverns early and the DM's explained what was happening afterwards.

I feel like this is the sort of thing that some volunteer or DM should be explaining to the players while they are in the waiting area. Otherwise most players will have no clue what is going on.

However, the quality of the DM did make a big difference as to whether players knew what was happening.

They did not offer extra treasure pulls for running out of survivor pins to everyone. Our group Sat late night got a "here you go" without mention of the pins.

One thing I thought of while talking to someone at work (that works with TD), height. Unless you were 6 foot, you would have had issues holding the tubes in the Zeph first puzzle room. Not an issue for my 2 groups, but any non 6 ft tall person groups may have gotten "hosed" (ba da ching)

My group solved the egg puzzle on Nightmare on Thursday. The same solution did not work on Sunday. The Eggs were very unresponsive on Sunday. Part of the problem was that sometimes it took several taps to get a response and then on occasion the double tap took and we had to start over. It didn't help that the horn sounded in the middle of our last attempt and the DM told us we had to stop. The room lasts 12 minutes, not 11.

The eggs actually triggered off magnetics NOT tapping. You can do the entire puzzle without touching a single egg.

The magnetic sensors were not in the same spot on every egg and some were too close together or too sensitive leading to the problems you saw.

Harlax wrote: I just prepare myself with potions of healing for the push damage I have come to expect.

That and I got the Lenses of Divine Sight for my son the Druid.


Sorry to hear that the extra treasure was not available Saturday night.

Having volunteered two years now, I see how complex an undertaking TD is and how hard everyone works to make it the best it can be. But its not always perfect.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The eggs actually triggered off magnetics NOT tapping. You can do the entire puzzle without touching a single egg.

The magnetic sensors were not in the same spot on every egg and some were too close together or too sensitive leading to the problems you saw.

Well it was a really cool puzzle. It was just frustrating to solve it on nightmare and then fail it on normal.

When you did the puzzle on normal did you start from center egg, coil left to golden egg and have all eggs turn green?