TOPIC: Reviews and feedback

Overall: I had a blast. Definitely one of my favorite TD years (have been playing since the late days of the woodies)

Entrance: the transition into darkness always seems so abrupt. But after helping with the install, I'm amazed at what a huge impact the dim lighting provides to change the look of things. I do think it would be good to have some table top lamps like some of the traders had though, as well as some additional tables.

Sign-In: Is there any way to not have to have us sign the release form on every run? It seems like there should be some way to let us sign once per con. A minor annoyance to be sure, but signing that form a dozen or so times in the last few couple years just makes me think there has to be a better way.

Coaches: Dan and Toby did great as always. I'm sure I got some other great coaches as well, but those two stick out.

NPCs:
- both hawk-kin I saw were awesome and did a great job. Love the combined DM/NPC and keeping the DM for multiple rooms. Would love to see more of this.
- skeletons - some of these were more interesting than others, but I think that was due to how my different parties approached the situation (one run our cleric was blasting them every round so they just kept leaving as soon as they showed back up, the other run they came down and interacted with us, which was great). Either way, I give them a round of applause for donning what had to be a very sweaty costume.
- medusas - you ladies all did great, and from what I saw of your feet, I'm sure your costumes were great too (seriously though, you ladies all did a fine job of sneaking up on me and startling me)
- drow - I don't know if the same ladies have played drow in years past, but the ones this year did an excellent job, though their appearances were always brief (sneak attack!)
- serpent priest - i think i narrowly avoided stepping on one of your corpses several times. Make sure to die away further away from the combat board
- makeup / costuming - downright awesome on all counts

On to the actual dungeons... (Puzzleand combat listed together, with puzzle rooms first)

Viper:
- Room 1(obelisks) - really enjoyed the puzzle in this room, but was confused by the random damage a few minutes in. It sounds like this is due to spreading out the push damage (which I am in favor of) but it can be confusing when you don't know whether the damage is from an action that you took or due to a timer.
- Room 2 (snake guardians) - combat was nice and simple. In one of my runs got to see an assassination on the first slide which was cool, but then there was not much to look at in the room.
- Room 3 (egg puzzle) - kind of meh on this one. Liked it initially, but on reflection it usually wound up being too easy (and that is even with repeat runners sitting out of the majority of the discussion on repeat runs)
- Room 4 (floor puzzle) - the puzzle would have been ok, but this one really suffered from us not knowing when we took damage for doing something wrong or just because of a timed event.
- Room 4 (skeletons and sarcophagus) - really liked the idea of this combat, but the layout of the room was not conducive to it. If you have to cycle everyone through one at a time, there needs to be more room to maneuver.
- Room 5 (sands of time) - while the visual effect was awesome, it was pretty twitchy. I think a simpler approach with the same puzzle idea would have been better. Loved getting to play in the sand though! For some reason I didn't have the issue of sand sticking to me that several people have mentioned.
- Room 6 (medusa) - this room seemed very inconsistent across 3 different nightmare runs. In one run just having a mirror was useful by itself (no need to use an action). In another run, you had to stay out of combat if you were using a mirror. And in the 3rd, it didn't seem to matter at all. Damage against the players also seemed very inconsistent (and quite high)
- Room 7 (glyphs and snake puzzle) - for once my group actually paid attention to the clues we came across in the dungeon! Woo! And then half of them were turned to stone in the previous room and couldn't talk to us Great two-part puzzle though!
- Room 7 (Mr. Wiggles and friends) - holy #%^*! This was great! Awesome animatronic! Great lighting (could see the shadows up on the wall from early in the dungeon). Sneak attack was definitely a surprise.

Zephyr:
- Room 1 (power overload) - great intro puzzle to get you thinking. Even after a couple runs the challenge was decent
- Room 2 (power charge) - really enjoyed this puzzle. But I will say that everything was working the times I went through. So I can understand how that would be frustrating if the tech was failing later on.
- Room 3 (wind walker) - the hawk-kin getting sucked out the side of the ship was an awesome touch. But I'm honestly suprised this combat wasn't more difficult. I have to wonder if my runs just got lucky?
- Room 4 (drone puzzle) - this was a fun puzzle, but I'd be suprised if we would have gotten it solved without the rogue clue.
- Room 4 (drone combat) - I'm really liking the combats the last couple years that have "different" targets that we need to hit. Throws a nice little change of pace into things. Not something that should appear in every combat, but nice once or twice in a dungeon.
- Room 5 (no one should ever use this many switches) - Just why?
- Room 5 (guardian mech) - loved the animatronic, but evidently the puppeteer was misisng during our run. Another fun combat though.
- Room 6 (liftonium gasifier) - I feel like I must have missed some very obvious clue on this puzzle. It seemed to be purely brute force, which kind of sucked due to the 20s timer and the dead ends in the pipes.
- Room 7 (wyvern battle) - this really needed more exposition. In each run I had, the DM basically just said that they needed 4 volunteers without saying what they were volunteering for. The challenges themselves seemed ok, but it was easy to accidently have your best ranged attackers volunteer for duty that kept them out of the combat. The video imagery was pretty cool though, and the challenges were interesting.

Adventurer's guild quest - really appreciated this. I'd like to see something like this again in the future! Side quests are cool.

Irreduceable damage - still not a fan.

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

I don't know whether Jeff will or will not be able to read this thread. Even though Gen Con is officially over, there are still a thousand things he needs to take care of. I would strongly encourage you to email him. His address can be found on the Contact page. (Scroll to the top of this page for the link, it's on the far right.)

Picc wrote:

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.

the dm for our hardcore run through that room told us that the spiral had to be in a specific direction. luckily we had enough time to reset it and go back through a second time the correct way.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The viper gas room I STILL believe to be broken.

Both runs I did with that room we found one of the tubes stopped getting air after about 5 connections were made.

We got to 9 of 10 tubes in the second run with those of us who'd run before pushing directly into the puzzle.

Either the puzzle was broken or you are supposed to figure out there are tubes not in use. I don't see that happening with the design.

what day of the con did it stop working? i know it was working for us on our run friday night.

Fiddy wrote: Coaches: Dan and Toby did great as always.

If you mean the tall guy in the fez, that was Don.

Druegar wrote:

Fiddy wrote: Coaches: Dan and Toby did great as always.

If you mean the tall guy in the fez, that was Don.

D'oh! This is what I get for posting when I should be sleeping

Spreading out the push damage is a silly idea. It means even if you did the room correctly, you're still taking damage.

Raywind wrote: Spreading out the push damage is a silly idea. It means even if you did the room correctly, you're still taking damage.

I think there were issues with push damage killing people in single hits and people wanted more chance to heal so push didn't kill.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Raywind wrote: Spreading out the push damage is a silly idea. It means even if you did the room correctly, you're still taking damage.

I think there were issues with push damage killing people in single hits and people wanted more chance to heal so push didn't kill.

At that point I feel like we may have fallen to far into the convention of push damage. I'm fine with triggered damage for making a wrong choice, even fine with you take X but eventually manage to get it open style push. I agree though that ticking push is a bad idea. Made it really hard to let new people take their time to solve puzzles like the rotating pillars when you knew they only had 3 minutes before the first zap.

Maybe we should look at adding a floor to push damage, ie push cant kill you. Walking into the next room at 1 will either let you heal up or kill you anyway.

Picc wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Raywind wrote: Spreading out the push damage is a silly idea. It means even if you did the room correctly, you're still taking damage.

I think there were issues with push damage killing people in single hits and people wanted more chance to heal so push didn't kill.

At that point I feel like we may have fallen to far into the convention of push damage. I'm fine with triggered damage for making a wrong choice, even fine with you take X but eventually manage to get it open style push. I agree though that ticking push is a bad idea. Made it really hard to let new people take their time to solve puzzles like the rotating pillars when you knew they only had 3 minutes before the first zap.

Maybe we should look at adding a floor to push damage, ie push cant kill you. Walking into the next room at 1 will either let you heal up or kill you anyway.

At the very least have DMs willing to avoid push damage if someone with the solution privately tells them the solution and lets the room play. That's what my Viper room DM did and it worked great.

But absolutely 100% push damage will not kill you would be a great solution

Picc wrote:
Maybe we should look at adding a floor to push damage, ie push cant kill you. Walking into the next room at 1 will either let you heal up or kill you anyway.

Now that is a FABULOUS idea! On Hard Core and Nightmare have push damage kill but on non-lethal and normal mode push damage can only take you to 1 HP.

If you're playing HC or NM at least one person in your party should know that push damage kills.