TOPIC: Important Update! The Astral Adventure is now NEW

Cavor wrote: Everyone who plays a TD event deserves the opportunity to earn XP regardless of event location, current player level, number of tokens bought, amount of time volunteered, or number of years supporting TD. Players that play more TD should have more XP, the current system does not do this and is broken.

The current system is highly discouraging to mid level players and feels “rigged” to keep those at the top there indefinitely.

Here’s what I would do:

Create a TD “hall of fame” that rewards long time players, supporters and volunteers.

Create an XP system that includes all runs from every convention.

I 1000% agree

Cavor wrote: Everyone who plays a TD event deserves the opportunity to earn XP regardless of event location, current player level, number of tokens bought, amount of time volunteered, or number of years supporting TD. Players that play more TD should have more XP, the current system does not do this and is broken.

The current system is highly discouraging to mid level players and feels “rigged” to keep those at the top there indefinitely.

Here’s what I would do:

Create a TD “hall of fame” that rewards long time players, supporters and volunteers.

Create an XP system that includes all runs from every convention.

How is the system rigged?

It seems it is if a lot of the discussion is presuming that some of the older players are unable to reach any of the conventions with the new dungeons and therefore are excluded from earning the additional experience points. Yet everyone everyone has the same opportunity to attend a convention it doesn’t matter if they’re old or new or in between. Everyone has to make the same job sacrifice to take time off everyone has to spend the same amount of money to attend the con and everyone has to spend for lodging and food.
The other problem is that a disincentivizes newer players because there have been several years in which I’ve been completely shut out of TD tickets at Gen Con. Ghosting happens there and many of the veteran players are able to buy out entire Ron’s making it extremely difficult for new people to get in on those runs. Newer players may not be able to get off four versions of the Dungeon at Gen Con.
It also limits the expansion capability and creativeness available to Jeff by creating other opportunities at additional conventions

Why should I get xp for doing something I've already done?

How does not getting all the runs you want at GenCon disadvantage you when you can get them at other Cons?

Why should I get more xp because I win the RNG lottery and get all the runs I want?


If I can afford (and get) 10 runs and I get 10x more xp for it, that starts to feel like pay to win.

Harlax wrote: Why should I get xp for doing something I've already done?

How does not getting all the runs you want at GenCon disadvantage you when you can get them at other Cons?

Why should I get more xp because I win the RNG lottery and get all the runs I want?


If I can afford (and get) 10 runs and I get 10x more xp for it, that starts to feel like pay to win.

Perhaps I was unclear I didn’t mean to suggest anyone should get additional XP for the same run. I’m simply saying the same 4 Dungeons may not be available at every Con. So if there is an alternative option ANYONE who has the opportunity for go to that con should get XP for a distinct run. And I freely admit it does have an adverse impact on our foreign players. For them the opportunity isn’t the same.

I'm not an advocate of letting people continue to get xp for a dungeon they've already run. That does start to get into a game of who has the most money and can squeeze the most runs out of every con. If someone's willing to do that (and I'm guilty to an extent), then that's fine, but extra xp just doesn't seem right. I can see getting minimal xp (i.e. 50 to 100 pts) if there is a new room in the run, but even there it's not that big of a deal. But I do agree with those who say that for TD to grow it can't stay reliant just upon GC.

kurtreznor wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote: It's been a very long day. Thanks for your feedback on this. I'll talk to the team via phone on Saturday and get their input on different ideas. We should have a final decision by Monday morning.

Thanks again.

Thanks, Jeff! One thing to consider is that far more people play True Dungeon at GENCON than at other conventions. For those that do GENCON but not other conventions and who care about XP (I'm guessing it is a significant number of people), it would be a real negative for other conventions to offer more XP than does GENCON.

Why would it be a real negative? If you want to play TD aren't you going to play were and when you can? I also wonder what you think a significant number is. This are real questions I am attempting to understand.

I think the simple fact that there are far more people that play True Dungeon at GENCON than at the other conventions shows that there are a lot of people, for whatever reason (time, money, etc.), only attend GENCON and no other conventions. So there are clearly a lot of people that enjoy True Dungeon that don't play it at every single convention it's at. Especially since Origins and GENCON are less than two months apart.

I obviously don't know an exact number of players that only play TD at GENCON and to whom XP is important. There seem to be thousands of people that only play it at GENCON, and since XP is important to a lot of people (even the more casual players that I play with), I think it's a lot of people. The counterpoint obviously to someone asserting that XP isn't important to very many people would be that, in that case, why offer exclusive XP outside of GENCON?

I do understand that if True Dungeon has exclusive XP at non-GENCON conventions that it might drive additional attendance there. That is counterbalanced by the GENCON players that won't attend those conventions and might be unhappy and disincentivized by getting less XP than those going to other conventions. I'd imagine those and other factors we haven't even considered are what Jeff and the team are discussing this weekend.

I wouldn't consider it to be Jeff being pressured to change his decision, but rather him considering some points / options that perhaps they hadn't considered before.

So, lots of people play at gencon. And many care about XP. And some of those cant/wont attend other cons. There is no logical reason that the conclusion should be to cap XP at gencon unless you want to add one more premise: those few people mentioned above should receive special treatment/consideration.

I suppose you could try one other approach: if you feel that any player who only attends 1 con per year should be able to get max XP. But i would think that is a terrible restriction to place on TD.

Im sorry, mike, but TD can and should grow beyond being a gencon event that happens to also run its gencon dungeons elsewhere. Allowing non-gencon XP opens the possibilty that there could be many new dungeons and other events every year. I would love to see that, even if i couldnt make it to all of them.

I think my proposal to allow the extra XP at different cons for different Dungeons up to two levels below the top XP level, and then cap at 4K XP per year, would accomplish all of that. It would certainly allow growth of new players at different conventions, as they would get the full XP for years, as even with the extra XP it would take them years to reach Level 8 (where the 4K XP per year would currently begin) or Level 9 or more (which is where the 4K might start by the time they reach that level).

Plus, it would keep the top of the leaderboard from just reflecting who had the most money and time to go to all of the different conventions. Unless, of course, that is what True Dungeon management wants the top of the Leaderboard to look like.

its F'ing XP....you get some cool perks...yay that is it

it doesnt let you buy tickets early...get better tokens...just add ons from TD


It doesn't do anything else...it can only help you

Harlax wrote: It's easy for me to not get worked up about the XP issue as GHC is under an hour away for me.

I sympathize with some of the top xp players as it's a long haul for them to any of the Cons. For others at least one of the new Cons is a reasonable driving distance, even for a one day Con experience.


Has anyone considered the impact of 6k per year on level progression? A total newbie who runs with an experienced group could hit 4th level in a single con. 5th in two years and 6th in three. (Here is where I could get all curmudgeon like and talk about how long it took me to reach those levels. Uphill. Both ways.)

Is this is a concern? Would the levels need to be adjusted?

I thought you can get xp only once from a particular dungeon? Did that policy change?

My preference would still be to have the Astral Adventure at GENCON, either making room for it by reducing the storyscape, or replacing one of the versions of one of the Dungeons. Since the Astral Adventure is fully designed, there shouldn't be any added expense to having it at GENCON as well.

Mike Steele wrote: My preference would still be to have the Astral Adventure at GENCON...

I believe Jeff already said that’s impossible

Dungeons are huge and the storyscape is already puny. I can’t imagine six more coaching rooms crammed into that space, let alone the dungeon

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote: its F'ing XP....you get some cool perks...yay that is it

it doesnt let you buy tickets early...get better tokens...just add ons from TD


It doesn't do anything else...it can only help you

+1 to this.

It's f'ing xp. If it's that important to people then they need to make all the TD Cons. Quite trying to lobby for a system that isn't fair to everyone. You want your XP then go get it and play TD at the Cons that offer it. This argument of the vets getting the shaft is absolutely hilarious. They are no different from the newer players when it comes to the means to make the different Cons.