TOPIC: Sealed Adventure Feedback

I ran Vipers Pit on Friday evening at ~7:30. The party consisted of 2 veterans, a buddy w/ two runs under his belt from Thursday / Friday, and 7 first-timers. One of the first-timers was an online acquaintance from another forum. It was my first time meeting him IRL.

The coaching room went exactly how it's supposed to. We divvied up the gear and absolutely everyone was happy to offer up tokens they could not use. The e-acquaintance opened up a +1 Bliss Berserker Axe. The second veteran offered him Infernal Hate Plate. Suddenly we had a very powerful Barbarian. It helped a lot that he was sliding like Rookie of the Year (2 crits landed).

The rest of the first-timers were 2 families with three members each. Two parents and a daughter. One of the daughters had an absolute blast running druid and was trying to speak with animals at every turn. That excitement definitely infected her parents who got very into the experience as well. They were collectively so stoked when she passed her first leaf test. The other family was more subdued, but they were smiling at the end.

Lurking on the forums, I'd heard the legends of fighting the Medusa and her gaze attacks. When I saw the silhouette, I half-jokingly told everyone to close their eyes and to turn around. Turns out that it helped quite a bit. It didn't take long for us to figure out that you had to slide eyes-closed or at least block her snakes from your line of sight.

I was playing a naked monk plus the monk belt that allowed 2 instances of stun. In this room, one of the other members knocked me into a 20, allowing me to stun the Medusa. Cheers all around.

Having a few veterans on the run made all of the difference. My friend played Dwarf Fighter but gave up his Infernal Hate Plate to the barbarian. I was able to pick up monk and still help the party with just the one token. My third buddy with two runs of experience played Bard and got very animated singing. The group's fun was amplified as they joined in chorus to the Disney sing-alongs.

At least 4/7 newbies from our run will certainly look for an intro-sealed experience next year. Despite having an absolute blast, my e-acquaintance voiced that he wasn't sure he'd be interested in an $80 experience. I think it'd be a great idea to keep offering these sealed experiences at a lower price point to get new fans hooked.

I'm glad that the difficulty got ratcheted down a bit for everyone's sake. The rumors of the TPKs on Thursday had me concerned for our first-timers. I'll defintely be running any sealed adventures for the dungeons I've missed.

Does anyone know if the plan is to go forward in time (2015), backward (2013), or will it just be random?

Brad Mortensen wrote: As I recall, the original intent of making it “sealed” was to make it newbie-friendly and unattractive to veteran players.

No treasure enhancers (to prevent farming), no suitcases to intimidate new players, just a 10-pack to avoid overwhelming new players with too many choices, and just a single completion token to discourage collectors. There may have been other considerations, but those were the main ones I recall.

There was talk of prebuilt characters but it was deemed too simplistic, because it cut out the decision-making and swapping, and eliminated a core component of the experience. Random meant the group got to start to cooperate and work as a team in the coaching room.

That was the original intent, Brad but I think it morphed into bringing back one of the best runs. I still wholeheartedly believe we NEED a newbie dungeon at Gen Con because that is where we can reach the most casual players and hopefully convert them into regulars.

Because of the difficulty of Viper's... it wasn't the best dungeon for newbies even on Normal. We had five vets and five newbies in our run and only one of the newbies survived room 7. We did everything we could to make it fun for the new players and in the end, despite the deaths, they all had a great time and we may have converted them. (We did things only vets would know like as soon as we saw Medusa's shadow, I yelled, "Nobody look at her!" and everyone in the party turned away.) I can only imagine how hard it would be with 10 all-new players.

But I also love bringing back the best of the best dungeons. I just think that and the newbie dungeon need to be two separate things.

jpotter wrote: So, our DM roleplayed it (like good DMs do!). She encouraged us to search the room after the Medusa was defeated. Low and behold in the box in the corner we find some scrolls of stone to flesh!

IMO this is the kind of tuning we need to improve on in future years. Kudos to that DM

Arnold wrote: Does anyone know if the plan is to go forward in time (2015), backward (2013), or will it just be random?

No info on this at present (though I hope backwards or just cherry picking).

It’s hard to think of everything. There have been distractions.

Like I said, I’m sure lessons were learned. And I agree, a newbie dungeon every year would be awesome. A “best of” that reuses props and modules will keep down the price, as well as give newer players a chance to see adventures they’ve missed.

Wow there were stone to flesh scrolls hidden? I went through Saturday night and the DM said once we found the mirror there was nothing else to find in the room. Plus I thought it was an overarching rule there are no tokens hidden in the dungeon.

That scroll would have saved the lone guy from out group from feeling left out on his first time. In room 6 he was sitting in a corner on his phone while we solved the puzzle. After killing the room 7 boss he was still sulking even though we told him he still gets treasure, etc.

Flik wrote: I thought it was an overarching rule there are no tokens hidden in the dungeon.

To clarify, item tokens are no longer hidden in the dungeon. But sometimes "virtual items" can still be hidden, in recent memory there was a "cache of healing potions" hidden in a treasure box in the mimic room a few years ago, there was no physical tokens present but if you opened the right chest you had the option to heal a few points.


Not sure if the vipers scrolls were something like that or just an unofficial DM level edit to the room.

Makes sense, thanks for clarification.

I just picked up one random ticket and this was an incredibly fun run for me After some drama with brand new and very late players in the coaching room, we worked well as a party and everybody had a great time.

My suggestions:

1) I really hope we do this every year at GenCon!
2) I don't think we need a special 10-pack for this run. Instead during token development we need to do a better job making sure that the set of 40 common tokens provides better coverage for sealed pack runs. For example, there should be at least one weapon for each class, and least one armor for each class, etc. I think there are no 2-handed common weapons in 2018 and I think we need to make sure there is one in the future.
3) I really like the idea of an NPC merchant that will sell current year rare tokens for GP in the coaching rooms. I think that would be really fun for the party to pool their GP and buy one or two strategic tokens for the run. If that's too much volunteer time, you could have a "menu" posted on the wall, with say 5 or 10 choice rare tokens from the current year and posted GP prices. The coach or assistant coach could facilitate the purchase.

The difficulty should have been adjusted for sealed pack runs (I heard it was during the con, but Thursday afternoon it was just slightly too hard). A bunch of veterans doing a sealed pack run is different than a random pickup group of newbies doing a sealed pack run. Not a lot easier, just a bit. And ideally the room descriptions should be updated to review the current year tokens and only the current year tokens.

Also, perhaps a poster in the coaching room to help guide new players. Maybe just a list of the classes and brief descriptions, as well as very brief strategy. Something like "These classes are primarily going to be sliding on the combat board" and "these classes are going to be doing a lot of spells". And "make sure you have at least one person playing a healer". In my group, had me and two other veterans not been there, the 6 newbies would have run without a healer, which for a sealed pack run isn't going to work out well.

Picc wrote:

Flik wrote: I thought it was an overarching rule there are no tokens hidden in the dungeon.

Not sure if the vipers scrolls were something like that or just an unofficial DM level edit to the room.

Yep - there weren't any actual 'tokens' - the DM simply enhanced our experience with some expert level adjustments

Kirk Bauer wrote: I think there are no 2-handed common weapons in 2018 and I think we need to make sure there is one in the future.

tokendb.com/token/bliss-war-club/

Every group I coached, the Barbarian ended up with a 2H melee weapon.

If it were up to me I'd perhaps add 1 more common all-class weapon, but overall I thought the mix in the set for weapons was quite good.

Either we got really lucky then, or the difficulty was greatly reduced by Friday at 11pm. Medusa was dropped with only one party member turned to stone and they were revived via scroll at by prompting from the room DM to search the room.

We wiped the final combat without any significant problem and no death - the monk (someone from my group) pulled the item (ring?) that allowed multiple stunning blows and stunned the wizard in the last room twice in a row. I (cleric) buffed the The spell spell casters who took down the dragon with double surge druid nuke and a restored wizard spell.

We used almost all of our spells, but never felt in real danger of having anyone killed. I don't think we had anyone drop past 5hp for the whole event.

Played it once. Neither wizards had weapons. No issue with completing. One person turned to stone. Pointed put boxes to open but no one wanted to touch so I opened both and only a mirror with no scrolls.. Possibly due to moving items in a previous room which were not meant to be moved.