TOPIC: Sealed Adventure Feedback

We played late Thursday night, after 11pm.

Our group entered room 7 with eight survivors, one of the PCs got killed due to damage. I survived as druid with 2hp left along with most of the party and all of the newer players. Again, for me, it was more enjoyable than most (even though I didn't care about any of the puzzles) - I guess the point is that TD is not always good for everyone and it may just not be possible to perfect things, especially when you have a small sample size like VN using 2018 tokens.

No gaming experience is always good. We talked highlights and lowlights of the con and the consensus highlight was the play of TD at the con (a personal lowlight was disorganized token manipulation for varying builds which we are going to try to address).

Actually, I'm far more concerned with people's experiences due to other players than due to dungeon challenges, even though some challenges can be very frustrating and I'll comment on one thing I noticed in our N1 run in a separate thread.

TD being hard/deadly is not inherently a bad thing. As long as it's fair, and I have found petrification to not come across as fair. Interesting, sure. But, not fair. For one thing, happens way too early. Why not have an avatar of some goddess be the final boss and have people petrified when it no longer matters? Or, again, the theme suggested maybe it was all illusory what was going on.

... One more year in which my remaining woodie Stone to Flesh scroll from 2006 or 2007 doesn't get used.

We died in the last room after 1 or less rounds of combat. And three of us were vet TDers. While the adventure was fun to go through, I found two major issues which went against 'new player fun'.

1. The packs were for Bliss, not Viper, which meant there was much less 'usable gear' for the runs.
2. Inability to bring in other tokens meant that you couldn't deck out your friends or newbies to ensure they have a better time.

Honestly, I like the idea of an intro run, but there's three options to solve the problems:

- Give multiple packs of tokens to the players.
- Allow people to bring in their own tokens to deck out a team.
- Drop the difficulty of the run.

I definitely don't want outside tokens. I don't want people looting the runs for treasure draws. Even if you exclude outside treasure enhancers, I actually don't think that most newbies benefit from veterans lending them tokens or builds. For newbies the simpler the build the better. I have seen plenty of veterans overwhelm new players with tokens and/or more complicated builds. Others do make nice and simple loaner builds too, but I think it's better to avoid allowing them.

I guess in our run we randomly got zero 2-handed common weapons

When we entered room #7 all 9 of us (3 vets and 6 newbies) were alive and fairly well healed up. I don't remember exactly, but I believe after the second round of attacks most of the party were below 5hp, including me (the Cleric). At that point I couldn't even heal myself enough to avoid death on the next attack. I think 3 were still alive when the combat ended (having not defeated the monster).

I actually think this is more or less the correct difficulty level, but if there had been no veteran players I don't think it would have ended up that well.

I did not attend gencon nor did I do this sealed run but my perspective as a coach is that on sealed runs everyone should probably get 2 ten packs and trade eq, I just don't think 1 ten pack is enough. Also if non lethal was an option it should have been offered by the coach to players that were completely new. From a comabt DM perspective it's hard to balance a room for what you are given. It's sounds like they made adjustments to rooms after a con for future cons. I have seen mosters cut in half for damage and sometimes hit points. This makes things difficult because room problems get solved and later days are easier or for each origins significantly lowered the challenge for runs compared to gencon last year. I guess it comes down to what is the target success rate? Should half the parties fail?

James J Krot wrote: I did not attend gencon nor did I do this sealed run but my perspective as a coach is that on sealed runs everyone should probably get 2 ten packs and trade eq, I just don't think 1 ten pack is enough. Also if non lethal was an option it should have been offered by the coach to players that were completely new. From a comabt DM perspective it's hard to balance a room for what you are given. It's sounds like they made adjustments to rooms after a con for future cons. I have seen mosters cut in half for damage and sometimes hit points. This makes things difficult because room problems get solved and later days are easier or for each origins significantly lowered the challenge for runs compared to gencon last year. I guess it comes down to what is the target success rate? Should half the parties fail?

I mentioned non lethal to a lot of groups on Thursday, a surprisingly large number of them went for it. When the dungeon was re-tuned on Friday we were told not to offer non lethal unless the group asked for it explicitly.

In terms of the second pack, I don't think it would really help much. Almost all the groups I sent were able to get a weapon/armor/ranged weapon from sharing between a single pack. However the number of duplicate items I saw already leads me to believe a second pack each would have just resulted in a lot of extra bliss clubs sitting around.

Kirk Bauer wrote: I definitely don't want outside tokens.

I agree. It isn’t meant to be for experienced players, so we shouldn’t make changes to make it more appealing to veterans.

I go back to the original purpose, as I understand it: a low-cost introduction for first-time players who aren’t sure TD is for them. Vets can do it if they want, but they aren’t the target audience.

I think the majority of newbie concerns would be addressed by a few parameters:

- Make sure players are aware of the minimum AC (on party card)
- Have common gimme weapons available for unlucky packs
- No insta-kills before room 7
- Make sure the dungeon works with the current token collection

Sounds like things got there eventually on most of those. Next time will be better.

If one pack isn’t enough for sealed, then it isn’t enough for normal runs, either. I don’t think a second pack is necessary if the other four items (and maybe a few more) are followed.

As for target success rate: the players should feel challenged but like they got a fair shake. They should have fun. As a newbie, I would view a TPK as the total opposite of fun. If that means 100% success, then so be it. But I don’t think it does. I’m gonna say that, unless they do something stupid, at least half of every party should survive, and there should be zero TPKs. Because remember the target audience. But that’s just my opinion.

Speaking as the room 2 DM for 3 shifts, I saw 2-4 teams with a player (usually a wizard) without any weapons.

I saw 3-4 teams with Barbarians with no 2 handed weapons (I'm sure several just bypassed Barbarian and therefore my notice).

On Thursday, only 1 team reported passing the first puzzle, and that by random chance. This improved on Fri & Sat. (I disagree with how that puzzle doled out damage via time rather than error.)

I wish there was some way that teams could have had tokens that worked with my monster. It wasn't a big deal, as the players were generally just mildly frustrated (I had a monk do three 19s and three 20s in three rounds, several teams put 3 20s out in a round), but if some of them could have had the right tokens, they would've probably been thrilled to have "beaten" that particular defense of the monster. I'm sure certain defensive tokens would've been helpful to those who didn't know or imagine the right tactical defenses later.

Looking forward, I think providing old or specific tokens could draw in too many Vets, so solutions should prevent that, but it would be nice for groups to have some of the same help the original groups probably had to make their lives easier.

If we do want to keep old dungeons & sealed runs & lower prices all the same thing rather than splitting them up, and we don't want to bring in any old/rare/new tokens, solutions include:

1) Re-work the dungeon rooms themselves to eliminate many of the hurdles that would've been solved by tokens, so unavailable tokens aren't necessary, or so that tokens within the current set do the same job.

2) Carefully select old dungeons, not based on cool factor, popularity, or anything else, but on what the current token packs can manage.

3) Faux "Tokens" to shore up the correct weaknesses.

- These would either be party-card only info/bonuses, additional spells/abilities added to class cards, or limited use tokens that would be useless after the day.

- Physically, these could be managed with pen, stickers, and cardstock tokens, or specially backed tokens marked with sharpie/holepunch/etc for which day.

- They could be doled out either in "sets" for each team, by class, by rolling dice, or in smaller "clusters" chosen by party vote, so instead of solving ALL the possible issues for the team, they could choose the form of their destruction.

(So, for example, this could include, based on my limited knowledge of this dungeon, choosing between things like Scroll of Stone to Flesh, Goggles, Bracers/Hood, special Weapons, etc. - giving them a choice could also provide hints to future danger.)

Piggybacking off of the idea of merchants, players with 25-50 GP tokens could buy rumors which could warn them not to do dangerous things.

4) In-room solutions (sounds like this was available in some rooms, at least eventually. Perhaps additional clues/props that could be worked out in-room over a period of time).

E) also, if these runs are meant to bring in newbies, but we do want to have death be somewhat likely, a little extra juice in terms of Speak With Dead (cardstock scrolls handed out, extra spell for the Cleric, etc.) could go a little ways to lessening the sting of being dead in Room 5 or what have you.

Maybe just let each ghost have 1 sentence as they die, and 1 sentence later in the dungeon?

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: I definitely don't want outside tokens.

I agree. It isn’t meant to be for experienced players, so we shouldn’t make changes to make it more appealing to veterans.

I go back to the original purpose, as I understand it: a low-cost introduction for first-time players who aren’t sure TD is for them. Vets can do it if they want, but they aren’t the target audience.

I think the majority of newbie concerns would be addressed by a few parameters:

- Make sure players are aware of the minimum AC (on party card)
- Have common gimme weapons available for unlucky packs
- No insta-kills before room 7
- Make sure the dungeon works with the current token collection

Sounds like things got there eventually on most of those. Next time will be better.

If one pack isn’t enough for sealed, then it isn’t enough for normal runs, either. I don’t think a second pack is necessary if the other four items (and maybe a few more) are followed.

As for target success rate: the players should feel challenged but like they got a fair shake. They should have fun. As a newbie, I would view a TPK as the total opposite of fun. If that means 100% success, then so be it. But I don’t think it does. I’m gonna say that, unless they do something stupid, at least half of every party should survive, and there should be zero TPKs. Because remember the target audience. But that’s just my opinion.

I have one counter agrument to this. The dungeon is the more or less the same dungeon as 2014 (minus tokens from that year which would help so I agree with that 100%). I don't think the dungeon should have a really different success rate than it did in 2014 (again if the tokens were the same). You get the same xp for playing today as you did in 2014. So think it should be about as difficult as it was in 2014 with just a starter pack on normal. Now granted maybe it should not be a newbie dungeon. I remembered the damage over time puzzles then and remember how they wrecked groups then. I thought for a first puzzle room it was very week to do that much damage to group so I solved the puzzle (knelt and touched the snake) without my group knowing what I was doing and let them work on the puzzle for the 12 minutes. I just 'tied' my shoe there and told the DM to let them keep working on it.

If I could make 2 suggestions to improve people experience for next year it would be

1. Make all runs non lethal unless the group agrees to bump it to normal
2. Make sure the dungeon itself takes advantage of the environmental bonus on the tokens (ie +3 in bliss)

I think these would both be very helpful to first time casual players (which I am happy to admit we definitely managed to attract).

Something I forgot to mention. My understanding is that you can Neutralize Poison on monsters to remove their poison damage. I was only allowed to NP a PC. I'm curious as to how it should work for the future.

Anyway, back to introducing TD.

For the casual player, which is my term for what me and my friends were for many years, and for the newb player, the expectation should be having no relevant tokens. While I didn't play wizard all of those times because my collection was irrelevant, that my collection was irrelevant made things work fine as I could just do my tokenless spells for 6 damage and sometimes impact combat.

That's the intro baseline I have in mind - aim for difficulty for a party with zero tokens. Maybe non-lethal is better than that, but I just think that part of the appeal of TD is that it will kill you sometimes and suck out your soul. If the party gets fortunate and has better equipment, well, then, the dungeon is easier. If the players are knowledgeable about TD to where they handle combat and/or puzzles better, then the dungeon is easier.

On a tangent, I was reading reddit for complaints about TD. I'm not surprised by them, as it's difficult to get a more complete picture of TD without doing it more and without the move from casual player to invested player to see the other side of things.

TD, for me, has always been a mixed bag experience. It's why I didn't do it that often in the past. We got serious about TD because my friends like it more than I do. It is hideously expensive to the casual player. For $4, still, I get a fourish hour RPG which may not be great but is probably going to be enjoyable, or it's awful, makes a great story for the future, and only cost $4 and four hours. So, the expectations are through the roof.

Things that commonly impact newb (not to be confused with casual player) experiences negatively:
1. The group doesn't get along well personalitywise.
2. The experience is confusing as to what you are supposed to do and you haven't developed TD metagaming skills to make things easier yet.
3. The group doesn't get along well tokenwise.
4. Those who do dungeons multiple times having extra knowledge.

My single greatest concern nowadays is having overpowered builds for PUGs. I'm perfectly happy to play sealed pack with CoA/ISSN and maybe RoH if that's more fun for others, but I'd rather play hardcore with PUGs and run some interesting URs. At this point, we are just going to switch to buying out runs at GC or joining forum games because trying to control the variables of difficulty and party balance are just too complicated. At other cons, probably still going to do PUGs.

Besides, that also does something to solve for personality alignment. Most PUGs have been fun but not all of them.

I'm also not entirely comfortable with extra knowledge of dungeons and how to manage puzzle engagement. I try to not be involved when I know puzzle solutions, but I'm sure that can come across as being not helpful at all. Yes, it's probably ideal to just state flat out when you know the solution right away to give the other players context.

Maybe non-lethal just is a better intro with its lesser XP gains so that there's no pressure and people who aren't expecting failure to mean that you stop playing an expensive event don't experience the termination of the gaming experience in their first exposure.

Ian Lee wrote: Something I forgot to mention. My understanding is that you can Neutralize Poison on monsters to remove their poison damage. I was only allowed to NP a PC. I'm curious as to how it should work for the future.

That honestly could've been me. Room 2? I made that mistake once, looked into it, and corrected from there on out. I can only apologize. I was new to DMing combat, but considering the room, I should've looked into that power more closely before taking that room.

Singsalot wrote:

Ian Lee wrote: Something I forgot to mention. My understanding is that you can Neutralize Poison on monsters to remove their poison damage. I was only allowed to NP a PC. I'm curious as to how it should work for the future.

That honestly could've been me. Room 2? I made that mistake once, looked into it, and corrected from there on out. I can only apologize. I was new to DMing combat, but considering the room, I should've looked into that power more closely before taking that room.

If it was remove 7 it would not work because the source of the poison was not the creature but the staff (or so we were told when one of my players tried it and it made sense to us).