TOPIC: Idea for GenCon 2016: Newbie Runs

Kaledor wrote: Not just newbie runs. My wife and I met people that couldn't get tickets, then I see a groups ghosting multiple characters to get extra treasure pulls themselves. This is an issue IMO. Great you can solo, 3 man, or 5 man a dungeon but the fact is if TD didn't offer the treasure pulls for the ghost would you really spend that much money on tickets to solo, 3 man or 5 man a run? I predict that it would probably be a no.

I would purpose to get new players involved is stop allowing ghost pulls. I have done ghost in the past but now I see people that have been trying for years to get in a run and can't.

So this year our extra tickets we walked around asking people if they wanted to do True Dungeon (we had a person drop out) so we had an extra ticket. I gave them a choice as new players, they can keep their treasure pulls and pay for the ticket or let us have their pulls.

Why is this different than ghosting you might ask, it gets a new player involved in TD! We ended up giving him ALL the rares, uncommons, and commons for the class he wanted to play from all the pulls. He bought the other ticket we had available later on and we did the same again thing again giving him all the tokens. He now wants to play all TD. I call that a success!

I think Kalendor has a strong point here: Stop allowing ghost pulls and you will see a drop in small groups hoarding runs, effectively locking out more players.

Something I noticed during my shifts was there were very little ghosting this year. I think I personally had two different people and it was one extra ticket, so maybe it is getting less.

I'm not sure we should completely eliminate ghosting, I know lots of us take advantage of it when we buy full runs and not everybody shows up for some reason.

Perhaps limit to one ghost per player or make it so if you ghost and want treasure then they can fill that slot from the waitlist.

Yea, I used to be firmly in the no ghosting camp, but seeing that significant tickets were available this year after all the want lists were processed, I don't think ghosting hurts as much as it used to.

Harlax wrote: Alternatively, create a mini dungeon, say three rooms, billed as Intro to True Dungeon. It would offer no XP and only one treasure chip (like True Grind). Those features alone would keep veterans out.

TD did exactly that a few years ago back at the Marriott. You didn't get a bag of tokens, instead you got one Common weapon and pre-fab stats. IIRC everyone was a rogue. It was fun and a good thing for newbies to play, but lots of vets ran it.

Druegar wrote:

Harlax wrote: Alternatively, create a mini dungeon, say three rooms, billed as Intro to True Dungeon. It would offer no XP and only one treasure chip (like True Grind). Those features alone would keep veterans out.

TD did exactly that a few years ago back at the Marriott. You didn't get a bag of tokens, instead you got one Common weapon and pre-fab stats. IIRC everyone was a rogue. It was fun and a good thing for newbies to play, but lots of vets ran it.

We also had a free demo at WYC with the coaching room, the training room, 1 combat room, and 1 puzzle room. It was free.

quip wrote: a slot dedicated to new players, labeled "New Players Run Only".

You're assuming people read. They don't.

Next time you see me, ask me to tell you my "I didn't come here to read!" story. You will laugh and weep for humanity.

Commenting on the original topic, I had 2 runs with veterans this year and didn't really enjoy them.

They had each room efficiently planned out, and of course were superbly overpowered with tokens. It took them great restraint to allow people who had not run the dungeon before to try their hand at things, but their patience wore thin very quickly and they ultimately bulldozed over anyone who wasn't part of their "in group".

Out each 2 hour block, I probably spent less than 30 minutes playing. The rooms were just beaten by the power players way too quickly, and we spent the majority of the time in most rooms just standing around chit-chatting. Not the greatest use of my $104, I feel.

I understand why high-level players operate this way, but it would really be nice if they try to remember that even doing a single run can be a big expense and a significant event for the vast majority of players. It astounds me how blase some veterans can be about doing a run.

Anyway, I'm not out to change people's play styles. Suffice it to say that I don't ever want to run with the major player's again. And although I wouldn't consider myself a veteran, I've been playing since 5 GenCons ago and am mostly purple/relic builds... so I can't begin to imagine how frank newbies must feel when playing with such a group.

Jim Auwaerter wrote: If that's part of the description, it strongly discourages most veterans from buying out the slot

Every year we say Grind is not for newbies and every year newbies buy tickets for it.
Every year we had dedicated nightmare runs and warned people about it, newbies would buy tickets for it and get pissed that they got stuck in a group they were ill-equipped for.

It matters not what the description of the event says. If it says "True Dungeon" people will blindly buy tickets for it. I feel like if the description said, "If you go on this run, we will kill you. We're not speaking metaphorically. We don't mean we will kill your character. We will literally murder you." people would still buy tickets for it and show up for the event.

Garrison wrote: Commenting on the original topic, I had 2 runs with veterans this year and didn't really enjoy them.

They had each room efficiently planned out, and of course were superbly overpowered with tokens. It took them great restraint to allow people who had not run the dungeon before to try their hand at things, but their patience wore thin very quickly and they ultimately bulldozed over anyone who wasn't part of their "in group".

Out each 2 hour block, I probably spent less than 30 minutes playing. The rooms were just beaten by the power players way too quickly, and we spent the majority of the time in most rooms just standing around chit-chatting. Not the greatest use of my $104, I feel.

I understand why high-level players operate this way, but it would really be nice if they try to remember that even doing a single run can be a big expense and a significant event for the vast majority of players. It astounds me how blase some veterans can be about doing a run.

Anyway, I'm not out to change people's play styles. Suffice it to say that I don't ever want to run with the major player's again. And although I wouldn't consider myself a veteran, I've been playing since 5 GenCons ago and am mostly purple/relic builds... so I can't begin to imagine how frank newbies must feel when playing with such a group.

I had one particular player like that for me a couple of years ago in my run. If we didn't figure the puzzle out quick enough they jumped in and finished it. Which I can understand some of the puzzles can be brutal same goes with some of the fights, but maybe they could give more hints so we could get on track faster or in the case of combat give suggestions like keeping a party slide order or something like that.

Druegar wrote:

Harlax wrote: Alternatively, create a mini dungeon, say three rooms, billed as Intro to True Dungeon. It would offer no XP and only one treasure chip (like True Grind). Those features alone would keep veterans out.

TD did exactly that a few years ago back at the Marriott. You didn't get a bag of tokens, instead you got one Common weapon and pre-fab stats. IIRC everyone was a rogue. It was fun and a good thing for newbies to play, but lots of vets ran it.

IIRC we also had some people choose the mini run not realizing it was a mini run. There were some people that went on the wait list after trying out the mini run expecting it to be similar but were disappointed by the fact that it wasn't quite as hands on for everything in the main dungeon.

ok so in both of our runs we did have a couple of first timers. however what we did was that those of us who were experienced and had extra tokens helped to fill them up. we also gave them the option of what character they would like to play and helped them understand what they would be doing.

the training room we showed them about the damage counter and helped them by quizzing over the memory tests