Background
The current new player experience in True Dungeon is a 4-room sealed pack run. All players receive a 10-pack of tokens in Coaching. Here is the current schedule in a 12-room dungeon:
• 24 minutes of coaching – character choice and building
• 12 minutes of training – adventure prologue, sliding and skill test practice
• 48 minutes of adventure – typically 2 puzzle and 2 combat rooms
• Epilogue – everyone love treasure
Purpose of Proposal
Coming from the CCG world, I never recommend sealed deck or draft tournaments to brand-new players unless they’ve first had a dedicated Learn to Play experience. Building a deck when you don’t know how to play is a recipe for disaster in that arena. However, this is the exact experience True Dungeon offers its new players in the current sealed pack environment. In 24 minutes, new players must open the pack, read the tokens, study 12 different character cards, decide on a character to play based on their tokens, build out their character by deciphering the circles on the character mat, and then have a coach help build out the stats of their character. They do all this before they get to learn about sliding and skill tests in the training room. Coaching is a very stressful experience for new players and the coaches.
Proposal for an Update to the New Player Experience
The new player dungeon would only have Normal difficulty. To take some of the pressure off the coaching experience, I propose the following change to the schedule:
• 12 minutes of character introduction – one coach introduces the players to the different classes, including their major strengths and weaknesses. This could be a script written by TD. Players do not receive tokens in this room. Players choose character cards at the end of the introduction and receive a common weapon suitable for their class. This could include a 2-handed weapon for Barbs, Mystic Staves for Wizards, a Trinket for Druids, a Mace for Clerics, etc.
• 12 minutes of training – players are shown the sliders and the skill tests. They view a story prologue video.
• 12-minute combat – easy normal-level monster
• 12-minute puzzle – Standard puzzle room. At the completion of this room, they would be given 10-packs of tokens. This would be part of the story, as if they’re looting the room and opening a treasure chest.
• 12 minutes of token time in a new room – players open packs, trade tokens and update their characters. I know that’s a lot in 12 minutes, so I have some ideas to simplify this process (see below). Coaches in the room are costumed to not pull people too far out of the story.
• 12-minute puzzle – if players successfully complete the puzzle, they get a rare-level treasure enhancer.
• 12-minute combat – harder big bad
• Epilogue – watch a video advertising full sized dungeons, including differences in coaching. Everyone loves treasure.
What about the token experience in the middle of the run? The token packs in these runs should be a specific set of evergreen tokens for the new player dungeon experience. They would be used every year (reprinted as needed), since they wouldn’t have a specific theme to them. The new player dungeon each year could be a standard D&D style run, rather than going along with whatever the theme for the year is.
• The tokens should be limited to just a few possible slots; head, neck, torso, back, hands, 1 ring, belt, boots, melee mainhand, melee offhand and ranged mainhand. The rare-level TE mentioned above would be in a slot such as bead, charm or ioun stone.
• Instead of a mat, players sit down at a tablet. A simple app allows them to select class and then add the tokens they want. The tablets talk to a master computer that receives everyone’s character data, then a coach prints a party card. (Yes, I am aware there are tech questions to be answered here.)
• Common level tokens should do simple things like increase hp, AC, or a single save. They should not have any specialized effects like “+3 damage vs Accursed.” There could be a cool set bonus that’s well-advertised in the room. Token packs should contain very few common weapons, since players would already have gotten one of those in the introduction.
• Uncommon level tokens should give better basic boosts to hp, melee and ranged hit, or damage. Basic damage reduction is also an option here. They can also do specific class boosts, like the
2026 uncommon rings
.
• Rare level tokens should be weapons, shields, armor or robes. They could also be tokens that are usable by everyone such as healing potions.
I hope this generates some good ideas for how the new player’s experience can be improved.
