TOPIC: Thoughts on 5 rooms

I play two kinds of runs at Gencon, because I genuinely love and enjoy both:
1. pre-arranged Epic runs of veteran players with all our fancy tokens. Vibe: we're here to be challenged!
2. casual pick-up groups where I randomly buy a single ticket, join whoever's there, choose last from the classes nobody else wants, and run a build that is appropriate to the difficulty setting. Usually these runs are Normal difficulty with new players, once in a while it's a more experienced group who wants to try Hardcore, this year I got one of each. Vibe: we're here to play a cool game and have fun!

For my Epic veteran runs, the reduction to 5 rooms was a bit of a letdown as expected: sweet, this dungeon is awesome so far, I'm ready for room 6! Oh, wait...

In addition to being only 5/7 of the fun, this devalues tokens: for example, why bother equipping gear to cast extra spells when there aren't nearly enough combat rounds to use up the spells I have?

But here's the thing: for casual runs, it felt *perfect*. Everybody seemed to be having a great time, the dungeons were well designed and the room 5 combat felt like a satisfying conclusion, and of course I can't deny that for most people a two digit price beats a three digit price by a psychological mile.

So here's what I personally am hoping to see next year:
- ditch the 4-room format, it's not much different from 5 anyway
- several 5-room dungeons for $98
- one "True Dungeon XL" premium 7-room dungeon for $128, so those of us who crave that level of challenge can get our fix

Honestly, as an established player, I never really felt threatened during the 5 room dungeons. The game isn't really designed for 5 rooms, when 5th level and tokens are involved.

David, your “have 5 room and 7 room dungeons” idea is really interesting.

I didn't particular enjoy the 5 room format. Spending 36 minutes in coaching/training seems like too big an investment for an hour of substantive content. (I know the coaches need the time to prepare the party card, but coaching and training isn’t what I’m there for.) Plus, as a Barbarian with Bog’s, I could literally Rage every combat. Indeed, if my party chose puzzle over combat, I’d have a Rage leftover. That does devalue higher-end tokens.

That said, some of the “we like TD but aren’t obsessed with it like our quartermaster is” members of my party said that they preferred the 5 room format. It gave them the TD experience they wanted (some cool puzzles and combats in an immersive setting) but cost less and used 24 fewer Gen Con minutes than a 7 room run.

I wonder how a program of 5-room sealed, 5-room regular, and 7-room regular would be received? (Maybe with 2 of either the non-sealed options?) Having a sealed pack option is important because is reduces the barrier to entry. I have at least one friend who has said the only way he’d play in a PUG is sealed pack (he doesn’t want to run into a super-geared player pushing for a higher level). Having a shorter dungeon at a lower price point but playable at all levels would appeal to the causal TD player. Having a traditional 7 room dungeon would appeal to token collectors. That’s my theory, at least.

When the volunteer with the epilogue room asked us if we would prefer a $99 5 room Dungeon or a $128 7 room Dungeon, he told us the majority of people he'd polled voted for the 7 room Dungeons.

It seems like a bit of a catch 22, 5 rooms does seem too short for me and my group, but I wonder how much $128+ ticket prices would affect sales. At some point price elasticity might give out and sales might take a big hit. I know primarily due to higher ticket prices my group has dropped from 3-5 Dungeons per GENCON to just one. Hopefully the prices to climb to the point where the group drops out completely.

Ideally we could get a 7 room Dungeon at a lower price, but maybe too many of the costs are fixed to make lower ticket prices viable.

5 rooms is better than 4, but 7 is best.

There was a poll for what everyone prefers in epilogue. The way it was administered was biased, because abstaining was counted as "I prefer 5 rooms". Despite that, half my runs were PUGs, and a surprisingly high number of those players voted for preferring 7 rooms. On my pre-arranged runs with vets, almost everyone voted for 7 rooms. So it will be interesting to see TDA's interpretation of those poll results, and how that decides what happens next year.

Two dungeons with 5 rooms, and two with 7 rooms does seem like a good compromise.

If it were up to me, I'd eliminate the sealed runs. They discourage token collecting and token sales. Anyone who has played at least once before should want to use the tokens they've collected. A free demo (like has been done at smaller cons in the past) would be a better way to get a brand new player interested.

I enjoyed the dungeons this year. The dungeon detail and extra work in the dungeons was evident. Since I am older I prefer the five-room format. However, I think a compromise would be good for the community.

Maybe a six-room dungeon is the answer. Three combat rooms, two puzzle rooms and one where you choose either puzzle or combat.

The four-room intro dungeon is important in order to attract new folks to True Dungeon. They get a taste, experience it and maybe get hooked to be a regular.

Lequinian wrote: Going to throw this out again... Run as GenCon, but also introduce special runs: TD-Ironman - 10 room or even 15 room runs.

Run all 5-room dungeons back-to-back-to-back without another coaching, no spell refresh, etc. Minimum level being Nightmare.

That way the casual players play the 5-room, but the vets get a challenging experience.

I don't know if logistically they could do this, but I would certainly be down for it. I would love it.

I couldn't recall what the numbers they provided were so thanks for posting.

98/5= ~$19.6 per dungeon room
128/7=~$18.3 per dungeon room
Basically its the same price. Either way at this price point I am down to one of each dungeon per year regardless of 5 rooms or 7. Do I want more? Always.

If we have 3 7-room dungeons I get 21 rooms to play in.
If we have 3 5-room and a 4-room i get 19 rooms to play in.

As long as the price per room is about the same I care more about the total # of new rooms to see at the con.

I would suggest do whatever is needed to resuscitate the game. IE get new players and new volunteers.

Our group had some pretty strong feelings about the 5 rooms:

- When there's a bad room, be that puzzle, DM or NPC, it sticks out *way* more in the 5 room setup. [I'm using bad in a general, not pejorative sense. People get tired and cranky, or are new to the material/skillset, etc etc]
- It didn't feel like the 2 less rooms allowed TD to focus on what was there and really enhance those 5 rooms into being spectacular. In fact, this year, nothing was really mind-blowing, whereas most years there's a room or two that are really memorable.
- Ditto the assessment on tokens.
- Ditto the assessment of time investment. Most hardcore players get there 30 minutes (or more) before the slot to get their classes, then they have another 36 minutes in coaching, that's nearly as much time not doing anything as doing the run.
- Unless the price point was $50, runs are a premium experience and they need to feel as such, whether 5 or 7 rooms.

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Chiming in on the ongoing discussion of volunteers, I think revitalization comes with one or a few of the following decisions:
- Choosing quality over quantity when creating a dungeon. The wow factor is what inspired the decade-long players to pick up the hobby and that's what will invigorate new members. The wow factor also inspires people to be a part of the world and volunteer.
- Rejiggering volunteering comp + expectations. The world and times have changed in the past twenty or so years and I believe the bleed is mostly due to these not being given a good hard look.
- Offering an explicit 'new player' experience 5-room dungeon at a lower price (i'd say use the 7 room runs to semi-subsidize price). Sealed pack runs, wow new players.
- As much as I hate to say it: cut back on VTD. It's stretching the TD resources too thin in terms of builds, time and volunteers. And if it's a desired cash flow, the extra earnings need to be reflected in the live runs.

I think I land somewhere in the middle on this.

I agree with David that I'd rather see the 4-room dungeon go away. I also like the idea of two 5-room dungeons with one 7-room capstone, but I also think John may have the right answer with 6-room dungeons. Three 6-room dungeons feels like a nice compromise.

That said, I think the biggest difference between 2025 and 2026 wasn't the room count. In 2025 we had 25 total rooms (one 4-room and three 7-room dungeons). In 2026 we had 19 total rooms (one 4-room and three 5-room dungeons). What I noticed most was the amount of NPC interaction.

Almost every memorable in-person TD moment I've had has involved an NPC, whether it was a gorgon, an NPC yelling insults during combat, the Spawn of the PUNisher, or Papa. This year felt much more alive because of that. If 19 rooms means we get this level of NPC interaction, I'd honestly take that over simply adding more rooms.

For me, the room count matters less than the quality of the experience.

One thing that probably makes me the wrong person to ask about pricing is that I'm going to play every dungeon at least once regardless. Honestly, if a run cost $200, I'd probably still do it once. I also didn't mind the one-hour format at Gen Con because it made fitting other events into the schedule much easier. I wouldn't want that format at Gamehole Con, but at Gen Con I thought it worked well.

The one thing I do think needs another look is the 4-room introductory dungeon. After 36 minutes of coaching, new players still seem overwhelmed once the timer starts. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the current format is quite accomplishing what it's intended to do.

Wiltey wrote: I think I land somewhere in the middle on this.

I agree with David that I'd rather see the 4-room dungeon go away. I also like the idea of two 5-room dungeons with one 7-room capstone, but I also think John may have the right answer with 6-room dungeons. Three 6-room dungeons feels like a nice compromise.

That said, I think the biggest difference between 2025 and 2026 wasn't the room count. In 2025 we had 25 total rooms (one 4-room and three 7-room dungeons). In 2026 we had 19 total rooms (one 4-room and three 5-room dungeons). What I noticed most was the amount of NPC interaction.

Almost every memorable in-person TD moment I've had has involved an NPC, whether it was a gorgon, an NPC yelling insults during combat, the Spawn of the PUNisher, or Papa. This year felt much more alive because of that. If 19 rooms means we get this level of NPC interaction, I'd honestly take that over simply adding more rooms.

For me, the room count matters less than the quality of the experience.

One thing that probably makes me the wrong person to ask about pricing is that I'm going to play every dungeon at least once regardless. Honestly, if a run cost $200, I'd probably still do it once. I also didn't mind the one-hour format at Gen Con because it made fitting other events into the schedule much easier. I wouldn't want that format at Gamehole Con, but at Gen Con I thought it worked well.

The one thing I do think needs another look is the 4-room introductory dungeon. After 36 minutes of coaching, new players still seem overwhelmed once the timer starts. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the current format is quite accomplishing what it's intended to do.

I think any introductory dungeon run whether it be 4 rooms or 5 should have pre-generated character builds with a starter Token pack for the pre-generated build that the player gets to keep. The party card should already be filled out with these pre-generated builds and during coaching the coach should spend the half hour going over each character class and how the game works.

As it is now I feel like it's a total mess for new players and way to overwhelming for them to have to come up with builds. It's chaos, and it stresses new players out. If TD gives them pregens then the coach can spend time talking to the players about game mechanics, the character classes and what abilities each one has. Let the coach spend 2-3 minutes directly talking with each player about their character. This can then be reinforced inside the training room.

Pre-gen builds is a great idea for a new person dungeon. Coming from the TCG world, I don't like throwing new players into sealed or draft events. If you don't know how to play, it's tough to come into an event and have to start by building a deck.

I like the chaos of sealed pack runs because it forces me to try new things, but if we're looking for ideas to help new players, this is a solid one.