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TOPIC: GHC review

GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #13

How one of my most enjoyable runs was when I died in room 5.


I had some folks flake on me from my Saturday DDR run. So it was looking like I was going to have to solo the run. Something I was not looking forward to doing. I knew the puzzles from WYC and GHC so that would be frankly boring. Combat was not going to matter because I could do it on whatever difficult to either make it a challenge or a cakewalk (even on nightmare knowing the last monster was fire base would not have made it that much of a challenge).

Luckily I was able to find a friend who had not yet done DDR. So I figured we would just two man it at some difficulty. When we got into the coaching room I realized I misplaced my pre-printed character sheets. This I figured could make things interesting if I had just equip 5 tokens (really it was only 4 and 3 with in dungeon abilities). So then we had the 'brilliant' idea to play as wizards. We both were equipped with a +3 Relic Focus Staff, a Ring of Heroism, a +1 Sling (didn't need this), a Charm of Synergy (the 8 ghosts also wore them) and a Charm of Avarice (the 8 ghosts were also wearing these). We decided to do normal as we would have zero healing (no potions).

I should say I don't play wizard, so I wasn't even going to bother learning the chart in the training room, but my friend wanted to so we worked on it together. I think I can do the chart now, but maybe by Gen Con I will forget.

Room 1 puzzle, it took awhile but my friend was able to solve it with a bit of helpful hints from myself and the DM.

Room 2 Combat against the Wisp. Eric the DM is excited because he can actually hit us as we are wearing no armor and are wizards. I cast 5 level 0 spells at the bugger and I think my friend casts a combination of level 0 and level 1 at it. It after 5 rounds and hits one of us each round. We are not looking good to make it to the last room, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve (or wizard's robe).

I may have rooms 3 and 4 reversed
Room 3 is the Tilting Labyrinth. We pick up the labyrinth to get a gauge of its weight to make sure both of us can handle it well enough. We then debate whether we should attempt it knowing that it is going to do damage to us for every ball that falls into a hole or just take the push damage. Ultimately we decide to elect taking push damage. After that is decided the DM lets us try it 2 man just to see how we would have done. I would have take 4 points (2 balls into holes) and my friend 2 points (1 ball). But because we elected to take the push we both took 6 points. This is one of the mistakes that will ultimately spell my doom.

Room 4 Library Puzzle. My friend is able to find the clue but uncertain which wall to knock on. I give him a hard time about picking the right wall for awhile before letting him off the hook. I attempt to get him to memorize the scroll for room 7 but not wanting to give everything away don't tell him it is important.

Room 5. I suggest he looks in the mimic chest for weapons just so we can start combat quickly. Barry the DM rolls TERRIBLY. But being wizards still manages to hit us most of the time. My friend has dropped low enough that he needs heals or he will die. I tell him to go open a particular chest so he can drink a healing potion. A round or two later I am doing the same thing, and then he has to return to get the last potion. We are not doing enough damage to it so I move up in spells and cast one of my Ray's needing to slide a 15. Should be easy enough but the puck slides just a finger width's too far and I have missed. The mimic is ALMOST dead, but not quite. It attacks me and I die. My friend gets back from drinking the last potion to have it attack him. The potions have lowered his AC by 2 each time so the only thing that can miss is a 1. Barry thinks he is about to get a TPK, but instead the dice gods proceed to delivery a 1 to him and my friend escapes to cast the final spell that is the doom for the mimic. I am dead and he is at 6 health.

Room 6. Mirrored Runes. As I am dead I can no longer give hints to the puzzle. The DM is a good sport and helps steer my friend along the right direction that he is able to solve the puzzle with a little over a minute left.

Room 7. I am hoping my friend remembers the correct order to cross the lava so he will be at full health, but unfortunately he does not. So it is just an elf wizard with 6 HP, and 1 offensive spell left. He casts alertness so he can win initiative. Which he does. He then casts Invisibility. DM and NPC both laugh and allow him to exit the room alive. I tell him technically he would die either to the monster being able to find him or the timer going off and being pushed to death, but still he revels in the fact the DM says he escapes alive. It is GHC anyway, so who cares really.

We had a blast on a run that I had been dreading.
You either discover a star or you don't. You arrogant punk.

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #14

Jeff, thanks for setting up at GHC! I hope it was a success and you return next year!

I loved every minute of my TD experience at GHC! We had such a great time on our 5 runs and we got to meet some really great players to possibly form a party for Gen Con! All of the volunteers did a great job this year. I'm horrible with names but the 3 big standouts for me was the GM in the "Masters Room" (I did that run 3 times and he was on point all three times), the flat dice puzzle DM who was also fun on every run (He wound up joining our adventuring group for one of the last runs reluctantly and it turned out he was also a great player!) and finally the American/Canadian Vanilla Ice guy who's dad was from Philly. He was a lot of fun during the battle and was really funny and a very high energy guy!

The Transmute room was also phenomenal and the treasure pulls overall were very satisfying (sans my last green bag that had all uncommons and zero gold or bits. That was my only minor selfish disappointment to a great weekend).

Anyone who did not make it to GHC missed out on a really fun weekend to get your TD fix until April!
"The Dreams of Youth are the Regrets of Maturity."

Boom goes the Devil Drake when this Rogue slides a 20 with a Holy Hand Grenade.

My Rogue Build: truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=569&id=244107&limitstart=0

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Last edit: by JACKOFTRADZE.

GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #15

GHC was my first time volunteering for TD. I was seriously nervous because I was given a DM role and wasn't the most confidant in my ability to do it. Shout out to Linda, Stu, and Jeff (not Martin) for the support and encouragement. I don't think I've ever had as much fun at a con as I had this past weekend! I think the best part was watching every party try and solve the puzzle. Some of the looks on their faces were priceless once they figured it out!

Volunteering is something I definitely plan on doing again and it was really neat to meet a bunch of the forumites as well. :)

jedibcg wrote: Room 6. Mirrored Runes. As I am dead I can no longer give hints to the puzzle. The DM is a good sport and helps steer my friend along the right direction that he is able to solve the puzzle with a little over a minute left.


I think this was one of my top 5 most memorable DM experiences at GHC. :cheer:

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #16

I won't add much, but thought I'd say something.

This is my first time just doing runs (no volunteering) since I first started with TD. Everyone was great! If things weren't quite right everyone was doing their best to keep things going, like being down a Coach.

First what seemed like the first time in ever I had some really great for me pulls which added to my personal fun and I got to do Grind for the first time, an experience and a half, but getting to see Raven and Eric both DM for awhile was cool in itself to watch. I especially liked the brain switching. Some years ago I would have been ticked that it happened to me, but now I just love that it was something unique and different.

I have to point out Pablo, I mean Steve DM, always great and his customer service speech is a great tool for new players to be more active after the event is over. I also giggle every time I hear it.

Chadwick (don't know if that was his name or not) from the Arcanist? puzzle room was a blast! The absolute highlight of my runs (though the blue hand Mimic was not far behind). He was just having such a good time and it reminded me of when I was working my local Escape Room, just chewing on scenery. I hope he'll be able to DM again.

Thanks to everyone that I was able to run with and to anyone that helped me out by loaning me a token or working out a trade. It was a very memorable con for me.

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #17

Room 7 Deeperdark Redux must have been brutal on Nightmare since the creatures AC was higher than 26 on normal.

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #18

Picc wrote: room GMs were able to do a truncheon only run


That was my highlight of the con for sure!

Picc wrote: I felt like the nerative on this dungeon was somewhat lost. I didnt know we were supposed to be trying out for the assassin's guild until the last room. Some kind of intro speach would have helped tie events together.


There was supposed to be an intro speech in training from a drow NPC. I don't know how often she was actually there though. She may have been needed to cover another room.
Classes Played: Barbarian (65 times), Monk (56), Ranger (33), Rogue (25), Cleric (21), Fighter (13), Druid (12), Paladin (11), Dwarf Fighter (10), Bard (7), Elf Wizard (2), Wizard (2)

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #19

I should add I also finally got to run with Raven. Joshua Baessler convinced me to do a run while I was sitting around doing nothing on Friday. We decided to buy out the run because why not. We ran into Raven and invited her along. We were suddenly doing a 3 man with 7 ghosts and the Coaches let us know the run after ours only had one person in it so they combined the two runs for a 4 person 11 character party run. I don't remember if we did Hardcore or Nightmare but I don't remember any issues at all.


We also did a 4 man grind that was interesting. I think we would have an zero issues if our brains didn't get swapped out. In the end the boss was just a bit too much for our team, but it still a lot of fun.
You either discover a star or you don't. You arrogant punk.

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #20

So a few friends and I decided to drive up to GHC to get a single run in, since a couple had missed gencon, and a couple just needed to get a quick fix.

Ended up in an impromptu Grind run. It was my first time running grind, but had a blast. had 2 monsters kill themselves just trying to grab me! I also scored a number of killing blows, was quite exciting, only to ignominiously dying to some falling rocks (those rocks had better have taken the retribution damage) Still was a great time.

My friends and I had an epic time on our 5:49 Underdark Awaits run on Saturday. Props to all the GMs. It was an interesting run, Myself and Allen were pretty solid Hardcore builds, Then 3 players playing up from normal builds, and the other 4 being nightmare ready. But it was a great experience, most organized party we've ever done which was a relief, and we got to play with some tokens normally well out of our reach. Also got to witness Raven deliver her second Nightshade's assassination of the day/her career.

I would say I had only two quibbles with the dungeon:

1. Need to have White lights, not yellow tinted. the Yellow tinting made it harder to identify the starting key in the first puzzle, and nigh impossible to tell the blue bead from the floor puzzle. (Though as a Drunken Dwarf Fighter, I was quite a fan of the excuse to drink mead)

2. I don't think we would have gotten the Dinner puzzle if it weren't for the vast experience of some of our party from previous runs. Part of this was we took the "Be Polite" clue literally and were trying related phrases to politeness.

Prize wise I pulled a ton of uncommons, but in the end also a Kovthe's Bloodless, so quite exciting.
~Meta: Don't worry, it is perfectly "safe" to follow the drunken dwarf into the dungeon!

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #21

By the way - this has been bugging me for years ;).

What was the solution to the dinner table puzzle?

Disenchant?

Unenchant?

Something else?

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #22

Dispel Hold
You either discover a star or you don't. You arrogant punk.

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #23

Matthew Hayward wrote: By the way - this has been bugging me for years ;).

What was the solution to the dinner table puzzle?

Disenchant?

Unenchant?

Something else?


The original solution was Disenchant.

This year it was Dispel Hold.
D&D teaches all the important lessons in life - the low blow, the cheap shot, the back stab, the double cross. - Jerry Marsischky

Let them trap us. We have our swords. - Elric of Melnibone.

You try to get them to play the game, but all they want to do is play the rules. - Ardak Kumerian

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend - Faramir

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GHC review 7 years 10 months ago #24

Harlax wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: By the way - this has been bugging me for years ;).

What was the solution to the dinner table puzzle?

Disenchant?

Unenchant?

Something else?


The original solution was Disenchant.

This year it was Dispel Hold.


Thanks!

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