I have been saving my feedback from Origins till I and everyone else got through Gen Con because I didn't want to taint anyone's experience of Gen Con. I should have written it down at least so it would be fresher instead of working off memory solely.
On Thursday of Origins I played E1 and E2. E1 had some minor technically difficulties but nothing I haven't seen before and nothing that prevented us from being able to do a room or puzzle. SPOILERS to follow
The hag betraying us was no surprise for anyone playing TD for any amount of time. In fact at this point any npc that travels with us and doesn't betray us seems more of a surprise. Maybe for someone that hasn't played for any amount of time though it is surprise and I am just getting jaded after 10 years of play. I am not a fan of monsters on video screens. It is not all immersive for me. I would rather have a person in a bad costume than a video screen 90% of the time. The only time I it was okay was the dragon fight aboard the airship. The snake creature we fault was a waste, imo because the video screen was behind where the players were sliding so even if it was cool the players barely saw it. The puzzles were okay even if the gem puzzle was too difficult to solve with 10 gems in 12 minutes. There wasn't anything cool or awesome on the run though that stuck in my head (I am likely forgetting something). It was an acceptable dungeon but not one of TD's best imo.
E2 was just plain awful on Thursday. After the run I actually asked for an AC and ended up talking to Jeff about it.
Room 2 where you are presented with the option to leave gold on the alter is way to small on Thursday. Once the combat table was pulled out there was bear room to get from one side of the room to the other. I also feel that is a terrible mechanic. Players are told by coaches that they can put away unneeded tokens. They then get into this room and dig through their bags attempting to find something acceptable using valuable time if they are unable to find anything adequate. If they do find anything that works quickly they stand around doing nothing in the room. Also I find seeing a monster revealed from behind a curtain to be getting old (again this could just be me being jaded of seeing it for 10 years) and maybe it still a good thing for new players. Also the positioning of the combat board was such that the players had their backs too it again (I know they changed this later just reporting everything that I felt at the time made the run awful). We had another puzzle were we needed to stick our hands in something which I felt was similar to the E1 puzzle though not solved the same way. The last room puzzle just didn't work. There was no way to solve it as it was intended when we first attempted it so it was a big miss for me. I left the dungeon and thought there was absolutely nothing of wow in it either. If that had been anyone's first time experience after spending $80 at Gen Con, you would probably have the awful time to convince them to return every. I talked to Jeff about most of this and he said he was aware and they would be staying late Thursday to fix stuff. He also told me about some of the cool effects they would have at Gen Con that they could not do at Origins. Running the dungeon on Friday and Saturday I saw the improvements they had man and was very glad they did, but still I wasn't certain if the run would be worth $80 at Gen Con because even with cool lasers there was still nothing that wowed me (puzzle or monster). It was great to have someone listen to me though about why I felt the dungeon was sub par. Jeff offered a free run, I declined because just someone listening made me feel a lot better about it.
Now we move ahead 1 month to Gen Con. E2 was the first up for my group. I liked that everything was working for our run the laser on final room and lights for the skulls. It definitely made it a cooler run that at Origins but still ultimately it was not cool enough that I would have recommended to anyone. All of the N's last year had a least one cool or wow room. Whether it be the ship navigation puzzle or the snow building puzzle which everyone I played with really enjoyed. Or seeing the rainbow bridge (even if they didn't like the puzzle itself) or devil drake at the end. Some loved the singing puzzle. There was one puzzle that someone loved doing or a monster or puzzle that they loved to see. There was a wow/coolness factor that I knew would want to make them play again. E2 just didn't have it for me not at Origins and not at Gen Con either. I would have recommend anyone to dump E2 tickets and do Odin's Redux for less money or E3 or E1. The group in front of us also prevented us from getting into room 1 for 3 minutes on 1 run. It didn't prevent it us from solving it but it was frustrating when we got to the room with the skulls and they had not reset the puzzle. Honesly though that might have been 2 different runs.
E1 saw some nice improvements from Origins to Gen Con. I think they did a much better job of placing the combat boards so you would have the monster at the end of the board. I liked the addition of the hammers in room 2. Felt that added a nice second layer of difficulty without making it too difficult since it was room 2.
E3 is the type of dungeon I expect from TD now over the years. We saw a cool monster at the end (imo) and I thought the puzzle where we had to feed the skull was different even if it was frustratingly difficult depending on the DM. There were audio issues in room 3 I think everyone knows. Which is very frustrating because all this money was spent on a new sound system that increased our ticket prices. That said I still liked E3 the best out of the new dungeons because I saw it potential.
Overall my experience this year was good enough that I am going to continue at my token purchase and ticket purchase level for next year minus doing E best of at Gen Con (assuming they have one).
You either discover a star or you don't. You arrogant punk.
