TOPIC: Five-room dungeons

If the expectation is still that we arrive a half hour early my group will likely end up playing much less. We used to give up 5-6 hours to get 14 rooms in. Now to do 15 you’re looking at a whole day of other con activities foregone.

This is not a criticism, it is a prediction.

It's by no means an expectation to arrive 30 minutes early, that's just the earliest you can check in. If your group is pre-made and you all are ready to go, you could probably check in right before coaching and be perfectly fine.

Adam Martin wrote: So is this correct?

24 minutes equip time
12 minutes coaching
60 minutes 5 rooms

Leaving 24 minutes for treasure pulls?

This is correct, except only 12 minutes for treasure, as the next group will be 12 minutes behind you. It won't be a full 2 hours, just how the system is set up it appears to block out in 1/2 hour increments.

So I obviously haven’t been clear, but my concern here is: what am I asking the casuals in my group to give up when we buy TD tickets? And by give up, I don’t mean monetary cost. I mean opportunity cost, which includes other events foregone.

We had a sense of the prior trade off. I am trying to get clarification on how a 5 room dungeon with the same 2-hour window translates into scheduling for a group

Adam Martin wrote: So I obviously haven’t been clear, but my concern here is: what am I asking the casuals in my group to give up when we buy TD tickets? And by give up, I don’t mean monetary cost. I mean opportunity cost, which includes other events foregone.

We had a sense of the prior trade off. I am trying to get clarification on how a 5 room dungeon with the same 2-hour window translates into scheduling for a group

From a GENCON event system perspective, I don't think it allows overlap so you'd probably have to schedule your next event after that two hour period and possibly have a big of a gap in-between. Which might work out OK for non-TD events because you have to walk to the new game location and sometimes look around a bit to find it.

Adam Martin wrote: So I obviously haven’t been clear, but my concern here is: what am I asking the casuals in my group to give up when we buy TD tickets? And by give up, I don’t mean monetary cost. I mean opportunity cost, which includes other events foregone.

We had a sense of the prior trade off. I am trying to get clarification on how a 5 room dungeon with the same 2-hour window translates into scheduling for a group

Well, if you used to schedule something exactly 2 hours after your TD run, now instead of guaranteed to be late, you will actually have 12 minutes to get there.

Do we know how fight difficulty is going to be adjusted for the shorter experience?

My group plays hardcore on a normal 7 room run and we usually end with plenty of heal spells left. It seems like a 5 room run where we might have only 2 fights is going to be too easy unless the monster stats are boosted from what they typically are.

I suppose the problem I'm facing is: do we bump up to nightmare or continue with hardcore?

This might not be answerable without some insight from TPTB in how they are designing the runs this year.

Chris Heuer wrote: Do we know how fight difficulty is going to be adjusted for the shorter experience?

My group plays hardcore on a normal 7 room run and we usually end with plenty of heal spells left. It seems like a 5 room run where we might have only 2 fights is going to be too easy unless the monster stats are boosted from what they typically are.

I suppose the problem I'm facing is: do we bump up to nightmare or continue with hardcore?

This might not be answerable without some insight from TPTB in how they are designing the runs this year.

One nice boost will be the casters will not run out of spells as fast if at all.

I figure there is a good chance it will be 2 combat and puzzle with a choice room. But we will see.
If you are doing all 3 once each, it might be a good chance to give nightmares a try once to see how you feel about it, that said I don’t know how will equipped y’all are as fare as tokens go.

Wayne Rhodes wrote:

Chris Heuer wrote: Do we know how fight difficulty is going to be adjusted for the shorter experience?

My group plays hardcore on a normal 7 room run and we usually end with plenty of heal spells left. It seems like a 5 room run where we might have only 2 fights is going to be too easy unless the monster stats are boosted from what they typically are.

I suppose the problem I'm facing is: do we bump up to nightmare or continue with hardcore?

This might not be answerable without some insight from TPTB in how they are designing the runs this year.

One nice boost will be the casters will not run out of spells as fast if at all.

I figure there is a good chance it will be 2 combat and puzzle with a choice room. But we will see.
If you are doing all 3 once each, it might be a good chance to give nightmares a try once to see how you feel about it, that said I don’t know how will equipped y’all are as fare as tokens go.

It is guaranteed by previous information to be 2 rooms combat, 2 puzzle rooms, and a single room of puzzle/combat choice. Not sure the layout as to when that choice would occur. But yeah, I would also say if you think it might be too easy to try a harder difficulty. Worst that happens is you die and know for the future.

Manny Classic wrote:

Wayne Rhodes wrote:

Chris Heuer wrote: Do we know how fight difficulty is going to be adjusted for the shorter experience?

My group plays hardcore on a normal 7 room run and we usually end with plenty of heal spells left. It seems like a 5 room run where we might have only 2 fights is going to be too easy unless the monster stats are boosted from what they typically are.

I suppose the problem I'm facing is: do we bump up to nightmare or continue with hardcore?

This might not be answerable without some insight from TPTB in how they are designing the runs this year.

One nice boost will be the casters will not run out of spells as fast if at all.

I figure there is a good chance it will be 2 combat and puzzle with a choice room. But we will see.
If you are doing all 3 once each, it might be a good chance to give nightmares a try once to see how you feel about it, that said I don’t know how will equipped y’all are as fare as tokens go.

It is guaranteed by previous information to be 2 rooms combat, 2 puzzle rooms, and a single room of puzzle/combat choice. Not sure the layout as to when that choice would occur. But yeah, I would also say if you think it might be too easy to try a harder difficulty. Worst that happens is you die and know for the future.

In the lords and ladies section, the scoop

Event Structure
All five-room adventures will have two combat rooms, two puzzle rooms, and one room where the party can pick either a combat or puzzle challenge.

We submitted events after we had made the decision to offer 5-room dungeons vs. 7 room.

If your ticket time is 10:00, you will hit Epilogue at 11:36 and exit the dungeon (provided you take your entire 12 minutes in Epilogue) at 11:48.

Hope that helps!

Lori

Chris Heuer wrote: Do we know how fight difficulty is going to be adjusted for the shorter experience?

My group plays hardcore on a normal 7 room run and we usually end with plenty of heal spells left. It seems like a 5 room run where we might have only 2 fights is going to be too easy unless the monster stats are boosted from what they typically are.

I suppose the problem I'm facing is: do we bump up to nightmare or continue with hardcore?

This might not be answerable without some insight from TPTB in how they are designing the runs this year.

There's still a lot of tooling around with numbers to be done, but my initial plan is that the 5-room dungeons will have the same final room power levels as a 7-room. Numbers are admittedly not my strong suit from a GM perspective (I'm very much a "rule of cool"/storytelling GM), so I've talked to several players and Combat DMs to make myself a 7-room guide for in-person stats. For the 5-room my plan is to use my 7-room guide and modify it for a 5-room. Room 1 will be based on the stats of Rooms 1 & 2. Room 2 will be based on the stats of Rooms 3 & 4. Rooms 3, 4, and 5 will be using the base stats for Rooms 5, 6, and 7.

I hope that makes some kind of sense. I want the challenge to be as close to a 7-room as I can get without feeling like the first rooms are a slap in the face with harder difficulties than would be expected in the first rooms of a dungeon. Of course, all of this could change well before Gen Con. There's a lot of time for us to mix and match stats.