TOPIC: Thoughts on 5 rooms

Grizwald wrote:

Rob F wrote: For me the 5 room dungeon felt more like an escape room then TD. My overriding thought after the runs were:

"Do I really need Tokens?".

5 rooms under the current format makes me less interested in playing. It wasn't as fun.

Suggestion to consider:

Go to a 4 room format but have the first 3 rooms be both puzzle and combat and extend the time in each room to accommodate both accordingly. Then have the last room be a choice between puzzle or combat, or maybe just keep the last room combat. With less rooms TD should be able to make each room larger to accommodate both the puzzle and combat. This gives players what they were used to in the 7 room dungeons, cuts down on the need for volunteers, and probably makes set up and tear down easier for TD. A win all around. TD could even tie in the puzzle with the combat some how which would be cool. Lots of options. Less rooms, same content as before.

In a 24 minute room scenario you either lose half your runs or you create duplicate rooms. The :00 group goes into room 1A while the :12 group goes into room 1B. If the final room is the same, you now have 7 rooms for a "four" room dungeon. Plus you need to duplicate some of the set pieces. Some of the puzzles I can see TD only having one version of, like the rope table in Monster Unbound.

We did something like that in 2006 (I think it was 2006). Rooms 1-6 in two different Dungeons were unique, but both groups combined into one room for the final room, and both had to succeed in their challenges (I think one was puzzle and one was combat) for the two groups to win. From what I recall, there was a lot of negative feedback of having your group's success be dependent on another group.

Grizwald wrote:

Rob F wrote: For me the 5 room dungeon felt more like an escape room then TD. My overriding thought after the runs were:

"Do I really need Tokens?".

5 rooms under the current format makes me less interested in playing. It wasn't as fun.

Suggestion to consider:

Go to a 4 room format but have the first 3 rooms be both puzzle and combat and extend the time in each room to accommodate both accordingly. Then have the last room be a choice between puzzle or combat, or maybe just keep the last room combat. With less rooms TD should be able to make each room larger to accommodate both the puzzle and combat. This gives players what they were used to in the 7 room dungeons, cuts down on the need for volunteers, and probably makes set up and tear down easier for TD. A win all around. TD could even tie in the puzzle with the combat some how which would be cool. Lots of options. Less rooms, same content as before.

In a 24 minute room scenario you either lose half your runs or you create duplicate rooms. The :00 group goes into room 1A while the :12 group goes into room 1B. If the final room is the same, you now have 7 rooms for a "four" room dungeon. Plus you need to duplicate some of the set pieces. Some of the puzzles I can see TD only having one version of, like the rope table in Monster Unbound.

Darn

Ryan wrote: Keeping in mind that I have far less experience to compare it to than most everyone else here, I felt as though there was a skew of resources vs resource sinks. I survived all four dungeons, but likely should not have. Our group failed to defeat the final boss of Fang and Fury, but the DM pushed us forward anyways to a victory with a story about how we distracted the monster long enough to escape.

The takeaway that my group of new players found from this was that damage > any other stat. Puzzle room damage can be circumvented without any character card stats. Monsters seem to attack at most three people a turn (vs AC, making that stat devalued). With only two, at most three combat encounters, spell slot healing was plentiful as long as we were able to kill the monster quickly enough to have time left over to heal before the next room, further incentivizing damage > everything else. In fact, in two runs, we didn't even have a cleric, and nobody died to damage or used any healing potions. The only actual death I saw over my runs (sealed normal, normal, hardcore (borrowed tokens), and Nightmare (borrowed whole build)) was to an instant death mechanic, which could only be mitigated by killing the monster faster. To bring this back to the topic at hand: two extra rooms worth of threats may improve the value of other stats.

Hi Ryan, welcome to True Dungeon and to the forums!

Your analysis is spot on; full-length adventures were 7 rooms for many years prior to this, so things like the class cards are essentially calibrated to make sense in that context. With 5 combats + 2 puzzles (and sometimes even with 4+3), Wizards often run low on damage spells and Clerics often use up all their healing spells, and dying from lack of HP becomes a real possibility -- assuming token builds that are "appropriate" for the chosen difficulty rather than super-OP, of course.

Have you heard about Virtual TD? ( td.events/faq ). It's a different kind of experience than playing in-person, but it is 7 rooms and typically calibrated to be a bit harder at each level, so damage still matters but things like to-hit and saving throws also matter a lot more than they did at GenCon. If this sounds at all intriguing, there is one coming up at the end of August ( td.events/conventions/FearAndFog ) that might be worth a try!

David Zych wrote: Hi Ryan, welcome to True Dungeon and to the forums!

...

Have you heard about Virtual TD? ( td.events/faq ). It's a different kind of experience than playing in-person, but it is 7 rooms and typically calibrated to be a bit harder at each level, so damage still matters but things like to-hit and saving throws also matter a lot more than they did at GenCon. If this sounds at all intriguing, there is one coming up at the end of August ( td.events/conventions/FearAndFog ) that might be worth a try!

Thank you for the warm welcome! I have heard about Virtual TD, as an organizer at GenCon was kind enough to answer some of my questions prior to one of my runs, and one of the veteran players steered me towards TD Character Creator. Hearing that they're seven rooms makes me even more interested. I'm deeply intrigued by the idea, but I have some questions as a new player that I haven't been able to find reliable answers for yet. Questions like

-What kind of stat benchmarks are a reasonable estimate for moving up to Hardcore/Epic from Normal? I neither want to accidentally trivialize a normal run nor prove a liability in higher play.
-Is it taboo to buy a ticket for an event with people already signed up, but that isn't sold out yet? I know a lot of groups will coordinate ahead of time through the forums.

I don't want to bog down with off-topic conversation a thread for feedback, though. Is there a good place to post questions like this on the forums? The closest I've seen would be the "General Info for All TD Cons," but I'm not sure if that's maybe more for planning or if there's a questions subthread that I've not found yet.

There's a pretty good VTD thread here that we can tack onto: truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=602&id=259463

At first I was really excited about the idea of 5 rooms and a lower price. I go to GenCon with a very large group and many swore off of TD years and years ago due to the escalating cost. The event listings were still for two hours, so I assumed we'd be getting more time in each room. It was incredibly disappointing to find out in the middle of a run that it was still 12 minutes.

I prefer the 7 room format over the 5 room format for the reasons stated. Summarizing:

- I want a better balance of “immersive play time” to “character building, coaching, epilogue”
- 5 rooms did not feel challenging for a reasonably well-equipped Nightmare or Epic party
- Resource management is no longer an issue, somewhat undermining the one aspect of collecting & game play

I love the idea of GenCon with two 5-room runs and two 7-room runs if Lucas Oil and volunteer capacity fits. I think 5 rooms is a much better format than 4 and still supports sealed pack runs.

Selfishly, I’d love to allow TEs in a sealed pack run if we’re talking ~$100 for a run.

Finally, as someone playing Nightmare and Epic, and likes combat rooms, I want to enjoy the experience of casting spells (when I play Cleric) and sliding. In VTD, we’re usually going 3-6 rounds. In the GC dungeons, we generally only went 2 rounds thankfully because we ONLY HAD TIME for 2 rounds. I ran with several experienced combat DMs who commented that the “tricks of the trade” to combat-DM a higher level party weren’t being taught or adopted by many of the newer DMs that support faster damage calculation. Don’t get me wrong - we still had fun. But I think we’d all MUCH RATHER a harder combat experience that was a bigger drain on resources and ran more rounds than needing to tool up to 2-shot a monster or risk running out of time. This last point may seem off topic, but it’s a MUCH BIGGER deal in a 5 room dungeon than a 7 room dungeon.

Scott Kwiker wrote: I prefer the 7 room format over the 5 room format for the reasons stated. Summarizing:

- I want a better balance of “immersive play time” to “character building, coaching, epilogue”
- 5 rooms did not feel challenging for a reasonably well-equipped Nightmare or Epic party
- Resource management is no longer an issue, somewhat undermining the one aspect of collecting & game play

I love the idea of GenCon with two 5-room runs and two 7-room runs if Lucas Oil and volunteer capacity fits. I think 5 rooms is a much better format than 4 and still supports sealed pack runs.

Selfishly, I’d love to allow TEs in a sealed pack run if we’re talking ~$100 for a run.

Finally, as someone playing Nightmare and Epic, and likes combat rooms, I want to enjoy the experience of casting spells (when I play Cleric) and sliding. In VTD, we’re usually going 3-6 rounds. In the GC dungeons, we generally only went 2 rounds thankfully because we ONLY HAD TIME for 2 rounds. I ran with several experienced combat DMs who commented that the “tricks of the trade” to combat-DM a higher level party weren’t being taught or adopted by many of the newer DMs that support faster damage calculation. Don’t get me wrong - we still had fun. But I think we’d all MUCH RATHER a harder combat experience that was a bigger drain on resources and ran more rounds than needing to tool up to 2-shot a monster or risk running out of time. This last point may seem off topic, but it’s a MUCH BIGGER deal in a 5 room dungeon than a 7 room dungeon.

+1 to all of this.

In my opinion, the 5 room dungeon was designed for a lower bar of entry adventure that was tuned/semi-deadly for brand new players or ones with small collections and felt it successfully achieved this goal. For the beyond hardcore difficulty players not sure if just increasing the behind the scene numbers would satisfy the "I could potentially die" feeling.


Do think somethings could change if this is the new format for PTD going forward:

Having less rooms showed we can have bigger rooms to take up the convention space. So why not give us more choice rooms of puzzle/combat. Giving parties the "build their own adventure" and enhancing repeatability. More combat for their spells/token use or more puzzle for those that like the "escape room" vibe. Could be like a mini-grind or puzzle-grind if it was 4 choice rooms then final fight of big bad for that module. Possibly downside is needing more volunteers capable of Combat DM.

Personally I'm luke warm on seal run adventure being the "beginner friendly dungeon" but understand "sealed" has its niche in True Dungeon space. Maybe I would feel different if there was per-generated class builds to choose from. I felt the free demo 1 combat/1 puzzle room from older dungeons fit the introduction experience to players better. It is how I found out/got hooked on True Dungeon the first year they came to Pax South.

Lastly I wish there was more time in some rooms as 12 minutes doesn't feel to be enough to listen to dialogue/exposition then try and solve the puzzle or do combat. This problem gets compounded if the party is late getting out of any room or coaching. Which could have ripple effect with the following parties till a bubble hits. My initial thought was 20 minutes per room but that would make the dungeon longer than 2 hours (20 x 7 = 140 mins) which wont work well with GenCon's ticketing system. Thus landed on 15 mins (15 x 7 = 105 mins) but would put player coaches in a bind with filling out the party card. This is where assistant coaches would have to step up in explaining True Dungeon to new players/filling out assistant sheets before the player coach got to their room. Maybe the bigger elephant is 20% less runs can be done in a day.

My group voted about half and half for 7 room versus five rooms.Three of the players moved from five rooms to six rooms--if that was an option.

My big concern about the five room dungeons is the overhead of the 24 minutes of coaching, 12 minutes of training, and 30 minutes to get there beforehand to select classes and difficulty. This means that the there is an hour of overhead for each dungeon.  If there are five rooms, then that's about a 50/50 ratio.  If there are seven rooms, then it's a much better ratio of gameplay.

I also really, really want the sealed adventures that are 4 rooms to continue.  In my experience, this is the best way to get new players into TD. It's cheaper (less than $100). If no XP is given, then it's easier to get tickets for it. If no other tokens are allowed, then new players don't have to worry about veterans coming in with extensive collections--all players are on the same footing. If rooms from previous years can be used to reduce the cost to TDHQ, then that's even better!  The lower the cost, the better for players to see if they like TD (and get hooked!).

Four room dungeons are not for the veteran players. If you only want veterans, then continue to only run 7 room dungeons and increase the cost as needed.
If you want new players to join the hobby (and to replace the veteran players that leave), then having a low barrier to entry (low cost, short time, no XP, no prior tokens) is way to recruit them.

As you mentioned in the Riddle Reveal, there were a lot of new players this year (1000+), and that shows that shorter dungeons (lower cost and time commitment) are better for new players. I bet the new player numbers would be even higher for the sealed adventures that don't provide XP.

I would suggest having two seven room dungeons for the veteran players and two four room sealed adventures with no XP that is a repeat of past TD rooms for new players. If pregen players can be provided for one or both of the four room adventures, then that may help the barrier to entry as well.

I wonder how 1,000 new players compares to past years. I don't remember the number of new players being mentioned before, but I might have just missed it. I hope that a number of those new players turn into new volunteers.

Ryan wrote:

David Zych wrote: Hi Ryan, welcome to True Dungeon and to the forums!

...

Have you heard about Virtual TD? ( td.events/faq ). It's a different kind of experience than playing in-person, but it is 7 rooms and typically calibrated to be a bit harder at each level, so damage still matters but things like to-hit and saving throws also matter a lot more than they did at GenCon. If this sounds at all intriguing, there is one coming up at the end of August ( td.events/conventions/FearAndFog ) that might be worth a try!

Thank you for the warm welcome! I have heard about Virtual TD, as an organizer at GenCon was kind enough to answer some of my questions prior to one of my runs, and one of the veteran players steered me towards TD Character Creator. Hearing that they're seven rooms makes me even more interested. I'm deeply intrigued by the idea, but I have some questions as a new player that I haven't been able to find reliable answers for yet. Questions like

-What kind of stat benchmarks are a reasonable estimate for moving up to Hardcore/Epic from Normal? I neither want to accidentally trivialize a normal run nor prove a liability in higher play.
-Is it taboo to buy a ticket for an event with people already signed up, but that isn't sold out yet? I know a lot of groups will coordinate ahead of time through the forums.

I don't want to bog down with off-topic conversation a thread for feedback, though. Is there a good place to post questions like this on the forums? The closest I've seen would be the "General Info for All TD Cons," but I'm not sure if that's maybe more for planning or if there's a questions subthread that I've not found yet.

Ryan, Welcome to TD. It is a great community!

It is NOT taboo to buy into a run with players already in it. In fact, I highly recommend it. If it is an organized run, then they would have bought all the tickets.

I am not an expert on the current needs for each level of play, but I think if your character is +5-10 on to-hits, damage, and saves; then you are fine on hardcore. NIghtmare is probably +15-20. If the group really wants to play a certain level, then they can probably bump you up to that level. Don't be talked into Epic or Mythic unless someone is providing you with an appropriate build. The point is to have fun while not ruining other's fun in the process.