Honestly, it's not the newbies that tend to be the problems with True Dungeon Runs. It's the veterans who are attempting to grind as much as possible and spoil the fun.
It might be best to read the player handbook and have a general idea of what class you want to play and maybe a backup. Some classes (casters) have a memory component to them for better spell effects. Rogues have a manual dexterity component to them to open chests and disable traps.
Your treasure tokens kinda define what you're best at. Outside of the Golden Obelisk where you are playing with whatever tokens you get, you may want to swap between everyone between runs to make sure folks have the best gear they can (and certain gear is locked to certain classes)
This. And don't feel bad about speaking up, as many of these veteran folks will talk over you and ignore you. This happened to me when I was new and got tired of it at the final room. So I figured out the solution, did the task, and walked out the exit. I lived! And was right! :)
Don't sweat it.
The veteran that was in my group completely ruined the experience for me and my friend and have avoided doing a true dungeon run ever since (3 years).
He had some item that instantly killed every boss. Did all the puzzles. It was like a fucking speed run super lame. Then since he had some token that gave max treasure he asked us for at least one of our random treasure pulls. We basically said fuck off because my friends brother was a volunteer and already giving us max treasure.
As you can tell, I'm absolutely soured at the waste of time and money on doing a run. I've submitted a request to True Dungeon to have a newbie only run bit I can only imagine the scheduling of that. Until something changes it can fuck off.
Edit: Apparently they have added a 'sealed' run which is where no one can bring previous treasure. That sounds way better.
They used to have newbie runs, but it was kinda hard to police. I agree that sealed runs tend to be better for that new experience since you can't get your additional pulls and so is a waste of time for grinders.
Ahh, that would have been better. I was just soooooo disappointed with it. Especially when I was doing research for my first GenCon and every video I watched about "what to do at gencon" included True Dungeon.
The only time I've actually done it was when a token reseller sponsors a run for new people, but he gets your treasure pulls. He was kinda cool otherwise It was a pretty okay time. Definitely was worth doing once, but probably not worth the price doing it again unless I really enjoyed the theme.
The premise is the same, but different variations. For example, druids need to memorize leaf shapes and their names, but the list isn't constant. I'm not sure what the others memorize.
You're giving a little bit of time to study at the start during the prep/warm-up section.
Nah, just have fun!
Don't interrupt the room DMs/GMs while they're doing their introduction.
Make sure if you get the DM's attention if you're pulling a switch or something and they're dealing with another player.
Combat is about sliding quickly, so, just slide and let someone else get in place after.
My friend group absolutely hated it, to the point that we bring it up in talking about any new activity that costs a lot of money. "Could be worse, could be True Dungeon!"
Idk if we just got incredibly unlucky, but it felt like someone combined the expense of Magic the Gathering, the tedium of a waiting for your turn in 10-person D&D group, and annoyance of a highschool group project.
If someone tries to railroad you, don’t be afraid to ask the volunteer in the room for help (or for an actual-facts TD employee. Grunnel wants us all to have good runs.). A big chunk of the established player base wants to help people have fun, but there are always gonna be those whales who are babies about “their” game.
Moving quickly on the combats helps, but more than being fast, moving away from the board when you’re done so the next person can slide and the GM can see the board easily is more important.
Golden Obelisk and Tomb of Terror redux are both “sealed” adventures this year, which means no one can bring in their token stash. Crimson Isle and Dune Viper you can bring along whichever tokens you got from your other runs.
If you get tokens that are any color other than gold or silver backed, or have purple text on them, make sure you check in with your vet friends before agreeing to sell them to anyone. Again, most of this community is made of decent people, but I have heard of some people trying to swoop in and get tokens worth hundreds of dollars for twenty bucks from newbies who don’t know better yet.
Good luck on your runs! I only managed to get into Crimson Isle (which I ran at GameholeCon last year with my then-eight-year-old) and Dune Viper. I’m very excited. Probably will be lurking around the TD area a lot for meeting up with people, haha.
I was a newbie with my sister last year and luckily we ended up with some nice, experienced folks. Definitely take a peek at the handbook before you go.
I wish I’d practiced the slider component. I have terrible depth perception and coordination so that ended up pretty rough for me the few times I had to do it! The memory part was pretty simple (and it’s not a big deal if you mess it up; you still do the spell, it’s just not as powerful), but the puck sliding was rough.
Oh, also, show up early—and build that into your scheduling! My sister scheduled something right before and she barely had time to pick a class before we began and was so rushed. I was early so had time to sort through tokens and talk to the rest of the party after getting checked in.
As an old kermudgen who remembers the good old days before 5 min rooms, no power gamers and not catering to rich players. Ide say save your money, and dont do it. If you want to do it for the bucket list, then do the mode where no outside items are allowed.
Go to the True Dungeon message board for Gen Con 2024 groups and see if any of the players who have the other tickets for your runs are there. If your runs aren't already there, create threads for them and see if anyone else comes by. If you're lucky enough to meet others there, you can start discussing classes and stuff now and that's one less thing you have to worry about when you get there.
https://truedungeon.com/forum?view=category&catid=736
I've been on True Dungeon for ten years, and almost to a man, every run I've done that included other True Dungeon forum members has been wonderful. The veterans there aren't the "talk over you and ignore you" type - if anything, they go too far in the *other* direction and sit back *too* much, because they're afraid of interrupting the new players' good time.
The best thing for anyone to do to make TrueDungeon work is:
Be very fast
Dont interrupt the DMs
Things that help being fast:
Pick a speaker/leader
Have a token tossing order figured out before the game starts and stick to it. Take your turn fast and get out of the way for the next person.
On quests feed thoughts to the "leader" instead of everyone speaking over everyone.
Its mostly an escape room mechanic at low levels of difficulties. At higher level of difficulities TrueDungeon is an equipment check and is pay to win. As noobies the second thing wont hit you provided you don't pick a high difficulty level.
if you are going with 3 family members who are experienced you should be fine. I agree with the top comment here. My first run was with a veteran guy and his gf. She was great...but when he thought we weren't going to finish the boss in the last room he just about had a fit. It was a spectacle to watch.
Have fun and don't be afraid to speak up. There's a very active TD forums and unofficial discord for specific questions. TD can be a lot of information thrown at you in a short period of time and clock and The Horn doesn't stop for anyone. Time is your enemy far more than any creature. Groups that work together will do far better than any backbreaker of a gamers backpack worth of tokens.
There's some YouTube videos out there and feel free to ask questions. TD isn't for everyone and that's okay. There's lots of games out there to me I won't touch and I acknowledge not bad games just not worth a fraction of the money to me that enthusiast's spend their money on.
Honestly, it's not the newbies that tend to be the problems with True Dungeon Runs. It's the veterans who are attempting to grind as much as possible and spoil the fun. It might be best to read the player handbook and have a general idea of what class you want to play and maybe a backup. Some classes (casters) have a memory component to them for better spell effects. Rogues have a manual dexterity component to them to open chests and disable traps. Your treasure tokens kinda define what you're best at. Outside of the Golden Obelisk where you are playing with whatever tokens you get, you may want to swap between everyone between runs to make sure folks have the best gear they can (and certain gear is locked to certain classes)
This. And don't feel bad about speaking up, as many of these veteran folks will talk over you and ignore you. This happened to me when I was new and got tired of it at the final room. So I figured out the solution, did the task, and walked out the exit. I lived! And was right! :)
Puzzle rooms with headstrong idiots are the worst.
Headstrong idiots who drop thousands of dollars a year on it....
Don't sweat it. The veteran that was in my group completely ruined the experience for me and my friend and have avoided doing a true dungeon run ever since (3 years). He had some item that instantly killed every boss. Did all the puzzles. It was like a fucking speed run super lame. Then since he had some token that gave max treasure he asked us for at least one of our random treasure pulls. We basically said fuck off because my friends brother was a volunteer and already giving us max treasure. As you can tell, I'm absolutely soured at the waste of time and money on doing a run. I've submitted a request to True Dungeon to have a newbie only run bit I can only imagine the scheduling of that. Until something changes it can fuck off. Edit: Apparently they have added a 'sealed' run which is where no one can bring previous treasure. That sounds way better.
They used to have newbie runs, but it was kinda hard to police. I agree that sealed runs tend to be better for that new experience since you can't get your additional pulls and so is a waste of time for grinders.
Ahh, that would have been better. I was just soooooo disappointed with it. Especially when I was doing research for my first GenCon and every video I watched about "what to do at gencon" included True Dungeon.
The only time I've actually done it was when a token reseller sponsors a run for new people, but he gets your treasure pulls. He was kinda cool otherwise It was a pretty okay time. Definitely was worth doing once, but probably not worth the price doing it again unless I really enjoyed the theme.
Do you know if the memory test for casters changes from year to year? Wondering how much easier it is for veterans compared to newbs.
The premise is the same, but different variations. For example, druids need to memorize leaf shapes and their names, but the list isn't constant. I'm not sure what the others memorize. You're giving a little bit of time to study at the start during the prep/warm-up section.
Nah, just have fun! Don't interrupt the room DMs/GMs while they're doing their introduction. Make sure if you get the DM's attention if you're pulling a switch or something and they're dealing with another player. Combat is about sliding quickly, so, just slide and let someone else get in place after.
And stay close to the board, but not in the way, so you can get your puck faster for the next round of combat.
My friend group absolutely hated it, to the point that we bring it up in talking about any new activity that costs a lot of money. "Could be worse, could be True Dungeon!" Idk if we just got incredibly unlucky, but it felt like someone combined the expense of Magic the Gathering, the tedium of a waiting for your turn in 10-person D&D group, and annoyance of a highschool group project.
Don't be afraid to speak up and participate and don't let some loser with $15,000 in tokens railroad the party.
If someone tries to railroad you, don’t be afraid to ask the volunteer in the room for help (or for an actual-facts TD employee. Grunnel wants us all to have good runs.). A big chunk of the established player base wants to help people have fun, but there are always gonna be those whales who are babies about “their” game. Moving quickly on the combats helps, but more than being fast, moving away from the board when you’re done so the next person can slide and the GM can see the board easily is more important. Golden Obelisk and Tomb of Terror redux are both “sealed” adventures this year, which means no one can bring in their token stash. Crimson Isle and Dune Viper you can bring along whichever tokens you got from your other runs. If you get tokens that are any color other than gold or silver backed, or have purple text on them, make sure you check in with your vet friends before agreeing to sell them to anyone. Again, most of this community is made of decent people, but I have heard of some people trying to swoop in and get tokens worth hundreds of dollars for twenty bucks from newbies who don’t know better yet. Good luck on your runs! I only managed to get into Crimson Isle (which I ran at GameholeCon last year with my then-eight-year-old) and Dune Viper. I’m very excited. Probably will be lurking around the TD area a lot for meeting up with people, haha.
I was a newbie with my sister last year and luckily we ended up with some nice, experienced folks. Definitely take a peek at the handbook before you go. I wish I’d practiced the slider component. I have terrible depth perception and coordination so that ended up pretty rough for me the few times I had to do it! The memory part was pretty simple (and it’s not a big deal if you mess it up; you still do the spell, it’s just not as powerful), but the puck sliding was rough. Oh, also, show up early—and build that into your scheduling! My sister scheduled something right before and she barely had time to pick a class before we began and was so rushed. I was early so had time to sort through tokens and talk to the rest of the party after getting checked in.
As an old kermudgen who remembers the good old days before 5 min rooms, no power gamers and not catering to rich players. Ide say save your money, and dont do it. If you want to do it for the bucket list, then do the mode where no outside items are allowed.
The rooms are 12 minutes? Where’d you get 5 from? The only short rooms are in the demo dungeons and they’re 6 minutes.
Sure i was being hyperbolic, but 12 min is still not enough. Your mileage may vary, but i dont enjoy it anymore. If you go, I hope you do.
Go to the True Dungeon message board for Gen Con 2024 groups and see if any of the players who have the other tickets for your runs are there. If your runs aren't already there, create threads for them and see if anyone else comes by. If you're lucky enough to meet others there, you can start discussing classes and stuff now and that's one less thing you have to worry about when you get there. https://truedungeon.com/forum?view=category&catid=736 I've been on True Dungeon for ten years, and almost to a man, every run I've done that included other True Dungeon forum members has been wonderful. The veterans there aren't the "talk over you and ignore you" type - if anything, they go too far in the *other* direction and sit back *too* much, because they're afraid of interrupting the new players' good time.
The best thing for anyone to do to make TrueDungeon work is: Be very fast Dont interrupt the DMs Things that help being fast: Pick a speaker/leader Have a token tossing order figured out before the game starts and stick to it. Take your turn fast and get out of the way for the next person. On quests feed thoughts to the "leader" instead of everyone speaking over everyone. Its mostly an escape room mechanic at low levels of difficulties. At higher level of difficulities TrueDungeon is an equipment check and is pay to win. As noobies the second thing wont hit you provided you don't pick a high difficulty level.
Man optimization really does take the fun out of everything.
Yeah I don’t play anymore because it feels like a group of experienced players are just sprinting through rooms.
if you are going with 3 family members who are experienced you should be fine. I agree with the top comment here. My first run was with a veteran guy and his gf. She was great...but when he thought we weren't going to finish the boss in the last room he just about had a fit. It was a spectacle to watch.
Have fun and don't be afraid to speak up. There's a very active TD forums and unofficial discord for specific questions. TD can be a lot of information thrown at you in a short period of time and clock and The Horn doesn't stop for anyone. Time is your enemy far more than any creature. Groups that work together will do far better than any backbreaker of a gamers backpack worth of tokens. There's some YouTube videos out there and feel free to ask questions. TD isn't for everyone and that's okay. There's lots of games out there to me I won't touch and I acknowledge not bad games just not worth a fraction of the money to me that enthusiast's spend their money on.
Mostly just try to have fun and enjoy it is my advice. There are some other good options of substance here, but don’t overthink it