GenCon!! part 1
It was awesome, of course.
Details
Pre-con: spent Wednesday night packing and not sleeping and finishing up content my awesome-cool fold-out map (more on this later). It was at about 7 that I realized I'd left my iPod at work. There was no sleep. jadasc's friend W. gave us a ride in exchange for future furniture moving so we could catch our 6am flight. Flight was fine, nearly missed our connection due to momentary stupid (I blame lack of sleep) but did not and all was well. AirTran has started to charge for *any* checked bags which sucks eggs as I was considering doing so after last year's reaction OMG too much crap!
Thursday: took shuttle from airport to Convention Center (ICC) and nabbed multiple programs. Couldn't get into the room yet b/c it was only about noon, jadasc stored his bags and I met up with Niki and left stuff there. She had to head out to game and I changed into the red solider costume (my airplane outfit was a combo of comfortable semi-mundane costume articles that made me look like a folk musician) and got my act together. I gathered all my crafty stuff and found the open crafting room that had exacto knives, cutting mats, a paper cutter, lots of glue, no tape, and lots of other cool materials. I'd cut and folded the map holders at home and printed out copies of the info. Now I cut them to size, glued in place etc., or as much as I could without actual scotch tape. worldnamer was at an interview but then came and found me. We we joined by jadasc back from the exhibit hall with STUFF and Niki. We checked into our room, jadasc went to game. Lia and Daniel and their friend Allan arrived and the three of them, Niki, worldnamer, and I went to lunch at Alcatraz brewing. It was decent at least. Then there was TD token prep, a nap, the arrival of Mike and Mark, distribution of tokens, finishing the maps, and we were off to True Dungeon!!
True Dungeon
I'm going to try and remember all this, though it's hard without the riddle reveal.
The party
Fighter = Me
Barbarian = Allan (Mike had to drop out due to a work event)
Ranger = Lia
Monk = Mark
Cleric = jadasc
Bard = worldnamer
Wizard = Daniel
Rogue = Niki
There were 7 rooms:
1) puzzle and combat and trap: it was the same set as one of the last rooms last year, with an anagram puzzle on both sides of an arched doorway. The scantily clad woman of the year was in this room, she was a rather flustered dryad who couldn't remember her lines but helped with the combat. She was painted green and wearing a Tarzan-and-Jane tank and skirt make of leaves. We walked in and jadasc looks at the puzzle and tells me he's got the answer. But first we were attacked by a swamp monster! I forgot that we can only do one thing at a time, so jadasc couldn't do the puzzle while we fought, which I thought was lame. But still, we fought the monster and defeated it with relative ease with everyone chipping in, Niki unlocked the trap and got a token, and *then* we got to solve the puzzle and it was correct, despite the rather prickly GM trying to psych us out. The riddle instructions were cryptic, something about even numbers divide by two etc. But the anagram was "eleven and two" becomes "twelve and one." This is apparently a well documented anagram which is why jadasc recognized it.
2) Puzzle: we entered a small room with only a narrow space in front of a floor made of tiles four across and six long each with a letter on it. The first row was something like U U N U. There was a riddle on the walls that went something like: "Start with heat, then death, then to seed and cleansing breath." I'll put the actual text up here when I get it. We had no idea. We literally stood there for over half the time with no idea what to do. We though it might be describing composting, or something. Finally, I suggested we just start trying it. I stood on the first letter of the third column, a U, and nothing happened. We figured it had to spell something so I went for a consonant next (I think), anyway it was the tile directly in front of me. Nothing happened. I ended up walking straight across with no harm done and we realized that the letters spelled "summer" just out of order. And then, we saw that the other columns also spelled the names of seasons. So the next person walked across on winter, the third tried Spring, but was wrong, took damage, and then used Autumn. The fourth person followed on Spring, rinse, repeat and we got across. There were some plaster casts of women with butterfly faces on the walls I noticed.
3) Puzzle and trap: There was a central table (with faint UV paint markings of a spider web left over from previous years) it had numbers from 1-12 around the edge like a clock. In front of each number was a different colored gemstone (big plastic ones, about fist sized). We had to pick the right one that would open the door to the next room. The riddle said talked about dawn, midnight, and joyous arrivals. We pretty much got that it was a calender and not a clock, and Lia figured it was either 12 or 6 (December or June). Then Jason realized that the gem stones matched (loosely) the birth stones for the appropriate months, like green (emerald) for May and red (ruby) for July. Niki picked the trap and we confirmed that it was a calendar. And then Lia realized that since "joyous arrival" probably meant a birth and most people get married in June, that the correct answer would be 9 months later, in March. She was right and we got it on the first try (of 3). This room had little plaques again, but they were of a man with a sort of mane like flames. I should note that they were unpainted as before.
4) Puzzle and combat: The GM let us in this fort of waiting room early because we were so fast and pointed out a simple puzzle we'd have to solve to proceed. A board on the wall had 9 symbols, and the instructions said to pick the one that didn't belong. It looked really familiar to me, in fact I thought it was a bunch of the bard symbols, but I was incorrect. Rather, it was the stupid little test challenge they have on the TD website which I solved ages ago. Each symbol had one additional brush stroke than the last, except for the 6th one, which should have had 6 strokes, but had about 12 instead. So I declared my answer before the GM even showed up. The previous GM looked in on us, and tried to make us doubt our answer but to no avail. There was also a hole in the wall that we couldn't go through. The plaques here had a woman's face with seashells around it. The GM finally showed up and told Niki she could try the hole, we answered the puzzle and went through the door. There was a chasm spanned by a really awesome metal bridge with a stationary troll with a club on the other side. Niki apparently came out of the tunnel on that side of the bridge and had a chance to sneak attack the troll, but it wasn't useful or something, I think we got a treasure token at the end because of her actions though. So I went across the bridge first with the barbarian behind me and everyone else readying ranged weapons. This is an obvious thing to do, but apparently not everyone remembers that party order is important. We fought the troll, but it took awhile. The guy playing him was really good. We had to do a lot of healing after that and Jason wasn't so good at remembering the prayer beads, but no one died so it was ok.
5) Combat and trap: Ok this room sucked. We were in a tomb of some kind and they had a cool 3-D hologram thingy of a glowing light above the coffin, and then of a skeleton climbing up out of it and walking toward us. For every successful attack, by which I mean a hit on the shuffleboard, the GM flipped a large wooden coin to determine if it was a hit or a miss, 'cause ghostly skeletons fade in and out or something. He did this for spells as well as physical attacks. We did mostly all have rings of Pelor to do extra damage to undead, but we hit so infrequently that it didn't matter. And the ghost was really hyper accurate and did a lot of damage. We didn't finish the fight and had to flee to the next room. Niki slipped on the trap and didn't get whatever advantage that would have given us. I honestly can't remember if there was a puzzle or riddle of any kind, I know that if we defeated the ghost we got some treasure. I also failed to notice any face plaques in that room, I partly blame this on the fact we had to have our lights mostly off to see the hologram. But it was still careless.
6) Puzzle: This room had a table with a "stained-glass" looking surface with a pentagram drawn on it and circles at the axises and cups sitting on top of the circles. In between the circles there were five colorful face type things, each of a different color: a yellow sun, a blue crescent moon, a green tree, a purple thing, and a red sort of gnome face in profile. There's a picture on the website. In the center, there were five circles numbered I-V, and a riddle saying approximately "order me from peasant to king using [clues] foretold by the ring." Then we noticed there was a thin metal ring around the base of one of the cups. Oh, each cup had a little goblin on it pained a different color (red, orange, blue, purple, and green). There were 4 other rings like the first arranged on the outside edge of the table. I *think* they were placed randomly, but we tried to read into their placement unsuccessfully (one on one side, two beside each other on the other side). We had 3 chances to get the order right. I realize now that the GM tried to give us a hint when he said the cups were delicate and to be careful with them. We tried an order based on colors (Roy G. Biv), on seasons, with purple last because that's the royal color, blue first because that was the one with the ring around it's base. We debated and debated and totally got it wrong and took lots of damage. And it was one of those annoying ones where everyone took damage, not just the person who placed the last cup or the people standing around the table. Oh yeah, and we only took damage once they were all in place, not for each incorrectly placed cup. I found out later, as did jadasc that the solution was that each of the cups made a different tone when you hit it with the ring, like a tuning fork. None of us were particularly musical so perhaps that's why we missed it. Anyway, we'd taken a couple hits as it was and then failure damage at the end. Again, I failed to look for any face plaques.
7) In the final room's antechamber, we healed up and were given a choice: combat or puzzle. We picked puzzle and I have to say I think we should have gone with combat. Admittedly, we were low on the healing ability, jadasc was running out of potions and spells, but still we would have survived it, probably. And given that the puzzles had been getting harder and we hadn't gotten the last one...well who knows. Anyway, we went with the puzzle. It was a pentagonal table with a bowl of green liquid in the middle and a key suspended above it. There were five little painted plaques that we had to arrange at the five points. And, low and behold, they matched the ones I'd observed (and not observed) in the rest of the dungeon. The two I hadn't noticed were a green man and [one I can't remember now but might have been air-related]. The riddle on the right-hand side of the door said that spirit leads the way, and air rests here. We figured that meant that the tile for "spirit" went at the point angled straight at the door and that air went on the point to the right, the one closest to that side of the wall. The left-hand side had a riddle that talked about fire and spirit was a love it dare not know or something. We gathered that the order of elements was important and figured it had to do with which ones countered each other. Well, we tried a couple of things, but didn't get it. I suspect some of our early premises were wrong. I'd ask you to guess, but since I can't recall the exact phrasing or even what the last tile looked like, I certainly *hope* you can't figure it out without that info or I'll feel really stupid.
I'll post all the clues later when I have the full answers myself, it usually takes about 2 weeks for them to send out the email.
Ok, let's make this part one and I'll cover the rest in other posts.
Details
Pre-con: spent Wednesday night packing and not sleeping and finishing up content my awesome-cool fold-out map (more on this later). It was at about 7 that I realized I'd left my iPod at work. There was no sleep. jadasc's friend W. gave us a ride in exchange for future furniture moving so we could catch our 6am flight. Flight was fine, nearly missed our connection due to momentary stupid (I blame lack of sleep) but did not and all was well. AirTran has started to charge for *any* checked bags which sucks eggs as I was considering doing so after last year's reaction OMG too much crap!
Thursday: took shuttle from airport to Convention Center (ICC) and nabbed multiple programs. Couldn't get into the room yet b/c it was only about noon, jadasc stored his bags and I met up with Niki and left stuff there. She had to head out to game and I changed into the red solider costume (my airplane outfit was a combo of comfortable semi-mundane costume articles that made me look like a folk musician) and got my act together. I gathered all my crafty stuff and found the open crafting room that had exacto knives, cutting mats, a paper cutter, lots of glue, no tape, and lots of other cool materials. I'd cut and folded the map holders at home and printed out copies of the info. Now I cut them to size, glued in place etc., or as much as I could without actual scotch tape. worldnamer was at an interview but then came and found me. We we joined by jadasc back from the exhibit hall with STUFF and Niki. We checked into our room, jadasc went to game. Lia and Daniel and their friend Allan arrived and the three of them, Niki, worldnamer, and I went to lunch at Alcatraz brewing. It was decent at least. Then there was TD token prep, a nap, the arrival of Mike and Mark, distribution of tokens, finishing the maps, and we were off to True Dungeon!!
True Dungeon
I'm going to try and remember all this, though it's hard without the riddle reveal.
The party
Fighter = Me
Barbarian = Allan (Mike had to drop out due to a work event)
Ranger = Lia
Monk = Mark
Cleric = jadasc
Bard = worldnamer
Wizard = Daniel
Rogue = Niki
There were 7 rooms:
1) puzzle and combat and trap: it was the same set as one of the last rooms last year, with an anagram puzzle on both sides of an arched doorway. The scantily clad woman of the year was in this room, she was a rather flustered dryad who couldn't remember her lines but helped with the combat. She was painted green and wearing a Tarzan-and-Jane tank and skirt make of leaves. We walked in and jadasc looks at the puzzle and tells me he's got the answer. But first we were attacked by a swamp monster! I forgot that we can only do one thing at a time, so jadasc couldn't do the puzzle while we fought, which I thought was lame. But still, we fought the monster and defeated it with relative ease with everyone chipping in, Niki unlocked the trap and got a token, and *then* we got to solve the puzzle and it was correct, despite the rather prickly GM trying to psych us out. The riddle instructions were cryptic, something about even numbers divide by two etc. But the anagram was "eleven and two" becomes "twelve and one." This is apparently a well documented anagram which is why jadasc recognized it.
2) Puzzle: we entered a small room with only a narrow space in front of a floor made of tiles four across and six long each with a letter on it. The first row was something like U U N U. There was a riddle on the walls that went something like: "Start with heat, then death, then to seed and cleansing breath." I'll put the actual text up here when I get it. We had no idea. We literally stood there for over half the time with no idea what to do. We though it might be describing composting, or something. Finally, I suggested we just start trying it. I stood on the first letter of the third column, a U, and nothing happened. We figured it had to spell something so I went for a consonant next (I think), anyway it was the tile directly in front of me. Nothing happened. I ended up walking straight across with no harm done and we realized that the letters spelled "summer" just out of order. And then, we saw that the other columns also spelled the names of seasons. So the next person walked across on winter, the third tried Spring, but was wrong, took damage, and then used Autumn. The fourth person followed on Spring, rinse, repeat and we got across. There were some plaster casts of women with butterfly faces on the walls I noticed.
3) Puzzle and trap: There was a central table (with faint UV paint markings of a spider web left over from previous years) it had numbers from 1-12 around the edge like a clock. In front of each number was a different colored gemstone (big plastic ones, about fist sized). We had to pick the right one that would open the door to the next room. The riddle said talked about dawn, midnight, and joyous arrivals. We pretty much got that it was a calender and not a clock, and Lia figured it was either 12 or 6 (December or June). Then Jason realized that the gem stones matched (loosely) the birth stones for the appropriate months, like green (emerald) for May and red (ruby) for July. Niki picked the trap and we confirmed that it was a calendar. And then Lia realized that since "joyous arrival" probably meant a birth and most people get married in June, that the correct answer would be 9 months later, in March. She was right and we got it on the first try (of 3). This room had little plaques again, but they were of a man with a sort of mane like flames. I should note that they were unpainted as before.
4) Puzzle and combat: The GM let us in this fort of waiting room early because we were so fast and pointed out a simple puzzle we'd have to solve to proceed. A board on the wall had 9 symbols, and the instructions said to pick the one that didn't belong. It looked really familiar to me, in fact I thought it was a bunch of the bard symbols, but I was incorrect. Rather, it was the stupid little test challenge they have on the TD website which I solved ages ago. Each symbol had one additional brush stroke than the last, except for the 6th one, which should have had 6 strokes, but had about 12 instead. So I declared my answer before the GM even showed up. The previous GM looked in on us, and tried to make us doubt our answer but to no avail. There was also a hole in the wall that we couldn't go through. The plaques here had a woman's face with seashells around it. The GM finally showed up and told Niki she could try the hole, we answered the puzzle and went through the door. There was a chasm spanned by a really awesome metal bridge with a stationary troll with a club on the other side. Niki apparently came out of the tunnel on that side of the bridge and had a chance to sneak attack the troll, but it wasn't useful or something, I think we got a treasure token at the end because of her actions though. So I went across the bridge first with the barbarian behind me and everyone else readying ranged weapons. This is an obvious thing to do, but apparently not everyone remembers that party order is important. We fought the troll, but it took awhile. The guy playing him was really good. We had to do a lot of healing after that and Jason wasn't so good at remembering the prayer beads, but no one died so it was ok.
5) Combat and trap: Ok this room sucked. We were in a tomb of some kind and they had a cool 3-D hologram thingy of a glowing light above the coffin, and then of a skeleton climbing up out of it and walking toward us. For every successful attack, by which I mean a hit on the shuffleboard, the GM flipped a large wooden coin to determine if it was a hit or a miss, 'cause ghostly skeletons fade in and out or something. He did this for spells as well as physical attacks. We did mostly all have rings of Pelor to do extra damage to undead, but we hit so infrequently that it didn't matter. And the ghost was really hyper accurate and did a lot of damage. We didn't finish the fight and had to flee to the next room. Niki slipped on the trap and didn't get whatever advantage that would have given us. I honestly can't remember if there was a puzzle or riddle of any kind, I know that if we defeated the ghost we got some treasure. I also failed to notice any face plaques in that room, I partly blame this on the fact we had to have our lights mostly off to see the hologram. But it was still careless.
6) Puzzle: This room had a table with a "stained-glass" looking surface with a pentagram drawn on it and circles at the axises and cups sitting on top of the circles. In between the circles there were five colorful face type things, each of a different color: a yellow sun, a blue crescent moon, a green tree, a purple thing, and a red sort of gnome face in profile. There's a picture on the website. In the center, there were five circles numbered I-V, and a riddle saying approximately "order me from peasant to king using [clues] foretold by the ring." Then we noticed there was a thin metal ring around the base of one of the cups. Oh, each cup had a little goblin on it pained a different color (red, orange, blue, purple, and green). There were 4 other rings like the first arranged on the outside edge of the table. I *think* they were placed randomly, but we tried to read into their placement unsuccessfully (one on one side, two beside each other on the other side). We had 3 chances to get the order right. I realize now that the GM tried to give us a hint when he said the cups were delicate and to be careful with them. We tried an order based on colors (Roy G. Biv), on seasons, with purple last because that's the royal color, blue first because that was the one with the ring around it's base. We debated and debated and totally got it wrong and took lots of damage. And it was one of those annoying ones where everyone took damage, not just the person who placed the last cup or the people standing around the table. Oh yeah, and we only took damage once they were all in place, not for each incorrectly placed cup. I found out later, as did jadasc that the solution was that each of the cups made a different tone when you hit it with the ring, like a tuning fork. None of us were particularly musical so perhaps that's why we missed it. Anyway, we'd taken a couple hits as it was and then failure damage at the end. Again, I failed to look for any face plaques.
7) In the final room's antechamber, we healed up and were given a choice: combat or puzzle. We picked puzzle and I have to say I think we should have gone with combat. Admittedly, we were low on the healing ability, jadasc was running out of potions and spells, but still we would have survived it, probably. And given that the puzzles had been getting harder and we hadn't gotten the last one...well who knows. Anyway, we went with the puzzle. It was a pentagonal table with a bowl of green liquid in the middle and a key suspended above it. There were five little painted plaques that we had to arrange at the five points. And, low and behold, they matched the ones I'd observed (and not observed) in the rest of the dungeon. The two I hadn't noticed were a green man and [one I can't remember now but might have been air-related]. The riddle on the right-hand side of the door said that spirit leads the way, and air rests here. We figured that meant that the tile for "spirit" went at the point angled straight at the door and that air went on the point to the right, the one closest to that side of the wall. The left-hand side had a riddle that talked about fire and spirit was a love it dare not know or something. We gathered that the order of elements was important and figured it had to do with which ones countered each other. Well, we tried a couple of things, but didn't get it. I suspect some of our early premises were wrong. I'd ask you to guess, but since I can't recall the exact phrasing or even what the last tile looked like, I certainly *hope* you can't figure it out without that info or I'll feel really stupid.
I'll post all the clues later when I have the full answers myself, it usually takes about 2 weeks for them to send out the email.
Ok, let's make this part one and I'll cover the rest in other posts.