# I traded my John Wick LE for Dungeons And Dragons LE, mistake?

**Source:** RetroRalph  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2025-02-21  
**Duration:** 11m 44s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO3uaSeBh8M

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## Analysis

RetroRalph reviews his newly acquired Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye LE pinball machine, which he obtained by trading away his John Wick LE. He expresses surprise at how much he enjoys the game, praising the code depth, design by Brian Eddy and Dwight Sullivan, and the fun shot variety. He also discusses a manufacturing issue with dragon node boards that Stern has addressed, and encourages viewers to check out tutorials and the TPPY Awards.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The LE version of Dungeons & Dragons doesn't add much over the Premium version; Pro is also very capable — _RetroRalph directly states the LE/Premium/Pro pricing tiers offer similar quality across models_
- [HIGH] Stern resolved a dragon node board issue (node 10) by stopping LE production temporarily to focus on Pro models — _RetroRalph discusses the technical issue and Stern's production response in detail_
- [HIGH] The issue involved tight wire ties restricting dragon movement and causing intermittent power to node boards — _RetroRalph explains the root cause and demonstrates the fix by clipping the wire tie_
- [HIGH] D&D code is deep and impressive for a launch game, with more content likely coming post-launch — _RetroRalph's repeated praise of code quality and the implication of future updates_
- [MEDIUM] The spinner shot and left ramp/gelatinous cube lock are standout playfield features — _RetroRalph specifically highlights these as his favorite shots during gameplay_

### Notable Quotes

> "I like it a lot more than I thought I would. As a matter of fact, it's kind of blowing my mind."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~2:30
> _Expresses unexpected enjoyment of D&D after initial skepticism_

> "There's a lot of depth to the code already and it's in its infancy, which is really cool."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~2:45
> _Praises launch code quality and hints at future development_

> "Eddie's back, baby. He's back. Brian Eddy, you're back, man. I can feel it."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~3:15
> _Suggests Brian Eddy has returned to form as a designer after previous struggles_

> "I think when this game gets on location and more people play it, if they were on the fence of 'oh, I'm not a Dungeons & Dragons guy,' I think it's not going to matter."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~3:30
> _Predicts broad appeal beyond D&D fans due to solid game design_

> "There's a little bug in the code right now. I got to email Stern."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~22:00
> _Notes a minor code bug (ball drain delay) requiring Stern attention_

> "The code as it stands right now is pretty damn good for a launch game. So and that means that there's probably going to be a lot more coming."
> — **RetroRalph**, ~26:30
> _Final assessment of code quality and expectation of post-launch updates_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| RetroRalph | person | Content creator and pinball enthusiast providing gameplay video and first-hand impressions |
| Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye | game | Licensed Stern Pinball machine recently acquired by RetroRalph in LE form |
| John Wick | game | Previous pinball machine owned by RetroRalph that he traded to acquire D&D LE |
| Brian Eddy | person | Designer of Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine; praised for return to form |
| Dwight Sullivan | person | Programmer/code designer for Dungeons & Dragons at Stern Pinball |
| Elizabeth Gucki | person | Team member credited by RetroRalph for D&D code development |
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Dungeons & Dragons machine; addressed production/design issues |
| Rudy | person | Friend of RetroRalph who played D&D with him and became Grand Champion |
| Joel | person | Flippin' Out Pinball content creator; provided detailed D&D tutorial |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | organization | YouTube channel providing pinball tutorials |
| Wormhole Pinball | organization | YouTube channel hosting TPPY Awards broadcast |
| TPPY Awards | event | Pinball community awards show featuring content creators, games, and locations; broadcast on Feb 22 |
| CES | event | Consumer electronics show where RetroRalph played D&D at Stern tour before launch |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Dungeons & Dragons LE acquisition and first impressions, Code quality and depth at launch, Manufacturing defect (dragon node board wire tie issue)
- **Secondary:** LE vs Premium vs Pro pricing tiers and value proposition, Playfield shot design and mechanics, Brian Eddy's return to form as designer
- **Mentioned:** Community content creators and tutorials

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — RetroRalph is enthusiastic about D&D, praises the design team, and expresses surprise at how much he enjoys the game. Minor concern about a manufacturing issue, but Stern's quick resolution is acknowledged. Overall tone is celebratory and encouraging.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** LE tier pricing questioned; RetroRalph notes Premium and Pro tiers offer similar gameplay to LE, suggesting weak differentiation (confidence: medium) — RetroRalph explicitly states 'There aren't that many things that the LE gives you over the Premium'
- **[event_signal]** TPPY Awards scheduled for Feb 22 broadcast on Wormhole Pinball YouTube channel with content creators, games, and location features (confidence: high) — RetroRalph announces event, provides date and broadcast details, mentions he is a host
- **[sentiment_shift]** Positive reception of D&D from play-testers and early owners; unexpectedly high enjoyment despite non-D&D-fans having initial hesitation (confidence: medium) — RetroRalph's own experience plus mention of livestream with Rudy showing high engagement and fun gameplay
- **[design_philosophy]** D&D features character selection mechanics with different strengths/weaknesses (e.g., Ana offers luck bonus) tied to procedural progression (confidence: high) — RetroRalph demonstrates character selection screen and explains Ana's luck advantage
- **[product_strategy]** Stern addressing manufacturing issues post-launch by shipping replacement harnesses and implementing design fixes (confidence: high) — RetroRalph confirms Stern caught the issue, stopped affected production, and is shipping fixes to affected customers
- **[product_concern]** Dragon node board issue (node 10) caused by tight wire ties restricting movement; power intermittency resulted, requiring Stern to temporarily halt LE production and focus on Pro models (confidence: high) — RetroRalph detailed the issue, Stern's response, and the fix he applied; also addressed false rumors of fires/shorts

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## Transcript

[Music] all right so you're probably wondering what had to go out to bring Dungeons and Dragons in and it was John Wick I had to sacrifice you John Wick I am so sorry but maybe he'll be back one day a ridiculous immature half wet but here we're talking about Dungeons and Dragons I'm really excited it's the Le version of the game the cabinet is absolutely beautiful it's got the powder coated side armor it's got the foiled artwork it's it's really really pretty there aren't that many things that the ell gives you over the premium on this one as a matter of fact the pro is very capable too so these are all really good games you kind of can't go wrong with any one of these in the Dungeons and Dragons series but what surprised me the most cuz I've been playing it for about a week or so is that I like it a lot more than I thought I would as a matter of fact it's kind of blowing my mind I had my buddy Rudy over we did a live stream of the game him and I were just having an amazingly fun time there's a lot of depth to the code already and it's in its infancy which is really cool so I got to give a hats off to Dwight and Brian Eddy and Elizabeth geki they kicked ass on this one in my opinion and Eddie's back baby he's back Brian Eddy you're back man I can feel it you are back and I think when this game gets on location and more people play it if they were on the fence of oh I'm not a Dungeons and Dragons guy I think it's not going to matter I think people are going to go wow this shoot's fun it's got a cool story to it and there's a lot of depth to the code already so hats off to you guys but what we're going to do real quick we're going to dive into some gaml nothing like a tutorial or anything like that if you want a good tutorial on Dungeons and Dragons go visit my buddy Joel over at flip flipping out pinball he just did a great tutorial so if you just bought the game and you're looking to figure out like how do I navigate through the code he's going to be the best one to show you but for now we're going to dive in I'm going to show you a couple little things maybe Dragon multiball we'll have some fun with it and then I'll give you my final thoughts all right guys this is exciting because we are in front of Dungeons and Dragons the Tyrant eye what we're looking at is the Le version of the Playfield so you're going to get the full animat animatronic Dragon you're going to have the Dungeon Crawl popup then obviously aesthetic the cabinet looks a lot different but yeah we're going to go for it so when you first log in you get to choose your character now this is kind of important because each character has different strengths and weaknesses so I tend to go with um for right now I've been liking Ana so that's what I'm going to go with I think Ana's got um better luck and I need luck when it comes to pinball so we're going to go ahead we're going to plunge the ball what we're going to try to do first and this is just because it's fun we're going to try to get Dragon multiball going which is basically you're just bashing the targets underneath the dragon and then gelatinous cube multiball is interesting it's this left ramp over here that one's a little bit more challenging so whether we are able to do that or not I don't know so we're just going to play around just so you can get a kind of General feel for the game all right let's go all right so I got one hit on the dragon you can see the as you hit it it's going to spell the word Dragon so we're going to try to hit again now keep keep in mind this hitting the dragon is a little bit it's a little bit of a risky thing well the dragon shot you will not find a in all the realm all right now I don't know if you noticed this but the ball went underneath the gelatinous cube and there's a lock there that locks the ball for a second it's a magnet oh shoot I was you can get a really good shot on these two left shots from that is pretty cool being attack so this is how you treat your socalled friends let's get let's get back to focusing on the dragon if we can that's that's what I want to do right now all right so we're at we're almost Spell dragon you being attacked there we go so now now oh okay there we go save the ball there the dra you can see there's a light lit on the right hand side the Dragon Light so we can actually enable dragon multiball by doing that now right now we're supposed to be fighting these dwarfs but I'm just kind of ignoring that there we go we got it mall all right we're in Dragon multiball so this is really cool guys setting up the shield this is an eightball multiball so you're going to see them all collect here pay attention to the LCD 16 more drains and then wrath wins and I need to hit the dragon eight more times so I got to hurry up The Shield's going away so let's get some hits on these dragons we got to make sure we don't drain too many of these balls cuz if we do we're going to die and he's going to win so how many we need six more hits all right let's see we we can do here actually we're not we need 12 more drains so we got plenty of drains we got to hit this guy I could use the shield again to let's see I'm going to use the shield again to protect myself a little bit all right how many more hits do I need Let's see we need four more hits all right we got to hurry up here your Super Jackpot is lit all right no one goes up against the dragon all right two more hits we're going to lose our shield now so we got to hurry up we don't want to all right one more hit and then it'll be celebration multiball we can do it I think we got it let's see one more no oh I just drained a bunch of balls we got it we got it all right we put the shield up real quick very fun and now we just got to focus on these yellow shots during celebration multiball so I'm going to take advantage of my shield right now uh another thing that's cool about The Shield is it'll line up your shots too so if you let it sit there uh not so much right there cuz I had another ball there but it will it will help line up your shots which is cool but I haven't hit any of these shots that are lit let's focus on that really fast all right still didn't get any of them but that's awesome we will here in a second hopefully and not like that we won't not hitting anything all right so we didn't do that great but that was pretty cool so we got the dragon multiball going really quickly there's a little bug in the code right now I got to email Stern so right now I drain the ball but it's the game is still active so there's some kind of delay and it's not like this all the time see it's it's done now so anyways let me give you some final thoughts before I wrap up this video I am loving this game and honestly it was completely unexpected I did go to the stern tour and check it out there right before launch around CES and I really liked it there but the thing is with games sometimes you have to have it in a more I don't know a better situation to get the full perspective of the game there was just a lot of people at the St tour so I don't feel like I really got the kind of time with it that I got with it at home and and I'm really enjoying it Rudy and I we did a live stream on it so if you want to see a little bit more of the gameplay you can check that out turn Mason you got to turn this into a short this is unbelievable I don't know the next time going to play like this I have my shield right now I'm contemplating bringing it back how am I supposed to GC this when you're going to GC it no Rudy was the Grand Champion but I just want you all to see this right now you just shamed me full screen I'm not it's not because of Rudy it's just I I have to like celebrate something a great score and if you want a tutorial definitely go check out Joel over at flipping out he does amazing tutorials on new games and he did a really good one on D and D so definitely if you're looking to learn more of the rule set you'll want to check him out as well so if you're watching this and it's February 21st the day that this is published on a Friday this coming Saturday February 22nd is the tppy award so you're definitely not going to want to miss that what you'll do is go over to worm hole pinball and go subscribe to that YouTube channel and turn on notifications so that you can watch the tppy awards live it will contain some of your favorite content creators some of your favorite games your locations lots of cool Awards will be handed out and I'm one of the hosts of the show so I would really appreciate your support but anyways that's all I got guys I I I'm loving this game for various reasons but the one thing that's really cool is the code as it stands right now is pretty damn good for a launch game so and that means that there's probably going to be a lot more coming so again like I said before hats off to Dwight and Elizabeth for really putting the time and effort into the code and it definitely shows and then Brian for creating a really cool design there's a lot of fun shots in this that I'm loving and that spinner shot man you have to use that spinner shot a lot that spinner shot is really cool the other shot that's cool is when you go over on the left hand side and the scoop and it fires it over to the gelatinous cube and locks it and sets up those two left shots it's just a lot of fun and I I just I I'm really enjoying it way more than I thought I would so anyways if you're on location somewhere uh go check it out I'm sure they're going to be getting them soon I think the pros and the premiums are going out now so uh one last thing before I uh get on out of here there was an issue with the dragon where people were saying that one of the node boards I think it was node 10 was having issues they've resolved that issue so they stopped production on those and then focused on the pro and the I believe the pros for the time being until they resolve the problem uh you'll notice Noti in the video what I did is I clipped the uh wire tie for the cable so it had enough play for the dragon to move what was happening was the dragon would move and the wire tie was just a little too tight so the power was like intermittent going on and off on the Node board causing it to have some problem so luckily Stern caught that and um you know now now they're I think they're shipping some harness for the I don't know I don't know how many games exactly got out there with the issue but I I just cut the wire tie I'm kind of um it looks fine I don't know if I don't think or believe it would actually cause any problem the way it is right now so anyways that's a little bit on that there was some just posts about it that were saying like games are catching fire nothing was Catching Fire but no node boards were shorting out uh but it seems like that's behind us now and then the fix should be sent out to those those people that uh that their machines were affected anyways guys that's it for now and we will see you out the next one

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: c5b3ac4c-9a05-49b3-8491-a8652f69ec2a*