iserith
Magic Wordsmith
The game will not break if you take darkvision away.
That said, I've been running a chiefly dungeon-crawling game since July and I can tell you that it is just as scary with darkvision than not. Because the party that plays it every week can change, I get to see it from perspectives of parties with lots of darkvision and parties without it at all. In most sessions, there's a mix of those that have it and those that don't. Those that don't have it use torches or are supported by casters with light or dancing lights (the latter of which has seen quite a lot of use in this campaign).
Now, I get the benefit of running this game with Roll20 and using dynamic lighting which only reveals to the players what their characters can actually see. So there's always that area that is just beyond one's vision, even with a drow's darkvision. Therefore, it would seem to me that in a game not played in Roll20 with dynamic lighting, it's just a matter of good description from the DM hinting at what faceless horrors may lay in the darkness beyond and therefore removing darkvision is not required.
Also, your initial post really emphasizes what you want as DM. But what do your players want? Because that's just as important.
That said, I've been running a chiefly dungeon-crawling game since July and I can tell you that it is just as scary with darkvision than not. Because the party that plays it every week can change, I get to see it from perspectives of parties with lots of darkvision and parties without it at all. In most sessions, there's a mix of those that have it and those that don't. Those that don't have it use torches or are supported by casters with light or dancing lights (the latter of which has seen quite a lot of use in this campaign).
Now, I get the benefit of running this game with Roll20 and using dynamic lighting which only reveals to the players what their characters can actually see. So there's always that area that is just beyond one's vision, even with a drow's darkvision. Therefore, it would seem to me that in a game not played in Roll20 with dynamic lighting, it's just a matter of good description from the DM hinting at what faceless horrors may lay in the darkness beyond and therefore removing darkvision is not required.
Also, your initial post really emphasizes what you want as DM. But what do your players want? Because that's just as important.