D&D 5E Curse of Strahd (and limitations on 1st level play)

[FrozenNorth]

My experience with CoS is as a player, and I completely agree that it’s tough for both players and DMs.

As a horror setting, it often depends on players deliberately engaging with horror tropes (splitting the party, opening that cursed tome, meeting the villain for supper, taking the advice of the sketchy overly-helpful NPC) but as a game with set mechanics, it also depends on the players playing their characters as reasonably competent adventurers.

As a player, it sucks if “playing the trope” kills or permanently impairs your character. As a DM, it sucks if the players’ optimization and acting like reasonable rational people means they miss important information or drains the fear and terror from the setting.

There are a couple of ways of dealing with this:

• better communication with the players: “Look, I promise as a DM if your character acts like a character in horror movie, I won’t use that as an excuse to kill your character or permanently impair them. Your character can still die in other ways, including by biting off more than they can chew, but if you think that I’ve rendered your character unplayable because you were acting out horror tropes, tell me and we will work something out.”
• minimizing the situations in which the characters have to act like horror characters to advance the story. This is harder and takes more work. When we ran through Death House, the DM didn’t give us a choice. Going anywhere but the house caused the mist to give us levels of exhaustion. It was railroady as hell, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. Other posters has pointed out the tool of putting innocents in danger and hoping the party attempts to rescue them. There is also “offer the party something they really want but put it somewhere they don’t want to go”.

Overall, in our runthrough, we never had dinner with Strahd. We missed a pretty key part of the story, but it made no sense in-story for the party, who was sheltering Ireena, to willingly enter the lair of her tormentor, and just assume he would freely let us go. What made sense as competent adventurers did not make sense as characters in a gothic horror story.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think some of the discussion here points to something I don't think CoS being the book about running horror campaigns doesn't grok to: Roleplaying Horror needs to be different from movie horror.

All those things you yell at the screen over and make jokes about in the restaurant later? That's the connective tissue of movie horror. The main characters have to be complete dumbasses to make the movie work and... players aren't going to do most of that unprompted.

So in addition to the other advice offered, DMs need to understand this isn't going to work like a horror movie.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In reading up on horror movies I came across an old trope referred to as "The Idiot in the Attic". The idiot being the protagonist, who investigates the spooky attic alone, after dark, unprepared.

I.e. horror often depends of the protagonists acting stupidly. Thus causing the audience to anticipate all the bad things that could happen to them. Spoiler alert: It was the cat.

Now, in an RPG, you can't assume the players will make stupid characters (although that is certainly an option). But they do need to be genre blind and have a reason to investigate. Consider At the Mountains of Madness. The protagonists for the most part know nothing about the mythos, but they are explorers and scientists, they are driven by curiosity and boldness.

Now I suspect it's a bit late for the OP's specific situation, but one thing ghosts do is haunt people. If the party ignore the ghost kids they could haunt the party members' dreams (perhaps affecting their ability to take a long rest) until eventually they have to go back and investigate.

As alternative to the Death House, a better introduction for new players might be the adventure in VGR. Here the PCs are being paid to bust ghosts, and have experienced NPCs to show them the ropes.

I seem to recall the OP's players being younger. You might suggest they watch Lockwood & Co. or Mister Midnight on Netflix to give them ideas.

 

[Darth Solo]

This is my second time running Curse of Strahd. With this group, I tried to emphasize that Barovia was a scary place in an attempt to get the most out of the theme.
It's backfired.
The group is running away from every challenge, accomplishing no story progress, defeating no threats, etc. I was going to keep up with XP behind the screen to have an idea of when to advance their levels (along with milestone). In three sessions, they've earned 80 XP.
They ran away from the kids from the Death House without going in.
It's like they're going to be perpetually stuck at 1st level. As they've fled deeper into Barovia, they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: every encounter around them is too strong.
What's a DM to do?

Play a different game. Obviously the players aren't into it.

 

[pemerton]

The group is running away from every challenge, accomplishing no story progress, defeating no threats, etc. I was going to keep up with XP behind the screen to have an idea of when to advance their levels (along with milestone). In three sessions, they've earned 80 XP.
They ran away from the kids from the Death House without going in.

When we ran through Death House, the DM didn’t give us a choice. Going anywhere but the house caused the mist to give us levels of exhaustion. It was railroady as hell, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. Other posters has pointed out the tool of putting innocents in danger and hoping the party attempts to rescue them. There is also “offer the party something they really want but put it somewhere they don’t want to go”.

Why can't the GM just tell the players the adventure is in the Death House?

 

[Retreater]

Why can't the GM just tell the players the adventure is in the Death House?

I did that, eventually. Pushed the party through to 3rd level. And everything is okay for literally one session, before...

The party gets to Kresk and decides they want to stop the Abbot. I give the party's cleric some divine intervention to say "maybe don't try to kill this guy outright" - and the party gets frustrated that they have to leave yet another adventure location because it's too difficult to change anything.
So I'm assessing that the party has explored the village of Barovia and completed the Death House; gone through Vallaki and basically did all the damage they can do there by putting Wachter in power; met with the Vistani at Tser Pool; spoke with the Abbot in Kresk. In frustration, the other "old timer" in the group (a 55 year old parent of some kids in the group) says "everywhere we go, it's like we're at least 2 levels behind where we should be."
And sure enough, using milestone levelling, the party should be at 5th level before their next planned stop (the Winery).
So at the start of the previous session, they went from 2nd to 3rd level. An hour into yesterday's session (and after that complaint), I just shrugged: "Level up. I guess twice."
So we're averaging a level of experience per 4-hour session. Upon reaching 5th level, the party of 5 characters steamrolled through the Winery. I managed to shave off a couple of temporary hit points, but otherwise, it was a slaughter: druids dying before they could take a single action, dozens of twig blights being destroyed in two rounds.
Guessing I just push them into Castle Ravenloft now?
Do I need to completely redesign 5th edition? Is it even a functional system? (Doesn't seem to be at this moment.)

 

[dave2008]

Do I need to completely redesign 5th edition? Is it even a functional system? (Doesn't seem to be at this moment.)

IDK @Retreater, you seem to have problems few others experience as fully in both 5e and PF2e. It seems to me most DMs on these forums don't have trouble challenging their groups.

However, I don't run published adventures, so I can't really speak to the challenges that brings. The only advice I can give at this point is don't run published adventures or accept that you may have to run them heavily modified to meet you and your groups style.

 

[MGibster]

All those things you yell at the screen over and make jokes about in the restaurant later? That's the connective tissue of movie horror. The main characters have to be complete dumbasses to make the movie work and... players aren't going to do most of that unprompted.

I don't think most good horror movies, or most good movies, rely on charcters being stupid to keep the plot moving along. Candyman (the original), Us, Get Out, The Thing (1982), Alien, and The Devil's Backbone are all horror movies where the plot doesn't rely on stupid characters to move forward. I think what makes horror so difficult with D&D is a combination of players not having the right mindset and the characters being so powerful. When I sit down to play D&D I'm thinking heroic fantasy and have a different frame of mind than when I sit down to play Call of Cthulhu or Vampire. And when I sit down to play a horror game I'm not typically playing a character who can take on fantastical beasts all in a day's work.

 

[Cruentus]

IDK @Retreater, you seem to have problems few others experience as fully in both 5e and PF2e. It seems to me most DMs on these forums don't have trouble challenging their groups.

However, I don't run published adventures, so I can't really speak to the challenges to brings. The only advice I can give at this point is don't run published adventures or accept that you may have to run them heavily modified to meet you and your groups style.

I have trouble challenging my PC's in 5e. CR as an effective measure of "threat" is useless overall. Every time I draw up an encounter, I either have a cakewalk by the PC's, or a TPK. There doesn't seem to be a comfortable middle ground without mucking behind the scenes during the encounter to either shave enemy HPs, not use abilities, or make the enemy last a little bit longer for dramatic effect, or throw in some more enemies after the party crushed the BBEG.

Now, that being said, I run for a party that are fairly decent optimizers, and go square by square to fight enemies to maximize. every. single. ability or point of damage. So, of course, tables will vary.

I gave up on 5e.

Do I need to completely redesign 5th edition? Is it even a functional system? (Doesn't seem to be at this moment.

Pretty much, in my experience. I found myself wrestling with the system so much, and any tweaks or house rules would have cascading impacts that then required a re-think or re-write of other large sections of 5e rules, that I gave up.

I'm currently running a small party through Curse of Strahd, using OSE Advanced. The party is second level as they get sucked into Ravenloft, and I'm already re-building the order of encounters, and obviously having to redesign all the encounters (that I would need to do in 5e anyway). I'm not sure how I can speed up level progression to get them to a point where they can fight against Strahd, without making it very obviously a rush job. But, we're all playing and building this as we go, and as long as the players are having fun, that is what matters.

But I also feel I have a better sense of the character's strengths and weaknesses, compared to the monsters using the Basic/OSE/Ad&d frameworks. Less NOVA/gotcha/abilities and spell like stuff all over the place.

 

[Mort]

Do I need to completely redesign 5th edition? Is it even a functional system? (Doesn't seem to be at this moment.)

As with @dave2008 I haven't had any trouble challenging my group.

I tend to run my own stuff, but I DO occasionally run published adventures. Most run "a bit" easy but still have presented a challenge.

For example, currently running Light of Xaryxis (Spelljammer) and last session of 4 PCs, 2 PCs dropped while 2 were down quit a bit. This, in spite, one of them running a Twilight Cleric!

Haven't run Curse of Strahd so can't comment specifically though.

Does the group still routinely get the drop on the baddies and is able to nova right away? Do they rest whenever they want?

When the players can dictate the pace of play encounters become significantly easier for them.