D&D 5E B10 Nights Dark Terror in 5e

Hello, first post ever!

I got into 5e a bit ago and I'm digging the game I'm in and I'm looking to DM, particularly a sandbox adventure. I read Lost Mine of Phandelver but it didnt really do it for me. Im considering making my own little sandbox made of seeded adventures but I recently took a look at Nights Dark Terror and I really liked what I read. Has anyone ever run this in 5e? What level did the players get to because I know the level scale is different now, and was it too hard? Please let me know

Thanks

Welcome!

While I haven't run it in 5E, Night's Dark Terror is a great adventure (although a bit under the radar because it was released at the end of the Basic D&D product cycle). I't say a party would likely get to 5th or 6th level by the end. The main thing I would keep in mind when converting this one is that there are fights with large groups of goblins and other weak enemies early on that are going to be tougher for a low level group in 5E then they were in Basic. I would recommend at least eyeballing the EL until you have a good feel for what your party can handle.

Also you might want to check out the adventure Eye of Traldar (it is available on RPGNow/DriveThruRPG) as a possible prequel. I'd cut a bunch of the dungeon portion if I ran it in 5E, but it introduces the Iron Ring as bad guys and provides a hook for the party to go where they need to be at the start of NDT.

Good Luck!

Have not run it in 5E but the level 1-3 B series in 5E is more like level 2-4 in 5E.

Add a level or so 2 if it involves large numbers (more than 8) or things like Hobgoblins. Level 5 in 5E has a big jump in power compared with Basic so the adventures get easy once fireball and 2nd attacks come online.

I haven't run B10 in 5th edition, but I have run B6, B8, and B9 in 5th edition as an interwoven series.

It worked well having the party start as two 5th level characters. They hired on help to pad the party out to 4 for some parts, and that made things really easy, so I'd say Zardnaar is that having the 5th edition characters be 1-2 levels higher than the modules call for and then using the nearest equivalent monsters from the 5th edition monster manual in similar numbers as listed in the original module will probably work out just fine.

That same campaign of mine is now nearing the end of X1 Isle of Dread, but for reasons of having a bit more variety among the various campaigns we've got going as a group it has actually been converted over to AD&D, so I can't really say how the higher level old-school modules work out with the same kind of straight-across conversion.

They have it in the DM's Guild. There was a fan conversion but apparently that was taken down.

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/189683/Classic-Modules-Today-B10-Nights-Dark-Terror-5e

AaronOfBarbaria said:

I haven't run B10 in 5th edition, but I have run B6, B8, and B9 in 5th edition as an interwoven series.

It worked well having the party start as two 5th level characters. They hired on help to pad the party out to 4 for some parts, and that made things really easy, so I'd say Zardnaar is that having the 5th edition characters be 1-2 levels higher than the modules call for and then using the nearest equivalent monsters from the 5th edition monster manual in similar numbers as listed in the original module will probably work out just fine.

That same campaign of mine is now nearing the end of X1 Isle of Dread, but for reasons of having a bit more variety among the various campaigns we've got going as a group it has actually been converted over to AD&D, so I can't really say how the higher level old-school modules work out with the same kind of straight-across conversion.

Click to expand...

I have run a few AD&D/BECMI adventures and it varies by adventure in regards to the level diffences. One 5th level adventure made it as a 5th level 5E adventure. Some 8th level ones are good for level 6.

Dragons do not convert well.

Zardnaar said:

Dragons do not convert well.

Click to expand...

I didn't have any issues with the young black dragon in the Sanctuary of Elwyn the Ardent portion of B9 I think the characters were 5th level by that point and I know for sure they had hired on two other adventurers so there were 4 of them up against it.

What issues in conversion have you had? Did you use some method other than what I did, which was to just ignore everything in the original source except the age and color of the dragon and use the stat-block of the nearest possible found in the Monster Manual?

I've converted B10 to 5e and run it. It's a ridiculously fun adventure. Most monsters convert just fine. A few require a bit of extra work, but not many.

Depending on the number of PCs, you could start with PCs of any level from 1-3. Though I wouldn't have all of them be 1st level. The only issue you might have is that the adventure is worth lots of XP. I'm missing a few sections on the spreadsheet I just looked at for my conversion, but there is easily over 60,000 xp if you clear everything (at least using the xp from the monsters I used in the conversion).

When I run it again I'll either reduce monsters/excise some encounters, go with milestone leveling, reduce the xp for the monsters to slow leveling (say, 2/3 or so), or just let the PCs hit 5th level earlier than I would like.

But it is a really fun adventure.

I've run U1, N1, then B10. U1 was fun.

The PCs liked the haunted house/ship as a change of pace from a typical dungeon. In my version, they didn't get a ship in the end but they did get access to a ship in the future (and they got plot hooks for X1!!).

N1, which I've run twice (well, halfway through the second run), was a hit because of how deadly it was. First time, a PC died vs. the BBEG in the dungeon portion. I had a good time hamming it up as the villagers (either mind controlled or not). I even managed to cry as the rescued girl in the Temple. The look on the PCs faces when the DM cries and begs the PCs to help is one of the highlights of playing 30+ years of RPGs. And the BBEG in the Temple (which party 2 finished yesterday) brought a cheer when he died yesterday. He one shot two PCs (who thankfully didn't die outright) and there was actual fear at the table. And yet they weren't mad at me because the module does a good job of preparing the PCs that evil forces are at work.

But nothing... nothing... prepared the PCs (of the first party I ran through it. Should get party two started next week) for the brutality of B10. The look on their faces when you tell them the burning farmstead they are in is under attack by 40 goblins is priceless. Sure, the adventure is basically a series of MacGuffins of "rescue this, rescue that" but they were under a relentless time pressure to save the NPC (whom they had met and befriended as 0 xp characters in the generic starting inn) and then find the Lost Valley. It's also quite easy to tie finding the Lost Valley to some grander campaign versus some awful BBEG.

Oh, and one of the PCs decided his background was slave. So of course the slavers in B10 were those who had enslaved him. The PCs viscerally hated team bad guy. They wanted Golthar and his entire evil band destroyed. I added as many NPCs the PCs had met up to that point as victims in one way or another.

The adventure is just so long it feels oppressive. By the time they hit the Lost Valley they really, really had no patience for the pettiness of the inhabitants.

Thanks for the advice, I think it might be a good idea to run an intro adventure and I have been wanting to run Against the Cult of the Reptile God for a long time Guachi. It does look really fun to run, but yeah those mobs of goblins early on could be pretty tough. Just the very first encounter with the slavers on the boat looks really hard actually for a first level party. I can probably expect level 5-6 with an intro adventure which is fine.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] as the site's greatest B10 proponent this looks like your cue.

The only thing I can suggest, having now run B10 twice with varying levels of success, is to find a way to break it down into several smaller almost stand-alone adventures if you can; with the Lost Valley remaining as one larger mission at the end. Otherwise, as happened with [MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] and happened twice with me, your players may well be sick of it all by the time it's finally done.

Lan-"you might also want to slow down the levelling a bit or else the latter parts of the module might turn out to be pushovers"-efan