D&D 5E DMing an old school module

[Jester David]

I ran Castle Ravenloft as is for an early playtest and it worked very well. There were a few hiccups and I might adjust the number of creatures to better match the encounter guidelines.
Although the count himself is likely very deadly at the expected level range.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I also started with a "loot as xp" house rule, with monster xp cut drastically. My hope was it would encourage the sort of treasure hunt, don't get into fights that you don't have to, mentality. That didn't really work with my group, though. They managed to fight every non-treasure-guarding monster in the complex, and it was very slow going with little reward. So I've capitulated. Next time I try that I'll need to do a better job at getting the buy-in from the players and also make sure they have at least an inkling of an idea of how to get "the loot."

Were the players fully aware of the reduced combat awards and the awards they would get for treasure?

 

[redrick]

Were the players fully aware of the reduced combat awards and the awards they would get for treasure?

Yes. I introduced it before the first session and they agreed in theory. I didn't spend a lot of time on how that should adjust their play style, though, and I don't know that any of them were coming from the sneaky bastard, research mindset. And they did go 3 sessions without finding anything more than the 1d6 sp pocket change on monsters. It was ... a little comical ... but also not that fun for them or me.

If I were to do it again with a similar group, I would make sure to force a slightly more obvious setup into their first encounter. A small treasure trove well guarded from the front but with an unlocked back door. Or something. And I'd also probably have an NPC suggest they do a little more research.

 

[Darrius_Adler]

I have been running the 2e Ravenloft module Night of the Walking Dead as the only creatures I needed to convert for it is the Zombie Lord and a madman(modified a human assassin a little). It has been extremely easy to use the adventure. All I had to do was figure the XP budget for the characters and go through the module and build the encounters with the creatures listed. It was actually pretty easy to convert over the Zombie Lord from the 3e version.

 

[Darkstar360]

Treasure! The thing we noticed playing through ToEE and other 1st ed stuff is its positivly littered with magic and mundane loot. A rule of thumb we've come up with is down grade coins by one step (platinum becomes gold, gold becomes silver etc.) and ignore all +1 & +2 magic items and reduce all others by -2 (a +3 sword becomes +1 for example, unless they do something else too (so a +2 flame tongue becomes a +1 flame tongue.). On top of that just plain remove about half the magic items completely (unless they are consumables, healing potions, scrolls and the like).

a Playtest of the DMG i saw suggested magic armour and weapons should only come to players in the second tier of play, around levels 5-8 and even then they are rare.

of course, when the actual DMG comes out this will all be a lot easier.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Treasure! The thing we noticed playing through ToEE and other 1st ed stuff is its positivly littered with magic and mundane loot. A rule of thumb we've come up with is down grade coins by one step (platinum becomes gold, gold becomes silver etc.) and ignore all +1 & +2 magic items and reduce all others by -2 (a +3 sword becomes +1 for example, unless they do something else too (so a +2 flame tongue becomes a +1 flame tongue.). On top of that just plain remove about half the magic items completely (unless they are consumables, healing potions, scrolls and the like).

a Playtest of the DMG i saw suggested magic armour and weapons should only come to players in the second tier of play, around levels 5-8 and even then they are rare.

of course, when the actual DMG comes out this will all be a lot easier.

When the bulk of your XP comes from acquiring treasure there needs to be enough of it around to level up the party.

Magic items could be a bit more common because in AD&D they could be easily lost or destroyed constantly during adventures. Characters were always finding new stuff to replace what was eaten by rust monsters, oozes, disenchanters, and such.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Spoiler

How did it went in their investigation? Did they suspected the villain?

We had a great time, thanks!

Spoiler

They were pretty sure about Jean's involvement, but didn't suspect Marcel until they found him. Funny thing is, when I played this module years ago, our DM had a lot of work keeping our group out of the old graveyard before the last act. My players, on the other hand, didn't want to investigate the old graveyard until Luke told them to go there.