D&D 5E How to run Death House without killing your entire party

[Ath'kethin]

As a DM, it's not my job to keep PCs alive. If they're in over their heads and make bad decisions, c'est la vis.

The worst fallout from the WotC editions of D&D is this videogame-esqe idea that the party will never confront anything it can't kill. Praise be to 5e for moving back away from that ideology.

 

[ccs]

So what'll a wary DM who runs this "as is" get?

 

[jrowland]

Might be fun to explicitly run it as a TPK...have players roll characters for a "one shot adventure". Run Death House amplified to suit your PCs and kill them. All of them. Horribly (in an entertaining way). Then have them re-roll and run Curse of Strahd as normal, featuring the slain PCs as phantoms and such.

I know my players would get a kick out of that. They key being they know to roll one shot characters,

 

[rooneg]

Please see attached PDF for additional instructions on running "Death House."

I believe that the 12-16 hours estimate is for when running it as a series of 2-hour sessions like Encounters. Personally, I intend to run the entire adventure as two 4-hour sessions. "Death House" is more of a mystery/exploration adventure, though there is some combat, and I intend to run it semi-"Theater of the Mind" style with no grid but still using miniatures for relative locations.

May the mists be with you. . .

Wow, I can't imagine a world in which Death House takes 12-16 hours, and I can't imagine playing it weekly in two hour chunks for 6-8 weeks. That's like the very definition of not a fun way to play the game IMO. 4 hours to get to the point where you hit level 2, 4 more hours to get out of the house seems reasonable to me.

 

[Sunseeker]

It's called "Death House", emphasis on death. Personally, I like it. The existing adventures only seem deadly if your DM runs it extra hard and this edition is notoriously soft on players as well.

 

[Moraine]

Ravenloft is a no-nonsense setting (everyone can remember those vorpal goblins). If your players know how the setting goes, no problem. If they know nothing (or almost nothing "oh, yes, vampires, werewolfs, just tell me CRs") you should warn them. Oh, and tell them about Jeren Surenblade.

 

[bid]

As a DM, it's not my job to keep PCs alive. If they're in over their heads and make bad decisions, c'est la vis.

"it's the screw" works perfectly here.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

A...this videogame-esqe idea that the party will never confront anything it can't kill.

I can usually let people using "video game" as some kind of pejorative slide, but in this case I am gobsmacked by it.

I have no idea what video games you are playing, but my experience with videogames which happens to be a larger portion of my life than table-top role-playing games, shows that the vast majority of them fully allow a player to put their character up against nigh impossible odds by way of such simple things as "I went west when the NPCs told me to go north."

Not to mention that video games often have extreme lethality to begin with because of the differing assumption that death means starting over at some recent point, unlike the table-top assumption that if you die there are lasting consequences.

 

[devincutler]

The fact that the blog calls LMoP a similar TPK factory belies his argument. My PCs ran through LMoP as written and I held nothing back and there was not a single PC death. Careful play and strategic withdrawals can overcome most obstacles. 5e scenario design has definitely reverted to its 1e roots. PCs in 3e and 4e would go into every encounter expecting t to be perfectly balanced and so they could basically smash down the doors and start slinging spells. Not the case in 5e (as in 1e). Players are expected to carefully adjudicate the situation, scout, plan, consult, and then either fight or bypass accordingly.

In many ways this hearkens back to more deadly RPGs like Traveller and Runequest, where lack of levels and massive hit point totals meant you had to take potential threats seriously.

I, for one, as a DM and a player, like it.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

Ravenloft is a no-nonsense setting (everyone can remember those vorpal goblins). If your players know how the setting goes, no problem. If they know nothing (or almost nothing "oh, yes, vampires, werewolfs, just tell me CRs") you should warn them. Oh, and tell them about Jeren Surenblade.

Rubbish. Ravenloft products have been littered with Humor over the years. You CANNOT having a high strung tension packed Horror setting without elements of humor.. otherwise the tension does not work. The humor dosnt have to be over the top.

Death House is so named for what went on there many many years ago.. its got bugger all to do with people actually going inside the house (and lets be honest, as Barovia dosnt get that many new people coming into town the adventurers could have been the first people in decades to do so.

I was thinking of the mists actually taking the whole inn with them (Im going to as an ode to old scenarios going with the Tavern approach. Im planning on taking all the characters as they sleep but leaving all the other patrons behind)