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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dantilla" data-source="post: 2583833" data-attributes="member: 35735">I have been running a Ravenloft game since March.  However, I seem to be having mixed success on being able to scare my players.My biggest issues are:1.  The meta-gamer with way too many ranks in several Knowledge skills that uses ALL of these to try to figure out what they are fighting against.  He has a bad habit of rolling high, too.   :\   I've been trying to counteract this by sending him against things he wouldn't know about as a Ravenloft non-native, or by giving him extra little clues or observations about the creatures, without actually saying "its ____."2.  My PC's are powerful.  I have five of them in the party, and over the course of the campaign they have learned to work together and use their greatest strengths so efficiently that I can send something several EL's higher than them at them and they wipe it out in two rounds tops.  I have tried to beef up some things, but again, I have had mixed success.3.  Lost in translation:  I am running a few 2nd modules interspersed with stuff I myself am writing.  I have tried to use the converstion stuff to update the chars and creatures, but I have found that this SERIOUSLY underpowers the bad guys.  Therefore, I am building them up myself, using the stats given in the module as a guide, and thus coming up with something more realistic.  However, see also #2.  Plus, I am a bit afraid of "cheating" by making these NPCS more powerful than they are supposed to be.If anyone has any input/suggestions to help fix these issues, i'd appreciate it.However, everything does not suck.  I find that I am very good at coming up with my own flavor text, as well as embellishing that which comes with the modules.  More than once have I freaked out my players in my descriptions of places, and more than once one or more of my PC's have refused to enter a place because of it.I also have some talent with the Tarokka deck--besides making up minor on the fly quick fortunes related to the current adventures, I was also able to make a longer more detailed fortune for a beloved NPC.  I stacked the deck, but due to my own slight of hand skill and the fact that my other players also shuffled the deck before the fortune, I was able to fool all but one of them.  It was also a particularly bleak fortune for said beloved NPC, and has added a new urgency to trying to find him.One of my funnest moments of all, tho, was last session.  My PC's were camping the night in a graveyard on the advice of a tree (feel free to ask if you want), and although they had a canine ally in the area (a grim [Denizens of Dread]), they were attacked by something very strange to them--a cinderspawn (Libris Mortis).  They were able to defeat it without too much blood lost, and were just settling down again when the dog started growling softly in the other direction, and they could hear the roar of something in the distance, moving parellel to their location.  Even worse, little tendrils of mist were snaking thru the trees and wrapping around their ankles.  The thing, whatever it was, was coming closer.  The dog stopped growling, and looked up at the PC's, glaring whenever they tried to ask it anything or talked amongst themselves.  Eventually, someone threw out the suggestion that the dog wanted them to be quiet.NOT ONE PLAYER said a word or moved a muscle for the next five minutes.  It was great.</blockquote>

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