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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8190165" data-attributes="member: 7020951">I ran a 5e Castlevania dungeoncrawl campaign that started at 3rd level and ended with the party hitting 13.  They are 3 sessions into the sequel now.<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/castlevania-campaign-log.671990/" target="_blank">Here's the campaign log</a>.It's also on <a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/323889/Castle-Dracula" target="_blank">DM's Guild</a>.They did not actually get into the castle until they were 7th level... the first four levels were taking the stealthy approach up the side of the mountain. I suppose they could have gone back and said "we're going to march right up to the front gate up the main road" but there were plenty of implications that doing so would make them face off with an army of undead, so it never came up.What elements of play did you find helped make the game fun? -Terrain variations:  They never spent more than two sessions in the same type of area.  I didn't use many balconies/arrow slits, but there were plenty of areas with varying height and use of 3D maneuvering at the table, as well as obstacles to maneuver around.  After the first session, I don't think there were more than 2 fights back to back that were in fully open 'nothing on the battlemat' terrain.-Varied enemies, suited to the areas.  No slog of "more of the same."-Each area has its own logic or internal structure and theme.-Exploration and social challenges to give breaks from combat.Which ones made it tedious? Too much time waiting for players to roll dice and figure out their damage numbers sometimes.  I'm working on a product for possible KS to help speed this process up some.  We are at the table to play D&D, not to spend 2 minutes finding dice every turn and cross-referencing to small print on a character sheet.If you were a DM, how much did you prep ahead of time? If you were a player, did you notice how much the DM prepped ahead of time? Was it/were they published dungeon(s)? Was it all home brew? A mix?I wrote the whole thing ahead of time.  Plenty of custom monsters, custom items, etc.I think the players were surprised when they saw how thick my file folder(s) were <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I did get a couple of comments that I seemed to be ready for every strange thing they did (I knew they might try to challenge the werewolves to a duel with their leader, I knew they would probably not follow the obvious straight route inside the castle, etc.).Just to get things started, one area where I am concerned, especially if I end up using 5E, is the rate of advancement. 5E is way too fast in a normal campaign and I expect in a dungeon it would be even faster. I want the PCs to sit at their levels for a while, both to use all their toys and to let me use all mine. Relatedly, I am worried about the level ramp in power and that makes me worry about using 3.5 or PF.There's definitely less power-ramping.  Beyond 5th level, you can have the same content for an entire bracket of levels (6-8, 7-9, etc.) without worrying about exactly what order they get to it in.Since this was a Castlevania game, each area had an area boss.  Kill the area boss, level up and get a free long rest.  Outside of that, long rests were very hard to come by due to the 24 hour rule.  I leaned into it and mentioned how the Castle was saturated with magic and wealth, and thus offered a fast path for advancement in a world where 5th-7th level characters were normally "high level."  It ended up being about 2-2.5 sessions per area/character level and about 22-24 sessions overall.  That is a good length for a campaign to last.</blockquote>

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