D&D 5E The popularity of horror adventures/settings for 5e

[Paul Farquhar]

I thought we were talking about horror, not jokes?

Vampires are angsty over-sexed teens that are about as scary as a peanut butter sandwich.

Twilight killed vampires much more effectively than any stake through the heart.

 

[GrimCo]

So why would the PCs, intelligent creatures, knowing that they are a band of heavily armed and armored people, eyeballing the same 1v5 odds run in terror? I know you really want to have it both ways here, but it doesn't really fly. Either one side seems to have an significant advantage to the mind of an intelligent creature that finds itself in this situation, and therefore should feel confident enough to attack, or neither side has the obvious upper hand to the intelligent observer, and therefore the PCs have no reason to flee instead of at least making the attempt.

Mutually assured destruction. PC fear vampires because they heard stories about how terrifying and powerful they are. Vampires heard stories of powerful individuals that roam the land. PCs don know the stat block I use for the vampire. It could be CR5 Vampire spawn, CR13 13 Vampire or CR16 Strahd von Z. Same with Vampire, he doesn't know if party is lv 1 newbs with lots of money for fancy gear or lv 10 battle hardened veterans. In the end, it depends on play style and how you like to run your campaigns. I like to relay on fear of unknown. Ignorance breeds fear and all that. Also, most intelligent monsters won't kill on sight just because. They will attack if they are threatened, hungry or if PCs interfere with their plans. But it's just my and my groups preferred play style. Living world, where monsters are also people with their own agendas.

Also, tangential to the specific example, but relevant to the overall topic: Five 5th level 5e PCs, depending on party makeup and specific builds, have a decent chance of actually winning against the vamp and forcing it to flee if they've got ready access to radiant damage. Yes, it's a dangerous monster, but you might be surprised at how much of those 144 hit points can vanish in a turn if it's up against a party that's actually set up for vampire hunting.

Yes, they can do it. PCs are powerful. 5e raised power level up a notch from previous editions. Running horror games in 5th ed requires a bit more work from DM to actually work. If PCs know what they are going up against and have time to prepare, they can punch way above their level. To be fair, with right builds, in PF1 you could grind through some very hard encounters 10+ CRs above your CR. And than we are back to problem of CRs not really be a good measure of how hard the encounter is in 5e. FE Shadow is CR 1/2. But it's nasty bugger

 

[Paul Farquhar]

PC fear vampires because they heard stories about how terrifying and powerful they are.

PCs have heard stories about how terrifying and powerful dragons are too. What makes vampires scarier than dragons?

 

[GrimCo]

Nothing. They are both scary powerful creatures. In my games, PC's if they are smart they don't charge dragons. They tend to not charge at anything if they don't have high probability of fast kill. They run and hide. In other games, they charge them.

Different groups and DMs have different play styles. I have mine, you have yours. They may be radically different, but one isn't better than other.

I fully acknowledge that my particular type of running horror games is not for every one. I run games for people that like that particular flavor of it (as in- you are not Big Hero, even in late Tier2 early Tier3).

 

[Shardstone]

How about some actual support? Is Strahd really the best selling WotC adventure? I don't know that it's not, but where's the evidence?
And speaking of the DMsGuild popularity, ok, let's see the numbers. How many Strahd adventures vs everything else? How about best sellers?
You named two million+ dollar Kickstarters? How many are not horror themed?

You came into this innocuous thread looking for violence lol

 

[Shardstone]

As someone who primarily runs grim dark horror games, D&D, specially 5th ed, isn't really that good. Out of the box, without house rules, it just doesn't mesh well. To put it bluntly, PCs are just to powerful. Lv 5 party can have long or short rest when ever and where ever they want with use of Rope trick and Leomunds tiny hut. There isn't enough sense of danger.

Ravenloft, as a setting, was cool cause every Domain was different thematicly and culturaly. From Tristenora (primitive iron age) to Barovia (medieval) to Richemoult (chivalric).

Curse of Strahd is popular because it's good adventure. Plain and simple.

None of these have stopped me from running horror in 5e.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nothing. They are both scary powerful creatures.

So why is Dragon of Icespire Peak not a horror adventure?

 

[LordEntrails]

You came into this innocuous thread looking for violence lol

No I did not and I'm offended by your personal attack.

I came into a thread with an interesting title and hoped for some intelligent conversation supported by metrics. Not unsupported suppositions. I hoped the OP would support their views. But that's ok that they haven't. I was hoping to change my own opinion on this topic based on facts. But apparently that's not going to happen since their are not facts presented to base an opinion on.

 

[MGibster]

No, players don't know CR of monsters. Nor do monsters know PC levels. But players do know that vampires are deadly, dangerous and it's stupid and borderline suicidal to fight one at night. We are speaking about horror settings, Existence of vampire myths are common.

This is D&D we're talking about. Players are often very familiar with the CR, hit dice, and abilities of basic monsters from the Monster Manual. It's another reason why using D&D for horror can be somewhat difficult. And it's the same problem you can have with Call of Cthulhu given how familiar their otherworldly horrors are to gamers.

 

[Shardstone]

No I did not and I'm offended by your personal attack.

I came into a thread with an interesting title and hoped for some intelligent conversation supported by metrics. Not unsupported suppositions. I hoped the OP would support their views. But that's ok that they haven't. I was hoping to change my own opinion on this topic based on facts. But apparently that's not going to happen since their are not facts presented to base an opinion on.

Personal attack??? I meant no personal attack, sorry if you were offended, but man that was probably one of the tamest, most light-hearted comments I've made on this forum. Maybe it's a generational difference.