Today, I am a very frustrated DM. Last night was the fifth session of my current campaign, and only the second time my group of PCs got into combat. This is actually by design, because as a DM I thrive on building suspense and laying atmosphere thick on every set-piece I produce. I've had the players getting slowly closer to the main plot of the adventure, first through a forest that I tried to make appropriately bleak and unsettling (this was where they had some first fight, just some bandits they crushed). Second, a deserted elven city that was bizarrely well-preserved and unnaturally clean, which I tried to make as unearthly as possible with faintly luminous limestone everywhere and impossibly immense uses of silver.

To make things clear, I must say this is not your normal D&D campaign. None of my campaigns are, really. I have a strong preference for heavily "mundane" or "low fantasy" style settings. Spellcasting classes are vanishingly rare, magic items never for sale, most monsters are found only in the remote parts of the earth and considered to be legends, and humans are the only player race available. Additionally, I tend to strongly base my settings around a certain era of history--the current one at least superficially resembles the mid-15th Century, though the technology and politics are about a century ahead. My players are quite fine with all of this, at least they keep telling me (and I probably ask too much).

With my game, I'm really not aiming for a "heroic" feel, especially since the characters are 4th level. I was hoping to play up suspense, horror, and the otherworldliness of the first magic they encounter. The problem is, it feels like a few of the players didn't get the memo. Specifically, I have a Paladin and a Fighter who seem under the impression they're in Lord of the Rings, when what I was aiming for was more At the Mountains of Madness.

I do my best to hint to them what kind of story they're in. I ladle on the flavor text (it helps that it's an AIM chat-based game) and try to stress that even when a skeleton's sword arm misses the players, it's just barely. I throw in allusions to human cruelty (the PCs are traveling with a slave trader, and he's their boss. Fun stories to tell.) I try not to ham it up, but I emphasize things like silence, darkness, the yawning immensity of a cavernous underground and the sputtering frailty of their torch.

But they insist on playing their characters as unflappable. The Paladin's player is playing her as a fanatic to the hilt, the Fighter is a hardened mercenary, and neither so much as act impressed at what should be (to their characters) unimaginable wonders, closely followed by gut-wrenching terror. Yes, I know Paladins are immune to fear, but it's so.... dull.

So I'm thinking of going back to using Sanity Checks (the optional rule from Unearthed Arcana, made famous by the Call of Cthulhu RPG). I tried using them in the first campaign I ever DMed (2005), but ultimately abandoned them because players kept passing their sanity checks. With flying colors. I had a solid group of bastards so unshakable it became silly, and I decided not to use Sanity Points again. I hoped thereafter that my players would just roleplay realistic reactions to facing unfathomable horrors that would scar the saltiest veteran. I have been disappointed.

I admit I made this thread at least partly to just vent, but there's a question here. With the exception of the Paladin's player, no one in the group has ever had a DM other than myself. This is the Fighter-player's first game entirely. It's fair to guess most of the players may not realize they're in such an unusual game and think this is how D&D is supposed to be. So should I try doing a standard game just to show them? I'm not going to lie, typical 3.5 games don't excite me very much. I've talked about trying other games, actually, but the players seem attached to D&D (yet are willing to let me tweak and twist it like mad). Is there some sort of compromise possible here? The players want heroism, I want horror, any way we can meet in the middle?