Game Shock

[JonBeowulf]

I'm running a group of fairly-experienced D&D 5e players through Goodman Games reprint of the original In Search of the Unknown and The Keep on the Borderlands. To say they're having a tough time of it is an understatement. I warned them at the very beginning that BECMI characters start out less than half of what they're used to but their still dropping like flies. Only two players have managed to get their characters to level 2. They've also gotten 9 of the 20 listed NPC retainers killed.

I'm loving this more than I should.

[Grod_The_Giant]

But are your players?

[Leon]

{{scrubbed}}

[Delicious Taffy]

{{scrubbed}}

Yeah, I forgot that when you roll up a 5e character, you give up your knowledge of any other system.

[Leon]

{{scrubbed}}

[kyoryu]

I'm running a group of fairly-experienced D&D 5e players through Goodman Games reprint of the original In Search of the Unknown and The Keep on the Borderlands. To say they're having a tough time of it is an understatement. I warned them at the very beginning that BECMI characters start out less than half of what they're used to but their still dropping like flies. Only two players have managed to get their characters to level 2. They've also gotten 9 of the 20 listed NPC retainers killed.

I'm loving this more than I should.

A good strategy is to contextualize the situation a bit more. Paint a picture, and ask them if that's really what they're doing. Make it like a movie, so that they can see it. And then ask them if it still sounds like something that they really should be doing. Get rid of the normal D&D-esque stat descriptions, and play up the horror a bit. Teach them how to do some fictional positioning to avoid damage rather than just charging headlong into danger.

The danger can be fun, but if they don't know what options they do have, and it feels like they have no choice but to run into the meatgrinder, it can get unfun, quickly.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm running a group of fairly-experienced D&D 5e players through Goodman Games reprint of the original In Search of the Unknown and The Keep on the Borderlands. To say they're having a tough time of it is an understatement. I warned them at the very beginning that BECMI characters start out less than half of what they're used to but their still dropping like flies. Only two players have managed to get their characters to level 2. They've also gotten 9 of the 20 listed NPC retainers killed.

I'm loving this more than I should.

Oddly enough, I've run Keep on the Borderlands for 5e players a couple times, and they've done well... partially because they didn't approach it like they were John Wick.

[Beelzebub1111]

Oddly enough, I've run Keep on the Borderlands for 5e players a couple times, and they've done well... partially because they didn't approach it like they were John Wick.

Similarly, I ran Epona's Daughter from well of worlds for my friend's bachelor party. They engaged with the plot, only fought a few guards and avoided the trolls, roleplayed with the gnomes and ran when it suited them. Granted that may have been a poor die roll on my part on a player casting phantasmal killer on the evil wizard. I actually uttered the words "Well he needs to fail an intelligence check so he'll live if he rolls under a *rolls*...19"