u/twithiu

Hello! It's me again from this post (link above)! Thanks to everyone who has replied here! It really helped me get a bit of perspective on how I was ruling things, and it helped me improve, especially with factions!

However, I still feel my players are having a hard time enjoying the game. It might just not be for them, even though we truly enjoyed the first session. But it's also true that the first session was mainly exploration with very few challenges (they got 2 random encounters, one at the very beginning and one at the very end of the session).

But yeah, I feel like my players are way too scared to do anything, and the game just feels too oppressive. Yesterday they kept saying things like, "Do we have to get inside this dungeon? Could we just not do that?" lol

A quick summary of yesterday's session:

I have 3 players, but one was missing yesterday, so I decided to run the Wavestone Monolith instead of continuing with the Lost Citadel.

1. Players struggled for an hour just to enter the cave/pass the waterfall (requires Dex DC 12). They failed 3 times and tried to swim below the waterfall (Str DC 15 and failed) before one of them succeeded, wetting almost all their torches in the process. They kept trying to pass the waterfall or swim with their backpacks on... Then they saw the statue at the bottom, but they didn't risk taking the gem on its chest. They thought about carving wood to make a long-ass tube to breathe underwater, but I felt it was too much. They tried to throw a rope to the other side of the waterfall/fog curtain to see if it hooked onto something, but they didn't have a grappling hook, and they were throwing the rope literally at the waterfall, so the waterfall was blocking it. Then one person finally succeeded on the Dex check, went to the other side, secured the rope, came back, secured the rope on the other side as well, and they finally got in.

2. Then they went up the stairs of the ziggurat, completely ignored the arch with the trilobites, activated the trap, both failed the Dex check, and fell into the pit. The PC holding the torch died from the fall damage, and the torch went out after falling into a puddle. The other one managed to relight the torch, stabilized the dying PC, and a leech appeared. Then the PC managed to climb out of the pit (he tried twice in his turn; from my understanding climbing is movement, so he sacrificed his action to move again. Was I correct about this?). The leech killed the unconscious PC, the other one failed the ranged attack, the leech climbed out of the pit, and killed the other player. TPK.

3. Then, with new characters, they found some soldiers around the ziggurat, fugitives. They warned them about the brain flayer and the trap on the fourth step of the descending stairs.

4. Once inside, they split up. One is still wandering around, while the other entered the room with the 6 nautiloid berserkers (room 8). I'm wondering if I should have told him he heard noises coming from the room before entering it. I just ran it as all of them becoming aware of each other at the same time. He then tried to run away, the berserkers chased him, and I made them do an opposed Dex roll to see who ran faster. The berserkers won and grabbed the PC (opposed Str check, which the PC failed). The berserkers were leading the PC to their boss when the player said he could bring more food/slaves for their boss if he were given the chance to leave the ziggurat alone. I ran with it, but the berserkers said he needed to leave them something extremely valuable as collateral. He accepted, gave them his +1 longsword, and got out.

We ended the session there. At the end they felt truly defeated. It seems to me the game is too heavy, too intense for them. Maybe it's not their vibe. It's not like they dislike it, but they feel like there's no real freedom, in the sense that they are just at the mercy of destiny. And they were also blaming the bad rolls instead of trying to understand what they could have done better (like asking more questions, inspecting the environment, and trying things, but I'd already told them exactly these things at the beginning of the session). I explained that there are layers of information, and what I say unprompted is just the superficial information — what their PCs notice at first glance. At the end of the session I told them about the arch, and that if they'd inspected it they probably wouldn't have died, because they kept blaming bad luck.

Also, death really takes a toll on them, and I told them that dying in Shadowdark is part of the game. I just feel they're too used to 5e. They say they enjoy Shadowdark, but the first session — which was really mild throughout — was their favorite one. In the other two, they just felt depressed at the end 😂

I think I'll try Pulp Mode next time to see if they like it better, or maybe I could give gauntlets a try.

Do you think I'm maybe too harsh or strict? Maybe I should just roll with whatever ideas they come up with until they get a better feel for the game.

Ah, I also feel like I'm schooling them. Every session I tell them what I think went well and what went wrong in the last session, and how I think they could improve by sharing the tips I find most important from the Principia Apocrypha and the OSR Primer. I also shared those documents with them, but I don't think they've read them.

Hello! Me and my friends started playing shadowdark a couple of weeks ago, coming from dnd 5e, and while the first session was amazing! Yesterday's session was kind of a let down and it ended with a tpk (lol). Now I keep having the feeling I could have run things better and I have some questions!

How do you handle random encounters that are "near" or "close"? If enemies come talking, do players hear them first even if they appear "close"? What if they are "far"? In my head "close" is literally on top of them, "near" is in the same room or adjacent, but what about "far"? Are they like a few rooms away? And If an enemy appears "close" and it's something like the cave creeper on the ceiling, does it have a surprise attack if the players are not looking at the ceiling? And what about the player's light? If enemies appear close/near the players, do they see the player's light first? For instance, yesterday my players got an encounter with 7 whispering beastmen that were "near", but how could they get so close to the players for them to hear them when the enemies can clearly see the player's light?

Also roleplaying factions and single encounters. I think I tend to roleplay them too 1 dimensionally. I feel I make all NPCs coerce the players to give them food or gems/golds or otherwise they are gonna kill them. I can't figure out why NPCs wouldn't try to force the players to give them food, gold or gems, unless their reaction is neutral or friendly. And it feels I'm removing players agency. Also, how could the players convince suspicious NPCs they are trustworthy? Should I call for a roll check? Cause I can't figure this out otherwise. Maybe it's supposed to be like this and players need to figure out a way out? Or maybe I just roleplay poorly lol

Then I'm not sure how to handle player's creative ideas, and they got really creative when they faced the minotaur. They blinding him for 1d4 rounds with a torch and black powder, tripped him over with ropes a couple of times doing the same action, tried to cut his ankles when he was laying on the ground, lured him towards explosive jars, stab his eyes, etc. I allowed all these actions with attack rolls or opposed strength checks, but the fight started feeling repetitive and silly? Like the minotaur was just a punching bag for a bit? I just didn't know where to draw the line. Like, would the minotaur fall for the same rope trick twice? And could he avoid it during the player's turn? Can enemies react outside their turns for things like these?

Then after the minotaur, the priest was in total darkness, tried to light a torch but I made him roll with disadvantage... Maybe I shouldn't have had to? He failed and a skeleton appeared and attacked him with advantage and missed... So how does a skeleton fail to attack an unaware player? Maybe I should have let the skeleton just automatically hit the priest here?

Sometimes we also forget to keep things in initiative order, any advice on how to remember it?

Also how do you decide if what the player does is an action or a multitask?

Sorry for the long post AND thank you so much to anyone patient and kind enough to read all this and reply!