7:26 I believe zombies have so many hit points because it simulates having to hack them completely apart before they stop moving. Last year I ran a session (D&D 3.0) for 2 new players. They killed the 2 hp kobolds and their 5 hp orc boss in just one hit each. Then they encountered a zombie. The look on their faces when it didn't die after one hit. It was great.
A DM once asked me to play Strahd in the original Ravencroft supp. I had Strahd use "Magic Jar" to possess two PC's in succession (they missed their Saving Throws). One gutted herself before I let her back into her body to behold her ruin. The other appeared to go mad running off the roof laughing and gibbering. He too got to go back to his body as the ground rushed up to crush him. Horrible enough for ya? Love your OSR character, that's me!
Funny how the stress level mimics precisely what manages to make Call of Cthulhu a great horror game with it’s sanity mechanic. In general it raises the stakes and makes for incredible tension at the table in key moments
I ran a game with an Artillerist Artificer who really wanted to use a modified version of the DMG Madness rules for a character. He was a very trigger-happy, Jinx style character and honestly one of my favorites I’ve ever seen.
As someone who came up through early editions, can we get a trigger warning before you start in with energy drain? Undead used to be more feared, and we liked it, we respected ... Wait. Carry on, good sir.
Damn... as someone who lives in a third world country and that collects d&d books and adventures 5 times my currency, when you cutted, scribbled and burned that page of Curse of Strahd it did the same thing with my heart X﹏X otherwise great video haha
My Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual fell apart because the D&D books are so poorly made. I had to get page protectors and put those books into binders.
@6701naruto out of curiosity Have you tried the submarine martial art of piracy, or is the point to have the physical books rather than the rules in them?
In our corner (second world country), people often print PHB and dm book on paper, and wrap in soft plastic cover, because prices are insane. You just can't afford all of literature that wizards made. Heck, even the PHB AND dm book on the same table are rare. So, often we just use pdf on computers and phones instead of printed books. And these spell cards?! OMG, we print them too, or just using phones with pdf or website with information. Also, God bless the 3Dprint which gave us oportunity to play with miniatures, not with the toys or coins. Of course, there always be people who can buy all of this, but mostly profeccionals who dming for money and can buy this without guilt. Well, our people often feel guilted when buying something ONLY for a hobby, it must be "usefull" somehow. "Oh, you're buyng stuff for hobby? So you have to make money from it, otherwise you're a big child who's wasting money!!!" I know, money usefull, but people often tell me that hobby - isn't "something you like to do because you like it", but "Hobby - it's a stuff you do after work to make more money". This sucks
Finally, it's spooktober so I ran your adventure for my friends! We had a blast, they ended up flying away on a giant Raven and taking the priest NPC with them. They were really hurrying to find the last Treasure needed to pay the Raven and barely made it in time. They even used an additional half hour after helping the skeleton to repair the old clock. I ended up making the instructions that the skeleton gives to the players each about 9 words long. It seems to me that it's impossible to keep in short-term memory longer phrases for an average person. (btw what a cool encounter stolen from the Labyrinth) Also the damage that the giant witch deals in the kitchen seems a little too deadly, maybe I went too soft on my players, but I ended up reducing it to 1d6, so that to not one-shot them that early in the game. Anyway, thanks for this amazing material! I hope you will make another great adventure, I would definitely buy it!
Dude, discovered you like yesterday and keep binging your vids, keep it up! You blew my mind with replacing Death House with this the next time I run this module. If the players survive and get out, they have a personal reason to go back and whoop ol' Strahd for hunting them. But I actually like the alternative better. If the party TPKs at the end of session 0, their souls are lost in the mist, maybe some are reborn or others are trapped in that Death March scene depicted in the Village of Barovia. Either way they are now NPCs and they could maybe interact with the new party (who gets to Barovia by whatever means you like to use) in some way during different points of the campaign, just making little cameos to remind your players how dangerous this place is.
I know you don't have a huge video library, and you're relatively new compared to the others, but I already consider this a top-tier D&D UA-cam channel. You make excellent content, and it's clear that 1 you care and 2 you are enjoying yourself. P.S. I'm positive while growing up, you dreamed of making D&D content on UA-cam and being complimented by strangers. So consider it mission accomplished. Bad jokes aside you're absolutely killing it. 👏👏
I finally ran this one for the group. We used AD&D 2E. Lots of fun, my players really enjoyed the interactivity and figuring things out on their own. We finished in 4 hours, and most of them escaped via the chapel exit, but a couple had been drinking lots of blood and correctly deduced that the only hope for them was to eliminate the Count, however even with the Sunsword, they still succumbed at midnight and were lost. Overall it was a great time, but I do have some recommendations for others. My main one is that I don't think the escalating encounters work all that well. The math and time simply don't work in their favor. You're not all that likely to see any one to its conclusion, and you dont get that "escalation" feeling when the theme changes so often. What I would probably change is making it so that once you first roll for an escalating encounter, each event always escalates that one until you see it through completely. Then you can roll again. This way you get the feeling that its following you, and something big is about to happen. I would probably also only use the brides and the count. The next thing is that some escape routes are far too easy to figure out quickly. Brothers tomb comes to mind. The catacombs stairway shouldnt go all the way up, it should be more circuitous. It drops the 50 foot rope right in your lap on the way to the countess. I actually did change this one by making the drop 150 feet because I was worried about it. They would have been done in less than 2 hours if I hadnt I think if my players hadnt figured out the gargoyle statue right away then maybe I wouldnt have seen that problem. This is a great adventure and well worth running. There is room for improvement but even as is, it is a really good module.
I just discovered Old School D&D games recently and I'm running one with level draining undead in it. When my players knew they were going up against a vampire and that it could drain 2 of their levels - Wow! They got really creative with their plans and precautions. If anyone out there is considering play Older Editions - I'd recommend trying them out. It's great to see players are concerned as someone probably should be when they are going to go try to kill a vampire! And as a player, you really feel the tension and when you win it means a lot! You didn't just roll dice long enough to eventually win - you probably made some really smart decisions or got really lucky or maybe both. It's awesome. Also, I can't wait to check out the adventure!
Just something really funny- I was watching the scene with you running to the shop to get "cow" when an advertisement came on for a dairy free butter which was all about "saving the cow"
Thank you so much for this time saver to Castle Ravenloft. I've been beating my head on the wall to find a simple DM solution to adventuring thru the castle. Many Thxs
What's the music at 6:35? Things that slow gameplay: 1. rolling for initiative 2. looking up spell descriptions 3. recalculate stats because of energy drain
Love the idea for the stress level. Really brings something that works well in other rpgs meant for horror to 5E in a simple and effective way. I have done increases to difficulty due to effects like it, but a constant DC "level" based on the current horror is great. Only change I would make to it for my next run is that I will explicitly state that any DC which is lower than the listed stress is raised to that amount. Let the players wonder whether it will be even higher, mwahahahaha!!
Great job! I picked this up before seeing the video, which brought me here. I'm rounding up the players for a nice Fall horror one-shot and this is it. Looking to run it with Knave 2e.
Man, I thought this video is about a some trick to quickly finish module, ya trick me! But in search of copper I found a gold, thank you :) I want to write a horror oneshot about mouthering gibber in sewers, and thinking how to make players scared for at least a moment
Lol you’re just out to piss off all the rpg sub communities. I love it…. As someone who lurks to steal from all of them I like the punches thrown both ways.
Excellent Video, Excellent Document, just what I needed, I am working on something, and the ideas of stress work great, as well as the whole layout seems like an old school adventure game. Like a point and click horror game. I've seen curse of strahd fail thrice, and heard of it failing from others twice additionally. I agree with condensing down filler, I've done that for a starter set, was one of my more successful campaigns I think.
My dude... I bought this campaign, I threw together some shadowdark premades for my group of five players, they ended up completely avoiding the torture chamber because "it sounded too scary", speed ran through to the brothers tomb, stumbled across the tomb of the girl, brought the corpse down, laid with brother, out the secret balcony, and boom, module defeated in 3 hours and 30 minutes from 8 pm to 1130 pm. But it was a really cool module. I threw down a dry erase board, they drew their own map from the best descriptors I could give them from the book, and game over strahd... Just for them to escape the module and get smacked upside the head for the full blown campaign starting next week! Goodtimes.
Running this tomorrow night using old 5e, 3 lv1 players (maybe lv 2 if they wipe every other room 😅). Thinking on if i should worry on how to recover casters spell slots or giving like half back on trinkets and vamp dices. If you got any tips leave it bellow.
for the finale I had led candles everywhere and a fog machine hidden under the table. I blinded my players with fog and clouds of pot smoke then pressured them to hurry the fuck up in combat. good times.
I played CoS with The One Ring 2e. And its amazing experience tho. Also, tried with Brancalonia and Masque of the Red Death for 5e and it went better than vanilla 5e
Having run this adventure twice now, I've learned one thing... Player Characters should not be close to 10th level at the end or they won't fear anything.
I read through your adventure and really loved it! Can’t wait to run it with my friends. I got one question though: there is a key falling out of the Count’s tome, what does it open? It references p. 27 (yesteryear’s study) but there is no mention of the key on p. 27.
Oh… I've wondered how to get my fiancée into TTRPGs before… She's not sure she'd know what to do and thinks her instinct would be to try and get away … trying to figure out how to get out of a vampire's castle, though, with a stress roll instead of a DC or ICRPG room-based target number? Yeahhh, yeahhh… 🧛 And since it's May, not September, I have six months to plan instead of six weeks. I see a plan starting to come together.
oh my god my breathing went heavy at that intro i actually almost started to hyperventilate edit: alright that and the cow section really cements How to Basic being an inspo
This isn’t good for the one shot version, but using the gritty realism rest variant, or any longer rest variant, would greatly improve running horror games.
I would love to hear you talk about Call of Cthulhu. It has my favorite game mechanics but running anything besides "The Haunting" is an absolute dumpster fire, and I cant figure out how to apply your sandbox advice to a mystery game, even with Pulp Cthulhu rules.
You mention that midnight should come at a specific point in the evening in the supplement, but don't advise how long the players should get. 3 hours? 4 hours?
I gotta give you credit, man. When you make a video, you go ALL the way.
The fire department loves me.
Ikr, the amount of modules he has destroyed for a video 😂
As a 30 yr old OSR stan I lost it at "Okay Old Grognard, go back to pickleball we'll come back to you later"
7:26 I believe zombies have so many hit points because it simulates having to hack them completely apart before they stop moving.
Last year I ran a session (D&D 3.0) for 2 new players. They killed the 2 hp kobolds and their 5 hp orc boss in just one hit each. Then they encountered a zombie. The look on their faces when it didn't die after one hit. It was great.
A DM once asked me to play Strahd in the original Ravencroft supp. I had Strahd use "Magic Jar" to possess two PC's in succession (they missed their Saving Throws). One gutted herself before I let her back into her body to behold her ruin. The other appeared to go mad running off the roof laughing and gibbering. He too got to go back to his body as the ground rushed up to crush him. Horrible enough for ya?
Love your OSR character, that's me!
Funny how the stress level mimics precisely what manages to make Call of Cthulhu a great horror game with it’s sanity mechanic. In general it raises the stakes and makes for incredible tension at the table in key moments
I ran a game with an Artillerist Artificer who really wanted to use a modified version of the DMG Madness rules for a character. He was a very trigger-happy, Jinx style character and honestly one of my favorites I’ve ever seen.
As someone who came up through early editions, can we get a trigger warning before you start in with energy drain? Undead used to be more feared, and we liked it, we respected ... Wait. Carry on, good sir.
I'm dyin'😂
My god that cow sequence fucking killed me
Editing this must have been like speed running Strahd. And paying that turtle actor was genius.
Turtle? I only saw a subscribe button?!?
"So the players can start making their poor decisions..." I'm losing it!!!
Damn... as someone who lives in a third world country and that collects d&d books and adventures 5 times my currency, when you cutted, scribbled and burned that page of Curse of Strahd it did the same thing with my heart X﹏X otherwise great video haha
My Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual fell apart because the D&D books are so poorly made. I had to get page protectors and put those books into binders.
Saaaaame
@6701naruto out of curiosity Have you tried the submarine martial art of piracy, or is the point to have the physical books rather than the rules in them?
In our corner (second world country), people often print PHB and dm book on paper, and wrap in soft plastic cover, because prices are insane. You just can't afford all of literature that wizards made. Heck, even the PHB AND dm book on the same table are rare. So, often we just use pdf on computers and phones instead of printed books. And these spell cards?! OMG, we print them too, or just using phones with pdf or website with information. Also, God bless the 3Dprint which gave us oportunity to play with miniatures, not with the toys or coins.
Of course, there always be people who can buy all of this, but mostly profeccionals who dming for money and can buy this without guilt. Well, our people often feel guilted when buying something ONLY for a hobby, it must be "usefull" somehow. "Oh, you're buyng stuff for hobby? So you have to make money from it, otherwise you're a big child who's wasting money!!!"
I know, money usefull, but people often tell me that hobby - isn't "something you like to do because you like it", but "Hobby - it's a stuff you do after work to make more money". This sucks
I think it probably involved some smart video editing and a printer or copy machine.
EDIT: Now available on DriveThruRPG: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/458350/The-Count-the-Castle--the-Curse
Dude, I love your content, really invigorated me to get back and workshop some of my own ideas.
Thank you good sir. We are a few session in CoS and this point crawl/stress level idea will help prep that dinner with the devil.
Finally, it's spooktober so I ran your adventure for my friends! We had a blast, they ended up flying away on a giant Raven and taking the priest NPC with them. They were really hurrying to find the last Treasure needed to pay the Raven and barely made it in time. They even used an additional half hour after helping the skeleton to repair the old clock.
I ended up making the instructions that the skeleton gives to the players each about 9 words long. It seems to me that it's impossible to keep in short-term memory longer phrases for an average person. (btw what a cool encounter stolen from the Labyrinth)
Also the damage that the giant witch deals in the kitchen seems a little too deadly, maybe I went too soft on my players, but I ended up reducing it to 1d6, so that to not one-shot them that early in the game.
Anyway, thanks for this amazing material! I hope you will make another great adventure, I would definitely buy it!
Dude, discovered you like yesterday and keep binging your vids, keep it up!
You blew my mind with replacing Death House with this the next time I run this module. If the players survive and get out, they have a personal reason to go back and whoop ol' Strahd for hunting them. But I actually like the alternative better. If the party TPKs at the end of session 0, their souls are lost in the mist, maybe some are reborn or others are trapped in that Death March scene depicted in the Village of Barovia. Either way they are now NPCs and they could maybe interact with the new party (who gets to Barovia by whatever means you like to use) in some way during different points of the campaign, just making little cameos to remind your players how dangerous this place is.
Heck yeah! Or make the TPK'd characters vampire thralls that keep harassing the new characters.
Awww, did you give yourself a save the cat scene twice :) You are a storyteller by heart.
Random encounter I swear.
I know you don't have a huge video library, and you're relatively new compared to the others, but I already consider this a top-tier D&D UA-cam channel.
You make excellent content, and it's clear that 1 you care and 2 you are enjoying yourself.
P.S. I'm positive while growing up, you dreamed of making D&D content on UA-cam and being complimented by strangers. So consider it mission accomplished.
Bad jokes aside you're absolutely killing it. 👏👏
the 'You can play however you want" gave me a fight or flight reaction from a video in the future
The very useful video aside, it's amazing to see how much you already improved in just one week. I can't wait to see what you're cooking up next
I finally ran this one for the group. We used AD&D 2E. Lots of fun, my players really enjoyed the interactivity and figuring things out on their own. We finished in 4 hours, and most of them escaped via the chapel exit, but a couple had been drinking lots of blood and correctly deduced that the only hope for them was to eliminate the Count, however even with the Sunsword, they still succumbed at midnight and were lost.
Overall it was a great time, but I do have some recommendations for others. My main one is that I don't think the escalating encounters work all that well. The math and time simply don't work in their favor. You're not all that likely to see any one to its conclusion, and you dont get that "escalation" feeling when the theme changes so often.
What I would probably change is making it so that once you first roll for an escalating encounter, each event always escalates that one until you see it through completely. Then you can roll again. This way you get the feeling that its following you, and something big is about to happen. I would probably also only use the brides and the count.
The next thing is that some escape routes are far too easy to figure out quickly. Brothers tomb comes to mind. The catacombs stairway shouldnt go all the way up, it should be more circuitous. It drops the 50 foot rope right in your lap on the way to the countess. I actually did change this one by making the drop 150 feet because I was worried about it. They would have been done in less than 2 hours if I hadnt
I think if my players hadnt figured out the gargoyle statue right away then maybe I wouldnt have seen that problem. This is a great adventure and well worth running. There is room for improvement but even as is, it is a really good module.
As someone with way to much attachment to inanimate objects, thank you for not actually stabbing the cow
This will soon be one of the most popular D&D/ RPG channels on youtube. Deservedly so
You deserve 100k subs immediately.
I just discovered Old School D&D games recently and I'm running one with level draining undead in it. When my players knew they were going up against a vampire and that it could drain 2 of their levels - Wow! They got really creative with their plans and precautions. If anyone out there is considering play Older Editions - I'd recommend trying them out. It's great to see players are concerned as someone probably should be when they are going to go try to kill a vampire! And as a player, you really feel the tension and when you win it means a lot! You didn't just roll dice long enough to eventually win - you probably made some really smart decisions or got really lucky or maybe both. It's awesome.
Also, I can't wait to check out the adventure!
Just something really funny-
I was watching the scene with you running to the shop to get "cow" when an advertisement came on for a dairy free butter which was all about "saving the cow"
Thank you so much for this time saver to Castle Ravenloft. I've been beating my head on the wall to find a simple DM solution to adventuring thru the castle. Many Thxs
This is so good, I'm using it for a Darkest Dungeon inspired mini campaign. Your content is fantastic, so glad you decided to start youtubing.
Best TTRPG production quality on UA-cam, genuinely gemeralded
What's the music at 6:35?
Things that slow gameplay:
1. rolling for initiative
2. looking up spell descriptions
3. recalculate stats because of energy drain
Well since finding your channel last night I have now watched every single one of you videos, and now I am sad. I best subscribe for more!
Love the "blink and you miss it" deathbulge reference.
Love the idea for the stress level. Really brings something that works well in other rpgs meant for horror to 5E in a simple and effective way. I have done increases to difficulty due to effects like it, but a constant DC "level" based on the current horror is great. Only change I would make to it for my next run is that I will explicitly state that any DC which is lower than the listed stress is raised to that amount. Let the players wonder whether it will be even higher, mwahahahaha!!
Great job! I picked this up before seeing the video, which brought me here. I'm rounding up the players for a nice Fall horror one-shot and this is it. Looking to run it with Knave 2e.
Love your chaotic energy
Man, I thought this video is about a some trick to quickly finish module, ya trick me! But in search of copper I found a gold, thank you :)
I want to write a horror oneshot about mouthering gibber in sewers, and thinking how to make players scared for at least a moment
Dude that is an interesting what to create dread. Using a stress meter for difficulty class grants a wider range of possible outcomes
Fucking awesome. I love your humour and approach
You know the formula, you’re very good at these videos my man :) keep up the amazing work
I enjoyed the HowToBasic vibe from 9:20 to 10:20
I think I'm about to binge watch your channel.
Holy hell
Why did the turtle cross the road? " becuz this crazy mf with a pet cow kept putting me back on the side man! "
for real man, youre the best brother! lmao when you spitted the teeth
5:13 Thank you! So many people say "har" instead of "horror" these days!
The cow bit gave off major YSAC vibes. I was expecting you to grab that ground beef and throw it at the wall or something.
9:30 that video game graphics are crazy, also cute turtle
Excellent content. Glad to see you growing since the last videos I watched.
Yes! Looking forward to this!
Hope there is a donation option on whichever platform imma get this adventure from! :)
It's one of the reasons I like OSR. The horror vibe is easier to give off. But I must say I love this idea. Great video
I love the history and lore of the game. Keep up the phenomenal work!
Master Oogway has a deathwish
Lol you’re just out to piss off all the rpg sub communities. I love it…. As someone who lurks to steal from all of them I like the punches thrown both ways.
Excellent Video, Excellent Document, just what I needed, I am working on something, and the ideas of stress work great, as well as the whole layout seems like an old school adventure game. Like a point and click horror game. I've seen curse of strahd fail thrice, and heard of it failing from others twice additionally. I agree with condensing down filler, I've done that for a starter set, was one of my more successful campaigns I think.
"Sound of ripping pages" Me: Good Lord, what have you done you monster???
My dude...
I bought this campaign, I threw together some shadowdark premades for my group of five players, they ended up completely avoiding the torture chamber because "it sounded too scary", speed ran through to the brothers tomb, stumbled across the tomb of the girl, brought the corpse down, laid with brother, out the secret balcony, and boom, module defeated in 3 hours and 30 minutes from 8 pm to 1130 pm.
But it was a really cool module.
I threw down a dry erase board, they drew their own map from the best descriptors I could give them from the book, and game over strahd...
Just for them to escape the module and get smacked upside the head for the full blown campaign starting next week!
Goodtimes.
Your videos have been great, wonder how much Shadowdark you run. I enjoy the inspiring content for GMs. Have a great day, señor!
I actually paused to make sure you were not really tearing apart your Curse of Strahd book... Don't mind me, pressing play again...
Crazy good content
That FPS hand bit was pretty hilarious.
Almost saw your elbow in the car window
You had me at suggesting the Grognards play pickle ball! Lol!
I love your videos!
I need to know where those little game pieces from 11:33 are from......
Peeples! Available by your local Amazon overlords
Running this tomorrow night using old 5e, 3 lv1 players (maybe lv 2 if they wipe every other room 😅). Thinking on if i should worry on how to recover casters spell slots or giving like half back on trinkets and vamp dices. If you got any tips leave it bellow.
tape asmr
I was laughing out the whole video XD Thanks!
for the finale I had led candles everywhere and a fog machine hidden under the table. I blinded my players with fog and clouds of pot smoke then pressured them to hurry the fuck up in combat. good times.
This was fantastic
Do you recommend icrpg to a newcommer dm? Dnd looks too complicated to start.
I think ICRPG assumes you've played a d20 tabletop rpg. Shadowdark might be more beginner friendly.
@@DeficientMaster thank u.. i ll try out shadowdark...
damn, this is an epic idea with the stress level!
It’s almost that time of year, what’s the fastest I could run this?
I played CoS with The One Ring 2e. And its amazing experience tho.
Also, tried with Brancalonia and Masque of the Red Death for 5e and it went better than vanilla 5e
Cracking stuff!
Having run this adventure twice now, I've learned one thing...
Player Characters should not be close to 10th level at the end or they won't fear anything.
Oh I creamed when I saw the DC rules from ICRPG used mentioned. I was yelling it’s gotta be ICRPG
Watching him tear up Cruse of Strahd actually hurt my soul
Just a little editing and a copied page or two 🤫
@DeficientMaster No, don't let the secrets out! Now we have to be sacrificed in the same pentagram as the cute cow!
Good to see ya again. Time to throw on the TV and go to sleep 😴
The turtle!
I read through your adventure and really loved it! Can’t wait to run it with my friends. I got one question though: there is a key falling out of the Count’s tome, what does it open? It references p. 27 (yesteryear’s study) but there is no mention of the key on p. 27.
Thanks! The key in the tome opens the the locked door to Yesteryear's study if you enter the study from the throne room.
Oh, now I see it! Somehow missed it, thanks for the answer! This is gold, keep up the good work!
Which adventures would you recommend that are well designed?
I want to run this this Halloween and have purchased and read the adventure. Anyone here run it yet?
What about shadowdark rpg? Is it good as a starting point?
Still not missing
Another banger video!
I love you man
Oh… I've wondered how to get my fiancée into TTRPGs before… She's not sure she'd know what to do and thinks her instinct would be to try and get away … trying to figure out how to get out of a vampire's castle, though, with a stress roll instead of a DC or ICRPG room-based target number? Yeahhh, yeahhh… 🧛 And since it's May, not September, I have six months to plan instead of six weeks. I see a plan starting to come together.
oh my god my breathing went heavy at that intro i actually almost started to hyperventilate
edit: alright that and the cow section really cements How to Basic being an inspo
Is there any chance you can put your points in a pdf
If you want the d&d feeling but with horror, try shadow of the demon lord. Cleaner, yet similar, with the horror theme embedded.
Great video! :)
This isn’t good for the one shot version, but using the gritty realism rest variant, or any longer rest variant, would greatly improve running horror games.
Im thinking of running this as a Funnel In DCC
Definitely had the DCC funnel in mind making this!
Is the stress level applied to every individual player or is it something for the group?
I ended up running it as group stress and it went pretty well, though they managed to nab 2 out of the 3 artifacts early and it was pretty easy.
I like deficient master videos
I would love to hear you talk about Call of Cthulhu. It has my favorite game mechanics but running anything besides "The Haunting" is an absolute dumpster fire, and I cant figure out how to apply your sandbox advice to a mystery game, even with Pulp Cthulhu rules.
You are the best
Love the video
haha loved this one :D
Love it
didnt someone literally write One Night Strahd to do this?
You mention that midnight should come at a specific point in the evening in the supplement, but don't advise how long the players should get. 3 hours? 4 hours?
However long you want your IRL game to last
Like for the turtle.