By Jason Campbell

I’ve been running a weekly 5e campaign in Monte Cook’s Ptolus setting since January 2022, the player characters are currently 17th level. It can be difficult to run a 5e game with higher level characters while keeping the game challenging and the players engaged. This campaign diary series features notes from my players and I about the challenges of playing high level 5e.

The Big Ending of an Adventure

In our most recent session, the heroes were hunting a demon lord and in the process became trapped in a version of The Darkest House. The Darkest House is a game, setting and adventure from Monte Cook Games. The complete setting is a huge haunted house with dozens of rooms. Since I wanted this to be a shorter arc I selected 7 rooms that fit the theme of hatred and loss. The idea was that the house IS the demon lord. There could be combat inside the house but the idea is that if the heroes survive and escape they defeat the demon.

The Order of Exploration

I had determined where the heroes enter the house and what room the exit was in, but otherwise they were free to explore, so the order they discovered the rooms was somewhat up to the players. There was one higher level monster (CR 17) in the house, and the heroes encountered it first. With some clever tactics and good die rolls the heroes defeated the creature with no losses.

Psychological Attacks

Most of the other rooms featured things like a fearful scene from a character’s past, an autobiography of a character (that they didn’t write) revealing them incorrectly to be an awful person, and accusing messages from a character’s parents. The players are good role players and they played into this.

The Escape

The characters ended up finding a hidden exit, escaping the house and finding the structure (and the demon lord) destroyed. They enjoyed the session, but seemed to find it off putting that there wasn’t a “big bad monster” guarding the exit. These players weren’t disappointed, momreso they were surprised. I’d imagine some players might think they were missing out on something. In this case the house inverted player expectations – whether your players would enjoy this is for you to judge.

What do you think? Is there always a big bad monster in the final encounter of adventures? Let us know in the comments!