Last night I had a rather long discussion with my players, the result of which was their asking me to step down as DM, discontinue Curse of Strahd, and have another player start a different campaign. Frankly, it was the lowest point in my entire career as a DM.

The group consisted of myself and five players, meeting for 4-6 hour sessions each week. All of us are experienced 5e players, and I had only joined the group about a month prior to a TPK and them asking me to DM. The campaign was decided by vote, and everyone agreed that they had been dying to play CoS. Beforehand I had briefed everyone that this would be a horror campaign: darker in tone, meant to challenge them, and fostering a sense of paranoia and stress. At the end, PCs were level 7, having just completed Argynvostholt with 4 PC deaths during (2 of which took Dark Power resurrections). We had been playing CoS for 9 months.

In the end, I think it came down to a conflict of play styles. For the past 6 years that this group had been meeting, the games were very much heroic fantasy: epic heroes who are the undisputed protagonists of the campaign, spates of magic items and character buffs, and a story and game world that is hand-crafted to make the PCs look good. They are by and large very focused on fun-first, flavorful gameplay of mostly rp and inter-PC interaction. Some simply did not function well in combat, and often they made sub-optimal build choices such as refusing to take certain spells (i.e. Shield, Fireball) because "everyone takes those". In short, they prefer a rather "new-school" approach to D&D. Which is valid.

As a DM, however, I lean much more towards "old-school". I cede much less to the protagonists being main characters and do not go out of my way to change the game world to cater to the PCs. Don't get me wrong, I wanted and tried to give everyone what they want on a player level, but instead of hand-crafting most things around them, I view my responsibilities as DM as being to take the narrative, game world, and NPCs, and develop them deeply to convey a theme while preserving verisimilitude. Additionally, I have no problem letting the party fail if they make poor decisions. I run my foes with an appropriate degree of tactical aptitude and am not afraid to mob PCs or attack downed PCs if the monsters are intelligent. I want them to succeed, truly, but I'm not going to pull punches or fudge rolls.

Almost immediately upon starting, some people wanted a different play experience (more rp, more character focus, more direction) which I sincerely tried my best to accommodate. I solicited feedback after every session and tried to adjust as best I could while not compromising my principles as an artist. After last session, however, a player informed me (with candor and maturity) that he no longer wanted to play but wished me luck going forward. This resulted in another saying he would drop as well if they first player did, and in the end 3 of the 5 players voiced that they would prefer I step down and another campaign begin. Within minutes of the decision being made, everyone turned to excitedly talking about what was coming next with the new DM.

I appreciate that they were honest with me, and I recognize that there is no wrong way to enjoy D&D, just different ways. But goddamn if this didn't sting. I have poured 9 months of my life and hundreds of dollars into trying to make this campaign the best it could possibly be. But in the end, I guess it's better that we don't waste time doing something if people aren't going to enjoy it. I think what hurt the most was just seeing how excited everyone was that they got to go back to their old DM, listening to them having this conversation moments after the thing I had enjoyed most in my life for almost a year came to a screeching halt. I just wish they had ended things sooner.

In a lot of ways, I think I'm just venting here, hoping for some commiseration. If that's not acceptable, mods please remove this post. But I also wanted to say a sincere thank you to the subreddit, the discord, and to everyone who has ever interacted with me regarding CoS. Sincerely, I'd like to thank MandyMod and DragnaCarta for their incredible guides, which I must have spent countless hours poring over. I genuinely love this community. However, after posting this I am going to unsubscribe. Seeing it in my feed just makes me sad.

If you read this far, thank you. I wish you the best of luck and immense fun with your games. May you fare better than I did, fellow Dark Powers. It's been fun.