Hi all,

I'm going to start running IWD Rime of the Frostmaiden for my group (3 players). They have some experience with D&D, I ran Strahd with them and before that they played through The Lost Mine of Phandelver. Myself, I've been playing and DM-ing for over 10 years in 5th in 3.5th.

We stopped running Strahd as I felt they had some issues with a more open world setting and, in my opinion, treating more like a video game looking for a fight to another fight and expecting a boss fight at the end of each session. Not a lot of RP-ing, solving puzzles or investigating was done. 

Don't get me wrong I like running D&D for this group of my non-D&D friends but I could really use some help to keep them interested in the overall story and have them looking for solutions outside of combat.

I was thinking of not letting them communicate with each other during character creation. I think that for Strahd they min-maxed their party and this in my opinion might have pulled them a bit out of the RP-ing aspect.

Let me know what you think and what would help. Many thanks in advance.

TLDR: I need help running IWD RotFM for a group of friends that are mostly inclined to not RP and look for a fight.

Hmm... are we sure here that you are not trying to strong-arm these players into having fun your way? Because that's kind of what it sounds like. You gave up on Strahd because they were "treating it like a video game" and expecting boss fights, and not doing a lot of investigation or RP.  Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, this is the style of game these players would prefer to experience? And if so, as a DM, what is your justification for saying "No, I don't want you to play the game like that?"

I mean -- if you don't want to run a game like that, I could see it. There are styles of D&D play in which if my players all said, "We want this," I'd have to say, "Find another DM." You have to have fun too. (Example: Palace intrigue -- that is not the sort of game for me to run, since I don't like those kinds of stories at all.)

I would suggest that maybe you should consider either rigging Rime to be more combat-centric, if that's what they like, or maybe running them through something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is explicitly a more video-gamey dungeon crawl with less emphasis on RP and investigation. Now, I am not saying run that if you hate that style of game but... as a GM, I try to give my players what they want, to the degree I can, rather than what I want. As long as I can have fun with what they want.

Thank you, that's actually great advice. I'll look into a more combat oriented adventure. Thanks again.

Maybe some other folks can give really good suggestions for which adventures are more combat oriented other than Mad Mage. I can only go by hear-say because I do not use the official adventures to run my game (it's set in ancient Rome so, the published stuff is not really a good fit). I think Princes of the Apocalypse is also very combat oriented, and Tomb of Annihilation is supposed to be more hex-crawly.

I would not recommend Mad Mage. All of the fights are super boring, and their isn't anything that makes it unique. The Doomvault, from Tales from the Yawning Portal, is a much better megadungeon in my opinion. And the whole rest of Yawning Portal is very good, and you can use it to lead up to the Doomvault.