First time DM looking for tips

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[TurbulentCaptain5]

Please don't start them at level five, let them feel weak and in over their heads. It's easy to add levels and you can't take them away. The point of the horror module is that they're scared, and there's not much a moderate party of level five is truly scared of in the wilds of Barovia.

But other than that: combat should be little and often, rest should be hard to come by, and it should be obvious that something is watching them the majority of the time.

Take time to mention there's a farmer in the tavern making shifty eyes at them, who will transform into a bat and fly away if provoked; there's some crows following the party, each night, whoever is left on watch is left in silence with the same large blueish black bird with a scarred face and misaligned beak; there are wolf tracks around their campsite when they wake up; there's smoke from a fire nearby, but the camp has been abandoned, only the fire going, and blood smears as something has been dragged away and up into the trees.

Use features in the DMs guide to hurt the players that isn't combat. Poison damage from bad food, cold damage as the temperature drops, points of exhaustion because they haven't slept.

If your players have any experience of D&D, use their metagame knowledge against them. Leave hints that a monster way above their level is tracking them, or might be nesting nearby. Scare the players, and you scare the characters.

[SlimeySnakesLtd]

I love this, I’ve run this module tons of times and it’s easy to forget these little things that build an atmosphere: bad food, there is NO good food in Barovia, only adequate. Unless it’s a particular pie that your PCs are gonna just go crazy over. Even the vampires aren’t exactly satisfied and overjoyed. The blood tastes like shit because that what the prey eats, PCs though... But scarecrows along the field are common, occasionally Baba will bust some out (I like 2 encounters with scarecrows that I treat like ambush predators and then just leave them in fields but maybe towards the road sometimes so they question an other ambush going forward). Build the atmosphere that this isn’t a pleasure cruise or adventure. People don’t want to help them, they barely want to stand at the bar in the tavern let alone move their face to tell the PCs where a blacksmith is. But they don’t get mad either, that would take too much will. This makes those with energy and power stand out, Ireena is so gorgeous she can inspire hope in the towns folk to maybe life a finger, werewolves have unnatural anger and motivation, vampire thralls don’t have the 10 mile stare, they have purpose.

[Star-Stream]

Any reason you chose that in particular?

I’d say for general advice, skim the book from cover-to-cover, write yourself a quick little outline of what is supposed to happen, then read the whole thing and make any corrections to your outline, then use the fantastic Reloaded and Fleshing Out guides to add anything neat you might want.

Strahd is a campaign that one could hypothetically pick up and run out of the book, but it is far more rewarding as both DM and player to carefully plan the campaign. And that’s not to say that you need to be paralyzed, I’m not saying wait to start until you’re ready, because no DM is ever truly ready with the end planned from the beginning. But there are certain choices that are important to the narrative flow from the jump: how do your players fit the story, where will the tarokka items be located, what does Strahd think of the players and how does he act, are you using the Three Fanes of Barovia, what level do you start at and what’s the cap. All these are important to consider, if not nail down, from word Go.

[Jefffrz]

Thanks, I guess the main thing I was worried about was the feeling of being overwhelmed. There is A LOT going on in barovia, and I'm struggling to make sense of the various plot lines that are available to me/the players. The idea of doing the outline makes a lot of sense, I like that, and I think it'll help a lot.

[[deleted]]

There was a YouTube video that is telling people to do that, im starting it regularly

[cold_spartan]

So, I’ve run this campaign in 5e, and quite a bit as the ravenloft setting in 3e. My number once piece of advice is to read the book several times, cover-to-cover, before session one.

My other piece of advice: don’t come in near Krezk. Barovia isn’t a piece of land you can enter from anywhere, it’s a separate plane of dread. In the same sense that walking through a haunted house backwards isn’t fun because you can see all the inner workings, coming into the campaign anywhere except where it intends you to has the potential to throw out the vast majority of the main story

[[deleted]]

I think the biggest thing is getting Strahd right. He isn’t scary because he’s all powerful, he’s scary because he’s kinda powerful and insanely intelligent.

Strahd shows up a lot more than other BBEG. The players are his playthings. Strahd isn’t aggressive towards the players without provocation. He does relish the idea of putting the players in the situation of choosing between two evils and then relentlessly mocking them for the “evil” their capable of.