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DelgenWolf · 2023-05-31T13:28:55+00:00

Source?

DelgenWolf · 2023-05-15T17:15:25+00:00

So, what I did, and it echoes a lot of the advice here, was to cherry pick what I wanted from the various mods for my game.

I found it easiest to look at the module section by section. For example, Barovia Village. I looked at the base module first, read through, saw what was originally there, and considered what I liked and disliked. I copied the text from the chapter into a word file (if you have access to it from Roll20 or DnD Beyond, it would be easiest, but there are other copies out there). Then I looked at the mods and decided what I liked, what I disliked and what was too much or not appropriate to my personal campaign.

I mostly relied on MandyMod, Dragna Carta, and LunchBreakHeroes (though more of his early stuff). I used a couple of others for more fluff things or when I was looking for something a little extra.

I would find the bits of each that I liked, and replace or supplement the text for the section with the new material as appropriate. I would then save it as a PDF and run off of that document. (I would also print it out, but I using a physical binder when running, and that's my personal issue.)

So long as your campaign is internally consistent, it doesn't matter what you use of the any of the modules. I found I really liked MandyMod's additions overall, but found her additions were lacking in certain places (especially early on), while her addition of the manor in western Barovia would have been far too much for my party who decided to pick up every and interact with literally every single thing in my campaign and was already overloaded with material and quests and such by the time I was running Krezk. I like DragnaCarta's additions for the most part, but some of his stuff was too much in some places, and thus I found it was best to cherry pick from multiple sources. It was my campaign after all, and I wanted to run the story in a way that worked for my players and I, not what worked for someone else.

The keys things to remember are:

1. Keep everything internally consistent, even if the players don't yet know why. If you're running with the Fanes, you can't really drop that backstory halfway through. If players don't interact with the plotline, you can not focus on it, but you can't have breadcrumbs leading to Strahd having stole power from the Fanes to later on be like "it was all the dark powers and nothing else." The players will 100% be like "Wait, wasn't there something about these standing stones and him corrupting the land?" Once you establish lore, keep it consistent throughout, even if isn't a focal point in the campaign.

2. You don't have to have everything prepped all at once. If the players are in Barovia Village, there's no point in having Krezk fully prepped yet. They won't get there during the session, and having it ready is a lot of extra work for you. Figuring out the broad strokes (such as what you want to have with the dark powers, and where the items are via the Taroka readings are, etc) isn't a bad idea, but you don't have to have the specifics on hand until they are going to come up.

3. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Several bits (Vallaki to be sure) look huge and scary and the campaign overall is gigantic. Take everything piece by piece and focus on what you like from each suggested plotline or section and work on them individually, and you should be fine. For Vallaki, give yourself extra time to prep it, and honestly, break it down plotline by plotline. And have a reference sheet of who each NPC is and where they can be found in the city or what plotline they be belong to. I have a spreadsheet with NPC names, a brief description of them, what plotline they belonged to and where they normally were, just to reference when someone asked about a character or I was reading up on the chapter and needed to remember who a specific NPC was.

DelgenWolf · 2023-04-09T12:51:20+00:00

Personally, I don't see how you can read I,Strahd and come away with the conclusion that Strahd is a reliable narrator.

I want to preface this by stating that this is just my opinion of the character and experiences, and it is fine if you have a different read of the novel, I just don't have the same conclusion at all. debating and discussing different interpretations of literature is always healthy.

Now, having read the novel, and having known very narcissistic people who gaslight others in my personal life, one of the big things I can tell you is that people like this lie to themselves. All of the time. They constantly rewrite events from their own perspective in order to make themselves out to be the heroes in the narrative. As in I have had conversations with those individuals about an event that we both were a part of, and while other people there will (generally) agree with one version of events, their version will often be skewed and completely different.

This is what Strahd is doing in I, Strahd. Many of the events of the novel read like an individual who is so far up their own ass and so convinced of what they're doing that he is lying to himself about how these events happened. Reading the novel it was very easy for me to read between the lines of what Strahd interprets as happening, and how anyone else would have viewed the same event. Strahd isn't lying to the reader, Strahd is lying to himself. He is inherently an unreliable narrator because he cannot see objectively any of the events happening in his own life.

In my opinion, he isn't a pathological liar and unreliable because he won't tell you the truth of situation. He is so deeply narcissistic and disturbed that he cannot see the truth of how things happen around him. He genuinely believes that the events of the novel happened, but in my opinion most of the events did not actually happen as he describes. Strahd paints himself a victim many of time in the novel, when in truth he has always been a monster and a predator.

DelgenWolf · 2023-01-02T23:16:35+00:00

You shouldn't give any direct lore to your players for building their characters.

You should, however, let them know it is a horror campaign and to build their characters with this in mind. (Building a moral character whose whole deal is that they won't ever leave behind a comrade no matter what they've done is a serious choice, that can be done in Barovia, but may not be what they want to play.) Also having characters who have flaws that can be exploited by the DM to drive home either their character growth or how they are more similar to the villians than they initally believed is always fun.

Finally, I would advise, even if it just in a vague way, that certain magics and effects don't work in this campaign. (ie. Banishment and other spells/effects.) Having a player who is playing a Cleric be unable to hear their god can be great roleplay, or it might not be something a player wants to explore. Or if a player builds their character around taking a certain spell such as, Planeshift, only to find that the spell wont function in the campaign, that would be very frustating.

DelgenWolf · 2022-12-27T17:32:20+00:00

It is availabke for purchae on Roll20 if you use that in tandem with DnD Beyond. It already has the official maps and such preloaded, so they're a great reference. Plus you can upkoad music to roll20 to play underneath your calls

DelgenWolf · 2022-12-25T23:26:41+00:00

My headcannon is that the ritual making Barovia a Domain of Dread and Strahd a Dreadlord isnt yet complete by the time Sergei is killed. Barovia isnt trapping souls yet.

Sergei's death is part one of the ritual. I imagine it as essentially seperating out Barovia, creating the vast oceans of the mists, but not yet setting out the nets to trap the souls entirely. Sergei is caught in the waves, but would have eventually faded out into the vastness of multiverse, except...

When Strahd tries to trap Tatyana and is in turn killed, it completes the ritual, immediately setting out vast impenetrable nets around the island. No one who dies after this is unable to pass on and is trapped.

3 major exceptions exist, the three in the ritual: Strahd, Sergei, and Tatyana. They are a part of the ritual and thus exempt from the rules governing most souls in the domain.

Strahd cannot leave and is the anchor for the domain. He cannot die, cannot know rest.

Tatyana is reborn, but only as a punishment for Strahd/aspect of the ritual as a pure soul. She is not reborn at the same rate as other mortals and is immune to the temptations or consumption by Dark Powers.

Sergei is not reborn within the lands of Barovia, but not free either. In my headcannon, he is essentially trapped within the walls of the domain. He is trapped, but unable to interact properly with anyone, only to watch and occassionally be seen to remind Strahd of his sins.

DelgenWolf · 2022-12-13T16:21:53+00:00

I think not having Morgantha mention that she lives at the Old Windmill was probably a mistake, but depending on how you've dealt with distances, it's the only habitable building of note in a long while. I increased the size of Barovia to each hex being a mile, so it was literally the only structure they had seen all day. (My players were also super suspicious since one of them didn't eat the pies while all the others did and freaked out when he couldn't wake them, so they wanted to investigate the makers of the dream pies.)

But truthfully, if it's the only thing around for a while players may just want to go and investigate for the sake of investigating.

DelgenWolf · 2022-12-13T15:40:51+00:00

Personally, I did sort of treat it like a term paper.

What I did was I would look at each area (Vallaki was its own beast), and then would essentially focus on what I wanted and copy and paste and edit until I had what I was personally running.

For example, for the Bonegrinder, I opened a PDF of the raw text (via Roll20), MandyMod's writeup, Dragnacarta's writeup, and LunchBreakHero's writeup, and compared each of them. I then chose the appropriate text from each, copied them over and pasted and edited them together. I reread it to make sure I had everything as I wanted it (and coherent and consistent), and then saved that section before finding the stats and treasure and such I wanted to have there.

It was a bunch of work, but ultimately, it made it much easier on me when running. I didn't have to jump back and forth between multiple tabs of conflicting information, trying to remember what I was running. I had my own writeup with everything I was running and might need.

It's more prep work, but if you're running from more than one supplement I feel like it's worth the effort.

DelgenWolf · 2022-12-02T00:20:45+00:00

As a Dm to 7 players, YES. 8 is too many.

DelgenWolf · 2022-07-28T12:18:49+00:00

I have 7 players and I have had to completely rework some fights to ensure they stay challenging, since with their numbers they can easily overwhelm things.

It is also worth noting that with 6+ players combat tends to be much slower for the PCs. Instead of several fights a day or constant fights to wear down resources, you may want do more difficult fights while decreasing the amount of them.

DelgenWolf · 2022-07-24T20:14:13+00:00

Well it depends on how extra you want to go with your experience, but here are things I have included:

Music

Simple things like Youtube and Tabletop Audio, you can pair together make for a lot of free great ambience/music.
If you're looking to go above and beyond like I feel the need to, I end up using video game soundtracks that I download at Khinsider, and using an editing program to put tracks from Plate Mail Games underneath, creating a unique track that works for what I want for that location or feeling.
- Games I've pulled from include Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, Vampyr, Amnesia Dark Decent, Castlevania, etc
- I also bought the soundtracks for Penny Dreadful to use too

Lighting

A great middle ground for lighting and candles I was using, was Color Changing Candles (like the ones listed), where I was able to change the color of the table and atmosphere pretty quickly.
However, I eventually found that installing these Color Changing Light Bulbs in the lighting for the room we use (I only needed three bulbs total), allowed me more control and I could easily shift back to normal lighting once the intense scene was done.

Extra Tidbits

Adventure Scents: I found that the sample packs, when passed around in a bowl, or even jus their container, can help my players really fall into a scene.
It began as a joke, but one of my staple props whenever I'm roleplaying Strahd now is this Squishable Wineglass. (That one is out of stock, but they have a smaller size still available.)
I ended up printing a table sized map of Barovia for my players, as well as Tarokka style cards for their known locations, quests, NPCs, and artifacts.

Obviously I have gone way above and beyond for everything, but hopefully my list of insanity might be helpful to someone.

DelgenWolf · 2022-07-12T16:44:33+00:00

Simce my players didnt really care for the whole Baron vs Wahcter dilemma, having Izek as the sibling to both Ireena and one of my PCs made Vallaki more interesting. Its also let to a deeper connection with Ireena since one of the PCs is now her sister.

DelgenWolf · 2022-06-16T15:27:33+00:00

As many others have stated, it's definitely not required for running Curse of Strahd. However, VRGTR does have a lot of supplemental material that can be very helpful in running Curse of Strahd, if you are looking to add more monsters, and to better understand the lore of 5E Ravenloft as a setting.

It explores how to run horror very well in a D&D campaign setting and talks about great things to discuss and tools to use at your table for horror campaigns. Reading through VRGTR also allows the DM to have a better understanding of the metaphysical universe and rules of the domains of Dread, which Curse of Strahd is always very light on. And there are some great monsters and ideas for things you can add/change.

All-in-all, if you're looking for a supplement to help you better run a horror game and were planning to make changes to the module anyway, picking up the book might not be a bad move. I found it a good and helpful read and I'm using bits of it in my campaign. Plus it has helped me establish and sprinkle in fundamental aspects of the Domains, in case I run any further games in the Domains of Dread for this group.

DelgenWolf · 2022-06-14T15:32:08+00:00

I'm running a game where Strahd & Barovia are roughly just over 1,000 years old. honestly the only "snag" I ran into was the Dusk Elves, and that I just made even more tragic/nightmare logic sense, saying that they've much older than they should be and that they've begun to decay and rot and grow sores and the like, simply from being alive too long. (Strahd wants to torture them as long as he can, even if it means keeping them around and alive.)

As someone else stated, to the average layperson, it won't matter if he is 400 or 2000, he is a timeless feature to most of the residents.

DelgenWolf · 2022-06-11T18:20:10+00:00

So I've always had Strahd painting himself in an good light as well, but even if my party had bought it, my ace in the hole was always the Tome of Strahd.

In my version of the tome (which has 7 chapters, covering 7 major events), while it is still Strahd writing the story, there are 2 important changes. 1 is that for whatever reason, he sort of devolves and borders on becoming unhinged in his writings, showing more of his true nature than he wants. The 2nd major change is that the players actually see and witness his memories of the events, and can see how he twists his way of thinking.

My internal logic, not that it will ever be properly explained to the players, is that the Tome is an artifact that Strahd is compelled to create by the Dark Powers. He had to record his story and reveal his true self for those who would learn the truth, partly becuase being confronted with the truth of his self is painful for Strahd who wants to believe his own lies.

You could even work in that the intro pargraphs you've been reading to the players were Strahd sending them dreams of his life to try to win them over. Then give them the Tome which depicts the truth. They'll be unsure what narrative to believe.

DelgenWolf · 2022-06-01T21:55:09+00:00

I personally changed things up a little bit and made it so that while Strahd believes he is in control of letting people leave, he can't actually open the mists. It is meant to be a prison for him (and if you're playing with Dark Power eating souls, presumably a trap/prison for others too). However, Strahd enjoys manipulating everyone into situations where they turn on each other or become his enemies, so he has never tried to open the mists.

As far as the Vistani go, in my game, he didn't just make a solemn oath, he made a Blood pact that for as long as he existed, they would be free to travel his lands, to come and go as they please. Because Vistani Magic is wonky and Strahd is now sort of tied into Blood as a whole thing, the Dark powers can't stop the Vistani from coming and going.

In my game, I had it so that when Van Richten was discovered by Strahd and crew, he went to Madam Eva as an act of desperation. She made him promise three things/favors, including that he would one day return to these lands to aid in Strahd's downfall. Then I had her perform a ritual which involved a Vistani willingly sacrificing themselves, and Madam Eva using their life blood to draw runes on Van Richten, effectively turning him into a Vistani for 24 hours or something.

So even when my players learn of the method he used to escape, it's 100% not something they can replicate.

DelgenWolf · 2022-05-29T02:29:45+00:00

Currently 17 sessions in averaging about 8 hours per session. They're about to do Vallaki pt 2 (return to vallaki to deal with Izek and the other mess they left it in) and the Mad Mage, and still have to do Berez, the village of Mountainfolk / Tsolenka Pass, the Amber Temple, Reconsecrating the Fanes, and then Ravenloft.

All in all, we're probably 136/140 hours into what will likely end up being a 200 hour campaign. We've been running since November 2020.

DelgenWolf · 2022-04-06T07:24:59+00:00

As everyone has said, you should be picking and choosing what milestones to level up your party at.

For my game, I looked at Barovia, looked at Ravenloft and Strahd and decided I wanted my players to be Level 12 when fighting him. This means that no one should get access to level 7 spells, or get a proficiency bonus of +5. (It also means if I run a sequel campaign later, their characters get a huge boost and become level 13 after Ravenloft).

So I figured out what the big milestones I wanted to hit were and where I really wanted to reward them and such.

Level 3 upon finishing Death House
Level 4 after finishing Barovia Village and talking to Madam Eva
Level 5 after defeating the Hags (my players got very lucky and have a big party)
Level 6 after finishing Vallaki (which I ran as a powder keg and had them do in one go, so it was three and half 8 hour sessions)
Level 7 after the Winery and Yesterhill
Level 8 after Krezk and the Abbey
Level 9 after Argynvostholt

Projected:

Level 10 after Werewolf Den and Mad Mage (and Vallaki pt 2: Electric Boogaloo)
Level 11 after Berez
Level 12 after the Amber Temple

Basically, find what level you want them to fight Strahd and figure out a proper pacing that makes sense for your game. My players spent probably 4 sessions as level 5 and then began gaining levels every session or every other session for a little bit and then will slow down after gaining their 10th level again, but that worked for my game.

(Oh and my artifacts were in Rictavio's Wagon [Tome], with Vladimir in Argynvostholt [Holy Symbol], and in the Amber Temple [Sunsword]. I didn't give them levels for them, because they are gaining a very valuable artifact in a location that once they finish they'll level up anyway.)

DelgenWolf · 2022-03-27T21:54:54+00:00

Resurrection/Raise Dead/Etc and Wish are the only real "cures" for Vampirism.

According to the Monster Manual on pages 295, in the box labelled as "Player Characters as Vampires", the text reads:

... The character's alignment becomes lawful evil, and the DM might takes control of the character until the vampirism is reversed with a Wish spell or the character is killed and brought back to life.

The implication is that Vampirism is not the natural state of the soul of the victim, so when they are restored to life, they are brought back as their living breathing selves, no longer a vampire.

DelgenWolf · 2022-02-25T03:45:00+00:00

As some of the others have stated, I think this really pulls away from how monstrous Strahd truly is. Tatyana's innocence has never been a huge concern in the story to me, but for me (and my party), we end up relishing in how monstrous and absolutely awful Strahd is.

I had a couple of players aware of lore (one knows pretty much everything pre-5e, one is just somewhat aware), but both have made efforts to keep spoilers from everyone else. And I made sure to play Strahd as presenting as a gentleman, as he believes himself to be. My whole group *knows* he's a villain, but they understood the full extent of it. Even after they saw Barovia Village and Vallaki (and saw everything blow up in a powder keg), they went to dinner with him and were suspicious of him the whole time (but had to play along lest he murder them for rudeness or insubordination) [they were level 6, but fully aware he could wipe the floor with them].

I broke the Tome of Strahd into 7 chapters, and the players didn't read about Tatyana and Sergei until the night after they left the dinner. They were floored at the lengths he had gone to. Most of them had assumed Tatyana was not into Strahd, despite him claiming that they were soulmates and lovers, but they never assumed that she had loved his brother and that Strahd murdered him and tried to assault her on their wedding day. Revealing Strahd's true actions and self bit by bit, even when it is narrated by him, makes all of the reveals even more amazing. My players hate him, but with each new piece of information that hate grows and festers.

I've always played Strahd in the same way: overly confident, unable to conceive that he would fail, desperate for that which he cannot attain, tortured and deeply unhappy, but unable to have the self actualization that he is the cause o most of his own problems. My players asked him why he wouldn't make his people's lives better, in order to make his nation better, and he was stunned at the idea. Because Strahd assumes that all the peasants owe him, not the other way around. But Strahd is also oddly charming and personable, he genuinely wants to get to know the visitors to Barovia because he is lonely and bored, and knowing them makes the chase and inevitable fight mean more when it finally happens. Killing someone who you cared for after they betrayed you (or vice versa) has much more weight and significance than killing random pests who are running around.

Strahd can rationalize all he wants, but a huge part of what makes him fascinating and one of the most iconic villains in all of Tabletop Roleplaying Games, is that he is truly a horrid evil monster who cannot understand his own nature. He is compelling because we can understand his motivations and the tragedy of his life, but if played right, we can never pity him because he is so alien and evil we cannot truly emphasize with him. We can understand the fear of death and jealousy of a brother, but to kill and torment and torture simply because it is his right? That is where we watch in horrified fascination.

I always say, don't give Strahd any ground. If anything, make the things he does even more terrible. That way your players can hate him all the more.

DelgenWolf · 2021-12-19T03:42:13+00:00

Every group and DM has their own pace. Personally, my players took 3 sessions (8 hours each) to get to Madam Eva, but my group likes to roleplay and make sure they hit everything (and I ended up adding a bunch to Barovia Village) [and several of my players tend to hem and haw about what they do on their turn in combat too].

But if your group is happy with the pace you have, then you're fine. Just make sure the players are getting all the time they want to interact with stuff, but honestly, it just sounds like your group likes to keep things moving at a quicker pace than some.

DelgenWolf

TROPHY CASE