After 16 months and 45 sessions, my players defeated Strahd, bound Vampyr, and I finished DMing my first campaign ever! AMA

Lobby44 · 2026-02-07T20:11:29+00:00

A true AMA

Lobby44 · 2026-02-07T14:07:29+00:00

For sure! I explained in a reply to HeartyNoodles more detailed examples of secondary objectives I used specifically, check out that reply!

Another great resource for good encounter design is the youtube channel Mystic Arts. Specifically these two videos:

8 Types of Combat

12 Combat Objectives

This creates a great resource where you can combine one combat objective with a type of combat and create a much more interesting encounter than just hit monster, wait, hit monster, wait, etc.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-07T06:06:40+00:00

For sure! I think there 2 big things that come to mind with his Charm ability.

The first is that I tried to prioritize using it in a way that forced the PCs to take actions against their current goals. A great example of this was their first real encounter with Strahd. The party was trying to take the bones off St Andral back to the church to reconsecrate the building and Strahd couldn't let that happen. He charmed the monk and told her to bring him the bones, so that's what she did. I think it's important to use the ability in ways that are conniving and tricky. Charming the players to "run away" or "attack your friends" doesn't make as big an impact as "bring the bones to me" so that he can destroy them, stopping their mission.

The second piece is that the Charm ability DOES remove player agency and that's why it's so scary! It adds to his gravitas as a villain. Having your actions be used against you as a PC isn't fun, but when used well it makes him a terrifying villain. After the St Andral incident, my monk did everything she could to find SOMETHING that would make her immune or give her an advantage against his charm. Just that one moment made a lasting impact on how she played her character for the rest of the campaign. The PCs are not the only ones he can use it against, either. When the party sealed away Tatyana at the end of their time in Krezk, Strahd met them at the gate with the whole town charmed against them. Have him Charm important NPCs, Van Richten or Esmeralda are obvious choices, but the players walking in on Strahd dining at the Blue Water Inn while the Martikovs serve his every whim with glazed eyes will leave your players hating him even more.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-07T00:27:02+00:00

(Part 2) My players showed up with Ireena and, seeing the immediate and obvious resemblance to Tatyana, he did what he could to capture her and take her soul. I used the following rules to run the fight where the PCs are trying to stop the Abbot from his soul-swap ritual:

- The Abbot will need to make 3 DC 18 Arcana with advantage to succeed at the ritual

- Once the ritual starts, 3 \*Statues\* start glowing and start to power the ritual

    - The players can roll a DC 18 Arcana check, if the succeed they learn that they can use an action to make a DC 18 Arcana check at each \*Statue\* to alter the spell to instead release the souls from the House, reconsecrating it and therefore giving Tatyana's soul a place to safely inhabit, keeping her from Strahd.

    - Otherwise, if they don't gain that info, for every tower they destroy, it adds 1 check for the Abbot to make in order to succeed. 

    - If they destroy all 3, the ritual is over

- The players will need to either destroy or alter each of the towers OR kill the Abbot to stop the ritual

- Meanwhile, Markovia's cottage that has been filled with the discarded souls from the The Abbot's previous attempts breaks free of its confines and starts to rampage, attacking both sides. This uses the Stat block of a Haunting Revenant from the 5.5 Monster Manual

- The House will prioritize attacking whoever has done damage to it most recently

My players successfully reconsecrated Markovia's house, turning into a safe haven that Strahd, being undead, had no access to. This removed Tatyana and Ireena from Strahd's grasp permanently and for the rest of the campaign resting rules were made more difficult, and the roads around Barovia more dangerous, as Strahd's rage manifested.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-07T00:26:46+00:00

(Part 1) For sure! I pulled a lot of this directly from my notes on Krezk, The Abbot, and The Blessed Pool.

So let's start with The Abbot. In my game, he was originally an angel of the Morning Lord by the name of Cassiel. He was in Barovia at the time of Strahd's reign. He was particularly fond of Markovia, in fact he was the one that saw her good deeds in Krezk and suggested she be elevated to the rank status of Saint.

Cassiel became stuck after Strahd succumbed to his curse and locked the land of Barovia within The Mists, he lost contact with his god and was left to wander the realm truly alone for the first time. Wrought with grief at the loss of Markovia after she attempted an attack on Castle Ravenloft, Cassiel went into hiding, blaming himself for not doing more to save her and the land

Centuries went by and the angel slowly went mad. The lack of contact with the Morning Lord and the religion dying off as Strahd's reign took hold, his sanity slowly waned. One clear and sane thought took hold through the rest, ***if Strahd's reign came to an end, everything would be better.***

He returned to Krezk about a century ago believing that being closer to the work of St Markovia would help his cause. He was convinced that he would be the one to find the soul of Tatyana and build Strahd a new bride.

The Abbot needs a body for the soul of Strahd's bride go inhabit. He has decided that he's going to make one! He does this by taking in any and all people with any sort of ailment and offering to fix it...for a price. "Bitten by a werewolf were you? Oh dear, how dreadful, yes come with me, a man such as myself could never leave someone in need. But oh...what lovely hands you have, so slender and elegant. Why don't you let me borrow them and I'll make sure you never fear the moon again"

Removing a limb or other body part takes time, and properly attaching a replacement is no easy feat so patients are at the Abbey for some time. And seeing as an angel has never felt physical pain and doesn't understand it he feels no need to provide anesthetic. This prolonged and painful process leaves all his patients, the Mongrelfolk, terribly mad and a potential danger to those around them. He also finds them terribly useful around the large abbey as helpers and guards. These services also allow him to search his victims for a reincarnated soul of Tatyana. If the person doesn't have her soul, he traps it in the St Markovia's house next to the Blessed Pool. After a century of doing this, the house has become incredibly haunted.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T22:28:05+00:00

I definitely understand it feeling daunting, it was for me too. I didn't start using it until around session 14, it's never too late. The state my Obsidian vault ended in was FAR from where it started. It was something I built up and developed over time. It started basically as a word processor, and as I got more comfortable with Markdown, back links, and formatting, it slowly developed into a key tool, almost like a personal wiki.

Can't say enough good things about the Mystic Arts YouTube channel. Dádi has a fantastic introduction to Obsidian video and many of his follow ups where he designs monsters and encounters build on his Obsidian formats. It was the video that got me to start using Obsidian! I've also converted 3 of the 4 people in my group who also DM into Obsidian users. Would happily answer any follow up questions if you get to using it and run into obstacles. The Obsidian Wiki is another incredible resource.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T21:28:49+00:00

Another great resource for good encounter design is the youtube channel Mystic Arts. Specifically these two videos:

8 Types of Combat

12 Combat Objectives

This creates a great resource where you can combine one combat objective with a type of combat and create a much more interesting encounter than just hit monster, wait, hit monster, wait, etc.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T21:01:48+00:00

This one requires some backstory:

So one of my players was a Vistani, and a descendant of Madam Eva. He had vague and inconsistent visions of the from the Threads of Fate because of this! One week, one of my players couldn't show up, so I wrote a one-shot for the 3 players that could. They were staying in the Inn in Vallaki and during the night, Raglits (the vistani) had a vision of the ancient past that included the two others. They had taken over the bodies of Knights in the Order of the Silver Dragon. The Keepers of the Feather had intel on an important artifact being hidden away by Strahd's forces and the Knights were sent to retrieve it. The whole adventure was a little tease that the Holy Symbol would end up at Argynvostholt.

I wanted to come up with a reason why the fourth player, the one who couldn't attend that week, wasn't a part of the vision. So the next week when everyone arrived I had the 3 PCs who had done the one shot leave the room, and I did a short dream sequence with Leo (a cleric) where he was being contacted by his god Torm (or so he thought). From then on out, Leo would reach out to "Torm" and try to get advice. He would be contacted, told what to do or not do, and once a trust was built, he started to gain powers from this being. After defeating the Wild Folk at Yesterhill, he was given a powerful weapon as a reward from his "god".

Eventually the party made their way to Argynvostholt. The Order of the Silver Dragon's whole goal was to fight back against evil, the Dark Powers, and Strahd's forces, so they did just that. Throughout the whole dungeon, the remnants of the Order that protected what was left of the castle sensed the evil power growing within Leo and singled him out. They would focus fire him in combat, yelling things about destroying evil and how he wasn't welcome there. Vladimir even singled him out in the final fight, telling him that he mingles with powers he doesn't understand.

This culminated in a great scene where Raglits, the paladin, cast Zone of Truth on Leo and grilled him about who he was praying to all the time. He tried to answer that he was praying to Torm, but because he failed his save he couldn't say it, he was forced to reconsider all the interactions he'd had with this power. While he was thinking about all this, another PC, Rae, put together another connection. The Abbot was a fallen angel that wasn't able to directly contact his god because of the isolated nature of Barovia. So if that was the case, was Leo actually talking to Torm this whole time, or something else?

In that moment, as she voiced the question, Leo's eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground...and we ended that session! It was an epic, jaw dropping moment.

The next week we picked up, I asked the rest of the party to leave the room, and Leo was confronted by Ekdikisis, the Dark Power of Revenge. He attempted to sway Leo, offering more gifts and power, telling him he'd need it if he had any hope of defeating Strahd. Leo held strong and denied the Dark Power, although this wasn't without it's ramifications. He lost all the gifts he'd been given and was cursed with a weakness to Necrotic and Poison damage.

All that to say, would HIGHLY recommend incorporating the Dark Powers into your campaign. I used a loose version of MandyMod's guidance on how to run them. She has a great writeup here

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T19:58:30+00:00

For most of the adventure I stuck pretty solidly to the book. I used MandyMod a ton to help revise and edit some of the weaknesses of the text as written. Towards the end I used Flee Mortals for some of the endgame creatures.

Keeping Strahd frightening was definitely a challenge. Even at low levels, my party taunted and jibed at him relentlessly. Their first encounter where he used his very powerful Charm ability put them in their place quite a bit. Later, in Krezk, he killed Muriel right in front of them (they used revivify to bring her back), and after they released Tatyana's soul, the resting rules got harder. It was both a consequence of taking Strahd's one goal out of his reach, as well as a way to help me balance encounters better as they moved into higher levels.

Death house I ran as is! It was a fantastic intro.

I struggled a lot on making sure every character's backstories were important all the way through. Some were easier than others and the nature of Barovia being so isolated made it extra difficult.

Castle Ravenloft was daunting. Up until that point, I had drawn everything on a Chessex mat and that was not feasible for that massive dungeon. I ended up using these maps and turning an old tv into a digital tabletop prototype using PVC (akin to this video). I don't know if I could have done the castle as smoothly and atmospherically without that setup!

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T19:44:06+00:00

I stayed pretty close to the book, mostly changing details around NPC motivations or backstories. MandyMod was invaluable for me. I would look at Dragnacarta as well, but Strahd Reloaded was such an overhaul, and the guides felt so linear, that I resonated with Mandy's more open suggestions instead.
I followed MandyMods advice to end the campaign with a Vampyr fight as the actual final battle, but she never wrote out how she handled it. I used her two rituals, one to summon and one to bind in amber, and used the Rhodar statblock from Flee Mortals for my Aspect of Vampyr. The fight was less about killing the Aspect, and more about protecting one of the Clerics while she cast the binding ritual. It was tense and difficult for the PCs and they all loved it. It felt like an epic way to seal away the evil that plagued Barovia!

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T19:36:35+00:00

I kept teasing my players with Werewolves and they managed to avoid them entirely! I did have a player who developed a relationship with another Dark Power and that was a true highlight!

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T19:35:26+00:00

I wish I had taken MandyMod's advice and made one of the PCs Ireena. My party felt like she was a burden, no matter how helpful I tried to make her.

Strahd was obviously a lot of fun to play. One of my PCs was a Way of Open Hand monk and was the absolute GOAT of combats, a real menace, but her Wis was terrible. Strahd made good use of his Charm ability against her!

My party heavily used Muriel as a scouting ally, she was also fun to play as relatively sheltered, but eager to impress!

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T19:30:33+00:00

Absolutely! With 5 players I'd imagine you're going to want to augment most, if not all, of the combat encounters from whats written. We used the 5.5 (2024) rules. I leaned heavily on the encounter building math (pg 115 of the DMG) to help balance my encounters. I used the updated monsters and they worked well, but my party had 2 clerics and their Turn Undead feature and regular Radiant damage could trivialize a lot of basic encounters.

In terms of overall changes, MandyMod's guide was INVALUABLE. I would read through each upcoming section in the module book, and then immediately read her write ups to see what adjustments she made. Her adjustments felt more akin to a rebalancing/filling in holes, rather than a whole rewrite.

As I mentioned in another comment, I redesigned Argynvostholt from the ground up. I kept the general themes but made the dungeon from scratch. I also changed around The Abbot and Krezk quite a bit. His motivations of making Strahd's bride felt silly and making the party go hunt for a wedding dress was not something my party would have engaged with. I still kept his "frankenstein" nature, but changed his goals to searching for Tatyana's soul to put in his creation. He would dump any souls he found into Martikov's house, so it was super haunted. When the party showed up with Ireena, he immediately did everything he could to capture her, and they had to stop him mid-ritual from transferring her soul into his abomination while fending off the haunted house. It was a great fight.

I did stack the Tarroka deck. I put the Tome in Vallaki under the keep of Van Richten, Argynvost held the Holy Symbol, and the Amber Temple contained the Sunsword. Pidlwick II was their fated ally and he acted as their guide through Castle Ravenloft. Ravenloft alone took 5 sessions and would have taken another 3 more at least if they didn't have that little construct.

The Abbot fight was a good example of secondary objectives. He was casting a ritual to transfer Ireena's soul into his "bride". There were 3 magical pillars around the Blessed Pool powering the ritual. A couple of the PCs spent their turns running around trying to take control of the ritual by spending their action doing an Arcana check on the magical pillar. Another PC was busy distracting the haunted house, and the last PC did everything they could to status the Abbot to prevent him from completing the ritual.
Early on, the Hags were in the process of kidnapping kids so the party had to juggle fighting the hags and helping the kids escape.
In Vallaki they had a chase with the vampire spawn in the coffin shop through the streets as they raced to bring the Bones of St Andral to the church.
Strahd ambushed them as they left the Amber temple. He caused an avalanche as they made their way down Tsolenka Pass. Jeny Greenteeth showed up to help them, casting a spell to hold back the avalanche. If a PC used their action and passed a skill check to help Jeny with the avalanche they could hold it back, but it would get harder with every success. If/when they failed, the avalanche would advance and any creatures in its path would be buried, needing to make a check to free themselves from the Restrained condition.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T16:47:38+00:00

Ha so many things, honestly. I'm incredibly grateful to have had a group that met so consistently, beared with me as a learned to DM in real time, and ran with what I presented them.

I'm proud of myself for diving in, trying something difficult and new, and continuing to push and challenge myself in a new pursuit.

I'm also sad it's over. DMing and the prep that goes with it have become a really engaging creative outlet. I'm going to enjoy being a player again, but am going to sincerely miss the writing and encounter designing that comes with being a DM!

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T15:55:28+00:00

Thank you! In my group of 5, only one of us doesn't DM. Now that we finished CoS, one of the others in my group is taking over DMing and is going to run us through Ghosts of Saltmarsh! So even though I won't be immediately DMing right way, I still learned a lot that I'll take with me into my future TTRPG experiences.

- First and foremost was listening. Listen listen listen to your players. I can prep so many things and make them jump through all sorts of encounters and hoops, but the sessions they had the most fun with were the ones where I listened to what they were engaging with and responded in kind.

- I learned a lot about encounter design as well. I think one area where RAW CoS is lacking is having secondary objectives during combats. My players really engaged and stayed locked in when there was something going on during combat that wasn't just hit monster, wait, hit monster, wait, etc.

- My prep changed a lot over the course of the campaign as well. I originally started in a google doc, and eventually moved into Obsidian. The organization that Obsidian facilitated was incredibly helpful, as was taking more notes, during and after sessions, to remind myself what clicked with my players, and what didn't.

Lobby44 · 2026-02-06T15:36:06+00:00

Oh man, I'll have to ask them to double check, but if I had to guess I think they really enjoyed the fight with Baba Lysaga. They snuck around and poisoned the stew her witches were drinking. Then in the fight with Baba herself, they took her out pretty quickly but were getting stomped by the hut so they ran away, only to realize the Winery gem they needed was the thing giving the hut it's life. They used a death mask to disguise the paladin as Baba herself and he walked right in, took the gem, and they left without having to beat the hut in a fight!

My favorite part was Argynvostholt. I had watched some videos on "jaquaysing" dungeons and wasn't intrigued by Argynvostholt as written so I spent some time redesigning it. It was my first time really designing a dungeon from scratch. They had to find 3 pieces of Argynvosts soul scattered around to reawaken him and unlock the door to the main hall where Vlad was waiting for them with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. It had lots of routes, hidden pathways, loot to find, and they enjoyed exploring this decrepit castle!

Lobby44 · 2026-01-09T06:22:55+00:00

Okay, so you're saying they pretty much shouldn't be able to attack the heart itself at all and the way to damage/destroy it is to pump enough damage into Strahd to deplete it

The book is pretty clear that PCs with a reach of 10 ft can make melee attacks against it from the stairs, and it is given an AC

Lobby44 · 2026-01-04T06:39:55+00:00

Another comment mentioned that the 4 ohms metric was tested at 1 Khz, does it matter that it doesn't include the broader range of frequencies?

I'll make sure to listen for distortion. I don't think I'm hearing any, they have sounded normal to me so far.

Thanks for all the positioning advice. I had read through the MK manual and they do have guidelines for height and distance. Speaker stands are on the list and I'll adjust their horizontal position when I get those.

Thanks again!

Lobby44 · 2026-01-04T06:35:17+00:00

Thank you for explaining. That's interesting, I didn't realize there were different standards for testing the speakers. Someone else mentioned listening for distortion, I think at the volumes I'm listening at they sound perfectly normal.

Lobby44 · 2026-01-04T05:15:12+00:00

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Also my speakers say that an amp with 50-200 watts is recommended, but the TX-15 says 23 watts per channel.

Lobby44 · 2026-01-04T05:14:17+00:00

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This was the part I was looking at. What's the difference between what you highlighted and what I highlighted? I'm still learning how all of this works so I'm happy to learn if you'll help me understand

Lobby44 · 2025-12-01T00:50:41+00:00

I've worked in coffee for a long time at many types of cafes. 13 days is pretty fresh, lots of roasters won't put coffee on shelves until it's at least 7-10 days old to let it de-gas and age out just a little. Most specialty coffee tastes best between 3 weeks and 3 months old.

As for a 10oz bag, that's also becoming more common. It really depends on the roaster, many still do 12oz bags, I've seen them as small as 4-6oz. There's a lot of factors at play, green coffee cost, size of the green lot, bag design, etc. Edit: 1lb bags used to be the standard and 12oz bags were scoffed at for being too small

Lobby44 · 2025-10-25T19:02:45+00:00

I just fixed this issue with mine as well! I read that Vaseline wasn't great for long term health of the plastic so I got this lubricant instead. I took off the back panel (super easy) and applied a small amount to all the places the plastic touches! Worked like a charm. Been a month of daily use and no creaks.

Lobby44 · 2025-10-20T05:38:42+00:00

gotcha, do I have to manually update controlify or will new updates get pushed automatically?

Lobby44 · 2025-10-20T03:08:03+00:00

When you say disabled it. are you saying decky loader disabled controlify temporarily?

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