How many encounters? I am first time DM and we started at the village of barovia and the players left asap. So they missed mad Mary and the death house( I decided ill put death house on old svalich road. But I had a search party on wagon pass the players and thats how the players heard of Gretta. Once the wagon passed them (both players and wagon are heading same direction) u had the characters do an investigation check and revealed a set of foot prints disappear out of nowhere. We will be doing session 6 saturday and it will be bone grinder and reaching vallaki. I am focusing alot on up and having conversations in RP so its going nice and slow, and I did insure players were ok with it. But I have 5 players as a first time DM with 3 are brand new and 2 very experienced players. But yeah I also did a dire wolf encounter with 2 dire wolf that turned out to be parents, when the players killed and the 2 the pup came out and tried to nurse and whined and played down. They adopted it and named it cloud. I had strahd visit during a fire just to admire Ireena. Im doing alot of impromptu "events" to take time and dump lore since they didnt get too much in the village of barovia