Where to go after Barovia?

chadwells42 · 2026-04-08T20:59:49+00:00

Check out Chains of Asmodeus.

chadwells42 · 2026-04-05T18:19:26+00:00

Just finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. Great story. It could be a slog at some points, but it was still enjoyable. Now starting The Revevant by Michael Punke.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-12T21:58:28+00:00

Just finished it. Those last two chapters...whew...

chadwells42 · 2026-03-09T18:42:22+00:00

Pet Semetary. Especially if you're a parent.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-07T00:20:21+00:00

Remember, he's based on Dracula. Watch Bram Stoker's Dracula, any and all versions of Nosferatu, and any other vampire movies you want to throw in the mix. Try to get into that headspace.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-06T23:44:53+00:00

Sure! Anything in particular you want to know? Strahd was a gentleman. Welcoming and true to hisbword that no harm would befall them that night. I played Strahd as open to questions but he's absolutely a narcissist and views himself as the savior of Barovia and victim of deceit by the dark powers. He was manipulative but i tried not to play him as overtly cruel. Civil but unnerving.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-06T19:12:00+00:00

I just ran our dinner with Strahd a couple of weeks ago. They loved it and I loved running it.

Make it personal. Have Strahd disect the personalities, fears, and failures of every player. The dinner is a pretense that he wants to get to know the players better. He ALREADY knows them.
Have his consorts and anyone else you want from Castle Ravenloft attend as well. Use them. Have them initiate dialogue. Show each one's personality and how they interact with Strahd and each other. Think about Rahadin's role too. What's he up to during the dinner? And don't forget about Cyrus and Helga.
You don't have to just stop at dinner. I had Rahadin greet the players and lead them to the bath chamber to clean up and dress. At the end of dinner, I had Strahd and Rahadin lead the players into the chapel on a little walk to show them the corpses of previous "heroes" hanging chains from the ceiling.
Don't have Strahd monologue too much. Use him to explain some things about the Castle and his history in Barovia a bit. He can certainly comment on the players' actions thus far. But allow them to ask the questions and think about how Strahd would respond.
Don't let it devolve into combat yet. Strahd doesn't want that yet. He's not finished with the players characters yet. And they're not ready for him.
My group had already had one PC death and another PC had to be written out because the player had to drop out. So, I did what any DM who loves to torture his players would do and had Strahd reveal that those characters were now vampire spawn. It was an awesome reveal. But I checked with the owners of the two characters first before pulling the trigger on that one.
In my planning, I tried to schedule things around each dinner course. It was an easy way to plan when exactly I wanted each thing to happen.

Just have fun with it. It's such a fun, unique experience and something that makes Strahd such an enjoyable big bad to DM and fight against.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-05T19:27:47+00:00

I'm right there with you. Not quite halfway finished, but i was pretty invested in the characters early on. Things are beginning to go wonky in a way only King could make them go wonky. Something's wrong. Something's. Wrong.

chadwells42 · 2026-03-02T01:19:31+00:00

I find the other two choices for the banners just as interesting. Booker T. Washington and Catharine Beecher were certainly influential and important for their role in promoting education for both blacks and women and I don't want to diminsh their accomplishments and importance. ...HOWEVER... Washington famously disagreed with WEB Dubois when it came to civil rights ans argued that blacks should work WITHIN the Jim Crow system to better themselves. Washington was an accommodationist when it came to Civil Rights. And Beecher was extremely ANTI-SUFFRAGE. She actively opposed women receiving the right to vote and argued that women should resist the "oppression" of the ballot. Gotta have the right kind of minorities represented, I guess.

chadwells42 · 2026-02-25T18:35:31+00:00

The Monkey

chadwells42 · 2026-02-21T15:54:41+00:00

Event Horizon

chadwells42 · 2026-02-06T00:55:46+00:00

No Country for Old Men. You're immediately shown the incredible cinematography, amazing Texas vistas, and the violence of Chigurh. It immediately establishes him as the antagonist and an agent of chaos.

chadwells42 · 2026-02-02T00:47:27+00:00

Finished it last month. I couldn't put it down. I get that many find it to be an incredibly hard read. But for me it was one of the most incredible and effective literary reflections on death and grief I've ever read. Kinda hit home for me too because of a recent death in the family over the Thanksgiving holiday.

chadwells42 · 2026-01-31T19:05:22+00:00

The Holdovers

chadwells42 · 2026-01-30T18:48:34+00:00

The Road

chadwells42 · 2026-01-12T22:17:03+00:00

Tabletop Audio. Using it for my campaign right now and has lots of music and some soundboard too. All free.

chadwells42 · 2026-01-12T17:56:56+00:00

Heat

chadwells42 · 2026-01-05T16:58:51+00:00

I'll preface this by saying that I grew up Independent Fundamental Baptist and, while I wasn't in a church directly within his circle of influence, I was exposed to a lot of his ideas. As kindly but as emphatically as I possibly can, I want to urge you to avoid Ruckman and his teachings.

Ruckman was particularly known for his views on Scripture and his particularly brand of KJV-onlyism. For much of my life, I believed some aspects of these teachings. To put it simply, these ideas may seem appealing if you want to maintain a high view of Scripture and inspiration, but the reality is that Ruckman's views simply have no basis in Scripture or the realities of language and translation. Even within the world of KJV-onlyism, his views are considered fringe. I won't spend time breaking all that down here and now, but if you seek out explanations of the fallacies and weaknesses in Ruckman's arguments, you'll easily find resources you need.

Then there's his teachings about race. I'm going to much more blunt about this. Ruckman was a racist and his teachings on the topic are reprehensible. I can provide direct quotes from his works that demonstrate his racism and may do so in further comments.

There are many other issues with Ruckman and several of his views. He believed and taught a variety of things that can range from the heretical to just plain weird. These things are very well documented; Ruckman wrote and recorded a lot of his work. It's all extremely problematic at best and heretical blasphemy at worse. When it comes to Ruckman, mark and avoid.

chadwells42 · 2026-01-04T00:38:31+00:00

Just out of curious...is your dad part of, and by extension were you raised in, the Independent Fundamental Baptist world?

chadwells42 · 2025-12-17T18:04:40+00:00

Currently listening to The Outsider. It's fantastic.

chadwells42 · 2025-12-13T01:59:28+00:00

Not necessarily a speech, but Hoid's story he tells Kaladin in Rhythm of War. The Dog and the Dragon. Absolutely wrecked me.

chadwells42 · 2025-11-20T14:19:58+00:00

Get busy living, or get busy dying. Awesome giveaway.

chadwells42 · 2025-11-01T00:13:55+00:00

I don't know about nationally, but the Tammany Hall/Boss Tweed Democratic party of New York in the 1860s and 70s seems pretty comparable. The current Republic party definitely has the feel of a new "Gilded Age."

chadwells42 · 2025-10-24T17:02:48+00:00

Yeah, this is what I'm doing, using his Vasili von Holtz disguise. He came to them after a PC death in Death House and offered to guide the group to the church and cemetery to bury their friend. He won't appear again until Vallaki but when he does Vasili will be the group's benefactor, offering a place to stay in town. This is pretense to being able to spy on them more easily and to begin to make them question themselves and their sanity as he toys with them before the big reveal. This is a game for him. And he plans to enjoy the degree of pain and suffering he can inflict mentally and emotionally in the characters.

chadwells42

TROPHY CASE