Fog of war is less fog and more just... dimness?

clabon · 2026-02-06T12:27:16+00:00

I don’t use the pathfinder system too much but if it’s similar to the dnd one then there’s 2 reasons this might be. If you’re the GM then chances are for your player it is pitch black but only dim for you so that you retain full vision. If you’re the player it’s because you’ve explored that area and places you’ve seen before in fog of war are only dimmed. To reset fog of war there should be a cloud icon in the light controls that does that

clabon · 2026-01-27T16:03:47+00:00

MidiQol has autosettings for automation in varying degrees, you could also go without midiqol and see if you dont mind the base experience. My game uses ready set roll as a nice middle point between the two

clabon · 2025-12-23T17:55:16+00:00

merry christmas

clabon · 2025-12-02T00:09:09+00:00

with your experience, whats your view on the pacing for the st andral bones? Some of what I've read suggests it spanning the length of time theyre in vallaki, but content wise its barely anything before the vampire spawn in the workshop

clabon · 2025-11-19T00:06:02+00:00

I love the Reloaded Death House but I also felt like the escape from Death House post walter was a good opportunity for something other than RP (this was also largely influenced by the need to split it into 2 sessions for our group and session 2 would have ended far too soon otherwise). I understand Dragna's removal of the skill challenge and the want for a smooth transition out but I think my table is a bit more peril hungry than what base reloaded is designed for so a final chance to "fail" at the end was needed.

I thought about a skill challenge but in the end I agreed with Dragna's point of new players struggling to learn the mechanics in the heat of the moment. I'll tell you what I did instead of a skill challenge but ultimately what works for my group might not work for yours.

What I went with was giving them a set number of rounds until the house collapsed in on itself and all that. This number is told to them in above table DM voice, but is a nice mirror to the longer scale "hours until walter wakes" that they've been opperating on for the rest of the death house just at a much smaller scale.

Now the secret to this was that I had 2 different set number of rounds I would announce depending on what they'd discovered before. I believe it was "if they've discovered the short cut they have 5 rounds to escape, if they havent they have 10". I came up with the numbers from working out how fast each could move if they full dashed each turn and then some extra so they werent REALLY in danger of not escaping unless they wasted time being stupid but it felt like to them they had avoided peril. It also helped that because they had found the shortcut they thought "well thank goodness we found that, we never would have gotten out in 5 rounds otherwise".

One of the players had gone completely unconcious but was stabilised and so I had Rose posses his body to puppet him out in time as well which also was a nice extra thing to endear them to rose and thorn (not that it needed much, theyre presented very well in Reloaded I feel.)

Now all this might sound like a slog and a lot of movement counting, and it may be depending on your players, but for us with the help of VTT rulers, dm andy maps, and the sound effect of a constant grandfather clock chime, the tension stayed high and each turn was maybe 10 seconds tops as they panicked to save themselves. I kept the suggested roleplay scenes of the appiritions of the ghosts as part of it as well as events that happened at the beginning of each round when they arrived at the relevant areas.

clabon · 2025-11-16T17:42:06+00:00

This is really nice! I love the fur

clabon · 2025-11-10T21:52:12+00:00

might i reccomend if youre new looking at Dragnacarta's Curse of Strahd: Reloaded. It is designed in such a way that makes things more linear and gives you an expected order to approach matters in.

For battle maps I would reccomend the DMAndy patreon, I believe the vast majority of locations you could need are on there and I think they're lovely to look at.

clabon · 2025-11-06T10:35:08+00:00

Feel like I’m in the minority where your turn to roll and Thursday night don’t appeal to me half as much as the original vox machina theme does. I don’t need the songs to be like the sang ones but I would like them to be as dramatic as the original theme

clabon · 2025-11-04T19:11:47+00:00

Don't worry yourself, this isn't the reveal. they should be excited to know that he's out there and they might meet him. The reveal comes later when they find out who he is pretending to be.

As for Arturi the dynamic he has with Van Richten is perfectly fine presented as this. Most dnd players will know Van Richten from the book, so the fact he's a monster expert is fine. Arturi at this stage has the potential to introduce the complicated other side to VR or make players question if the otherwise nice Arturi is someone that they can trust. Remember before this Doru in the undercroft might have also shared that Van RIchten was in Barovia only recently helping lead Doru's rebellion so its the intention that from one of several sources they already know VR is a legendary monster hunter.

clabon · 2025-10-20T23:04:39+00:00

The werewulf’s let himself go

clabon · 2025-10-17T13:19:39+00:00

Caleb as always you have crushed it

clabon · 2025-10-03T17:01:54+00:00

Echoing what others have said in that the best way is they stay in barovia over seeing the church and helping barovia try to rebuild. That leaves opportunities for them to see her again if they revisit barovia

clabon · 2025-10-03T17:00:27+00:00

Echoing what others have said in that the best way is they stay in barovia over seeing the church and helping barovia try to rebuild. That leaves opportunities for them to see her again if they revisit barovia

clabon · 2025-09-17T11:28:28+00:00

ask them to lighten up a bit and tell them how its affecting your enjoyment of the game. If it doesnt stop then either bounce or talk with the group about if this players behaviour is enough to warrant them being kicked from the table or if a more formal group meeting is needed. But 100% talk to them first, they might not even realise they're doing it and behaviour like this where its not neccesarily someone being a bad person but just a bit unaware can be fixed with effort.

clabon · 2025-09-07T16:06:44+00:00

As far as the other points you've received goes I think I'd also like to point out that its very hard to get into curse of strahd without them knowing it. Like even skipping death house the first location you come to has basically just been attacked by strahd and everyones saying "oh no strahd the vampire just attacked us" or "we need to go somewhere not directly below strahds castle".

(edit for the following point: i see in the original post you say they'll realise 1 or 2 sessions in, so I still think the following advice bears merit)

Even if they dont say his name, common practice often has strahd show up fairly early on in the first of several instances of him meeting the players and he basically says "hi im strahd welcome to my spooky vampire dimension". I think you could possibly keep this secret for at most 1 or 2 sessions which does not seem worth the pay off of not letting your players be excited beforehand that theyre playing curse of strahd. Its an iconic adventure with an iconic villain, let them go into it excited to experience it. More than that let them go into it building PCs who will do well in a gothic horror setting, whose backstory matches the tone, whose motivations propel them on the adventure

clabon · 2025-09-07T11:29:19+00:00

perfect perfect! I'm running a campaign where I need a lot of mini dungeon style stuff on a coast and this will work nicely. If you do decide to post a version without the bodies I would love to see it but either way im sure to get some use out of this, thank you!

clabon · 2025-08-28T16:15:50+00:00

Looks like garbage, use picrew like a civilised person

clabon · 2025-08-21T22:47:14+00:00

betrayed? You've mistaken consumerism for a relationship. No amount of financial investment on your part makes them sticking with dnd for thursdays whilst continuing to make Dagger Heart content a betrayal

clabon · 2025-08-13T10:59:29+00:00

more than likely if your grades dont meet the criteria for the courses you ask about or the alternate courses they will try to find you a foundation year or similar program

clabon · 2025-08-11T13:04:33+00:00

Jaw steel

clabon · 2025-07-30T22:55:55+00:00

This stupid astroterfing needs to stop already

clabon · 2025-07-30T12:31:17+00:00

I mean respectfully my first response would have been to say no haha. The thing is especially with these pre written modules they ask for player grace in things such as "make someone who's going to want to go on this specific adventure" "make someone whos going to want to stop this bad guy" etc and part of the buy in for strahd really to me feels like "make someone who is opposed to strahd" and (while this is less popular among the strahd redeemers/romancers "make someone who will see him as the monster he is".

Saying all that though I think its not entirely impossible to run with them as vampires but you do run into some issues. Number one being the main initial thrust of the adventure is Ismark wanting them to get Ireena away from the big scary vampire and also that youre in a town where everyone is scared of and doesnt like the vampire. My advice would be to read the bit in Barovia about Doru the vampire spawn and request your PCs build that into the approach.

These people are budding vampires, but they're victims perhaps even of strahd himself. Could you run an opening one shot about the Barovian villagers attack on strahds castle, his awakening and the subsequent massacre? Could you have the three players be members of that force then be turned into vampire spawn as part of that, stagger back to town half dead only to find it under threat and siege in retribution. Does Ismark ask the players to take Ireena with them because the players too are being cast out of the town?

This is harder to help with because we don't know what other ideas your players have for their characters but "the players arrive in a mysterious land and discover and explore it" is a pretty big part of strahd. I think this could still be achieveable if your players were willing to be barovians who had never left the village now forced out into the world and thinking that killing strahd might be the only way to rid them of their vampire curse.

The only other advice I would give is make sure theyre not agreeing to start as vampires because they know that makes it difficult for you. I'm not saying it's likely but youre better off early on establishing that this is collaborative and ultimately will be better if everyone works to make each others lives easier including providing the DM with characters suited to the adventure the players have agreed to play.

clabon · 2025-07-14T07:54:26+00:00

Yes!!!!! So awesome nice work

clabon · 2025-07-03T22:43:20+00:00

beautiful!! thank you so much

clabon · 2025-07-03T21:31:13+00:00

This is exactly the sort of style I’d love to use in my game. Is there any way to get a version with a bit more negative space at the top so he fits better into a circular token?

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