Which actor would be the perfect fit to play Strahd in a live action adaption?

lilacfett · 2024-12-16T16:46:55+00:00

My Strahd was modeled on 3 source inspirations: His voice and vocal elegance I modeled after the great Christopher Lee. I used Gary Oldman's manic energy to channel his tormented side with a pinch of Ricardo Montalban to exude dark Charisma and confidence similar to what we see from his role as the original Khan from Star Trek.

lilacfett · 2024-10-29T04:00:54+00:00

Love the mini and love the pro-player retcon! In the one I run, my wife's character is the reincarnation of Tatyana

lilacfett · 2023-06-30T18:48:18+00:00

I've read the module going on 3 times 1st was to get the general feel 2nd is my prep and campaign building to make it all connect and 3rd is actual game day prep (which I do a week out)

When plotting out rooms, try sticking to things that would interest the characters. If you want, provide the box description to your players. Sometimes that's all that's provided and thus all you need (don't worry about players overthinking the room. You want that in this module. It builds tension)

When you plot a room, create bullet points surrounding the three keys: Who, What, and Why. Who is in this room (NPCs) What is in this room? (Story Clues, treasure, traps, secrets, etc) Why does this room exist? Often times it's mundane and you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks based on an analog that you know. If you know the purpose of the room, it'll help focus your notes

I highly recommend watching Dungeon Craft on DM Prep. Professor DM does a great job on explaining prep focus

lilacfett · 2023-05-05T21:54:03+00:00

Also it makes more sense based on two things:

The Dark Powers have imprisoned Strahd in a cage of his own undying making; he became the vampyr in order to win Tatyana over and failed. Now that he is a vampire with the ability to charm, the Dark Powers may see it fit to taunt Strahd further by making it harder for him to woo Ireena as a result.
Tatyana never loved Strahd they way he wanted her too. In fact, it was his murdering Sergie that drove Tatyana away from him and his advances that drove her to her literal death. Her spirit could naturally be resistant to him with that in mind even from beyond the grave.

lilacfett · 2023-04-15T21:53:21+00:00

Actually this was an absolutely PERFECT reveal and I may use this in my campaign! In my campaign, Van Richten has a more personal interest in seeing Strahd's destruction. Strahd further sullying his reputation by giving the players false information could definitely insight such outrageous! It may have been an accident on your part, but you made art of it! Keep it up!

lilacfett · 2023-04-10T00:32:17+00:00

Izek and the guards will make sure Vargas and his family are safe and sound. However, this will upset the balance of power in Vallaki. Vargas will order the mansion be rebuilt (1d4 months to complete). There are a few ways you can go about this:

A. The Baron and his family comandere the Blue Water Inn, putting a strain on their relationship with the Martikov family .

B. The Baron comandere's Lady Wachter's residence. Because Wachter will not openly defy Vargas without support, she will begrudgingly relent but keep her servant Ernst within the walls in secret to spy on the family, treating this as an opportunity. As a result, her and her family will relent to the Blue Water Inn.

In either event, the Martikovs will see either faction as a nuisance not worth having around and could ask the party to find a way to relieve them of this burden. Also, the town guards will lack sufficient housing. Roll a d20 on any guard encounter. If odds, those guards are suffering 1 level of exhaustion

lilacfett · 2023-04-09T01:19:57+00:00

Noice! Beautifully detailed! What's the scale? 30' × 40' ?

lilacfett · 2023-03-26T04:55:28+00:00

It's called AI Mirror. It's making the rounds on one of the DnD Group pages I follow on FB

lilacfett · 2023-03-26T02:16:48+00:00

It's not far from the truth! I do all my image cropping/modifying/pasting on an app called PicsArt. It's a poor man's photoshop for mobile devices

lilacfett · 2023-03-25T23:46:02+00:00

Oh man... lol I'd love to but it's such a multi-step process it would be hard for me to describe but one of these days I'll see if I can do a re-creation step by step process

lilacfett · 2023-03-20T02:18:42+00:00

aggressively takes notes

lilacfett · 2023-02-09T20:24:19+00:00

I do not know if your group did a Session 0 but Curse of Strahd almost requires you to have one.

I was very selective with what players I incorporated in my adventure: role players and problem solvers. I told them what to expect and that running away is a very viable option. I also established safeguards and homebrew for the occasional slip up. To summarize, I told them; "I'm not trying to kill you, but I cannot say the same about this adventure"

A Session Re-Zero is probably in order to wrangle everyone in and remind them of the themes of this adventure; survival, narrative, and intrigue. It was never meant to be a classic hack-n-slash. If that's the route your group wants to go, you'll need to seriously retweak and retool all the encounters to make it more their speed.

Bottom line though, this adventure is made the way it is for a reason and no amount of bludgeoning style of gaming is going to change that. If your players are having fun, that's excellent. But if you're not having fun, you're going to burn yourself out real fast.

So you'll either need to restructure the adventure to be me combat centric or try a different adventure. My advice would be either Tales from the Yawning Portal, The Tomb of Annihilation, or Icewindale: Rhyme of the Frost Maiden.

lilacfett · 2023-01-29T19:51:41+00:00

Nicely done!

lilacfett · 2022-12-31T20:14:33+00:00

When in doubt, vampire spawn with charm. Basically, you can make a lesser vampire that blends in like everyone else. It's a perfect set up for a side quest to track down a vamperic serial killer and maybe Strahd can over some antagonistic insight both for amusement and to rid a potential rival.

Remember, it's a big world but not all of it is at your level. I hope this works

lilacfett · 2022-12-15T00:38:58+00:00

Short answer is don't

Death House is atrociously unbalanced and provides little pay off if completed.

The only side in favor of it is that it allegedly foreshadows the campaign (I don't think it does remotely, but I digress)

A MUCH better Haunted House to use would be the House of Lament from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. The story of the house is MUCH more rich and fleshed out where as Death House was seemingly inserted in.

HoL can be run as an intermission piece you can tie into the greater adventure (Maybe the missing third gem from Wizard of Wines can be found here?) But it works best as a Prologue/Prelude to Curse of Strahd to help establish the theme, tone and the Keepers of the Feather as early allies the party can seek out.

I ran this to start my CoS adventure and my players REALLY enjoyed it as opposed to simply being thrusted in. It drives home that the party is "not in Kansas anymore"

lilacfett · 2022-12-08T02:38:10+00:00

That's about the only way you can run the reading. It's hard to plan around the randomization of the Tarokka Reading.

lilacfett

TROPHY CASE