r/CurseofStrahd

Good Morning everyone. Long time DM here, but my first time running Curse of Strahd. One of my players is a Paladin, and we decided that he would be a member of the Order of the Silver Dragon.

(But Pika, how can he be a member if Strahd killed them all 400 years ago?!) alright, so Strahd killed *nearly* all of them. A single lowly recruit named “ser Feigling” was off running an errand, and came back to the hold to see Argynvostholt burning. He fled to Krez, and paid a Vistani to smuggle him out in a Vardo. Ser Feigling was back in the forgotten realms, and founded a mercenary company called “The Silver Snakes.”

Drawing inspiration from ASOIAF’s Golden Company, the Silver Snakes were a pricey yet well disciplined mercenary army, whose mission was to train warriors and collect a war chest big enough to someday retake Barovia. This grand conspiracy was a semi-secret kept to only the inner circle of the order. Since my players Paladin is starting at third level, we’ve written into his back story that he’s fought in the order for a few years and gotten considerable stronger than your average guard. So recently he was taught the company’s 400 year history.

My players Paladin has now been sent to Barovia as a scout/tip of the spear, when Argynvostholt has been restored, he can send a message for the rest of his order to arrive and pressure Strahd. But that’s for another day…

Right now we’re trying to write and narrow down what the Tenants of a Vengeance Paladin sworn to the Order of the Silver Dragon would be. Any ideas?

I'm not a particularly experienced DM, only having run some Pathfinder games way back when. Curse of Strahd made me dust off my DM screen and come back after a long hiatus - I really enjoyed the tremendous amounts of extra lore available in the broader Ravenloft context. Combine that with the rather tight focus of the campaign which physically confines your party to Barovia and encourages them to really delve into the mysteries and plot lines of each of its landmarks and you got what I consider to be one of the most interesting campaigns out there (both to run and to play in).

But now, my favourite campaign of all times has come to an unfortunate & premature end due to my players' IRL commitments and I wanted to use this opportunity to share what I learned from running CoS for the first time.

After the party managed to defeat the Abbot and the druids' Wicker Man, the final stretch of the campaign rapidly approached, with the Amber Temple beckoning and the Machinations of Ravenloft reaching their peak – the party hadn't actually directly antagonised Strahd, even at this point, but their confrontation was all but inevitable due to their meddling and covert support of Ravenloft's enemies.

Alas, most of the players had to bow out at the same time and might be unavailable for more than a year, so we made the decision to call it and have one final debriefing session where I outlined the rest of the story for them. I felt that replacing most of the core player group with new players for the final stretch of the campaign wouldn't have been rewarding for anyone.

Some key points for context:

• I ran the game through FoundryVTT (v11) using the 5e 2014 rules
• We played weekly (but skipped quite a few), for 4-6 hrs per sesh
• Overall I'd say the sessions were 70% RP and 30% combat
• The main campaign supplement I used was Pyram King's Legends of Barovia
• Various bits from other 3rd party additions like LBH were used where suitable
• The party started with 5 players, then ran with 4 for remainder of the campaign
• A few players switched in and out earlier on
• Surprisingly, no non-scripted player character deaths occurred (extremely close fights though, especially with the hags, the first Baba encounter and the Coffin Maker ambush)

My personal recommendations for running CoS (what worked well):

• Treat each of the major locations as set pieces, add distinct NPCs and events to them, give the players a reason to come back & investigate further.
• Make use of the Consorts!! Having the brides do stuff around the valley can be pretty interesting and they can each serve as a mini boss in their own right, or even an unlikely ally (enemy of my enemy..). I used slightly altered versions of LBH's stat blocks to enhance the brides and make them stand out from regular vamp spawns.
• Have Strahd be an active villain - I introduced him in person as early as Kolyan's funeral, which seems to be pretty common. It's hard to build up your BBEG as actually being scary when you don't see or hear anything from him (looking at you, Eve or Ruin). My players were pretty damn scared of him from the get-go which helped with the story telling.
• Make NPCs you want your PCs to care about likeable! Forcing someone like Ireena on the party without giving them any reasons to care about her is a bad idea, I tried to portray her as genuinely friendly, supportive and helpful in combat (can forgo her action to grant advantage, decent medicine skill to stabilize etc)
• Work with your players to incorporate their backstories into the setting. CoS is a super tight narrative experience, but I still found it super rewarding for the players to have their own personal hooks that played out all throughout the story.
• Music matters, having a solid playlist can really do a lot to enhance your scenes. I used Travis Savoie's OST and had additional "boss themes" for each of the major enemies, including all the brides. For combat, Darkest Dungeon's OST was really fitting, too.
• Last but not least - Establish what kind of campaign your players are looking for. I made it clear that I would focus on story telling and RP and found a group that was on board for this. Also, I set the tone for the adventure and made players aware that there was going to be really messed up situations, relationships and quite possibly a lot of death (even though they were able to stave this off in the end).

As per PK's campaign supplement, I added the Fey Quest to offer the players a bit more agency in how to tackle the big baddie, and as an alternative to the "he can't ever really be defeated" trope. That worked pretty well, especially because one of the PCs wanted deep ties to the Fey.

Roleplaying the Court was an absolute joy, I gave each of the consorts their own agenda to pursue which caused them to clash with the party on a few occasions. I think it's interesting to have one or two of them be potential allies to the players, with the obvious limitation of not being able to oppose Strahd directly due to being spawns.

Another fairly big departure from the as-written stuff was not having the full Tarokka reading happening early in the campaign. I wanted to let the party explore and come to their own conclusions before seeking out ways to combat Ravenloft (which the reading would then help with). Also, no ONE fated ally, rather I alluded to multiple that made narrative sense. Gathering allies and building a little rebel army through their actions was pretty cool to experience for me.

I'll stop rambling here, if you have any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them. I hope that more people run this campaign because it truly is an experience - even first-time DMs should not be discouraged to sink their fangs into Barovia!

Good day all,

I posted the other day for advice and someone recommended I look at CoS Reloaded. I have only read a tiny bit of it so far, but for the most part I like what I see. It seems like it might help with some of the pacing issues I'm facing at the moment but I'm concerned about swapping to Reloaded after I've already started the game going by the book.

My party has Ireena in tow (no Ismark) and has left Tser Pool after receiving their reading from Madam Eva. They've been on the road and dealt with some random encounters (even managed to have a minion steal an item for Strahd's scrying attempts). We stopped last session after walking through the west gates and are likely going to come across Old Bongrinder next session before heading to Vallaki.

Is it too late to change over to reloaded? If not, is there a good way to make that change smoothly or anything I should be aware of when doing so? Maybe I can swap over to it when they reach Vallaki?

Thank you for your time!

Edit for Grammer.

Hey everyone, I need some serious tactical, psychological, and DM-to-player advice for my campaign.

I am currently running Strahd: Reloaded, and my party just finished the Castle Ravenloft heist arc. We reached that pivotal, dramatic moment where Strahd finally drops his polite, hospitable facade, takes off his mask for the first time, and reveals himself as the unmasked, merciless tyrant.

Instead of being terrified, my party’s Paladin/Warlock absolutely laid into him. Right as he was executing this terrifying shift in persona, she told him to his face that he behaves like a "child" who is throwing a tantrum and changing the rules of the game because the party seems to be winning and he doesn't like it.

Here is my biggest problem: Strahd is supposed to be a centuries-old, hyper-intelligent tactical mastermind. I, however, am just a regular person. This player is incredibly sharp, fast-talking, and much better at debating and arguing on the fly than I am. During that conversation prior to the battle, when she dropped that speech, I completely froze. Because I couldn't think of a genius, devastating retort on the spot to match Strahd's intellect, I felt out-debated. To cover for it, I immediately had Strahd transition into a physical attack to show his superiority.

When the battle started, Strahd completely toyed with them just to showcase the massive gap in their combat skills. He absolutely mopped the floor with them. To flex his absolute dominance, he even downed one of the characters and then brought them right back up on the exact same turn, basically showing them that their lives belong to him.

Even after taking this brutal beating, she STILL defied him. Visibly annoyed by her stubbornness, Strahd stopped the assault, coldly told the party, "I will see you tonight" (setting up the module's core nightly visits mechanic), and left them all bleeding and half-dead in the dirt.

Here is where the real dilemma lies: Out of character, I talked to the player. She clarified that while her character is stubborn enough to die for her beliefs, she as a player absolutely does NOT want her character to die. However, because of her character's background, she feels completely trapped—she feels her character physically cannot just let a tyrant win or bow down to him.

She actually asked me for a narrative way out of this deadly corner. I suggested having her character pretend to play along with Strahd for now until they are strong enough to defeat him, but she wasn't very convinced by that option and felt it didn't fit her character.

Strahd is visiting their camp tonight, and since this will be a purely verbal encounter, I want to script his dialogue so I can do his hyper-intelligence justice without getting out-debated again. I need a way for Strahd to give her a narrative "out" that allows her character to survive without making either Strahd look weak or the Paladin look like a hypocrite.

Could you help me answer these 5 questions to figure out my next move?

1. How can Strahd leverage her heroic background to force her into compliance? Since she won't bow to save her own skin, how can Strahd frame his threats around other people (the party, innocent Barovians) so that her backing down feels like a heroic sacrifice to protect others, rather than just submission?
2. What are some rhetorical traps Strahd can use during the nightly visit? Since I'm not as quick-witted as the player, what are some chilling, logical counter-arguments Strahd can use to twist her "child throwing a tantrum" analogy back on her, especially now that he completely controls their fate?
3. How can I target her character's theme of "Hope" to shift her roleplay strategy? Her character's secret true name literally translates to "Hope." How can Strahd systematically dismantle this concept during his visit to make her realize that blind defiance isn't brave, it's just foolish, giving the player a narrative reason to change her tactics?
4. How do I use the rest of the party to defuse the 1v1 tension? The rest of the group just took a brutal beating and was left half-dead because of her defiance. How can Strahd pull the other characters into the conversation tonight to let the party put some pressure on her to survive?
5. How should I structurally and narratively run this first "nightly visit" to maximize the dread? Knowing that the player wants a way out but is stuck on roleplay constraints, how can I script this encounter so Strahd looks like a tactical genius who is letting them live for his own twisted amusement, rather than because I'm pulling punches?

Thanks in advance. I really want to do the Dark Lord justice now that the gloves are officially off!

My players (7 players currently all level 7) started the campaign in Tser Falls after traveling with some Vistani.

Their fortune told them that their ally was Father Donavich. They immediately went to the castle and then west for the rest of the campaign so far. They’ve never been to the Village even after several hooks/hints. That’s fine with me, but now we are headed back to pick up Donavich.

Anyone have any ideas to “revamp” the Village of Barovia to be a big challenge? I know I can just enhance established encounters and story beats… but I’m wondering if anyone has an idea for an entirely redesigned experience in the village that would work with 7th level players? Thanks

My players made it to Vallaki and the first thing they did was >!release the tiger, who walked calmly through town to Rictavio. Screaming villagers and ringing bells brought guards, who saw Rictavio petting the tiger as the players caught up to it, but were scared of the tiger so they signaled to Izek that All was Well. !<I tend to go into sessions unprepared but would like to think of some sets of consequences that could potentially play out. I imagine that Rictavio will take off immediately. Maybe the guards shadow the players? I think the only one who saw it all happen was>! the stockyard guy.!<

The playlist is over 3 hours long. Best enjoyed sequentially. Contains audio and visual OC. I recommend following and also adding it as a new playlist to your library.

Major spoilers ahead for Curse of Strahd Reloaded Act II

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I'm facing a(n) (un)expected situation during my run of Curse of Strahd Reloaded. Let's start from the context:

During last session, the party interrogated Milivoj and learnt that Henrik van der Voort, the coffin maker, payed him to steal the bones. They went to speak with Henrik and, along the way, I described them passing in front of Blinksy's toyshop, as a way to introduce the place already as the were planning to visit it to buy Arabelle's birthday gift later that day.

At that point, our monk asked Ireena to join him to the toymaker to get some help in picking a reasonable gift for a 10 y.o. girl. Inside the shop the monk got scared when he saw Strahd's puppet, then he thought Blinsky was suspicious and possibly mad, saw Ireena's doll, didn't ask about it and at the first occasion fled with Ireena, almost bumping into Izek hanging flyers for the Festival.

The remaining 2 PCs with Father Petrovich continued to Henrik's shop, sneakily entered from the back, found the bones and triggered the noisemaker, starting the fight with Violenta while missing 2 people.

End of the session, the players comment: "we thought buying a gift would have been a routine operation, that's why we quickly split. It was supposed to be a nice roleplaying thing with Ireena, having her think of a gift for a young girl. Also, we were just going to talk with the guy at the coffin maker, and instead it triggered a boss fight? How is everything we touch a quest?"

This last question struck me hard. Reading through Reloaded I was loving the amount of stuff to do, all the different storylines made the world feel alive. Now, I'm starting to question whether it's "too" alive. I get that coincidences are needed to have the players play the story, but I feel what they are saying: everything they touch is a "quest" (possibly not the best term but it conveys the idea). Imagine if they knew that with the doll they bought for Arabelle they will start the quest of the missing child that will lead them to Victor Vallakovich and then to the arc of Stella Wachter and to Van Richten pushing them to Krezk or whatever. Or that in just a few hours they are getting the dinner invitation from Lady Wachter to trigger the hit on Izek and change the seat of power in Vallaki.

The amount of material covers so much ground that anything but "we go to sleep" triggers a storyline of some kind (and even that...). Suspension of incredulity and all, of course, we don't think too much about everything happening right now when it's been months of nothing around here, but they are starting to notice it and I fear it starts to feel a bit "videogame-y". Plus, Vallaki being "just one place" amplifies it a lot, compared to the many events scattered along Barovia and the valley.

Has anyone experienced this?

How did your players react to Vallaki?

Would you change anything to account for it?

EDIT: my tone might have been clearer. We are actually having a blast! The comment they made was along the lines of "wow this place is messed up, everything we see is broken in some way" and not "I don't like what's going on and I'm not having fun". Characters are surely overwhelmed, players are enjoying the amount of stuff but, as someone already suggested, they have been writing a shared text file with NPCs info and keeping tracks of deadlines and stuff they need to remember because there's so much stuff. I'm happy to see that a lot of people have experienced Vallaki as a tight-paced keg of gunpowder so I'm not completely crazy, and compared to RAW the hooks are not lacking lol

I don't think it's controversial to say that the 'Tome of Strahd' supplement in the campaign book is kind of awful.

Its perspective is bizarre, it's basically Strahd himself breaking the 4th wall and speaking information directly at the players, including listing off all the common vampire weaknesses.
Its tone is all over the place - Strahd seems to think he was a good person, but hated his brother for obviously petty and childish reasons and then admits he became evil even before his transformation???
The information it conveys is nonsensical - why would Strahd specifically list all his weaknesses and state that he's afraid of the Sun Sword, despite the background on that item making it clear he should think it was completely destroyed?

It sticks out amongst the other two items from the Tarokka reading, which are S-tier magic drops. In my first campaign they got the Tome last, and were completely underwhelmed after the build-up of the first two. With Barovia being such a sprawling, rich setting with many areas which are difficult to convey backstory about - presuming the players get around to exploring them at all - it felt like a huge missed opportunity.

So... I started to rewrite and expand the Tome, to bring some coherence of character, some deeper backstory for Strahd, and tie together some locations in Barovia.

And then I wrote a fifteen thousand word novelette.

I drew inspiration from the book 'I, Strahd: Memoirs of a vampire' along with an incredibly broad sweep of the many remarkable rewrites, supplements and insights posted on this sub and across the web about the CoS experience.

Why so long? I feel it adds to the immersion and investment of the players if this oh-so-important Tome they recover is an actual journal, something they have to actually dig through and try to discern clues from, rather than just a print-out of key facts. In the one instance where I actually printed a physical copy of this and gave it to my group, they all fought over who would take custody of it first, with the Wizard winning out since logically they should be the one who does the book readin'.

Character wise, the new tome attempts to grant the following depth to Strahd:

• Pre-vampire Strahd was an extremely harsh ruler and conqueror, but also had a certain nobility of spirit and code of honour.
• He did have genuine goodwill toward Sergei.
• His attraction to Tatiana/Ireena is an obsessive need to own her rather than any real love. This is hinted to in part be born from bitterness and jealousy toward Sergei, though he himself is unaware of it.
• Cool backstory behind the 'I am the Land' line, which I never fail to use in every one of my big Strahd showdowns.

It also establishes the following about Barovia, hopefully giving players a compelling reason to seek these areas out and plumb their secrets;

• Backstory on the Order of the Silver Dragon, Argynvost, and Tsolenka pass.
• Deepening the Amber Temple's significance.
• Explaining why there is a random lich inside the Amber Temple, and giving the players a compelling reason to speak with him and try to recover his memories (as he assisted in the reconstruction of Ravenloft, the new Exethanter can tell them all about its layout and secret passages).

Please note that for clarity I have changed the name of Barovia village to Svalich village, as in my experience having Barovia be both the name of the region and the village is an endless source of confusion.

I present this now for the community's review and, I hope, approval for use in your own games.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f-A9X9ptIOZVPuHD96bQWwZfjq46HDVj/view?usp=sharing