D&D 5E Curse of Strahd for Dummies (confessions of a DM new to the idea of 'sandbox' blecch!!)

OK so I get the idea, but really at a loss as to how to make it actually work!

Either no obvious options as to what to do, or way too many options as to what to do, and I'm kind of flummoxed but would like to give it a try.

A flow chart of options in each chapter would be great . . . unfortunately not in the book!

I don't have the book in front of me so apologize for incorrect info.

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OK players start out in Barovia, meet Doru and deal with vampire spawn in cellar of church and meet Ivana (?) who wants to bury her father. Possible options from this point are:
- escort her to Kreszk (abbot / mongrelmen etc)
- escort to Vallaki (big section of book, lots of choices but nothing jumping out at me seems more like a setting than an adventure??)
- meet hags and go deal with Bonegrinder section

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After this I'm totally lost! Way too many choices, and I can't have entire book prepped so the players can do whatever they want. I like the idea of the party having a choice of A-B-C etc but still want to steer them in certain directions and not offer too many choices. To start off I'd like to roughly follow level guide to sections presented early in the book.

If they decide to go to the castle right away they will be horribly devoured!

OS DM and OS players but I want to give it a shot!!

Yes it can be very daunting. There are lots of random encounters that are pretty simple to run as the party travels. Also you can premake some encounters with Strahd or other things as well, to add in. If you focus on a few areas that the players might go (depending on the party, they might be likely to take the hooks). Also the length of average game sessions might make this easier or harder. If you play for a very long time in one session it would be harder, but short sessions, with random encounters and 1 or 2 places this could be more manageable.

While its just a generalization, in most cases, experienced GM tend toward liking sandboxes (myself, I am running a FR campaign of my own making that is super sandboxy and I love it). Newer GM's can be scared by this. My suggestion, is to take it slow, focus on a few areas, and use random encounters to sorta slow the pace. Good luck and I hope this helps.

Well, I disagree w/the concept of sandbox being preferred by experienced GMs. IMO sandox makes the DM too much of a player. IMO most players don't mind having their choices reduced in number in exchange for knowing that the DM is not just making stuff up as they go along. In my experience, the longer a GM is a GM, the more apt he is to give in to the dark side and give in to the option of making stuff up as he goes rather than doing the hard prep work, all the while citing sandbox and player freedom as his excuse.

IMO CoS as written is a hot mess. But I think its really more just about the way the designers are going in 5E w/the whole sandbox thing. Not my cup of tea, I liked 3.5 w/its boxed encounter descriptions, set encounters. I always heavily mod the published adventures to give them more structure.

With CoS, I am doing that now for my upcoming campaign - I basically remake the adventure in 3.5 style, by balancing the encounters (making most of them be within a certain CR range rather than randomly distributed between CR 1/4 and CR 18 lol), giving structure to events and jettisoning the sandbox approach, adding DCs for events not given in the book, printing copies of magic items and monsters to put w/the room key. I pre-roll random encounters, and pre-design those rolled so I don't have to create something weak on the fly.

I also make "sub-games" of town encounters - in short saying "here are the x things you can do in town and y people you can speak to, you have z amount of time because of such-and-such time pressure, so you can do this many things, what do you choose to do? And I have all DCs of everything ready, we do a little roleplaying to modify DCs, and we're done. Based on the results, we then go to encounter a, b, or c, with the encounters possibly modified based on their info gathering.

The most important part of running Ravenloft (or any sandbox) is to tell the players, before the game even starts, that not all the encounters are fair or level appropriate. They have to judge the threat level and make informed decisions about what beehives to poke their appendages into and in what order.

Your job as DM is to give them the information they need to make those informed decisions and then let them choose. If they want to storm the castle at level 1 despite warnings from the townsfolk, let them. Maybe toss them a deus ex machine the first time if they are inexperienced at that sort of game, making it clear that was their ONLY freebie. But only once.

There are worse things than a TPK.

I really like Kreszk, and plan to use it. It's open ended and players can go about it any number of ways but it makes sense.

Some of the other sections go on and on, and I'm struggling with why the players would care or even bother.

It's funny, I have a hard time getting my head around just how to run the more "railroady" modules (like HotDQ) and making them work - they're ones that seem like a mess to me whereas sandboxes seem obvious. I guess it's all different strokes for different folks.

Excellent advice from DemoMonkey and Lillika above and I was going to say similar things -ie try not to limit choices but you can limit information (and without knowing about a place it is unlikely that the party will end up there).

The parties main points of information and choice will be:
1. NPCs. CoS will involve a lot more talking to NPCs than most official modules. Get to know those NPCs and what they want. If there's a place you think the PCs should go next, make it the first place the NPC mentions (and in fact the NPC notes mostly have this built in already - the NPCs are the breadcrumbs for the PCs to follow). NPCs shouldn't always be doing nothing waiting to be spoken to - this isn't a videogame - they can be active and approach the PCs first if you want.

2. Crossroads. When travelling between locations tell the PCs when they reach a crossroads and describe each choice - just like corridor junctions in a dungeon. The safe towns will be signposted, the more dangerous locations probably won't. Combine this with the next source:

3. The view. If the players reach a high point or foolishly leave the roads, describe the view, in particular landmarks (town, a vineyard, a windmill) . In some places this is described for you in the adventure. Within towns you can draw their attention to noteworthy buildings or features like a town square or a large and obviously important building (eg the burgomeister's house or a church). Use sounds just as much, and smells too - and since this is gothic horror use the description guidelines given in the module; really play up the creepiness of the more dangerous places.

That brings us back to NPCs again. You can easily decide a particular NPC is passing by acting in an interesting way or making a noise, entering or leaving a building, or they may even come and speak to the party.

shoak1's comment about sandbox making the DM more of a player is a feature not a bug. In sandbox the DM is much more reactive and the shape and narrative of the overall adventure is often constructed by the players. You can leave a lot of the adventure logistics to the players rather than working out logical options to give them, which will save you prep time. You are offering them a lego set rather than a rubix cube Let them make their own "adventures" and set their own quest goals.

Try to end each session knowing where the party will head next - encourage them to make plans (any NPCs travelling with them can asks "where next" or you just ask them as DM) and then depending on time you can end the session as they leave the current location, or on the road with a wandering encounter, or just as they arrive at their destination. This gives you time to prep.

Prep wise you can come up with any set-pieces you think will be particularly nice, decide what you need to describe and which NPCs wil be most pro-active. Try not to over-prep though - instead read around about NPC and sandbox improv techniques so that you feel confident in reacting to the players plans and decisions (again best way to do this is really get to know the NPCs and the locations).

If the party goes somewhere too tough for them make sure they know it early and give them a chance to escape. Remember that most monsters have goals other than "kill the party" and lots of them just want the PCs to leave them alone - they will fight to force them away but won't pursue. To them the PCs are just an amusing minor annoyance until they get to a level high enough to threaten them. If the players really get in trouble you can always have Strahd show up and tell the monster "not yet...". Do have a backup plan though for introducing new party members, as there is a much higher chance of death than you may be used to. Tell the players this before you start and maybe have them roll up a backup character sheet each.

I highly recommend reading about the well-known West Marches campaign : http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/
CoS is not as much of a pure sandbox as West Marches, but that account will still be a good primer and hopefully very inspirational. Sandbox play can be refreshing and very rewarding both for players and DM and the best approach is to really embrace it.

shoak1 said:

...the longer a GM is a GM, the more apt he is to give in to the dark side and give in to the option of making stuff up as he goes

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I was kinda laughing at this because what else does the DM do but make stuff up and why does it matter if you do it during the game or before but then I saw who posted ... the guy who BUILT RAVENLOFT CASTLE and how amazing would it be to play at that table? That's Masterwork DMing.

My style is a bit lazyer. Given a 2-3 hour sessions, what I do is prep a couple of things most likely to happen and make up the rest. Like, as my players will enter Barovia Town tomorrow, I'll make a little flow chart, like Weeping Lady-Tavern(Ismark&Vistani)-Witch-Burghouse(Ireena)-Church-Hangman Crossroads-Madame Eva. That's the most likely sequence of events. If they go to the Church first that's fine. But if they get through all that in one evening I'll be psyched. If they blow through town I guess I'll just roll with it, probably including some random encounters for some action.

Daern said:

Like, as my players will enter Barovia Town tomorrow, I'll make a little flow chart, like Weeping Lady-Tavern(Ismark&Vistani)-Witch-Burghouse(Ireena)-Church-Hangman Crossroads-Madame Eva. That's the most likely sequence of events. If they go to the Church first that's fine. But if they get through all that in one evening I'll be psyched.

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Well... nuts. That's exactly the same as my flowchart for MY next game, except I'm counting on it taking 5-6 hours (we only play monthly). Guess I better bring some spare bad guys to fight, just in case...

The structure of the adventure is pretty simple, and should be obvious to players:

1. Find all the things from the card reading
2. Go kill Strahd

So, the PCs will go to the locations indicated in the card reading, and then go to Castle Ravenloft. If you want to make it easy for yourself, you can fudge the card reading and only prep the places you know they'll need to go. Of course, they could always go somewhere unexpected, but that's the joy of DMing.

HawaiiSteveO said:

A flow chart of options in each chapter would be great . . . unfortunately not in the book!
...
Way too many choices, and I can't have entire book prepped so the players can do whatever they want.

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They could have made it easy, but they instead went with the tried-and-true "memorize this entire book before playing" model. If you dislike this policy, I urge you to vote with your wallet and stop buying adventures with horrible presentation design.

HawaiiSteveO said:

After this I'm totally lost! Way too many choices, and I can't have entire book prepped so the players can do whatever they want. I like the idea of the party having a choice of A-B-C etc but still want to steer them in certain directions and not offer too many choices. To start off I'd like to roughly follow level guide to sections presented early in the book.

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First, just prep the opening and village (skip Gertrude's mother, do that their next visit). Do the card reading. Then ask your players what they want to do and prep that.
Go from there. Always end the session asking the players their next move and prep accordingly. Ask them honestly not to just change their mind without messaging you first.

Don't view it as one huge sandbox where you need to learn everything, but a whole bunch of interconnected sandboxes.