D&D 5E Curse of Strahd help

[Wepwawet]

Guys, how is the Abbot supposed to react to Ireena?

He has this exquisite golem bride made for Strahd, but Ireena the one he really wants. And the Abbot does't want to anger Strahd or go against him...
I don't know how to handle it, what do you think?


@pukunui, I love that idea of having Strahd get on with a PC and turn him, while the others watch, I have to include that in my game sometime

 

[Wepwawet]

Just wanted to say that last night my group saw the Abbot and he was very candid with them and suggested replacing Vasilka's face with Ireena's, to protect her. Because he can.

Obviously the players declined, but I was very proud of myself for coming up with that in the moment.

They were also very creeped out by all the mongrelfolk and the Abbot's tranquility. It was brilliant

 

[Holly]

Hey everbody,

first of all I'd like to thank everyone contributing to this thread as it helped me and my players a great deal over the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so till the end of our campaign.

We are all very new to the game as I never could gather some players together who had the time or enjoyed it enough to actually make the time, thus all groups scattered after a couple of sessions. This time its different though and after starting with level 2 and doing a couple of random self made quests we were eager to try something bigger and I bought the book for Curse of Strahd.

I'd like to share our story so far, more for the sake of finally being able to share it with someone as I can't talk with my players as to not spoil anything.

Starting with level 4 the group consists of:
a tiefling monk, a half-elf ranger, a half-elf druid (who are half-brothers ingame) and a human paladin.
For the first session our ranger couldn't make it, so he was left out only to find their tracks later on.
The other 3 get a letter from Arrigal and make out for Barovia.

On their way they get ambushed by 2 Berserker's who flee as soon as they realize they're attacking one of “the holy ones” (Druid). Otherwise nothing to eventful happen till they come to the village although they do find the real messenger send by the burgomaster.
In Barovia they start by heading into the tavern and meet Ismark aswell as the Vistani. They help Ismark and Ireena to bury their father and get creeped out by Doru. While the father is gone preparing the funeral and buying stuff they let Doru escape by accident but manage to kill him. They spend some more time in the town and meet Morgantha and buy out the children she took and are puzzled about everyone beeing in such a bad and sorrow mood.
They also meet the mad Mary and promise to find Gertrude.
The ranger (whos actually going to be a Doppelganger as I told the player beforehand) catches up with them (yeah pretty lame solution, but we want to play together instead of foiling around seperated).
During the night of the corpsewatch Strahd pays them a visit and ask for entry at the church which is denied. He challenges them to come out to talk which they do. He's there with a couple of wolves.
He asks for Ireena and the group deceides that she should choose whether she wants to come with him, she actually does charmed by him but Ismark stops her which leads to the attack. Strahd quickly bites the paladin but leaves thereafter while the party fight the wolves.

Day 3:
Next morning they bury the burgomaster and leave town with Ireena trying to get her to Valaki.
They get their card reading, I probably made the mistake and added some more for minor magic items and overwhelmed them with to much information and riddles.

Day 4
They head out for Vallaki only to stop by the windmill. After finding the children a fight burst outs and the group get their ass kicked. They surrender and make a pact with the hags.
The monk has her thumbnails removed. The paladin got some skin scratched out of her bottom. The druid had to left a lot of his hair and the ranger had to bring the hags a little white puppy, an old cat and a chicken. They only have 3 days time for this task!
On their run to Vallaki they end up encountering a will-o-wisp which actually kills the ranger, only for the group to find out that it's been a Doppelganger.
The rest makes it into Vallaki during the night just by smoothtalking the guards. They end up in the bluewater Inn only to find their ranger-buddy waiting for them (this time the real one). Unfortunately no one of the others is playing remotely suspicious..

Day 5
A lot of info in Vallaki..they did quite a lot this day.. and I will leave quite some out in between, to not make it to long:
They get the animals the ranger/doppelganger needed for his pact with the hags, just in case they do something with the other people body parts if its not fullfilled despite the doppelganger being dead.
They find out about the problem of the wine delivery and get asked for help.
They find about the burgomaster, Izek who's the tieflings brother as both found out, old Lady Watcher, collect the animals.. The Druid and Ranger make a pact with Lady Watcher to kill Izek in exchange for the chicken.
They meet Blinksy and find out about Rictavio.
In the church they find about the stolen bones but no one ever speakes to the gravedigger, actually they somehow suspect Lady Wachter has them, probably because one of their card readings (for the extra magical items) was the one about old Watcher and the bones of Strahd enemies. They also leave Ireena here believing herself to be save.
After finding out that Rictavio is the man with the monkey and thus their ally the have a long talk with him, he interprets most of their cards.
They get interrupted by Izek who came with guards to take his sister to bring her somewhere safe. A fight starts and Rictavio throws the key for his wagon to the ranger and tells him to open it up and run which he does releasing the tiger.
This ends up beeing enough of a distraction so the group can flee into the church to hide while the guards try to catch the animal. Rictavio tells them to meet him in some days at his tower.

This night the group stays in the church and escape the city in the morning by making a distraction fire. They're on their way to windmill to give the hags the animals. The puppy they bought from a shop, the chicken as said by promising Wachter to kill Izek and the cat is actually a skeleton one from the burgomasters boy (which they tried to speak to but who was to scared and run away invisible).
The session ended with them beeing close to the windmill as the door opens and Strahd came out smiling at them.

We're going to continue in just about 2 hours after a break of 5 weeks!
Their plan was to finish their deal with the hags followed by paying a visit to the winery but I'm not sure how far they're going to get as the festival of the blazing sun is going to start pretty much when they come back to Vallaki...
Strahd is just going to try to talk some sense into them, inviting them for dinner but probably getting angry at their impolitness of refusing him.
I doubt they're going to try to take on the hags just yet again but will wait to become stronger.

I haven't planned to far ahead as they're going to mess with any plans I make anyway, but the druid is actually the nephew of Kasimir while the paladin is a decendant of Argynvost.

This ended up quite a bit longer than I expected while still leaving out so much.. anyway if anybody got some good ideas I could incorporate just tell me, in any case thanks for reading

 

[Wepwawet]

The ranger (whos actually going to be a Doppelganger as I told the player beforehand) catches up with them (yeah pretty lame solution, but we want to play together instead of foiling around seperated).

Lame? Not at all. If a player can't come to a session his character is away doing something that you handwave out of the game with that player.
In the beginning of this adventure I used to carry the missing PC as my NPC, but it quickly gets too much to keep track of, nowadays only the players that are present play.
Which sometimes works great to feed extra info to the party through the missing character. Like, while he was doing whatever he witnessed something important.
That's actually how I played the meeting of my half dusk elf with Kasimir. While the other characters went ahead towards Krezk, this one saw an elf that looked like her father and followed him. We did the whole dialogue in our facebook group.

You seem to be having everything under control there
The best way to make a published campaign work is to make it your own and change whatever you think needs changing, and you seem to be doing great at it!

Oh, Welcome to ENWorld!

 

[hastur_nz]

Sounds great, I would say just try and keep the ideas from spiraling under control, i.e. There are heaps of potential plot threads all over the adventure, try and let the players focus on their main ones of interest, and dont throw more and more at them until,they are ready. Especially newer players, let them enjoy and play out their main plot thread(s) before over complicating things too much. For example they should return to Vallaki multiple times, dont try and throw everything at them all the first time or two they are there. Be prepared to leave a lot of the adventure unused.

 

[evilbob]

Guys, how is the Abbot supposed to react to Ireena?

Probably indifference. The Abbot has a plan that he KNOWS will work (in his insane mind). He probably won't be bothered with Ireena, as he probably doesn't know how important she is to Strahd, and even if he does he'd likely think she'll just get killed anyway, like all the others. My Abbot politely requested to one of the party members that he be able to use her spare body parts once she's dead (in order to improve the golem) - he could do the same with Ireena.

EDIT: I think maybe what I'll do is have the three PCs Strahd has captured tied up in chairs facing the bed in the bedroom. As they regain consciousness, they'll see Strahd getting busy with the PC he took away before, and just at the climactic moment, he sucks her dry, looking at his captive audience as he does so.

Clearly from the rest of this thread this has already happened and your players went along with it, but I would strongly advise anyone else reading this against putting a rape scene in any role playing game, D&D or otherwise. This goes doubly for captive PCs who can't opt out or stop it, and triply for a former player character(!). Obviously some groups will be fine with it and you'd have to know your table and be your own judge and what not, but my advice is: as a rule of thumb do not ever do this.

 

[pukunui]

Clearly from the rest of this thread this has already happened and your players went along with it, but I would strongly advise anyone else reading this against putting a rape scene in any role playing game, D&D or otherwise. This goes doubly for captive PCs who can't opt out or stop it, and triply for a former player character(!). Obviously some groups will be fine with it and you'd have to know your table and be your own judge and what not, but my advice is: as a rule of thumb do not ever do this.

In retrospect, I can see how that was not the best idea. Luckily, my players went along with it pretty well. I toyed with doing it that way or just having Strahd bite her in front of them without the sex ...

I was thinking about what Strahd could do that would torment the ex-PC's brother in the worst way. Watching Strahd get it on with his charmed sister before drinking her blood seemed like a good idea at the time. I was channeling some of the scenes from Bram Stoker's Dracula ...

The brother is a policeman, and he's got the blood spear, so I've been putting a lot of effort into trying to have Barovia and its denizens corrupt him and bring out his inner rage and bloodlust. Morgantha's been haunting him at night, giving him dreams in which he is a corrupt cop, and Strahd's been making him feel helpless ... he also died once but the Dark Powers resurrected him with the no mouth / telepathy thing (from the AL options).

Sadly, his player is out of town for the next few months, so he'll be missing out on the end of the campaign.

 

[hastur_nz]

Well, I had a necrophillia scene to kick off the final battle in my campaign... I didn't play the act out, just described what the PC's saw (Strahd rises from where he was, on top of the naked corpse of Irena; some PC's especially the female ones can't help but notice his 'member'...) I wasn't overly descriptive, not even that descriptive (I happened to have a banana with me at the time to use as a prop) but the hints were pretty obvious. I played it up because I knew my audience pretty well, and it made sense given Strahd had been left with the dead Irena a couple of sessions earler. I also did similar to a player's dead PC earlier, except that was a note I'd written his PC, which hinted at the fact that Strahd had 'given him one' before giving him to Rahadin to bury outside... (he later came back as a Revenant, somewhat sore and thirsting for revenge).

That's the 'moral' of the story... you need to be aware of your audience if you're going to do stuff like that. In my game, we are all middle-age men (+ one woman for CoS), who all like a bit of banter and can handle any kind of theme that comes from DM or player.

 

[pukunui]

I didn't get particularly descriptive either.

In other news, I'm down to two players. We've still got four characters, though, so they're each going to play two. Hopefully we'll still be able to bring this campaign to a satisfying conclusion. (I reckon it's not worth trying to recruit a new player this late in the game; I'll wait until we start a new campaign.)

Right now the PCs are hiding out with the dusk elves (whom they befriended the session before last when they gave Rahadin's head to Kasimir as a gift). Last session they explored the catacombs a bit, and they got Tasha Petrovna's holy symbol (and her messagE), so they might head back out to Krezk to retrieve her treasure. They still haven't figured out how to get the dragon's skull out of the castle, though, so they haven't been able to recruit their ally, Sir Godfrey. They were also unable to get to the ex-PC's body (they figured they had plenty of time, so they went exploring the catacombs, only to get so badly beaten up that they decided to leave the castle and head back to Vallaki), so they'll be meeting her again as a vampire spawn.