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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8284400" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I don't know if it's crappy design or not for the Curse of Strahd adventure to put some things into the GM's hands. Certainly if the GM were designing their own scenario that's whose hands such decisions would be in, so it seems reasonable. To make the resources at Strahd's disposal a bit vague and effectively limitless is likely in line with how many folks would GM in modern iterations of the game, particularly 5E. There are exceptions, I'm sure, but I doubt that most folks would design scenarios with ideas like "Strahd has 30 wolves at his command, 50 vistani, 5 vampire spawn, and 20 zombies" or some such. I'm not saying that you cannot do so in a more specific scenario. But the one in Curse of Strahd is that the PCs are intruders into a land that is dominated by the vampire, and his resources are vast, and only so much can be done for players to strengthen their situation (primarily through finding specific items that can aid them in fighting Strahd). The scenario is very much about "what do you do to face a superior foe?" which is why I think it works as designed. There would be other scenarios that are perhaps superficially similar (PCs are infiltrating a castle to fight a local tyrant) where the overwhelming odds are not really meant to be as much of a factor....where the tyrant in questions isn't a supernatural being who is one with the very land itself, but is just a mortal tyrant.....and in that kind of scenario, it absolutely may make sense to say "The Baron has 20 men at arms at his disposal, plus the high preist and 4 clerics from the church of Hextor" or some such. It all depends on what the scenario calls for. Which is perhaps a bit different than what the last couple of pages have meant by "story" but there's clearly some overlap. I mean, if I didn't want to be curating the story to at least some extent, I think 5E would be a pretty uninformed choice of game since it's very geared toward that. Most of the conflict in this thread kind of stems from that fact....5E is very much a GM driven game by default, however loudly people claim otherwise.</blockquote>

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