Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8287307" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Yeah, the book offers several important elements that are meant to be decided randomly by a card draw. In my opinion, it's actually quite a bit to track to leave it up to a random process determined during play. The card reading is meant to be an in game/in fiction event with Madame Eva, one of the head Vistani characters, performing a card reading for the PCs.I actually crafted some goals into the scenario that were specific to my group based on our campaign. So I made some choices that suited those elements. Most significantly I kind of tweaked the role of Ireena Kolyana, the damsel in distress of the adventure, to have specific connections to our PCs, and so her fate was incredibly important to them.Yes, this I didn't mind because I actually wanted it to be the case. Because I was incorporating CoS into a larger campaign, the PCs were already established and had means at their disposal, and I wanted to bring them to a place where that was not the case. They were not randomly taken by the mists and transported to Barovia as the book suggests, but rather chose to go there through the Shadowfell (the book connects the demiplanes of dread with the plane of shadow, for which I like the 4E terminology and take). I think that this idea of being a stranger works well in certain cases, and I think that horror can be on such case. The characters are going into the unknown and are on their own....that works for the genre.Yes, this was something made very clear in the book. It doesn't necessarily have to work out that way.....you could conceivably encounter Strahd in any number of places, and defeat him. But given his nature, it will be incredibly difficult to actually destroy him unless you do so at his coffin. The book offers a place within the castle where he can always be encountered. It doesn't overtly state this to the players, but is instead through the form of the card reading. Something like "You'll find him among those who are lost to him" meaning when the PCs go to the family crypts, he will ALWAYS be there. I went with it, but had no intention of having him be there if they went there more than once. They only went into the crypts once, so it wasn't an issue in that regard.Yeah, there are several NPCs that the PCs can befriend. The card reading gives one of them an ability to boost the PCs a bit during a confrontation with Strahd (I forget the exact nature, something like the ally can grant Inspiration once per round or something similar). I didn't bother with that, but instead chose a specific character whose knowledge would greatly assist the PCs. I used that character to share a lot of the backstory of Strahd.Definitely! I used these very much as described in the book. The Sunsword and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind both give the PCs significant advantages against vampires, and so they were a big part of the game. The PCs only felt comfortable going to the Castle to confront Strahd once they had these (they encountered him outside the Castle early on, and he smacked the crap out of them and toyed with them).Yeah, I actually quite like the adventure. I think it's among the best of 5E, if not the best (Lost Mines of Phandelver is very good, too). It does have a central premise, and the nature of things kind of locks the PCs into that premise....so there does need to be some buy in on the players' part. But it otherwise presents a sandbox type area where the PCs are free to roam to try and do everything they need to in order to be ready for the showdown with Strahd. In the book as written, only killing the vampire will let them escape from Barovia. So it's a heavily curated experience. Again, something I think is baked in to the 5E approach to gaming.</blockquote>

Verification