D&D 5E Curse of Strahd: alternative exits?

[hastur_nz]

While i like a lot of suggestions here, i cant help but wonder how suitable CoS is for introducing newbies to D&D. I guess ive always thought its a great adventure for old timers to give them a change of pace. Adding personal quests for each PC, I know you want that to help them stick together, but unless you know your players well (from experience) i really do wonder if you risk turning their focus to themselves not each other. A single shared objective is always the best and easiest way to make sure players mostly cooperate, and new players sure can benefit from being encouraged to cooperate from the get go. CoS is quite a lot of work to run even if you dont change too much, its comolicated for dm and players, and has so many ways for inexperienced players to get themselves killed. i guess i just fear that by changing so much, with new players, you might do too much prep work that never sees the light of day (so to speak).
Last thng, you say you have timid players... Again is CoS really what they will enjoy, or are you forcing something on them because you want different players? I dont know, but i think its a valid question. You want new players to have fun. When I ran CoS we had fun because it suited our collective tastes for bad taste, and failure was something my players were totally up for as an option. I could be wrong, but most new players probably just want to win, then they will come back for more and complexity can gradually unfold.

 

[77IM]

I would dispense with the mists and the demiplane altogether. Just make Barovia a secluded backwater barony; it has few notable exports (their wine business seems to have dried up a few years back) so no-one ever goes there except the occasional desperate trader and, of course, the Vistani. The ruling noble family is a bunch of inbred recluses with no meaningful diplomatic relations, and the Barovian people are strange and depressed, rarely venturing outside their mountain valley.

Then, each character needs a motivation for going there:

1. You wish to do the most good, and a mystic oracle (who?) has told you to go to Barovia.
2. You seek wealth and treasure, and you have heard legends of a fabulous treasure (what?) in Barovia.
3. Your friend or family member (who?) has gone missing, and you've tracked them to Barovia.
4. You are searching for a powerful ancient artifact (what?) and your research indicates that it is in Barovia.
5. You are a loyal servant (of who?) and they have ordered you to see to their interests in Barovia.
6. You just want to kill monsters, and you've heard that there are a lot of really bad monsters in Barovia.

The DM can arrange for something near the end of the adventure to fulfill all these requirements. For example, maybe they have to kill Baba Lysaga in order to rescue the family member and gain the artifact, and then they must light the Beacon of Argynvolsholt in order to do the most good, see to the interests in Barovia, and gain the fabulous treasure. At that point, there should have been plenty of time for Strahd to harass the party and build up enmity, giving them reason to take him out -- or maybe they're sick of him and want to just leave Barovia to its own devices.

 

[SwivSnapshot]

While i like a lot of suggestions here, i cant help but wonder how suitable CoS is for introducing newbies to D&D. I guess ive always thought its a great adventure for old timers to give them a change of pace. Adding personal quests for each PC, I know you want that to help them stick together, but unless you know your players well (from experience) i really do wonder if you risk turning their focus to themselves not each other. A single shared objective is always the best and easiest way to make sure players mostly cooperate, and new players sure can benefit from being encouraged to cooperate from the get go. CoS is quite a lot of work to run even if you dont change too much, its comolicated for dm and players, and has so many ways for inexperienced players to get themselves killed. i guess i just fear that by changing so much, with new players, you might do too much prep work that never sees the light of day (so to speak).
Last thng, you say you have timid players... Again is CoS really what they will enjoy, or are you forcing something on them because you want different players? I dont know, but i think its a valid question. You want new players to have fun. When I ran CoS we had fun because it suited our collective tastes for bad taste, and failure was something my players were totally up for as an option. I could be wrong, but most new players probably just want to win, then they will come back for more and complexity can gradually unfold.

I just ended my COS game a few weeks ago, and while it's too soon to judge, I don't think I would be inclined to run it for a group of veteran players, or at least ones who had played previous versions of Ravenloft. They have too many expectations about what it should be based on what it used to be and that disrupts the game.

I would definitely run it for a group of players just coming into RPG's or with a few years experience.

 

[hastur_nz]

I just ended my COS game a few weeks ago, and while it's too soon to judge, I don't think I would be inclined to run it for a group of veteran players, or at least ones who had played previous versions of Ravenloft. They have too many expectations about what it should be based on what it used to be and that disrupts the game.

I would definitely run it for a group of players just coming into RPG's or with a few years experience.

YMMV. It's actually pretty hard to run a good published adventure for 5e, with old-timer hard core gamers, and find one that NONE of your players have actually read and/or played and/or DM'd before. Unless you want to convert something obscure, or run something 'fringe' which is usually lame, or make it all up yourself.

Personally I DM'd CoS for a group of old-timers: one had run the original AD&D game (where loads of his PC's died), one had DM'd me and another player through the 3.5 version of it (which was more combat-heavy), and one player had reviewed the 5e version all as an apha tester. We all enjoyed it. Mostly, the only expectations the players brought in, was that they might well all die before the end. Some did, some didn't. It was a fun campaign, shorter than our usual ones, a good change of pace and because it's quite heavy on 'plot', our group got a lot out of that aspect.

There's a lot of random plot, any every person who runs it will run a very different game, based on the cards drawn, the players, and the DM's changes made as they all go along. Disruptive players are a breed of their own - D&D seems to get more than it should, but in my experience people are usually disruptive or not for reasons of their own, not anything to do with any knowledge or expectations they might have about an adventure, campaign, setting, etc.

By way of another example, I'm currently DMing in the Forgotten Realms, which most of my players know WAY better than me, in fact I've always deliberately avoided the setting. But people come to my games expecting to work together and have fun, so we all work with what knowledge we have and bring to the table, but we use it pro-actively and ultimately I'm the DM so whatever the players think they know, may or may not be totally applicable in the setting and campaign as I see it, and everyone accepts and runs with that, because we all know that I'm the only one who truly sees and manages the "future plot threads", even if, in this campaign too, one of my players has indeed also reviewed (as an apha tester) the adventure book I'm using.

Anyway, I have no idea how CoS might run for a group new to D&D. I'm just speculating, that to me, it's a gamble unless you know your players are going to be into the kind of flavour that the campaign has. IMO, it runs best when you have a "mature" set of players and DM, who can all get into the themes which are not the "heroic, good vs evil" or "murder hobo" tropes.

 

[CapnZapp]

Thanks all

 

[Wepwawet]

In my game I got them all in Barovia because Strahd/the Dark Powers willed it. Like the book says.

But when they met Madame Eva she did a card reading for each of them, as a way of divining who these strangers were. This reading showed that each one had a connection to this land:

• Human Monk: He's a Vistana. His tribe was decimated by zombies (that's the tribe van Richten attacked)
• Drow Bard: Her family have been involved with a dangerous dark entity. That entity is here, calling for her (it's the Vampyr vestige in the Amber Temple, I'll try to tempt her to become a vampire)
• Half-orc Fighter: He has family here, a very bad man. He'll find him when he sees wolf heads on spikes (that's Izek)
• Half-elf Druid: You will find the answers you seek here (this was vague cause i wasn't sure what to say. But those answers are planar travel, which they will be able to perform once Strahd is killed; from the mists they will be able to reach anywhere in the multiverse... sort of)

After reading the players she does the official reading to tell them where the items are.

Later I had another player join in, she played a Half-elf Assassin. She's the child of a Dusk Elf and has been imprisoned in the Ravenloft catacombs all her life. After she managed to escape she finds the other PCs. She met Kasimir who told her about the Dusk elves and now seeks revenge.

It's a brilliant campaign, there's so many stories going on that you can use to hook your players in.

Edit: This campaign is fine for new players. In fact I find it even better because they don't play with the D&D hack'n'slash and rules mastery baggage that most veteran players carry. It's refreshing to see them engage with honest fear and wonder

 

[Elderbrain]

There were at least two "canonical" ways of escaping Ravenloft (the plane, not just Strahd's personal realm) in 2e. The two I recall involved magical items, one of which was an Artifact. One was Trimia's Book of Outer Planar Artifacts, a book which could take you to different Outer Planes (for a cost). I believe it had a 50% chance of failing if used in Ravenloft, but I don't have the text in front of me. The other was a unique Artifact called the Apparatus (careful, there's another one by the same name) which was created by a Night Hag who wanted to leave Ravenloft. It required the sacrifice of a great many souls to operate, and had a change of failure - I seem to recall it was based on the number of souls "fed" to the machine; the more souls, the better the change of successful escape. Both of these items are in the Encyclopedia Magica collection of 2e items. If you don't have these, you could invent something else along the same lines, or perhaps posit a unique spell or ritual that would do the trick. It depends on how much you want to preserve the feel of the original setting - in a "canonical" version, getting out should NOT be easy, no matter the method, and should come at a cost.

 

[Elderbrain]

(Correction: That would be Trimia's CATALOG of Outer Planar Artifacts... not "Book".)

 

[BenHomer]

The Curse of Strahd should be all about restoring hope.
You could even make it so the artifacts aren't even rewarded to the players without a great feat of hope

>Argynvostholt for the Sword
>The Winery for the Tome
>Sergei and Tatyana for the Holy Symbol

If they fail to gather these their quest becomes nearly bound to failure.

 

[Quartz]

Or you can just forget the mists? This is just a regular place ruled over by a vampire. The people generally don't leave because most people don't seek opportunity elsewhere (that's a pretty modern thing). The PCs can leave any time they want, but with the knowledge that they've left the poor locals to their fate if they don't deal with Strahd.

I like this. Change the names, though so they don't twig so quickly. Indeed, there was a Dungeon magazine adventure with a group of vampires. You could substitute them for Strahd. Or have them realise Strahd is a vampire only after they've dealt with the others. I've had a quick look at the index of Dungeon magazines but can't spot it.