Curse of Strahd "Edits"

[Sir_Lancian]

Another great source for narrative purposes if you want to showcase this cycle of corruption and despair is the Abbot in the monastery. He is a fallen angel and is described as being driven mad by the powers of Barovia. In my game I had his motive for betraying the party and for making the corpse bride be related. He was convinced in his madness that the only way to truly save the souls of those trapped in barovia is to ha e Strahd win, and to do that he must accomplish the one thing he is fated to fail over and over again with: ending up with Ireena. The powers are his jailers and Strahd is a prisoner. Even if you don't like the fate angle for Strhad to fail with Ireena, the Abbot can still be a great source to help showcase the futility of pointlessness of killing Strahd: the players may succeed (I even had the Abbot say that he *did* succeed at killing him once, though the players weren't sure if he was just mad or not), and may even escape, but Barovia and Strahd will always be out there...lurking.

That's EXACTLY how I ran it.

I made the Exethanter (Ch. 13, X27) the architect (Ch. 13, X20), and Khazan (Ch 11) the same person and changed the background a bit. Not only does it make more sense this way that the architects room is in the Amber temple, but it also give more opportunities to get hints about the Lich and his background. In particular it gives opportunities for the party to learn his name and perhaps use it to get by the arcane lock to his phylactery.

Almost exactly what I did. Khazan is a major player in my campaign too. His background is that he rebelled against Strahd once he discovered his master's true nature by reading, the Book of Strahd. He then raised a militia and stormed the castle. Effectively, he became the Mad Mage, then stole the book and the sword, left them hidden for other heroes to find and a series of clues so that he can be tracked down to the Amber Temple. Every time my PCs discover some reference to him in the tales told and in clues, they become very excited stating, "We've really gotta find this guy, he can help us."

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Another suggestion that may or not be useful. The early episodes of Dice, Camera, Action have the party starting out in Curse of Strahd. For those not familiar, it is DM'd by Chris Perkins, one of the designers for Wizards. He chose to make a few tweaks fo the book himself to help integrate the players of said game into Barovia and it is a decent place to look for inspiration. One idea that may or may not be relevant to you that he implemented that I found good was changing the obsession with Izek Strazni over Ireena to a player character instead. It works best with a tiefling player character, but any human player, or even possibly an aasimaar (especially if it is a female character as it's supposed to feel like a stalker-vibe). The connection between him and Ireena feels forced at best and the players finding a bunch of dolls in his collection is far creepier if they are dolls of a player character.

One of her change I chose to do? I made the Burgomaster of Valaki have his madness having been caused by his son, whom is a mage. The son has already cannonly broken the mind of Fiona Wachter's daughter already (which humanized her a bit in my game, even if she was ultimately a villain) so it isnt too much a stretch to claim he could've driven his father mad with a failed magical spell when angry at him. I basically chose to make the son of the burgomaster an irredeemable sadistic and angsty monster, and it really worked as a breaking point for the burgomaster to have been forced to hang his own child and have fiona try to pull a coup during said son's funeral.

...it should be noted though that a lot of the fluidity of CoS also hinges on who the "fated companion" is for the party. My party drew Ismark.

 

[Aiden_Keller_]

Has anyone thought of taking the 2nd edition of Ravenloft, which puts Barovia within a larger world, into the modern Strand?

 

[Draegn]

I changed Strahd's gender and played her as Miriam Blaylock from The Hunger by Whitley Strieber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_(Strieber_novel)

Miriam is afraid of loneliness and surrounds herself with intellectuals, poets, musicians, philosophers, or those who can provide her with excitement. My players were surprised as they were expecting a Bela Lugosi's Dead plot.