D&D 5E Curse of Strahd 'Revamped' Boxed Collector's Edition

If you're in the market for a revamped (geddit?) edition of Curse of Strahd (which is my favourite of all the D&D adventures so far) in a coffin-shaped box with additional material, you're in luck!

This boxed set is coming out in October and costs $99.99.

There's a whole bunch of stuff included:

• Updated softcover of the adventure itself, including errata and presumably some of the other adjustments to Vistani talked about recently.
• A short 20-book of monsters called Creatures of Horror.
• Double sided poster map of Barovia and Castle Ravenloft.
• A Tarokka deck and 8-page booklet.
• Handouts for players.
• A dozen 'postcards' from Barovia.
• A DMs Screen.

Updates to the original adventure include errata, minor tweaks, and sections of text which have been identified as problematic regarding the Vistani.

IGN has a video looking inside the box.

 

[Burnside]

Because they've done a ton of them en masse in Tales from the Yawning Portal, three more of them in Ghosts of Saltmarsh and then have licensed an unknown quantity of them to Goodman Games, which is republishing them as part of their Original Adventures Reincarnated line.

Between all of those, there really aren't a ton of great classic adventures still sitting on the shelf. We're getting Castle Amber and Temple of Elemental Evil from Goodman Games in the next year, and I would bet big money on Palace of the Silver Princess at some point.

I think it's pretty likely we'll see Desert of Desolation get the Ghosts of Saltmarsh treatment some time in the next few years. I suspect the Slavers series is being considered for the same, although with the ethnic stereotypes of some of the slave lords either replaced or modernized.

Given all the stuff with Gail Gygax, I don't think we're likely to see anything that touches on Castle Greyhawk too closely, which would rule out even Dungeonland and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror.

Dragonlance, for whatever reason, is something WotC wants to leave on the shelf, after clearly having thought about doing something with it during the 5E playtesting phase, when kender were a halfling subrace.

Once you've gone through that big whack of content, what's left that has a really big mass audience? The 2E stuff famously had a deeply fragmented audience, meaning even the most popular Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Ravenloft or Planescape stuff has a much smaller installed base of nostalgic fans than the 1E stuff does. (And that's to say nothing of Spelljammer, Maztika, Al-Qadim -- which I loved, for the record -- Jakandor or the historical booklets.)

Also, with the pandemic currently looking like it's going to be lasting quite a while, especially here in the US, republishing their most popular and most critically successful campaign requires a lot less work than making something from scratch (note that all of this content is previously existing, and just repackaged and enhanced) and is likely to be a big hit with all the new and semi-new players at home this October, just in time for a second wave of COVID-19 keeping people indoors.

If you can't go trick or treating in your neighborhood this year, why not go knock on the door of Castle Ravenloft?

The pandemic is actually the main thing preventing me from buying this, not ENCOURAGING me to buy it, since it looks like I won’t be regularly running in-person games anytime soon.

I actually just started DMing CoS for the second time and would definitely get this except that I expect the entirety of the campaign will by necessity be on Roll20.

 

[ProfessorDetective]

As long as anything new gets added/subbed in on DDB, I'm fine with this. And I got my hard copy of CoS back in 2015. Other than the map being pulled out, it's near-mint... I wish I could find a local buyer for my books. Going as-digital-as-possible doesn't mean I want to chuck these out...

 

[Parmandur]

I dont know why I was thinking Rise of the Frost Maiden was the Nov release but its Sept. Probably because Theros was pushed to July.

September release announced in June, October release announced in July...Perkins admits the book exists here, but we should hear details within a month.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So if Goodman Games wants to handle the classic modules, I got no probs with that. Boy would I love City of The Spider-Queen and Vault of The Drow done by Goodman Games.

WotC putting Against the Giants into Tales from the Yawning Portal could complicate that. Or, who knows, maybe Goodman will just write an introduction that says "so, you can start them at a secret entrance inside a fire giant's hall, or any old damn place."

 

[CubicsRube]

I think it’s vich (rhymes with witch). It follows the convention of Slavic patronymics... Except his dad’s name isn’t Zar. Though Zar is cognate with Tzar, so maybe it means son of the king? That would make a little more sense as a surname, but it would also be kind of redundant with the Von prefix... Which is Germanic, not Slavic... It’s just a mess, along with most of the pseudo-eastern-European names in the adventure.

I’ve driven myself crazy trying to “fix” the names in CoS, and really it’s a whole lot of work for next to no meaningful payoff. But, I’m both pedantic and stubborn, so damnit, I’m doing it.

Rename him to Baron Von McBarovsson de la Casas

 

[Charlaquin]

Rename him to Baron Von McBarovsson de la Casas

Ahh, yes, Lord Lord, son of son of Barov of the houses. It fits perfectly!

 

[CubicsRube]

Ahh, yes, Lord Lord, son of son of Barov of the houses. It fits perfectly!

It's a name full of comic level evilness.

 

[ccs]

Hard pass here.
I've already got the original 5e CoS. I've already got a Taroka deck. I've already got maps (5e & earlier).
Stupid odd shaped box....
No need to spend $100 to duplicate what I've already got. Not even if it is the now-more-politically-correct version.

And even if this was the best Ravenloft product ever?? It'll arrive too late. By the time it hits the shelf we'll already be playing in Barovia in my Thur game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not even if it is the now-politically-correct version.

The few changes they actually made still leave the Vistani far from “politically correct.”

 

[ccs]

The few changes they actually made still leave the Vistani far from “politically correct.”

Whatever.
More over it'd just be a waste of my $ as I've already got the adventure, maps, & cards. And it's ridiculously over priced in a gimmick box (that's it's true crime).