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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scorpienne" data-source="post: 6805483" data-attributes="member: 39774">D&D Podcast - Talking Curse of Strahd With Chris Perkins and Tracy HickmanGaming minds collide when Chris Perkins and Tracy Hickman talk about the return to Ravenloft in D&D's latest adventure, Curse of Strahd. <a href="http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/chris-perkins-and-tracy-hickman-curse-strahd" target="_blank">http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/chris-perkins-and-tracy-hickman-curse-strahd</a>Here are some quotes and my interpretations therof. You're encouraged to listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.CP "The time just felt right to go out beyond the forgotten realms and explore some of the other places where D&D can happen."Apparently Barovia is "beyond" the forgotten realms, as in, not IN the forgotten realms...TH "It is very much the Ravenloft that Laura and I envisioned and it expands beautifully on the Ravenloft Laura and I envisoned."Expands beautifully = this isn't just a remake. It's more than what the original was.TH "For me it's very important that Ravenloft potray that the monster as a monster and that Ravenloft remains a cautionary tale. And, yes, Strahd Von Zharovich *never* sparkles. ... And, in fact, eats anyone who sparkles for breakfast."TH points out that a lot of the current vampire mythology is similiar to the arguments an abused woman might make to stay. "It's not the monster's fault. It's okay to be a monster. If you love the monster enough he will change."  Apparently Strahd doesn't cotton to the newfangled ideas of vampires.  (Editorial note, this is 100% fine by me!)CP: "In Ravenloft, everything orbits around Strahd."They point out in a lot of D&D, the *location* is the focus of the mod. (Keep on the Borderlands anyone? Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain? Ghost Tower of Inverness?)  That's different in Ravenloft.CP: "When we sat down with Tracy and talked about how we can take the original story and just kinda build it outward we made sure that if we ever introduced a new character to the story, their whole reason for being in the story ties back to Strahd. ... We wouldn't put any character in Curse of Strahd who's life hadn't basically been torn apart by Strahd."Super juicy stuff here! That implies that there's significant expansion on the story of Strahd with more characters and a much more expanded story... and by that I do mean STORY. It sounds like they're making sure the narrative is strong and compelling - which is only good news for us.CP: "The original Ravenloft adventure was 32 pages and concentrated around Castle Ravenloft, but in Curse of Strahd we have a much larger area to explore. We've absorbed the essence of the original adventure and preserved that as much as possible. All we're doing is showing you more damage that Strahd has caused. We're pushing the mists out a bit and showing more of the people who have been victimized by or abandoned by this man."CP: "We wanted to take the opportunity to introduce some new places."  Paraphrased - apparently they talked to Tracy Hickman and went over some ideas and gothic horror tropes or ideas that he would put into the original work if he'd had the space. "Tracy talked about this abbey and this abbot figure and we talked about a windmill."TH: "That was one of my favorite times while I was at Wizards of the Coast with the team. Sitting back and exploring outward and finding these new tales that needed to be told and these new characters and settings that needed to be told. All of which, for me at least, felt like they had always been there, but now which we can examine and explore."More indication that this is a substantially larger and more expanded effort than the original work with a much broader story and cast. So yeah, we're paying $50 for it, and this seems like we're going to be getting our money's worth.CP: "When you're dealing with Strahd, it's not a straight-up fight, like in the classical D&D sense. You're not just confronting him once and putting him down. Strahd is very canny, and you're on his turf. He uses these hit and run tactics to wear you down and he looks for any chance possible to turn you one against another or trap you in a part of the dungeon where you can't escape very easily. You feel like he and the castle are allies against you. You end up hating the castle as much as you hate the vampire, and I think that's a testament to it's design. We certainly wanted to preserve that."Yeah, I can't calculate how many characters have died in that $@#$&! castle. Sounds like it's still going to be collecting scalps!CP: "In the original Ravenloft, you didn't know where you had to go to fight Strahd - the cards told you. You didn't know where to find the Sun Sword and the Holy Icon of Ravenkind and the Tome of Strahd - the cards told you. And that's an element we preserved in Curse of Strahd as well. For those who don't know, we've partnered with a company called Gale Force 9 to deliver Tarokka decks. We've got the art for the Tarokka deck cards in the Curse of Strahd product."Apparently it's prounounced tar-RAKKA.The art in the GF9 decks is in the CoS book. That ties them together very strongly.TH's idea was to do them as wood carvings so they'd be period-appropriate in Barovia. He's very pleased with how they came out.The cards point the PCs to areas all around Barovia outside the castle.The twitter art is 1 of the 54 cards. TH "I think Chris (Perkins) and everybody was able to capture that (essential nature of Strahd) throughout the text. I couldn't be more pleased with it. My wife couldn't be more pleased with it."TH "Laura and I both strongly and enthusiastically endorse Curse of Strahd. Not only is it a beautiful book in it's own right, but it is also a beautiful and faithful recreation and expansion of the work we had done so many years ago."So TH (and Laura, his wife, who was one of the original authors of the adventure) are extremely pleased with the Curse of Strahd. This is definitely an omen pointing in the right direction for this book.</blockquote>

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