D&D 5E (2014) Enhancing "Curse of Strahd" (and DDAL adventures)

[pukunui]

@fobia: Most of the bad puns date back to the original version of Ravenloft. There are a few new ones, though.

 

[fobia]

@fobia: Most of the bad puns date back to the original version of Ravenloft. There are a few new ones, though.

I didn't know that, thanks. Still I think a lot of groups will be surprised or even put off by the change of tone.

 

[pukunui]

Yes, it is a bit weird, but it is tradition now!

 

[jayoungr]

I've recently discovered a new resource for prepping adventures: YouTube. Fred Weller has a whole series on prepping Curse of Strahd, which included some great ideas for using the Blinsky dolls that I'll definitely be stealing. Here's a compilation of his suggestions, drawn from this video and particularly this one:

• Have the dolls move around or change position without anyone seeing them move or shift.
• Eventually, the players can see them move slightly.
• Give them glowing eyes.
• Have their facial expressions change.
• Make them look creepy, but familiar. Make some of them resemble the PCs. Make one resemble Strahd.
• Have them climb out of a backpack and just STARE at the PCs.
• Once the players have started to expect the dolls to do weird things, have some of them do NOTHING AT ALL.
• Have them just disappear from wherever they were stowed, possibly along with some of the PCs' mundane equipment.
• Have the dolls talk to the PCs, possibly just saying a single word. Give the dolls morbid and odd personalities. Have a doll become a "friend" to a PC and offer advice.
• If a doll is destroyed, have it turn up again later, completely intact.
• Don't have the dolls attack the PCs except as a last resort. They're pretty small, so if they do attack, make it a large group.

He said it eventually got so that whenever his players saw a Blinsky doll, they'd run in the other direction and/or set it on fire.

Mwahahahaha ...

 

[jayoungr]

My group just played through the Festival of the Blazing Sun. They attempted to humiliate the burgomaster by making him repeatedly fall off his horse when he was trying to punish the guard. That was interrupted by the screams of the Wachter brothers, who had let the tiger out of Rictavio's wagon. While searching for the tiger (which they did find), the PCs managed to rescue Arabelle, the Vistani girl, and took her back to her camp. But I've got a few dilemmas that I'd love some input on, if you have any thoughts.

1. Rictavio rewarded the party for saving his tiger by giving them the gems from the box in his wagon. While it was open, they noticed a holy symbol and a bundle of silver-tipped crossbow bolts in the box. This is their first hint that he isn't just an entertainer, but of course he's not going to just blurt out "I'm actually a famous vampire hunter." I have a feeling the group isn't going to be staying in Vallaki much longer. Any suggestions on how they might find out who Rictavio is? (He wasn't drawn as their ally from the tarokka deck.)

2. Rictavio also probably won't be staying in Vallaki much longer due to the tiger, so where does he go after that? I thought of having him go to his tower, but the Tome of Strahd is there, and it would also kind of spoil the entrance puzzle. Also, then you have to deal with him meeting Ezmeralda, and it could just wind up being a big exposition dump.

3. When the group went to the Vistani camp, they saw the Dusk Elf houses but had no reason to interact with the elves. Any idea how I can introduce Kasimir Velikov? I do want the group to go (back) to the Amber Temple, since they have already been there in the DDAL season adventures, and he adds a good story hook for that area.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve heavily revised the Tarokka reading. It started from wanting to use a real Tarot deck, but expanded quite a bit from there.

I use the suit of the first card (from the low deck) to determine where the third Wizard of Wines gem is from four options:
Swords -> In the nest of the Roc of Mt. Ghakis
Wands -> In the Old Bonegrinder
Cups -> Animating Vasilka
Pentacles - The Heart of Sorrow

The second card (from the high deck) determines the identity of the ally, and I’ve removed Sir Klutz, Perriwimple, Clovin Bray and No Ally as options, replacing them with Muriel Vinshaw, Izek Strazni, a special option where the ghosts from the March of the Dead event in Barovia can Inspire the party instead of an ally, and an “unknown” option where I roll randomly for the ally.

The number of the third card (from the low deck) determines the location of the weapon, while the suit determines what the weapon is:
Swords -> Sunsword
Wands -> Gulthias Staff
Cups -> Thighbone of St. Markovia (in this case it doesn’t break after hitting a vampire)
Pentacles -> Holy Symbol of Ravenkind

The number of the fourth card (from
the low deck) determines the location of the Icon of Ravenloft

The number of the fifth card (from the low deck) determines the location of the Tome of Strahd.

The sixth card (from the high deck) determines Strahd’s starting location for the final battle.

For all the locations of the weapon, tome, and icon, instead of 40 options shared between them, each has 14 possible options (one each for ace-10, plus Page, Knight, King, and Queen) with no overlap. That’s a total of 42 possible treasure locations, so I added 2 new ones to the existing 40. But this allowed me to insure that each treasure can only appear in a location that is thematically appropriate to the treasure. No more sunsword shoved in a busted wine casket in the castle or tome of strahd in the hidden cache in the Abbey, the treasures can only show up in places it makes some semblance of sense for them to be in (some of them were still a bit of a stretch, but I did the best I could with what I was given).

 

[jayoungr]

My group just left Van Richten's Tower with the Tome of Strahd and is now on their way to Krezk. Once they figured out how to control the guardian armor, they decided to take it with them. Any suggestions on how to handle that? It's not like they NEED another tank--they already have a near-unhittable paladin and two fighters (it's a large group). So the armor is expendable, if there's some cool way for it to go out.

Also, I tossed in a random encounter with druids and minions, from the random table in the book. I just meant it to be a time-filler and provide some combat in an otherwise all-roleplay session, but the party decided to keep the druids alive and question them. We're going to start off the next session (Saturday) with that. I'm sure the druids are part of the Yester Hill group, but to be honest, I didn't bother to come up with a reason why they attacked the party. I thought maybe they wanted to feed the PCs' blood to Wintersplinter, but I'm a little worried that if I hint too heavily at Yester Hill, the PCs will abandon everything to go straight there, and I think the adventure will flow better if they visit the Wizard of Wines first. Any suggestions?

(ETA after running the session: I did end up using the "feed your blood to the tree" explanation after all. I had forgotten that the path to Yester Hill leads past the Wizard of Wines unless the PCs are foolhardy enough to leave the road and go directly through the forest, so there's not much worry about them skipping the winery after all.)

 

[jayoungr]

There's been some CoS discussion on another thread, and I'm moving my replies here to keep from derailing it...

anyone made barovia a neighboring country in their campaign world? Made it a country next to the starting box set area?

I'm running CoS in a world that my players have been playing in since AD&D, and Barovia is just a country on the map there. Is there anything you'd like to know about how they handle it?

I LOVE Curse of Strahd, it's the most intricate and flavorful of all the 5e campaigns I've seen so far. But as you mention, the prep to run it properly is bonkers. I'm also using Reddit walkthroughs to help. And doing it on Roll20 allows me to easily add maps above and beyond what the core book comes with, so that's an additional prep step. And some of the artwork I don't like, for instance, for Izek Strazni, but a quick Google search finds art much better. If you're gonna have an NPC with a giant demon hand, please make that obvious in the picture.

https://i.*****.com/Z97tjnz.jpg

That Izek picture is great! Now I hope my players encounter him again so that I can show it to them.

Nebulous, can you recommend some good places to find additional maps for Curse of Strahd? And similarly...

If you wait! I found some brand spanking new animated MP4 art on a patreon for CoS, and that only came out years later. I used this last session, and holy crap did it set the mood.

Which patreon has this stuff? Is it all CoS, or is there other stuff as well?

And I'm also going to park this quote here as a reminder of a resource that people might want to check out:

I was also aided listening to the excellent podcasts by Red Moon Roleplaying on the CoS too.

 

[Nebulous]

That Izek picture is great! Now I hope my players encounter him again so that I can show it to them.

Nebulous, can you recommend some good places to find additional maps for Curse of Strahd? And similarly...


Which patreon has this stuff? Is it all CoS, or is there other stuff as well?

And I'm also going to park this quote here as a reminder of a resource that people might want to check out:

I'm making Izek the lost brother to the only human PC in the group, rather than a brother to Ireena. The walkthrough advises this because it creates a much richer backstory and bond. My Izek is going to be kind of a madman, but not a total psycho killer, but a lonely man haunted by the loss of his family and the loss of his arm, ripped off by a dire wolf during childhood.

This Reddit walkthrough has some additional maps, but I've been making own in Roll20 as well. In Valliki I now have a map for the Church, Blinsky's toy shop, the Refomation Center, the Orphanage and the Town Square. The town square is especially cool, I sprinkled it with .png tokens of prisoners in stocks, as described in the text.


https://i.*****.com/nRvCqDd.jpg

The patreon is here: James’ RPG art is creating Animated Artworks for D&D and RPG Adventure Locations | Patreon

 

[jayoungr]

This Reddit walkthrough has some additional maps

Was there supposed to be a link here?

The town square is especially cool, I sprinkled it with .png tokens of prisoners in stocks, as described in the text.

That's great!

The patreon is here: James’ RPG art is creating Animated Artworks for D&D and RPG Adventure Locations | Patreon

Thanks, I'll check it out!