D&D 5E Sanitizing Curse of Strahd (+)

[Gradine]

I'm thinking about running Curse of Strahd for my friends, but I know that there are aspects of CoS that are objectionable*. My plan is to go through the adventure and make edits as if I were acting as a sensitivity reader. Here's what I've got so far.

*Note the (+) in the thread title. It's okay if you disagree with this statement; this thread is not for you.

1) The Vistani. This is probably the biggest one. There are so many negative Romani stereotypes here. My plan: turn then into more modern Wiccans, and portray them more positively. Replace the drunken degeneracy with joyous revelry. The tarot already fits. Some can still be corrupted by Strahd, an off-shoot that is less "Mother Gaia" and more "LeVayan Satanism".

2) Dead Children. I think I can sell my friends on Gothic Horror, but killing kids is almost certainly a step too far. I'm reframing Death House entirely, so no worries there. I'm running of turning the hags' victims into the elderly of the communities. Not quite as grotesque, but maybe a family gets desperate enough to sell a child, to push the heroes into action.

3) Dusk Elves. Their "curse" and the "solution" are extremely gross. The former, as a symbol of Strahd's misogyny, is justifiable. The latter is not. I still haven't figured out how I want to resolve this; maybe some type of infertility curse, or something unrelated entirely to reproduction. I do want all want the Amber Temple to house the solution to it, in any case.

These are the big ones, but I'm working on some other issues as well. How have any of you approached these subjects?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Personally, I never had any objections to the elements of CoS as you suggest, but I can say I think your revisions work pretty well.

For the Dead Children, maybe just make the victims anyone from the towns instead of just the elderly?

 

[Scribe]

I dont have that book, but a quick google seems to indicate high levels of 'yikes'.

 

[Morrus]

I think WotC has already done some of that work in current printings. I don’t have one to check though.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm thinking about running Curse of Strahd for my friends, but I know that there are aspects of CoS that are objectionable*. My plan is to go through the adventure and make edits as if I were acting as a sensitivity reader. Here's what I've got so far.

*Note the (+) in the thread title. It's okay if you disagree with this statement; this thread is not for you.

An admirable goal!

1) The Vistani. This is probably the biggest one. There are so many negative Romani stereotypes here. My plan: turn then into more modern Wiccans, and portray them more positively. Replace the drunken degeneracy with joyous revelry. The tarot already fits. Some can still be corrupted by Strahd, an off-shoot that is less "Mother Gaia" and more "LeVayan Satanism".

This is similar to how I treat them. I use something similar to the 4e take on the Vistani, where they are a group of interplanar nomads, and are more of a culture than an ethnicity - though you do generally have to be born into it or marry into it. But they’re more ethnically diverse than Barovians, having picked up people (including people of different lineages) from all over the multiverse. They’re big in revelry and hospitality, but they face a lot of prejudice within Barovia.

2) Dead Children. I think I can sell my friends on Gothic Horror, but killing kids is almost certainly a step too far. I'm reframing Death House entirely, so no worries there. I'm running of turning the hags' victims into the elderly of the communities. Not quite as grotesque, but maybe a family gets desperate enough to sell a child, to push the heroes into action.

Yeah, there’s a lot of violence against children in CoS. I would just excise the cannibalism element from the hags. Drugging people into a deep sleep with the dream pastries and astrally feeding on them is reason enough for the players to want to do something about them, without having the pies be made of kids. If you still want to have someone sell a kid to them, maybe make it a girl (maybe even a member of the new Hexborn lineage?) whom they plan to raise to be a part of their coven and eventually turn into a hag.

3) Dusk Elves. Their "curse" and the "solution" are extremely gross. The former, as a symbol of Strahd's misogyny, is justifiable. The latter is not. I still haven't figured out how I want to resolve this; maybe some type of infertility curse, or something unrelated entirely to reproduction. I do want all want the Amber Temple to house the solution to it, in any case.

I actually had to rework the dusk elves for another reason, which is that I don’t like elves living for a bajillion years. So, my take on the dusk elves is that they were the native inhabitants of the valley before strahd conquered it. He basically just did a genocide against them the old fashioned way. They can still have children, there are just relatively few of them, and they are marginalized and oppressed by the colonial Barovians.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think WotC has already done some of that work in current printings. I don’t have one to check though.

They changed a couple sentences related to the Vistani, but their overall portrayal is barely changed, and they did nothing to address all the child murder or the grossness with the dusk elves.

 

[Azzy]

They changed a couple sentences related to the Vistani, but their overall portrayal is barely changed, and they did nothing to address all the child murder or the grossness with the dusk elves.

As someone that doesn't have CoS, what's up with the dusk elves?

 

[Charlaquin]

As someone that doesn't have CoS, what's up with the dusk elves?

To summarize, the dusk elves (and really, one dusk elf in particular) earned Strahd’s wrath, so in retribution he set out to exterminate the entire race. But he wanted to extend their torment, so he had all of the female dusk elves killed, but left all the men alive. With their long elven life spans, they were stuck slowly going extinct over hundreds of years, knowing that with no women, they couldn’t reproduce.

Personally I don’t find that particularly upsetting, though I could see it meriting a content warning for sure. Mostly it shows Strahd’s cruelty and misogyny, which I don’t think is a bad thing as long as your players are ok with the subjects of genocide and violence against women being broached in the game.

Where it does get kind of icky for me though is that the particular dusk elf who pissed Strahd off so much is an NPC in the adventure, and one of the player’s potential prophesied allies against Strahd. His goal is to go to the amber temple, where a bunch of ancient evil vestiges are trapped, so that he can make a deal with one of them to resurrect his sister, to save his race. And since their doom is caused by the inability to reproduce... the implication is that the dude wants to resurrect his sister to become a literal baby factory. Also, if you succeed in resurrecting the sister, it turns out she’s evil and in love with Strahd.

 

[pukunui]

Here's the official Curse of Strahd errata: https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/CoS-Errata.pdf

You'll see they have made an attempt to "fix" the Vistani.

 

[Eltab]

Barovian elves have never heard of Tanis Half-Elven? That concept solves the Dusk Elf problem but then you are stuck explaining why nobody thought of it before the PCs showed up.
Other curses:

• One line in the musical Phantom of the Opera states that more than just the Phantom's face is marred by his skin disease. Stradh did similar in a fit of pique, to humiliate the Dusk Elves; they are physically incapable of siring / bearing children.
• Stradh cursed the original elven survivors of his military wrath to all become Mordenkainen Elves hard-wired into a between state, neither male nor female, hence no mothers no fathers and no children.