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

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm pretty sure my parents read me Hansel & Gretel when I was about four, so I don't really see an issue with child-eating hags. It's the mongrelmen I find more troubling. But certainly just running the castle bit (I.e. the original adventure) is a decent approach. The issue I have always had with CoS is getting anyone to take it remotely seriously. It's basically Carry on up the Castle in my experience.

 

[Talltomwright]

Some people also add the Mongrelfolk to the problematic list as essentialy a depiction of people with disabilities/who are disabled and have mental health issues.

On the Vistani - Dragon Issue 180 reworks the Vistani as a culture not a race which works. I'm building on that so that anyone of any race can become a Vistani having performed an act of great service to the clan and under-going a painful ritual. At that point they gain the blessing/curse of the Vistani; the boundaries of the planes are weak for them and they will slip through it when travelling (it can be willed with a ritual, or just happens almost at random) always taking them to a random plane. They are unaffected by the psychological affects of planes from the DMG and won't ever be taken somewhere they can't survive (elemental planes, for example.) However, because of their rich life experiences the Raven Queen hungers for them; if they ever rest in the same location for more than five nights she will drain their joy and memories and they will lose their wanderlust, eventually being drawn into her Court permenantly. I haven't figured out how this sits with the two semi-stable Vistani camps in CoS; I will have to map that out.

 

[TheSword]

Some people also add the Mongrelfolk to the problematic list as essentialy a depiction of people with disabilities/who are disabled and have mental health issues.

On the Vistani - Dragon Issue 180 reworks the Vistani as a culture not a race which works. I'm building on that so that anyone of any race can become a Vistani having performed an act of great service to the clan and under-going a painful ritual. At that point they gain the blessing/curse of the Vistani; the boundaries of the planes are weak for them and they will slip through it when travelling (it can be willed with a ritual, or just happens almost at random) always taking them to a random plane. They are unaffected by the psychological affects of planes from the DMG and won't ever be taken somewhere they can't survive (elemental planes, for example.) However, because of their rich life experiences the Raven Queen hungers for them; if they ever rest in the same location for more than five nights she will drain their joy and memories and they will lose their wanderlust, eventually being drawn into her Court permenantly. I haven't figured out how this sits with the two semi-stable Vistani camps in CoS; I will have to map that out.

Woah, the mongrelfolk have willingly chosen to have body parts replaced with animals because they want to be stronger, faster, etc. The fact that this has left them disturbing is unpleasant sure.

However, that is very very different to someone afflicted by a mental illness or physical disability not of their choosing.

 

[TheSword]

I think a whole lot of these problems would be fixed by just jettisoning about 75% of the theme-park-of-horror content TSR & now WoTC have packed onto the classic I6 adventure.

Almost all of this crap? Exists in the adventure for the sole purpose of dragging a relatively straight forward vampire hunt though a haunted castle out & turning what should be several good sessions worth of play into an entire lv 1-10+(?) campaign. Ugh. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

So just drop most of the content, scatter the plot mcguffins throughout the castle, & run what remains as a Lv.10(?) adventure.
Your players will thank you {even if they don't outright say it} as they can just get on with what they really signed up to do - go fight the vampire - without wasting months & months of real time.

You may not like it but Curse of Strahd has been extremely successful and is frequently mentioned as the pinacle of campaign books. Precisely because it does look at wider locations.

You don’t need the other sections of Barovia sure. Having ran it for a group of experienced and dare I say jaded players. They thoroughly enjoyed the exploration. The fixed smiles of Vallaki, the witches in the windmill, the amber temple, the werewolves, the druids and the winery, the mad mage, the deranged abbot. Context is king, and seeing the evils Strahd had wrought in his kingdom turned it the campaign into much more than just a ‘vampire hunt though a haunted castle’. To be perfectly honest as a DM I felt the castle section was the weakest in the book and needed the most re-writing.

 

[Talltomwright]

Woah, the mongrelfolk have willingly chosen to have body parts replaced with animals because they want to be stronger, faster, etc. The fact that this has left them disturbing is unpleasant sure.

However, that is very very different to someone afflicted by a mental illness or physical disability.

I haven’t played that bit of the adventure yet so I’m still weighing up how I personally feel about it, but it’s often discussed as problematic on other forums: if I’ve understood the argument correctly the element some commentators find problematic is the way that people who are physically diverse from ‘normal’ Barovians are locked away in, essentially, an asylum and pose a threat to the citizens, with most of them being given evil alignments.

But I don’t really want to argue on other people’s behalf, I’m just flagging this up as an area that a sensitivity reader would want to sit with and consider.

 

[TheSword]

I'm pretty sure my parents read me Hansel & Gretel when I was about four, so I don't really see an issue with child-eating hags. It's the mongrelmen I find more troubling. But certainly just running the castle bit (I.e. the original adventure) is a decent approach. The issue I have always had with CoS is getting anyone to take it remotely seriously. It's basically Carry on up the Castle in my experience.

This is why the context of the wider valley is helpful in my opinion to fix Strahd and the Castle as the target and a place of menace/evil.

• A group directly oppressed by Strahd
• A group taking advantage of the despair
• A group ignoring it and hoping someone else will deal with it.
• A group enabling it, to avoid suffering
• A group enabling it, to gain power
• A group worshiping it as a force of nature
• A group who’ve given up fighting it
• A group who thinks by giving what it wants
• A group that helped create it.
• And a group trying their hardest to protect people from it.

I really like the nuance of the different approaches and how Strahd is still at the centre of it all. This feels like how every dreadlords prison should be.

 

[TheSword]

I haven’t played that bit of the adventure yet so I’m still weighing up how I personally feel about it, but it’s often discussed as problematic on other forums: if I’ve understood the argument correctly the element some commentators find problematic is the way that people who are physically diverse from ‘normal’ Barovians are locked away in, essentially, an asylum and pose a threat to the citizens, with most of them being given evil alignments.

But I don’t really want to argue on other people’s behalf, I’m just flagging this up as an area that a sensitivity reader would want to sit with and consider.

If you haven’t played the game yet, I guess a lot will depend on how you GM positions it. They could be very lazy and just have them as lunatics in an asylum... however

Spoiler

Most of them aren’t locked in, they serve the abbot for more power. What makes them pitiful is that they have done this to themselves for power!

 

[Helldritch]

I never had any problems with the original Strahd or its more recent incarnation in 5ed. But then again, my players are mature adults so...

I can see that playing CoS with a younger audience might prove more disturbing than necessary. In fact, CoS would not be my choice with a younger audience. Late teens ok, but early teens or younger? No way.

Now with adults with sensitivity problems...
Vistany are fine as long as you do not portray them all as bad. Some are good, some are bad and some are trully corrupted. Have some good Vistani warn the player that some of them are working for the devil Strahd. When asked the question of whom, have them answer:" We do not know, that is why we tell you. We are as much victims as you are in this matter. If you kill the devil Strahd, we will be free. But until then, we are silenced if we want ro survive." This makes the majority of the Vistani victims of Strahd and not collaborators. This is how I have always done it.

For the children deaths...
Keep this. Keep the house, the hags. An horror story does not spare the children. In fact, saving them brings heroism to the fore. The players have a chance to save children and their very souls. Seeing the evil of the hags and fighting it can be very cathartic for people. They are adults, they can manage and understand that evil is evil. I would certainly keep this in the adventure.

For the mongrelmen...
This part of the adventure is reminiscent of the Dr Moreau's Island novel. The grotesque associated with that part of the adventure can be unsettling but again, I would keep them. Especially if you intend to portray the Abbot as the mad angel that he is. Again, the goal is to unsettle your players with maccabre, grotesque and madness. Being witness to that can push the adventure a bit further down a feeling of righteousness in fighting the evil in CoS.

But if you fear that CoS is too hard on your players, why play that adventure in the first place? With so many changes required, the adventure itself is no longer a Gothic horror but a simple hack and slash the vampire. At this point, so many modifications and/or omissions just don't justify playing it. I always agreed on the Vistani as I have never played them as one sided villains, but I acknknowledge (now, at least this forum opened my eyes on that) that it is an easy trap to fall into and modifying that is mandatory. But the rest? Unless you are playing with young children or young teens... I would change nothing.

 

[Talltomwright]

If you haven’t played the game yet, I guess a lot will depend on how you GM positions it. They could be very lazy and just have them as lunatics in an asylum... however

Spoiler

Most of them aren’t locked in, they serve the abbot for more power. What makes them pitiful is that they have done this to themselves for power!

I’m DMing it but we’re still at Death House. I’m definitely not going to cut any element outright but I agree OP that it aspects bear a bit of thinking about. I also completely agree with your point that how I handle the material as DM will make all the difference; apart from the Vistani I want to make any changes as small as possible and mainly address things through tone and detail rather than massive rewrites.

There’s a lines and veils questionnaire I gave to the players beforehand and none of them had particular issues with child mortality, as I too have fond memories of Grimm’s tale goulishness as a kid, so I’m leaving that as is for my group but I need to keep aware of issues around race and disability which do directly affect my players.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think a whole lot of these problems would be fixed by just jettisoning about 75% of the theme-park-of-horror content TSR & now WoTC have packed onto the classic I6 adventure.

Almost all of this crap? Exists in the adventure for the sole purpose of dragging a relatively straight forward vampire hunt though a haunted castle out & turning what should be several good sessions worth of play into an entire lv 1-10+(?) campaign. Ugh. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

So just drop most of the content, scatter the plot mcguffins throughout the castle, & run what remains as a Lv.10(?) adventure.
Your players will thank you {even if they don't outright say it} as they can just get on with what they really signed up to do - go fight the vampire - without wasting months & months of real time.

That’s all assuming a one-shot vampire hunt through a spooky castle is what the players “really signed up to do.” Believe it or not, some people actually like the idea of a long-term campaign in a robust gothic horror setting. You certainly can run Ravenloft in a single session, perhaps as a Halloween one-shot (in fact that’s what it was originally written to be.) But that’s not inherently better than running it as a longer adventure path.