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Sanitizing Curse of Strahd (+)
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 8185734" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>So I guess this is where I spill the beans on my full intentions here. Canonically, the best the PCs can accomplish is getting themselves free. In the long run, nothing they do in Barovia solves anything, really. No one is saved, perhaps Ileena ages out of looking like Tatyana (or otherwise dies before Strahd re-forms), but that's it, really. It's bleak and depressing and I absolutely love that as a story.... but not at all as an adventure. Not even a horror one. </p><p></p><p>The point is, I want the PCs to be to save Barovia. I'll take just a moment to say goodbye to all the people leaving the thread over this heresy. I want what the PCs accomplish to <em>matter</em>. That means freeing Barovia from the Demiplane of Dread, and possibly killing Strahd forever. They could fail in this endeavor, or make things worse by freeing Barovia AND Strahd. This was all discussed in the old "Enhancing Curse of Strahd" thread, but the idea is that the greatest weapon that the PCs can bring to bear against Strahd is <em><strong>hope</strong></em>. In this </p><p></p><p>So, yes, I want things to be scary, horrifying even. I want to force the players to make tough decisions, and watch them make mistakes. I want them to feel sympathy and anger and despair and hope in equal measures. CoS absolutely has the skeleton to make that work, and it will absolutely make it a better adventure for me an my friends. </p><p></p><p>So, advice that I am looking for is along the lines "here's how you can make the hags appropriately despicable without dead babies". Meanwhile, advice along the lines "You shouldn't change it at all! It's essential to their role!" is worse than useless to me, because I already know that if I did that many of my friends* would shut down and disengage. It would actively ruin the experience for them. </p><p></p><p>*I say friends instead of players because I want to emphasize that these are some of my closest friends. They would never have started paying D&D if not for me. They do not engage with D&D discourse, at all (except for sharing silly memes), and if I don't tell them I'm running a published adventure they would probably never know. I will be setting up their expectations, as far as tone, from the word go. But they'll have no expectations as far as content.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 8185734, member: 57112"] So I guess this is where I spill the beans on my full intentions here. Canonically, the best the PCs can accomplish is getting themselves free. In the long run, nothing they do in Barovia solves anything, really. No one is saved, perhaps Ileena ages out of looking like Tatyana (or otherwise dies before Strahd re-forms), but that's it, really. It's bleak and depressing and I absolutely love that as a story.... but not at all as an adventure. Not even a horror one. The point is, I want the PCs to be to save Barovia. I'll take just a moment to say goodbye to all the people leaving the thread over this heresy. I want what the PCs accomplish to [I]matter[/I]. That means freeing Barovia from the Demiplane of Dread, and possibly killing Strahd forever. They could fail in this endeavor, or make things worse by freeing Barovia AND Strahd. This was all discussed in the old "Enhancing Curse of Strahd" thread, but the idea is that the greatest weapon that the PCs can bring to bear against Strahd is [I][B]hope[/B][/I]. In this So, yes, I want things to be scary, horrifying even. I want to force the players to make tough decisions, and watch them make mistakes. I want them to feel sympathy and anger and despair and hope in equal measures. CoS absolutely has the skeleton to make that work, and it will absolutely make it a better adventure for me an my friends. So, advice that I am looking for is along the lines "here's how you can make the hags appropriately despicable without dead babies". Meanwhile, advice along the lines "You shouldn't change it at all! It's essential to their role!" is worse than useless to me, because I already know that if I did that many of my friends* would shut down and disengage. It would actively ruin the experience for them. *I say friends instead of players because I want to emphasize that these are some of my closest friends. They would never have started paying D&D if not for me. They do not engage with D&D discourse, at all (except for sharing silly memes), and if I don't tell them I'm running a published adventure they would probably never know. I will be setting up their expectations, as far as tone, from the word go. But they'll have no expectations as far as content. [/QUOTE]
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