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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6890796" data-attributes="member: 9789">In <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?485031-Curse-of-Strahd-for-Dummies-%28confessions-of-a-DM-new-to-the-idea-of-sandbox-blecch!!%29" target="_blank">this thread</a>, I made a rough outline for Curse of Strahd to show the general narrative structure of the story in case it was (reasonably) overwhelming or you'd rather have a more linear plot.  It looks like this:[sblock]OutlineOpening QuestsI. Intro/hooksa. receive fake burgomaster letter, head to BaroviaII. Death House - right when they get into town, the party is drawn to the crying child  a.  explore all the upstairs  b.  rest, head downstairs, final battle, escape!III. Barovia  a.  find out about Mad Mary (optional)   b.  go to Inn, meet Ismark:  he talks about Ireena (sister) and Strahd (vampire) and sets up most of the plot and gives them all kinds of info about Barovia    i.  Vistani approach and tell the characters to see Madame Eva (critical)   c.  go to his house, meet Ireena    i. she asks them to help bury her father   d.  go to church i. find Doru ii. kill Doru iii. comfort priest iv. agree to come back in the morning for burial   e.  stop by shop on the way out of town (optional)   f.  meet hag, do dream pastries encounter on the way out of town (optional)IV. Tser Pool - make sure players know they should head there  a.  at the crossroads turn RIGHT   b.  get fortunes read   c.  leaveV.  Windmill (optional - also insanely dangerous so try not to let them get in a fight)  a.  talk to the hags   b.  negotiate for release of children (optional)VI.  Vallaki  a.  find the church first (change or ignore the map); introduce quest to find bones   b.  Inn; quest to find more wine from Wineryi. mention that people in Krezk will know more   c.  Stockyard; discover tiger (optional)   d.  coffin maker shopi destroy vampires and get bones (insanely dangerous so reduce vampire spawn total or give them an "out" like burning it down) to complete church quest ii. Ireena can now stay there safely (quest complete)   e.  introduce burgomaster of this towni. invited to festival coming up ii. introduce his bodyguard and how he's a bad guy   f.  NPCs mention Vistani on the edge of town    i.  get quest to find girl at the lake     ii.  finish that quest   g.  NPCs mention haunted mansion west of town "Argynvostholt", probably treasures are hidden there   h.  NPCs mention haunted, abandoned town south of townPCs choice:  stay in town, find wine, or head to spooky mansionVII.  Stay in Vallaki  a.  festival starts   i.  guy is arrested for laughing, party decides to help or not     ii.  if they help, the burgomaster gets mad and starts to have them arrested, but either way...     iii.  tiger is loose!  Must help the town get the tiger captured or kill it; Rictavio skips town   b.  party is either already under arrest or implicated in the tiger fiasco; either way the burgomaster sends bad guy bodyguard after them    i.  kill him or flee; either way, party isn't welcome in town and the townspeople fear them - but then they get an invitation to the Watcher House   c.  Watcher House    i.  creepy woman tries to get them to kill the burgomaster; either way she also hires Vistani to kill the party     ii.  more fighting; the party discovers the double-cross and can try to confront the Watcher woman or not; either way they will have to fight someone   d.  new boss, same as the old boss?    i.  if the current burgomaster is killed, Watcher takes over and the town is worse off and she still tries to kill the PCs     ii.  if Watcher is killed, the current burgomaster forgives the players and decides to reform (not in the book but easier)     iii.  if both are killed, the innkeepers take over the town (not in the book but easier)   VIII.  Find Wine  a.  head to Krezk    i.  frosty reception; these guys want wine, too!  They tell the party where the Winery is   b.  head to Winery    i.  the current owners intercept the party and let them know the winery is under attack     ii.  lots of encounters with druids!  lots of fighting; PCs win; owners happy   c.  new quests:  find the missing gems (optional)    i.  they think one was stolen by druids:  here is where the druids live     ii.  they think the other was stolen by an old witch:  she lives in the haunted, abandoned town south of Vallaki   d.  turns out there's enough wine for both Krezk and the Inn in Vallaki if they get both gems!IX.  Spooky Mansion - cut this place down a lot and reduce the encounters  a.  find the wagon and run into Ezmerelda - major companion    i.  she suggests finding Rictavio; there's a tower nearby - new quest (optional)   b.  go in, meet ghosts, find out they need a skull from the castle to light a beacon and be happy again - new questFinding gemsX.  Where the Druids Live a.  get close; fight some guys   b.  druids start a ritual - must be stopped!  (Strahd is supposed to show up - do not include this, as it is insanely dangerous that way)    i.  stop the druids:  defeat them, get the gem     ii.  don't stop the druids:  defeat the monster they create, then get the gem XI.  An Old Witch  a.  check out abandoned town south of Vallaki   b.  run into wereraven woman (Muriel) who can help them by telling them the witch has a secret which can be used to stop her (or find out from the windmill hags by bartering something?)    i.  party can sneak around to find out she has to bathe in animal blood to survive; they can keep her from bathing by fighting her or kill / release all her animals to get her out of there     ii.  find the gem while she's dead/gone Other questsXII.  old Tower (completely optional)  a.  lots of traps; can find Rictavio and some treasureXIII.  Krezk (completely optional)  a.  when they give them wine, they are allowed in   b.  burgomaster is sad about dead son   c.  lots of people talk about the Abbey   d.  Abbey has crazy angel guy   i.  PCs can decide to engage in conversation or explore or whatever but there's little reason for them to do anything here     ii.  If they do converse, they can get the wedding dress quest, but that involves going into the burgomaster's house in Vallaki which may or may not be off limits; getting the dress allows the son to be raised (yay!) but he's insane (boo) XIV.  Just skip it  a.  Werewolves - I can't think of a single reason that this ties into the story unless the Fortune of Ravenloft is there   b.  Tsolenka Pass - same   c.  Amber Temple - sameWrap It UpXV.  Castle  a.  hopefully they've found all the cool bits and bobs and leveled up so now the party receives a formal invitation to the castle    i.  when they get to the crossroads near the castle the stagecoach shows up and takes them inside   b.  explore the castle    i.  find the dragon skull to finish that quest     ii.  find Mad Mary's daughter     iii.  find any other fortunes of Ravenloft     iv.  try not to die   c.  find Strahd in the final battle location foretold by the cards; kill him[/sblock]Laying it all out like that got me realizing:  I know this is a sandbox and it's meant to be played over and over, but unless you put specific hooks into certain locations, there's no reason a party would ever go there (other than curiosity).Specifically, one that surprised me was the Werewolf Den.  Other than the initial story hook, the only in-game reasons someone would go there are:- they heard mention of werewolves in Krezk (along with lots of other types of wolves); a plot hook so thin it seems unlikely they'd take it- the werewolves attack them at the Tower and they decide to follow up on that somehow; this is both unlikely because it requires colossal mistakes on the PCs' parts to even happen, and it doesn't necessarily connect back to the werewolf den unless maybe someone is captured- they find the guy in the castle who wants to get back to his den; this is also unlikely because he's likely to turn on them / escape whenever he can, and has no reason to go back with the PCs necessarily; also they might just skip him or kill him anywayIn other words:  there's basically no reason for them to look for werewolves other than maybe they run into a very unlikely event and are internally motivated to go out of their way to investigate it.  And even if they were interested:  how do they find it?!?  Track it down or something?  From what?  Hope they get a random encounter and capture someone?  Literally nothing leads them there.Similarly, the entire Amber Temple (and subsequently Tsolenka Pass) are only mentioned... once?  Kasimir is the only one who has a quest to go there, and frankly the whole dark elves sub plot is a little out of place in this world (just like the temple).  Technically the hags can try to bargain the temple's existence for their lives but that's a long shot.  Also you can accidentally teleport yourself there in one of the super-awful castle traps.  But unless you talk to that one NPC who you have no reason to speak to whatsoever other than "because he's there", you'll probably never even know it existed.  (Seriously, why would the PCs investigate all those houses until they found the one that had a guy who wanted to talk and then ALSO bring up his dead sister and all that crap?)Even more surprising:  why would the party ever go to Krezk?  In my outline above I forced it by making the knowledge of the winery be in Krezk, but other than the fact that it's a town and has NPCs, there's nothing drawing you there.  You could easily skip it, especially since the people in that town don't want you to come in.  And there's a LOT of stuff there.Van Richten's Tower is also pointless unless you find Ezmerelda to tell you to go there (and the book acts as if you would most likely meet here here), and if Rictavio never skips town in Vallaki there is NO reason to go there.  Argynvostholt (I copy/pasted that) also has no reason to go there other than "maybe there's treasure or something."  Seriously why would anyone start that quest?There's also little chance you'd stumble upon any of:  The Winery, Yester Hill, or Berez except for the convoluted wine quest!  That's right:  nearly a fifth of the locations are only going to be introduced if your characters care about getting wine.  And since Krezk offers no reason to go inside and the Inn in Vallaki is just offering... free room and board??  (They find a piece of jewelry in Death House worth 750g which should supply all their boarding needs for the entirety of the adventure.)  It's an easy quest to skip, especially given how much effort you have to go through for literally no reward.I guess my point is:  other than the Fortunes of Ravenloft, there's almost nothing in-game to motivate the characters to venture from place to place.  Which:  ok, fine, maybe that's the intent.  I've wondered if there was just too much in this world for one campaign, really, and you're supposed to skip sections so you can come back and do them later in another campaign.  But - who does that, really?  Who buys a campaign to run over and over, especially one that takes literally weeks to prep?  I guess the plus side is that it's extremely easy to cut things with ZERO impact.Separately, there's probably TOO much plot in Vallaki.  That's where most new DMs are going to start going, "huh?  Wait... what's supposed to happen here?"  The truth is that nothing is supposed to happen:  they just put a bunch of dominoes in place and it's up to your players to knock them down or not.  But that's also pretty confusing and extremely open-ended to the point of getting people lost, especially since the only thing close to a direct path leads nowhere (who takes over the town when you get rid of both bad guys?  The answer is who cares anymore).  I know for my group if they have about 3 to 5 quests, that's about all they can handle:  when you start piling on tons and tons of options, they immediately just start ignoring information and focus on the first few things they found out.  Vallaki has too many paths and there's no clear ones, and keep in mind you already have 5 quests from Madame Eva, plus Ireena in tow, plus anything else that might have come up.And finally, all this comes back to the castle...  HOW?  I mean, there are a couple of things the PCs can do to specifically piss Strahd off:  if they stop the church in Vallaki from being destroyed (which hopefully happens early); if they allow Ireena to get sucked into a lake by a weird ghost who happens to be Sergei (why are they in Krezk again?); or if the characters meet Ezmerelda at the Tower (why would they go to the tower unless she told them to?); each of these situations will cause Strahd to send them a letter to invite them to the castle.  Strahd also meddles in specific affairs; the attack at the church and the druids' ritual involve him, and he might get mad at them that way, but those are also both heavily optional (and the church is hopefully unlikely!).  But other than the letter (which has no time limit) there's nothing drawing them back to the castle.  The one place in the countryside that asks you to go to the castle and come back is Argynvostholt and there's no reason you'd go there in the first place!  (Ok, also Mad Mary's daughter, but that's copied from the original module.)  Sure, Strahd's supposed to attack repeatedly so you hate him, but even that is confusing - why is he so pissed at us?  How does he know so much?  Is the GM just cheating?  And that's not really a story:  that's just flicking someone over and over until they punch you.So really, the only true narrative is:  "find these items and this person, then kill Strahd because he's evil or something."  So... it's really just one big fetch quest.  ...Awesome. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />Next post:  so how can these threads be tied together a bit better?</blockquote>

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