D&D General Unprofessional spoilers: it's not like it was hard to figure out but still...

[Chaltab]

Personally, I think Curse of Strahd is at its best as heroic fantasy with horror trappings.

And this is why. I agree that the sense of control (or lack thereof) is key to making it horror. But, not feeling like you’re in control of whether your character lives or dies makes for a poor D&D playing experience in my opinion. To each their own of course, but personally I want my players to feel in control of their characters’ fates, even in an ostensibly horror-flavored campaign. Ideally a Ravenloft campaign should endeavor to walk the fine line between horror and fantasy, playing with the notion that whatever control you may have is tenuous at best. But, in my experience when the players feel like they’ve lost control, they struggle to maintain investment, and that’s when a game can spiral into chaos.

Yeah. There's a sliding scale of tension vs apathy. If the players feel like they're one mistake away from death, you're golden. But if they feel like failure is the only possible outcome then you risk tension being replaced by boredom and disinterest.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Personally, I think Curse of Strahd is at its best as heroic fantasy with horror trappings.

And this is why. I agree that the sense of control (or lack thereof) is key to making it horror. But, not feeling like you’re in control of whether your character lives or dies makes for a poor D&D playing experience in my opinion. To each their own of course, but personally I want my players to feel in control of their characters’ fates, even in an ostensibly horror-flavored campaign. Ideally a Ravenloft campaign should endeavor to walk the fine line between horror and fantasy, playing with the notion that whatever control you may have is tenuous at best. But, in my experience when the players feel like they’ve lost control, they struggle to maintain investment, and that’s when a game can spiral into chaos.

I don’t think horror needs to remove agency from its protagonists. At the end of Dracula, the party piece together the clues, hunt down and destroy the vampire. But in D&D what I think works best is when the players piece together the clues about what happened in the past. Because what the imagination can come up with is always much worse than I can describe.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think horror needs to remove agency from its protagonists. At the end of Dracula, the party piece together the clues, hunt down and destroy the vampire.

Well, yes, but Dracula is famously a novel that’s better remembered for the original (at the time) way it was told, than for being a particularly well-written story. Not to say that you can’t have a good horror story where the protagonists are victorious over the source of the horror. But, I do think that a feeling of lack of control is an important element.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But, I do think that a feeling of lack of control is an important element.

Lack of control is one thing that people fear - perhaps particularly at the moment- but there are plenty of other fears to tap into.

 

[Charlaquin]

Lack of control is one thing that people fear - perhaps particularly at the moment- but there are plenty of other fears to tap into.

I didn’t say there weren’t other things people fear.

 

[Rune]

I get it but at this point it’s like a kid watching Empire Strikes Back for the first time - there’s still a very good chance they already have heard from their friends that Vader is Luke’s Dad.

There’s also a chance they haven’t. Unless you’re the one who spoils it.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

There’s also a chance they haven’t. Unless you’re the one who spoils it.

Do you get mad at people who say "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" for spoiling the plot of the Iliad? How old does a story have to be before we can talk about it top to bottom?

 

[Stormonu]

Heh, a few years ago I managed to fool my players into thinking "the Devil Strahd" wasn't the noble in the castle, but an evil shadow/curse that lived in the catacombs below. Ended up with half the party dead because Strahd had them believing members of the group had become allies of the Devil in the Dark.

Still, I feel ya for feeling like the secret was let out by a casual statement in the PHB.

 

[Rune]

Do you get mad at people who say "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" for spoiling the plot of the Iliad? How old does a story have to be before we can talk about it top to bottom?

I’m not mad about it. But I don’t think the time a piece of fiction has existed is a good determining factor for when conversation about it should casually discuss it without concern for spoiling it. Most people haven’t had the opportunity to experience most fiction for the entire length of that fiction’s existence. (Presumably, for instance, most people did not catch the Iliad during its initial run.)

I think social saturation is a much more relevant metric (for which time is certainly a factor). At a certain point, some works become a part of the social fabric that the mere concept of a surprise twist cannot apply. The Iliad is probably that. There is probably no one who could possibly read that work for a first time without already knowing how it ends.

Star Wars is not that.

 

[touc]

Knowing Strahd is a vampire isn't the horror or the "reveal" of Barovia. Instead, it's things like:

Spoiler

• Finding out it isn't just gossip that Strahd closed off the land to sunlight. He IS the Land.
• Watching Strahd walk into a beam of sunlight for the first time and emerge unscathed (due to a particular artifact).
• A slow build of his rage (at least the way I played him), from the gentleman soldier to the person who could murder his brother, try to mind control/date rape his brother's fiance, and eradicate an entire species of elf for upsetting him.
• Seeing the creepy lifestyle of most Barovians, and perhaps finding out the secret behind it all (that most don't have souls and were shadow creations of the Land to populate Strahd's prison - er home.)
• The realization of taking a Dark Gift, whether it be resurrection or the Amber Temple, including possibly that your soul is forever bound to this realm because of a decision you made (in game time months ago).
• Despair, what's the point, the hopelessness of Tatyana / Ireena. In my campaign, Strahd was trying a new tactic (get Ireena's friends to push her to him). Late game, they had a little talk, and Strahd rationalized that "what's the point of resisting" to the players. Even if he fails, she'll be reborn a generation or so down the road and he'll just do this all over again. He's eternal, and he has eternity. Just go home, it's not your problem. The Land feeds off people giving up, people giving into despair and willingly digging their metaphorical graves rather than being forced into one. It's a major theme and a "reveal" for Barovia.