Small baby heads growing out of the backs of deformed mongrel-men creeped me out. I, on the other hand, didn't dig the whole Island of Doctor Moreau theme going on over at Krezk. Sean McGovern, for example, didn't feel like the Amber Temple fit with the rest of the storyline while I thought it was a neat way to see Strahd's origins and add a new powerful villain, the lich Exethanter, into the mix. It's worth your time to read through the adventure and decide which parts of the adventure resonate with you and which ones don't. You certainly don't have to run them all. Choose Your Favorite LocationsĬurse of Strahd is a big book with a lot of locations in it. He is always watching and always reacting.
#Dnd curse of strahd full#
When you run Curse of Strahd, you have full authority to change Strahd's motivations and actions however the flow of the story goes. With an Ancient One loose in Barovia, it's possible Strahd himself becomes a quest-giving NPC instead of the primary villain. It might even be the Ancient One, the first vampire born a quarter of a million years ago whose blood created Strahd in the Amber Temple.Īny of these threats can change the landscape of Barovia and change Strahd's motivations and interactions with the characters. It might be awakening a being of horror yet unseen in the worlds. This might be unleashing the lich, Exethanter. It's also possible that, should they go to the Amber Temple, the characters awaken a darkness or an evil even worse than Strahd. For example, Strahd might design a much more dastardly plot by attempting to convert Ireena not just into a vampire, but into THE vampire- the Red Queen! He might know that his time in Barovia is done and it's time to put a new leader in charge, one more benevolent, one more lawful, than he. As the game evolves, as we look at the backgrounds of the characters, Strahd's actions might change. Strahd's plot may change depending on what the characters do.
Suspense is when the viewer sees the bomb under the seat but the character doesn't know it's there.
A surprise is when the viewer doesn't know if there's a bomb under the seat of the hero. Follow Alfred Hitchcock's rules for suspense here. You can do a lot of this outside the view of the characters as well, with some well-placed flash fiction to give players the impression that he's always paying attention even if the character's don't know it. In graveyards, hovering over ancient bridges, standing at the tops of ruined towers, whenever they think they just had a huge victory-there he is smiling at them. We can bring Strahd in like this a lot throughout the adventure. If they try to attack him? Great! He's not really going to fight back but he's not beyond throwing up a counterspell or shield to show them that he's no simple direwolf himself. This can happen right before the characters discover that their journey to Barovia was a ruse. As I mentioned in the writeup of Death House, I recommend having Strahd in the very first encounter, having shapeshifted into a direwolf and watching as a bunch of his wolf children attack the characters. When we run Curse of Strahd, it works really well when Strahd is in their faces a lot. He wants to add some excitement to the land, some new variables, and those variables are our heroes. Strahd brought the characters to Barovia because he's bored. We don't have to worry about the hypocrisy of not killing characters the minute they step into Barovia. He's powerful but his goal isn't to just wipe the characters out. Based on his motivations and potential interactions with the characters, he's almost the perfect D&D villain. This article, however, will cover some larger overall thoughts and ideas on this large campaign adventure. These each cover specific pieces of the adventure and offer tools to help run Curse of Strahd.
#Dnd curse of strahd how to#
These ideas aren't for everyone and likely each DM will have their own thoughts on how to run it.
This isn't a deep dive into the adventures. Instead, we're going to cover a few big thoughts and a few concepts that might make running Curse of Strahd more fun. For that reason, we're not writing in-depth coverage of the entire Curse of Strahd adventure. The same is definitely true with his excellent guide to the Curse of Strahd also available on the DM's Guild. With more recent adventures, Sean McGovern over at the Power Score has written fantasic guides of each of the Wizards of the Coast published adventures that put our Sly Flourish chapter-by-chapter writeups to shame. When writing about the adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen we here at Sly Flourish wrote chapter-by-chapter deep dives of the whole book to help DMs run this adventure. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Running Curse of Strahd