Covering all things Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft. Focused on D&D 5E (5th edition), but also referring to the older lore, especially on the Ravenloft side of things.
Check out my resources on DMsGuild, which includes the 3-Pile Tarokka Technique, which helps with running the tarokka reading during Curse of Strahd, and the Second Tarokka Reading, a supplement for running a Ravenloft domain-hopping campaign as a sequel to Curse of Strahd.
I'm also an aspiring fantasy novelist! My first trilogy - the DEMONS Series - is coming soon. Very D&D-inspired (although perhaps more Forgotten Realms and Honor Among Thieves in style than Ravenloft). Sign up for updates at theDEMONSseries.com
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I like the idea of a monster only children can see, very creepy
Indeed! Very Ravenloft. 😈 And I like the idea that the children have to try and communicate where it is to the PCs so they can fight them off. I really enjoyed it when I ran it for my players.
My players are in the process of trying to adopt an orphan that they grew attached to after saving him from the Old Bonegrinder. Despite warnings that I was not above having enemies attack the kid (if they bring him with them) they seem intent on the idea. This monster sounds perfect to use after lil Justy joins the group!
Having Majesto spy on the players disguised as a raven and making them think it's one of the wereraven's birds is just devious. (I'm doing it)
YES! Do it... 😈
The novels sometimes added other sections to Barovia, the land of the mists had one area for the Death Knight, one for the strange Carnival, and so on. Not normal transition from one section to the other however, the mists can be fickle.
Yeah, I read a bunch of the Ravenloft novels recently, and I think it might be the start of the I, Strahd sequel where Strahd visits a settlement that's not a part of the 5E/CoS map. And it was fun reading about how others interacted with his domain (Jander Sunstar, Lord Soth, Azalin Rex, etc.).
I'd say thois is the reason to increase it, in my experience CoS suffers from a tension cycle problem. In real horror you want tension and release tension and release, Cos is all tension which doesn't lend itself ti horror it lends itself to the players getting annoyed and irritated. I think the eternal darkness is actually kind of boring. I think horror campaigns should have daylight so you players can watch the hours tick away until there is night again and there is no safety anywhere. As you may have noticed I didn't particularly enjoy being a player in CoS, I felt it was a big exercise in being told no a lot by the DM, and was more annoyed than tense. I also very quickly found myself suffering from darkness induced audience apathy.
I get what you're saying. I actually liked the whole "no sunlight" thing because it's like a plot twist where the players _expect_ to be safe in the daytime, then realise Strahd and his consorts can just wander out freely at any time of day - and that's pretty terrifying. I'm sorry to hear you didn't have a good time as a player in CoS. TBH, before DMing it, I was a player in a CoS game, and while I mostly enjoyed it, I had a few moments like that with my DM, too - and I think it was a DM vs player thing. A lot of it can come down to what the DM is like. Have you DM'ed CoS as well, or plan to?
@@DMoftheMists No, we never finished it, covid hit and out DM got total burnout trying to convert to digital tools and we ende dup dropping the campaign. But a player in another campaign is talking about running it so I might play it again (though we may have to make some changes to account for half the players having played the begining before), so I am holding off on running it/reading the module to after that.
Cool - I hope it works out for you. I can think of 1-2 possible ideas for alternate starts, but I don't want to spoil anything for you (albeit they're minor spoilers plus you might know the places mentioned anyway), so either let me know and I'll pass them on (in the least spoilery way possible) or feel free to send your DM my way. Or I'm sure the new DM will stumble on them anyway when they're doing their research.
@@DMoftheMists I think we visited all locations on the map before the end of the last campaign so I'll risk it feel free to give me your ideas.
Cool. One idea is that some DMs start their CoS campaigns on the west side of the map - so near Krezk - rather than Death House / Village of Barovia. It's not something I'd encourage or recommend for first-time players/DMs, but for people who have played before, it might help to mix things up a bit. The other idea - depending on how far you actually got - is just to limit it to Castle Ravenloft (and maybe 1-2 other places before it). There's a one-shot version of CoS called Strahd Must Die Tonight (www.dndbeyond.com/posts/359-strahd-must-die-tonight-how-to-play-ravenloft-in-a), which is limited to just Castle Ravenloft - but your DM could also include a few extra places to expand it out (so it's not _just_ the castle). Hope that helps.
One of my favorite characters from the original ravenloft lore.
He's great, isn't he? Such a great character.
Anyone else made the map a tiny bit bigger. But, added that all of your long rests on the roads turn into short rests and short rest turn in half a regular short rest. The nights in barovia are brutal. To me, it's supposed to be ramped up. For example, the video game "Dying Light." My players got so scared and mistrusting when they got interrupted multiple times by quick interactions I made up. For example. I had just a plain old black cat, nothing unique about it, sat there and cleaned itself just at the edge of their campsite light. A player on watch woke the entire party thinking something would happen.... the cat started to walk in the thick fog, back and forth, meowing and making eye contact with them because it was hungery. I moved it along every hour in the game, asking what they wanted to do every minute to keep the game moving. They ended up staying up all night and rolled for exhaustion. So my point is. You don't even need to throw battles. Throw normal encounters that don't take up all the time out of game and keep it moving.
We expanded Barovia, but we added new locations. Strahd didn't create Barovia. He's trapped there like we are. So there's remnants of shrines and holy places frequented by travelers. Strahd would have destroyed them like he did The Silver Knights. Destroying them didn't deconsecrate the ground. So there were places where he couldn't see us. We also had nature trying to reclaim the land. So random beds of flowers and groves of trees that aren't infested with evil.
Really well articulated points. My first thought was about encounters in the night, but I totally glossed over the idea that long rests would be more plentiful. I guess you would need to pair a larger Barovia with rules that you must be somewhere "safe" to gain long rest benefits? Things like Van Richtens hideout, inside city walls, or in the werewolf lair on friendly terms.
Yeah, that could work well - a few other comments have said the same.
I increased the size of the map and use gritty realism rules (long rests are a week), because I want to create situations where the party needs to choose between staying ahead of events and getting a long rest. It also makes things like the hags sapping their max hp every night really dangerous.
Gritty Realism rules definitely sound like they'd work well (and side-step the issue) of a bigger Barovia for sure.
Are you telling me you can eldritch blast across hexes?
Chuck a zero at the end of its range, and it's a hard maybe for sure.
@@DMoftheMists one of the invocations: Eldritch Spear + Spell Sniper, gets halfway there (600ft), so not fully middle to middle, but that's a lot more than I expected.
Holy moly. That is indeed about halfway there. (Note to self: don't sing Bon Jovi, don't sing Bon Jovi, don't sing Bon Jovi...)
Sometimes the places where they hide information amazes me. A lot of this I would miss very very very easily!
I know right? 😬 Glad it was helpful! 😃
Your train is on the wrong track: Mike's map displays pre-conjunction Central Barovia at 46.5 hexes high = 11.625 miles North to South by 72.85 hexes across = 18.2 mi (@ 0.25mi/hex) East to West. (GIVEN, this is north central Barovia, NOT the entire width of Barovia. (Most people miss that tidbit entirely.) Realms of Terror has pre-conjunction Barovia at 52 miles high x 57 miles wide, and a breadth of about 35.7 hexes = 71.4 miles from the northwestern tip to the southeastern tip. A later 2nd Ed Ravenloft boxed set has post-conjunction Barovia at ~66 miles north-south by ~80 miles across (Post-conjunction Barovia absorbed Gundarak, and had a few other minor border changes, so it's not a 1 to 1 comparison.)(The scale on that boxed set is REALLY corny, that's why the measurements for this set are reported as about (~) 66x80 miles.) Actual Wallachia = 426km = 264.7 mi So yes, for historical precision, Mike Schley's map of Central Barovia should be scaled up precisely 4 times. For further reference.. the original i6 map of the Barovian Basin is a lie. Tracy Hickman had to scale his original map down multiple times, because in that day, TSR was scared to death that no one would want to (buy) play the game if it lasted longer than one evening. What you see in i6 is the tiniest map possible, that could represent a feasible the countryside of Barovia as described. That is all. Its actual scale is meaningless. Throughout Barovian canon, we are told to lean on the Historical Vlad Draculae where the Barovian lore is lacking. That is because Strahd = Vlad. You see, Strahd is not Bram Stoker's Dracula. Strahd is the historical Vlad Draculae, who then gets transformed in to a vampire. Brilliant, right? There is even a Ravenloft Guide to Transylvania. However, contrary to popular belief, Dracula didn't reside in Transylvania. His personal castle, and his castle fortifications were all in Walachia. So, if we use the size of Walachia to scale the (full) maps of the older versions of Barovia, which pictured the entire country.. we can deduce that we simply need to scale up Mike's map of Central Barovia to 4x to get to the correct size. You see? Also, as others have pointed out, your characters don't get a successful long rest if they're (low-level and) between villages. They get harried and harassed by any number of undead critters roaming the Barovian countryside at night. Someone compiled a tome of all of the creatures found in Barovia by canon, and there are over 300 of them. (Try fitting THAT in a 10x20 square mile block!) Anyway, the bestiary is on DMsGuild, so just look it up and grab it there. :)
Hey James. Thanks for the in-depth reply - I knew some of that stuff but not all of it (interesting the tidbit about TSR's views on Tracy's original map scale - I didn't know that). Sorry for my late reply - I've been away this past week and tried to be as deviceless as possible. Completely get what you're saying. I said this in another comment (although I think that thread's 'gone' now, as a commenter was being abusive to other commenters... 😬), but ultimately what's being talked about is old editions vs 5E - which is fine, and I completely get why people want a 'classic' experience (and I certainly don't want to get into an 'edition wars' debate here, especially as I don't know much about rules/mechanics pre-5E), but the problem is if people use a 2E/3E-style map, but use 5E's ruleset - _that's_ when there's potential problems. I also agree about harrying the players between settlements - IIRC I make that point in the video (like I said, it "depends on how you do it"), and if you're doing that, that's fine. But this is intended more for DMs who 1) increase the map size, 2) use 5E's rules, and 3) don't harry the PCs that much. Heck, I mentioned this in another comment, but I remember seeing a comment on Reddit once when someone said they increased the map size but hated random encounters between settlements and so they didn't do many or any (😵), so it's more intended for those folks. Sounds like you have the right thinking on it though. Thanks again!
I was about to put it bigger and after I eared your argument I think you are right. Putting short distance put extra stress on the grp. The only thing about that is the master must be very prepared to answer any decision the party would go with. Their will be no time for any reminder or preparation between the game. Sounds more funny like that thx
That's a fair point - I know what you mean. In those instances, I don't think it hurts between sessions to ask your players if they have their sights on Argynvostholt, or Berez, or the Werewolf Den (or whatever other place) as their next destination, in order to help you to prepare for it - especially given the campaign's sandbox nature. You could also potentially slow them down with a 'random' encounter or two on the way.
Great vid, didn’t know any of these and I thought I’d devoured the entire book
Thank you! 😃 Glad you found it useful.
mate please, in the future, theres 3 minutes of you saying "people make maps bigger that could be bad" and just edging us on why, at least say sort of reasoning so I can decide on if there is anysense to it,
8mins...
so like, I think the better solution is either adding in longer long rests, or only long rests in "safe" places, ie towns, look at Darker Dungeons (homebrew packet) so you can have a camping system to get some hitdice back, but you long rests you need to wait a week so be in a safe space, tho I also like just take a day in a fortified place. This both makes travel important, and means that the party will have lost some resources by the time they make it to the sites
Thanks for your feedback. I do - after a brief intro and then explaining why people do it, I explain it's because of the long rest and Hit Dice recovery issue. That's about 5 mins in (bearing in mind the intro is the first 1-2 mins). It's not 8 mins (as per your other comment). It wasn't my intention to pad out the video or "edge [people] on" or anything like that. But sure, I'll bear this in mind for future videos I put out. Thanks again.
Also what you are describing about players going from site to site is the players actively making decisions to make the game harder, with such a small map there is nothing stopping them from just taking a long rest and going to and from safer places to long rest each time, or to travel up and down the map long resting before taking on things on opposite sides of the map, same as your problem of larger spaces
I do think that you can also mess with strahds stat block, there's isn't really a reason you cant say that his mist form couldn't last longer, or move faster then the basic vampires one, when I played in the game my dm buffed the hell out of strahd, and we still kicked his ass, so I would say that I see some merit to your point of view if you consider game rules immutable, but I think in this case changing the game rules to fit the campaign better is actually the better move, If I went to run this I would actually consider looking into older maps tho and also adding in the extra settlements as if the map is bigger the kingdom might start to feel empty
The way I do long rests is that the hags are worshippers of dendar and every night the serpent devours the dreams of all barovians. So noone gets to long rest, ever. Unless they eat one of the dream pastries. It's evil, and I love it.
Oof, that sounds brutal (but in a good way)... 😈 If people never get to long rest, then how do you handle stuff like Hit Dice recovery, spell slot recovery, etc.? EDIT: Ohh unless they eat a dream pastry. Got it. Ohh that _is_ evil...!
@@DMoftheMists the players have been forced to accept that they just don't have any other choice, so they have been buying and eating the pastries from morgantha. I have planted a plot hook in which if they manage to restore the three fanes then the ability to long rest in Barovia will be restored. Once this happens I'm certain they'll go after the hags with vengeance on their hearts.
I don't really count miles. I'm very geographically impeded. I can't understand distances or spaces at all. I made the trip from the village of barovia to vallaki to last 3 days because it suited me narratively. I might be on the wrong but the players have not complained or appear to be any bothered by it
great video. The idea about vilnius is actually pretty good. About strahd's minions I think this is intended. It's a tragic villain, in the end, he's just alone, he has no more allies, no friends, noone to mourn his death, all he has is his ungodly powers and oh boy is he going to unleash their full potential unto the players. It's a high stakes tragic ending for a horror campaign. As it should be.
Thanks! I really like that perspective on Strahd - I agree! Also, "high stakes" - pun intended? 😆😉
@@DMoftheMists Pun very much intended ;) I think the overall narative is that the charismatic but cruel tyrant is slowly stripped of any allies while the party on the other hand has been gathering them. The end is meant to be a confrontation of what good leadership and kidness can do that pure raw evil power can't. It's the trope that fuels almost all horror stories.
I like this thinking a lot.
Great video, do you have a favorite homebrew to add to the adventure? I added a whole dragon zombie buried beneath Vallaki.
Thanks! Funnily enough I've been meaning to do a video called something like "My 5 Favourite Homebrew Additions to CoS". Similar to your dragon zombie (cool idea!), I planned for Argynvost to appear as a ghost dragon (from Fizban's Treasury of Dragons) if/when they tried to return the skull, but we had to end the campaign sooner than expected as two players moved away, so it didn't play out, sadly!
@@DMoftheMists thanks! And yeah, that would be a great video :)
Great vid! The Patrina stuff is definitely a good shout as her and Kasimir's info is soo spread out over the book. Also love hearing you hired a romani sensitivity consultant for your published material! I'd be curious re a Strahd combat video around your experience of his wall phasing ability as the community often seems pretty divided on this and how much 'fun' it is if you really play smart with it.
Thanks! 😃 Yeah I've been weighing up doing a video on Strahd's combat tactics. When I ran him, I used his RAW stat block (albeit with spells amended) and had him phase through walls - AFAIK all my players enjoyed the battle and saw it as a challenge more than a frustration, but it might be different from table to table. I've also been meaning to look into DragnaCarta's (of CoS Reloaded) three-phase Strahd, plus the CR 27 Strahd that's on DMsGuild, both of which would negate the need to do the wall-phasing (I think).
Interesting video, good points. Have you ever ran Death House or the House of Lament from Van Richten's guide? I'm interested in running those adventures in my campaign.
Thanks! I didn't run Death House when I ran CoS because we did Lost Mine of Phandelver before it, so they would've been overlevelled for it. I'd love to run it as a one-shot one day (maybe over Halloween) or if I do another run of CoS. I ran House of Lament but adapted it for a higher-level party and changed some of the story. So instead of them helping just 1 of the 3 'spirits' (IIRC), they helped Mara take down Dranzorg but then had to fight her as well.
If you don't mind buying the pieces of it, there is also the Misty Fortunes & Absent Hearts campaign that was created for the Adventurer's League as an alternate full campaign that also has a bunch of additional content.
Oh yeah! I didn't use that during my run of CoS, but I considered buying it anyway to take a look at it. Maybe I can do a video on it giving my thoughts - we'll see. Thanks for suggesting it.
Humor helps to relieve the tension of a horror game. Tension and release repeat, that's what keeps the horror up, so well done :)
Thank you! 😀
I'm really enjoying watching your backlog of content! This is such a nice channel. Keep it up :)
Thank you! 😃 I really appreciate the kind words. Cheers!
I didn’t even think about the hit die situation, I always figured the intimate size of Barovia was meant to facilitate the time crunch element of the adventure. If you make the map too big then you’ll disincentivize exploration since the players won’t want to get too far away from Strahd’s castle once they hit the final count down.
That's a good point as well, RE: the time crunch element - I think that's a part of it as well.
I would say that a neat solution could be that you cannot gain the benefits of a long rest outside of a a 'sanctuary', and then certain locations count as sanctuaries, such as towns, and perhaps the vistani camp and the winery after it's free of the pest. So then you have the same problems for player resources as a smaller map, but you get to make it more reasonable for Ireena needing an escort to Vallaki, when she can't just have a day's stroll over yonder.
That sounds like it could work. A few people have commented about the "less than a day for Ireena" aspect now. I get what people mean, but surely that just goes to show how scary Barovia is as-is? That Ismark and Ireena are too scared to take a 7-ish-hour trip without help? Because Barovia is that scary; _Strahd_ is that scary. That's what the players should be thinking/realizing IMO. Sure, extending the distance / number of days justifies it even more, but I don't think it's needed. If the DM - through I&I - makes it clear how dangerous the roads might be, there's no need to make it longer. IMO anyway.
@@DMoftheMists Well, then to bring up your point "spend a few nights outside of settlements and realize they aren't that dangerous", if they travel to Vallaki in one day and don't really feel it's that dangerous, you also break the illusion that "it's even too dangerous to travel during daytime". Another point is that this old kind woman travels to her windmill and doesn't need any escort there. Let's say we upscale the map so that Barovia Village > Old Windmill is one day's travel, and Vallaki is one day plus an hour or two, Morgantha can keep up her ruse that she can make it to her home during daytime when it's not as dangerous.
Could always just pull the 2e and 3e map which is 2x as big as the curse of strahd module and has 2 more cities and extra content. The map in the curse of strahd module isnt rhe whole domain, it just the portion you play in.
Indeed. I've heard of some DMs who do that. E.g. there's a town called Immol, right? If any DMs who did this read this, I'd be curious to know how it went in your games.
@@DMoftheMists the base game is fine as it is. Expanding the hexes to a larger size doesn't make the story better. It's just more flavor. Adding more regions does add more content, which causes another problem. The players need room to grow, which means they will be higher level when they confront Strahd. There was a remake in the 90s of the original Castle Ravenloft that had a low level campaign and a high level one, I believe level 15, that could be used to adjust the difficulty of the castle. Do you and the players want to spend more time in Barovia? Do you want to add homebrew. Personally, I have run COS 4x now and already homebrew the crap out of it so it doesnt bother me. I have been a Ravenloft DM since the mid 90s so I know my way around pretty well. Last game, I took the players into neighboring domains.
Sounds cool. I'm much newer to D&D (only started playing in 2018 & DMing since 2020), but I'm running a post-CoS Domains of Dread campaign at the mo, and the players and I are having a blast. They're Level 14 and in Valachan right now.
@@DMoftheMists it's all good. Would really recommend checking out some of the 2e and 3e resources. 5e did a good job making the domains more interesting but they really watered down the domain lords to a pg rating. The domain lords were a lot scarier and more tragic in older editions.
Thanks. Yeah, I've been doing that already to an extent. I tend to use 5E's VRGtR as a base / starting point, but look at older lore for further inspiration. When I ran Markovia I borrowed from Neither Man Nor Beast (especially the maps and info for the estate and the monastery), and I'm gonna do the same with Castles Forlorn when I run Forlorn. Helps to flesh it all out a bit more.
Great collection of resources! It sometimes helps to have these kinds of lists in video format instead of just a post to read. I am about to run CoS so your content has found me at the best possible time! Your videos give me a lot to think about but not in an overwhelming manner, and before I forget, the cat cameos are amazing! Also, I love the spoiler alert for Harry Potter 😂
Thanks for the kind words! 😃 And yeah... 😂 Hey, I guess you never know who hasn't watched/read it - and I'd hate to be the one to spoil the decades-old story, haha!
Great vid! Very thoughtful.
Thank you! 😃
I am sorry but I think you are completely wrong in your judgement on this topic. I have to disagree in regards to you having more hit dice if you make the map bigger. If you make it bigger so on average the party has to spend 1 night outside, the whole point is that there will be some type of encounter that makes it impossible to have a long rest. Strahd is not going to allow the party to go off on some boy scout overnight camping trip. If you can get from the village of Barovia to Vallaki in just a daytime hop down the road, Ismark could have easily gotten his sister to Vallaki without the party's help. Trade between the towns would be easier. You need a nighttime on the road to not just be scarier for the party but for the citizens as well. Making it an overnight excursion through the dangerous Svalich woods is what makes each location an island surround by a sea of terror. It makes the party think and prepare before heading out each time. Making multiple trips back and forth between locations becomes far more dangerous. There are enough possible oitdoor encounters within the game and plenty of gothic horror troupes out there to ensure that each night is something different and depending on the status, health and condition of the party. As for your point that once they survive outside because younare jotngonna TPK them with some wolves, well first off if it is still early in the game mayne they will TPK unless they run on the road back towards the village barovia and even if they do best them they are not gonna think "That wasn't so bad" as you state. They are going to think "Shit evey time we are stuck iutside at night something attacks us and we get no rest." I am not trying to be mean or anything but even after hearing you out, and actually even more.than before your opinion, I think the exact opposite is true. Making it bigger is not only better it is necessary.
Thanks for passing on your thoughts, and also for doing so in a respectful way. Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been sick the last few days. You make some well thought-out points, and removing long rests from journeys would indeed entirely side-step the main issue I raised, but your version sounds brutal, perhaps too brutal - in an already brutal campaign. Now I'm not saying that means you're wrong, but out of interest, have you run CoS, and if so, have you run it in the way you've described? And if so, how did it go? I'm not meaning to sound gatekeepery at all, but because I think it's one of those things where DMs _think_ making it harder than it already is automatically makes it better (in theory), and that not making it near-impossibly hard isn't true to the CoS spirit, but the way you describe it - while it sounds awesome running it as a DM - sounds like it'd lead to burnout and frustration for the players, so that'd be something I'd be conscious of. But then again I guess it depends on the players as well. If you have veteran players who want a challenge and love horror, they'll probably welcome it. Other types of players, not so much. My video was more aimed at DMs who may think "I want to make the make bigger" without giving it much further thought beyond that, not realising the wider consequences of doing so. In your case, you've obviously thought about it and suggested measures to counteract it (by not allowing long rests at all) - in which case power to you. I meant to mention this in the video as well but forgot, but I read a thread once where a DM said they made the map bigger to "make Barovia scarier" but also didn't bother with on-the-road encounters because they didn't like them(!), soo… y’know, that's not good. Maybe that's an extreme example, but my advice was meant for people who increase the map but then maybe also keep everything else as-is (the random encounter types, their frequency, etc.) or make other changes that actually undo the effect they’re going for. In your case, while I don't think I'd ever run it the way you've said, with the right DM and players, it could work well - but I don't necessarily think it'd be that way for everyone. Here's an analogy I thought of. RAW CoS (and RAW CoS map size) is Dark Souls. Your version is Dark Souls on hard mode. When people make the map larger but don't compensate for the change they've made, they think they're gonna get Dark Souls on hard mode but may be accidentally making Dark Souls on easy mode. That's what I'm trying to get across. I don't think that means my way is easy - it's just not as difficult as yours, as yours is harder still. I've also seen stories (on Reddit, etc.) where CoS DMs complain that their players get to a point where they don't want to leave settlements. Now this might be due to lack of direction, but I bet once or twice it's been because the journeys have been too long and too tough. Every DM wants to make CoS scary and hard, but making it _too_ scary and hard can equally bring problems and bring campaigns to a halt. I do also partially disagree with - and could argue against - the points about Ismark & Ireena "hopping down the road" and what you said about the trade between towns, plus there's the fact that making the distances longer risks drawing out the campaign (which may be fine for a long-lasting campaign and if the players are fine with that and invested), but this comment's already pretty long as it is. Thanks again.
@@DMoftheMists Hey thanks for the long reply. I definitely respect your opinion. Yes I have run it twice this way. Neither time would I say it was too brutal. In neither campaign was there a TPK and actually none of the players had to roll up a new character, they all survived till the end. Also you don't have to throw a deadly encounter at them every time they step outside. I am not fan of random encounters .I feel as a DM you should know your players, the characters, and their current status before deciding what they might or might not encounter on the road. As an example in one of the campaigns, while on the road they stopped for the night to make camp and they were pretty beat up. It was on the way back from Berez so they were not in the best shape. My players were all talking about where they were headed and what they were going to do next and when they said they were taking a long rest I gave them plenty of opportunity to say it but they never said they were going to post watch. They all went to sleep. so they awoke to hearing logs being thrown onto the fire and poked their heads out of their tents to find Strahd sitting in a chair poking at the fire. They were shocked and horrified for sure. Strahd was just there to express his impatience that they had not yet accepted his invitation to dinner and maybe they needed a little incentive. It was also a moment for him to let them know that one among them could not be trusted and had already made a deal with him. Once the conversation started to become rude, mostly because of the parties Paladin, Strahd got annoyed whistled into the night then vanished in a cloud of mist. A pack of wolves then came crashing into the camp. At this point the party was high enough level that the fight only last a round but it ended their chance at a long rest. My point being that each encounter on the road at night doesn't need to be deadly. Another night they got drunk with a group of traveling Vistani. That night they did get a long rest on the road. I also expanded COS in other ways and have implemented some of the suggestions from Lunch Break Heroes here on KZread. They have many great ideas for giving more depth to the campaign. I don't follow all their advice but a lot of it was really good.
Ahh that is such a *good* encounter with Strahd - good work! I get what you mean and what you're saying - I agree. Thanks! Already a fan of LBH - I used their version of the Werewolf Den and I felt it worked much better than the RAW.
I made 1 hour per hex, makes every major location 1 to 2 days travel from any other safe haven. Enough for a random encounter or two, without getting tedious.
Can I ask what your reasoning was for increasing it to 1 hour per hex?
Barovia village cannot be very far from the Durst Mill. You know very well why.
I take it you're referring to poor Granny's old, tired legs...? 😉 That's another reason for not increasing the map size. The trip between the two doesn't become feasible - when it comes to 'shopping' for 'ingredients' - if the distance is made even longer than it already is. Good catch with that one.
@@DMoftheMists Granny's old tired legs you say? sure sure
I love your cat so much! She deserves the world. How weird, I was looking at this artifact just last night and I managed to come up with yet another way to work in something involving Azalin. The basic idea is the final soul that was trapped, the Lich, is Azalin himself. And it is, of course, another escape attempt. Basically getting himself trapped in the Tarokka deck of a Vistana who can in theory leave the Demiplane of Dread and essentially be smuggled out. I like Azalin too much...
Thanks! She's the best. 😸 Ohh that's a cool idea! Smart. And so someone takes the deck out of Darkon and 'frees' him? That sounds just like the kind of scheme Azalin would dream up. I like it.
Stretching it too much makes Barovia feeltoo empty. However RAW, its just a short afternoon hike to take Ireena to Vallaki.
The players only get rests if you let them. Just make sure any night outside a proper building is a deadly encounter. Preferably forcing the players to make a mad dash for the nearest village in the dark. The map shouldn't be too big, it is a prison after all. It should be just large enough so that they have to make choice between camping outside or risking exhaustion to make it to the next village😈
One hex = 1/2 mile instead of 1/4 mile. Bigger, but not so big that moving at a fast pace isn't a viable option for covering the distance before nightfall
I'm running CoS but using the old edition lore, and lore from the "I, Strahd" novels. I tripled the distance to 0.75 miles per hex. My research indicated this was ideal if I wanted distances to reflect the novels. I also reduced the frequency of random encounters to reflect this. However, I am also using slower healing, so that they have to use their hit dice to heal, even on a long rest. Often they can still get to a location without a long rest, if they're willing to risk some exhaustion from pushing themselves. They've only camped in the wild once so far. But still, this video was helpful in the sense that I am better forewarned about the unintended consequences of my decision.
Sounds like you've got a good handle on the situation. And I'm a big fan of both I, Strahd novels (and wasn't the first Lord Soth Ravenloft novel set in Barovia as well?), so I can completely understand matching that scale.
I enlarged the map to 1 miles/hexagon and you are right, a bigger map offers more long rests....thats' why i incorporated a lot of adapted 3.5e undead monsters from the Libris Mortis....even experienced players were surprised and those old school monsters tend to do semi-permanent damages to stats like the Skin Kites for instance... Players were afraid of encountering those monsters that could severely damage the party effectiveness for days. I also used mental breakdown counters to add that "Darkest dungeon" feeling.
Sound cool! Might have to look into those monsters - they sound brutal. 😁😈
@@DMoftheMists Skin Kites, Spawn of Kyuss, blood golems…there are a lot of nice adds for an undead campaign. I’m an old school player from 3e and although i find 5e to be more elegant as a ruleset, one of the things that i’ve a complain for is the Monster diversity and complexity; luckly 3e is full of inspiration for clever evil dms Who want to be creative 👹
The tiny scale is absurd to imagine the trees, mountains, lakes, buildings etc, and imagine how much of it you could see on the horizon line into the "distance". It doesn't make sense for it to be so short
Fair enough. Although on the "horizon line" point, the map as a whole very hilly/mountainous - so it's not like the people of the Village of Barovia can see all the way to Vallaki (I think people travelling to Vallaki can only see it once they're near the windmill, which is most of the journey there). I found this 3D map to be handy for getting a feel for this: www.zootlocker.com/barovia/1barovia.html
@@DMoftheMists You could still se indivdual houses in all villages if you used a fly spell to fly stright up from Wallaki.
I suppose you could. Although you'd probably still need binoculars as well (especially if it's a particularly Misty day that day)... 😅🔭
The unknown is more terrifying than the known.
100%. At least two groups (one I played in, one I ran) can attest to that.
Depends on how much imagination one has. Those will little imagination go down into the basement when they hear a bump in the night.
You know, some of the stuff back from World of Warcraft's Darkmoone Faire might also be interesting to work into things
Ooo, interesting! I'll check it out. Thanks!
For specifically the problem of recovering all resources on every journey, you could patch this by making Long Rest outside of towns be less effective. There are several rules variants for this I've heard of already, but an extreme one is for a Short Rest to take overnight and a Long Rest to take a week specifically in a comfortable inn / big camp / whatever. This doesn't help with the other issues you raised though.
Yes! That's a good point and I think I've seen people suggest making those changes to rests when increasing the map size especially. It makes sense to do that. Gritty Realism I believe it's called, and it's in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
@@DMoftheMists The problem I have with this idea of long rests outside needing to be harder, is that realistically, most settlements of this time period would only be about one day apart, especially in horror type settings. In less horror type setting, where settlements might be a couple days apart, I would imagine that merchants would setup up safe locations along main routes between settlements so that they can transport merchandise between settlements in relative safety. How many trips of sleeping outside and losing goods before a group of merchants decide to set up safe spots to protect their goods? As for sleeping off of regular routes, that is what setting up a safe location with traps to warn your party and taking watch is for. Long rests say that you only need 6 hrs of rest and can take 2 hrs of keeping watch. What else is that for other than setting up a somewhat safe location while traveling outside. And, yes, I can imagine sleeping inside dungeons would be a bad idea. I'm just commenting on sleeping outside.
Great points.
I use to run a large map of curse of strahd made travel between towns days/weeks instead of minutes or hours, and my players loved it, it just depends on the player if your players are ok with a harder feeling campaign.
That's true! A lot of it comes down to what the players are like and prefer, what the DM's like... It's certainly not a clear-cut thing and I don't think there's any 100% right answer for 100% of people.
Thanks for the opinion piece. It isn't a PoV I've heard argued before and there's a lot of valid points to be had from it. As for the other "controversy" videos, I think one of the best things you can do is deliberate if the takes have anything new or revitalizing to add to the discussion (like this one did.) Providing those nuggets that haven't been iterated to death makes dealing with opinion backlash easier.
Thank you. For the 2nd one I have planned, I'm going to do something similar where I make an argument for something but there'll be some thought behind it and I don't think it's a perspective anyone's talked about before (but I won't be able to hide behind game design/mechanics on this one, haha)! 🫣
Definitely some good points there, makes the idea of expanding the map not as cut-and-dry. I also like the pulpy feel that can be brought about by mad dashes between the settlements, rather than trepidatious journeys.
In my very first D&D game the DM ran CoS and read the map wrong. He assumed 1 Hex = 1 day of travel. It took us 4 or 5 game sessions to get from the village of Barovia to Vallaki, and those sessions were boring. Just wandering along the path with occasional random encounters. The firs 1-2 were fun, but then it just became quite monotonous.
Ahh man, that's such a shame. 1 hex = 1 _day_ ? Ouch. That's a long walk.
Honestly, I think it's supposed to be tiny. Staying outside in Barovia might be scary, but being at the locations isn't less scary, once you get to know the people
Some good points, I will probably not go bigger than double when I run CoS.
Thanks! Yeah, I'd say if you do increase it, just doubling it is enough and is probably the maximum someone should consider (given all the reasons I said). It's riskier if it gets much bigger than that.
Humour can make the horror more grounded for sure
Absolutely. I'd argue that it helps for a more memorable campaign as well. Some of the best, easiest to remember moments are often the funny ones.
Really appreciate this video. I’m really interested in the Carnival setting but haven’t found a ton of resources to help inspire encounters
Thanks for the kind words! Yeah it can be a tricky one on the encounters front, simply because it isn't necessarily a combat-heavy location compared to some other domains (at least IMO). If in doubt though, I'd say that the best bet is evil fey creatures who are after Isolde.
I'm going to reveal what I did for this campaign. I didn't like it as written. I ran it as the first campaign for a new group I formed 2 years ago butI had to change things a lot. As written the entire campaign is basically Dracula's story which was boring to me and it also takes ideas from other horror stories like Frankenstein. So I just removed or replaced things. Goodbye Van Ritchen aka Van Helsing. Goodbye Abbot and his Bride. Goodbye Ezmerelda, and Ireena aka Mina. All this was also before Van Ricthen's Guide came out as well. It got released when we were halfway through the campaign. I made this all a larger campaign that used CoS as the major jumping off point to something bigger. The premise was, what if one of the Dark Powers was trying to regain their godhood by creating new worshipers. This Dark Power had been secretly experimenting with ways within the domain of dread to obtain followers. So I stole the idea from Sunless Citadel where there is a tree deep in this lair. The tree has fruits that turn those who eat them into mindless worshippers. The big bad leader for this portion is the first worshipper on this plane. I had the adventure start out with the players being prisoners who escaped. Once they got through that, they would be whisked away to Barovia at level 3. Now in Barovia I needed to do something about Ireena. Here is where I had one of the female PCs suddenly develop red hair. In folklore red hair is seen as a bad omen. Tatyana had red hair so Strahd's obsession with trying to find her reborn I decided led to a string of women that had red hair being taken, developing this superstition about red hair being bad. Tatyana's soul was just waiting for someone new to enter the domain and one of the PC's had this bad luck. Because this made the town of Barovia somewhat useless, I decided to remake that part too. I used the concept of a ravenloft adventure from 2E where a woman is set to be killed due to a high priest blaming her for a curse. It all is false of course and the real instigator of everything is the high priest himself due to a daughter he abandoned as a baby. However My players kind of blew past everything I prepared and decided while questioning the priest they would try to use Charm Person on him which failed (he is a cleric with high wis save after all) and blew the whole thing up and they had to flee the town. The hag's hut got changed. I kept it as a windmill but instead of hags I had it be a Lamia. She was a worshipper of this Dark Power that wants to be a god again and as Lamia are part of desert culture folklore, I decided she would have been from Har'akir which is where I was going to take the players at the end of Curse of Strahd as a surprise. This was the first hint in that direction because her type of monster had no place here and I also dropped some symbology for Har'akir as being on her person. At the windmill the lamia is using children as labor and as 'ingredients' for making those special cakes mixed with the fruit of the same tree the party saw in Sunless Citadel. All attempts to destroy this tree result in failure. Also this tree is a not quite perfected attempt at produce fruit that affects the mind. This one only works on the still developing minds of children and even then not all of them. The perfected version was the one they had first encountered so the party is essentially working backwards. After this I still used a lot of the same stuff in the campaign book for the important elements. I introduced other things I found on the internet for CoS like the Three Fanes which would be the party's way of further restoring Barovia and weakening Strahd. Since I removed Van Ritchen, instead of his wagon area I used that Puppet Darklord from old Ravenloft, Maligno, in this section. You know that murderbot in Strahd's Castle? He was the first attempt at making a sentient puppet. Maligno was the second attempt who later imprisoned the druid master who made him and is now trying to make children 'happy' by turning them into mindless puppets. This wagon area was now a stage where people would be coming to witness a puppet show. Here is where I also hooked the abbot in. The abbot is a fallen celestial creature who tried to kill Strahd and failed. Strahd tortured him for his amusement, ripping off his wings, and then when he grew bored, let him go. Now this 'abbot' runs the prison and still tries to help the people but is also quite insane too. He works with Maligno unwittingly. See the Abbot's monestary is a former prison for the criminally insane. Their ghosts still linger but his presence keeps them from hurting the town (not that he knows this). But Maligno is using their haunted remains (bone splinters) by embedding it into marionettes. This marionettes can inject little needles into its victims to make others more submissive. Once Maligno makes them, he gives some of them to the abbot who gives them to the kids of the village as presents. So the PCs now are involved in stopping this plot. I also replaced Mordenkainen with my own archmage NPC from my own homebrew world. She is a war criminal that got sent to this domain. Strahd's brides also got changed based on other stuff I found. They were boring as vampire spawn so I made them full vampires who Strahd had allowed control over specific creatures of Barovia although he could assert control back if he wanted to. One controlled bats, the other wolves and the last rats. The one in control of rats though resented being given control over vermin and was the traitor seeking to replace Strahd someday. This allowed me to work in some angles for the party working with her. So in the end after the party righted all the wrongs and everything was good, they still had the unanswered questions about the Lamia and the tree with the 'groovy fruits' they called it. As tried to leave Barovia, the mists reformed and they found themselves in Har'akir. This is where I basically made many things up as we went. We still had the same darklord and I used the old adventure for Har'Akir as my baseline for what was I was going to do. So we still had Anhktepot and Senmet here. But inserted was another one of the trees. This was the original try but the tree produced terrible fruit that changed people. The Dark Power's worshipper that is here is mutated and curses her. But this worshipper had an apprentice that still believed who escaped Har'Akir (remember the Lamia?) and tried again elsewhere. Once the party dealt with things here they left and found themselves in Tepest. In Tepest I wholly made up things. Here Mother Lorinda is an avatar of the Dark Power. They also encountered again my Archmage who had escaped Barovia with the party but I decided time works differently on the domains of dread so she had been in Tepest for hundreds of years and is now dying of old age (she is a gnome) whereas the party hasn't aged at all. The campaign ended at this stage. During the final battle against this dark power, one of the party members struck a deal with another dark power for its help when the party was having a rough time. So once they beat the BBEG and everyone was finally able to leaving the domains of dread, this party member plus murderbot (who they still had) got instead taken to Falkovia and landed right in the middle of a wave of zombies. The end.
Wow, epic comment! Thanks for sharing. I like the sound of your changes. I haven't included Har'Akir and Tepest as part of my run (and currently don't intend to) - but if I do, I'm going to come back to your comments on them for added inspiration. Thanks!
@@DMoftheMists Don't get me wrong. There are some aspects of Curse of Strahd that I liked such as how once you get past the town of Barovia, the adventure can be opened up more to allow the party to go anywhere. Princes of the Apocalypse did something similar. But in Curse of Strahd I felt like you were also held back by having to look after Ireena while the overall plot of the story was just 'been there, read that'. I can barely think of any vampire story that isn't them just kidnapping someone they are obsessed with. If I could go back, I'd consider changing Strahd into some kind of psychic vampire with further reaching psychic powers to mess with the party more and he could be leaving like drained husks of his victims behind instead of a more classical bloody mess. Knowing some of the classical Ravenloft and Domains of Dread lore helped me put together a better idea for a more far reaching campaign which all came from with some snippets I found on the internet for expanding the CoS campaign and that initial Sunless Citadel adventure then asking 'what if' questions. We were not quite in Har'akir when Van Richten's Guide came out which helped in the way of a nice map of it. Before it was basically just one run down town and a massive desert. And I was quite possibly going to use Kartakass before I brought them to Tepest since we had a bard in the group, plus a light domain cleric who took the performance skill so performed with the bard which could have been fun for them. But I couldn't quite think of an angle for going up against the dark lord there so we just went into Tepest after Har'akir which was easier since it didn't have quite so many towns and locations I had to work on.
I've always wanted to know how people responded to the changes for this domain, so I'll be watching this vid for sure, just a few thoughts before I do, you mentioned looking up the 2e material for Falkovinia so you know how it used to be. I find a lot of the 5e changes to be very abrupt and I often don't like the direction, and at first I was the same way about Falkovinia, but then when I thought about it, I honestly was never going to run Falkovinia as written anyway, like you can make a good story in that setting but the idea of taking a group of players through that experience is really not appealing to me, the biggest thing being the rampant SA and genuinely nazi levels of other evil shit going on. So on one hand, I'm excited for someone besides Vlad to be in charge of the domain, but on the other hand it's confusing to me just why zombie apocalypse was the theme, I mean Necropolis and Sourangne are both crawling with zombies, I always thought that it would be cool for the Vampyre "gangs" to have a potential darklord amongst them who takes over in Vlads place and it becomes something similar to original Falkovinia but kind of in the way the vampires in Blade use the humans as cattle, rather than the whole domain being a murder/r*pe survival room. But I'm interested to see your thoughts on what they did do with it so here we go!
The fact that Hyskosa is involved with the PCs sparing Gondregal is... Chef's kiss, the Mists have spoken. It's very appropriate that Hyskosa would be involved because the chain of events leads to the death of a darklord, I like that a lot. Reminds me of the Grand Conjunction meta plot from back in the day.
Honestly, it was a campaign highlight. 1 in 54 chance. Couldn't have written it better myself.
I see what you're saying. I didn't grow up with the older lore (I only got into D&D a few years ago, through 5E), so I didn't have the benefit of knowing what old-school Falkovnia was like, other than researching it. I probably should've made that clearer in the video. I'm obviously not trying to advocate for one over the other, but just that 5E Falkovnia was what I came across first - but for those who knew old-school Falkovnia, I can competely get that the changes were jarring. TBH, doing a zombie apocalypse domain didn't really appeal to me, either - zombie stuff is usually my least favourite type of horror to watch. But when my player and I decided their PC was from there, I had to commit to it - and I ended up really enjoying it. It works well as a D&D thing IMO.
Honestly Vlad was pretty ancillary given that he was a clear expy of Vlad the Impaler. That said: I have incorporated Falkovnia's past and combined with Darkon's direction came up with a vast conspiracy that Falkovnia was never a true domain. Vlad was never a true Darklord. And Vladeska is his daughter and she isn't a true Darklord either. That's why neither could ever control their borders. If we recall: Vlad originally appeared in Darkon before being chased away by Azalin's undead horde. So I took the lore that Azalin has supposedly escaped and decided that he *had* Well, kinda. I decided Falkovnia is simply Darkon and Azalin's latest escape attempt had him wind up there and he is actually the source of the neverending zombie apocalypse. His motivation is, as always, escape. He's trying to push Vladeska to the true breaking point of becoming a true Darklord in the hopes that the Dark Powers will make her Darklord and by extension his chains to the Demiplane of Dread will be broken and he will be free at last.
@@Azreal231916 I really like that actually, because there's a lot you can do with the fact that Vladeska seems to have some good deep down inside, and it makes that struggle all the more compelling, gives a good reason for characters to care about someone the players have meta knowledge (and expectations) about being the baddie. Very cool.