I am a new DM and will be running Curse of Strahd. I have read the entire adventure, but don't know how to prepare for the campaign, and prepare session to session. What should I do before and week to week for campaign/session preparation?
Welcome to the world of DMing - you're in for a great adventure. Well done for taking up the mantle.
The fact you're using a premade campaign works in your favour. That means a lot of the world building is done for you - but there's still some important things to consider before you all get together. A few tips for you as you start to think about your first session:
1. Don't over prepare. This is always my first point - there is loads you can do before the first session - but probably plenty you shouldn't do. Try to get into the mindset that you're not crafting the perfect adventure from start to finish for your players. Not every decision has to be thought of in advance. Not every interaction or encounter has to be meticulously crafted. Along with your players, you are weaving a unique narrative - while you know the plot, the story is something you all write together.
2. Know your strengths. What you'll need to prepare more extensively will depend on what you're naturally good at - or not so good at. Are you amazing at improvising characters on the fly? You might not need to think so much about NPCs. Do you think you'll struggle with all of the combat rules? Maybe a reference sheet containing all of the available actions available, initiative rules, and the like will help you in the heat of battle.
3. Understand your players with a Session Zero. A session before your official first session is really helpful to everyone invovled. In this 'Session Zero', you can roll your characters, talk about your DMing style, and what you expect from them. It'll let you hear what they're looking for in the game - whether they're more interested in hack n' slash, or more of a slower narrative driven game, and you set out some expectations early on. If your players don't know each other, it's a great way to break the ice too. It also helps you know in advance what race and class your players are going to be playing, so you can learn the important mechanics of their characters before you start playing. You can also lock down logistics, such as whether you're playing in Theatre of the Mind, or prefer Grid Map and Minis.
4. Have a rough overview. You've read through the whole adventure - which is helpful - but jot down a basic framework for the first session, and what you expect your players to achieve and do. CoS is pretty free-form, and so having your own framework along with the campaign book will help you keep a track of what's coming up in the adventure, and help you gently nudge players along the plot. But remember to keep it loose, because players can and will go off piste. And remebering tip #1 - that's fine.
5. Get yourself some handy resources. There's loads of additional resources that can help you - and some you won't you need until you start playing. But I can almost guarantee that if you think you need it after session 1, someone else will have thought the same and made it available. Battle mats, Initiative Cards, DM Screen additions - a quick search of what you're looking for will bring up plenty of helpful resources, most of which are free.
6. Make cheat sheets for towns. For towns, make a list of important locations in your notebook, with a list of important NPCs and the information they have. That way, when your party is chatting to the Barkeep, and your rogue decides to strike a conversation with someone else, you won't be left struggling to find what information they're supposed to have, and you can focus on roleplaying.
7. Make cheat sheets for dungeons. Same tip as before goes for dungeons - make a list of the rooms, and the main features, encounters, traps, and treasures. That way, you can have the campaign book open on the map, and not have to flick between pages to see what's coming up. You'll know exactly what they're about to face, and can have creature stat blocks to hand etc.
8. Keep a notepad handy. A simple notepad is your best friend during a session. You can record important points and conversations and their outcomes. Jot down important events and NPCs you've made up on the fly. Encourage your players to keep notes too, and then at the start of each session, rather than you recapping, get your players to recap. That way you'll get their perspective on what they think is happening, and what they'll likely do next. You can add any goals or information that they've missed in their recap, to remind them of what they should be looking for next time.
9. Reflect on the previous session. Following on from the previous tip, reflect on what went well in the session - and what didn't go as expected. You can ever ask your players for their thoughts - and especially in the earlier sessions, what they felt went well, and what could have been better. It's great to get this feedback, so you can prepare the next session more effectively, knowing what works, what doesn't, and what your players appreciate.
I'm running a CoS game at the moment. here's some tips for you.
Handouts: prepare all the player handouts beforehand. I did this for the letters, wax sealed them, and then just attach a post it note to them to keep track of them. Also, weather the Burgomeister letter they can find in the mud on the way to the Village of Barovia. Put that handout above some steaming tea, crumple it up, make it worn out, it stands out better compared to how clean all the other notes are.
Quest log: There are a ton of sidequests in CoS, recognize what they are and create and maintain a quest log that you can hand out at the start of every game.
Ask your players what they want to do: When you're getting closer to wrapping up one thing, ask your players to decide on what quest they may want to do next. This can really help out since it will allow you to specialize your game setup.
You should also check out the Elven Tower's guide on Curse of Strahd, it's a pretty solid supplement in running it.
I'd also recommend doing the Tarot reading ahead of time so you can sort of plan how things are going to go no matter which directions the party heads. Maps for this adventure can be really tricky to as there are a lot of multilevel ones that can be very hard to draw out if you are using minis and battle grids.
Good practical advice above. What follows is more about theme and feeling.
Watch a bunch of horror movies and steal images and scenes hand over fist. Hammer and old Universal are good for the overall Central European mood, but anything that scares you or creeps you out goes into the gumbo pot. Lots of D&D monsters were written with a horror movie in mind, so lean into that. A CoS campaign isn't one six-month long horror movie. It's a collection of tighter, shorter ones. Find the structure of each episode, find the horror movie in it, and underline it. You're like the host of the midnight movie. The Cryptkeeper or Elvira or whoever.
Second vote for pre-doing the tarot reading.
I found it useful to have a mentor character, either van Richten, Ezmeralda, one of the Martikovs, or whoever, to tell players what order they should be doing things in, so they don't start off at the Amber Temple or charging headfirst into Castle Ravenloft. That probably means taking the initiative to try to gain their trust when they arrive in Vallaki (at the same time the Baron and Lady Wachter are also trying to gain their trust and manipulate them).
I've seen a lot of people nerf the coven fight because it's the first big setpiece on the road to Vallaki and lowbies charge in to the windmill full of righteous fury. DMs don't want a TPK in the second week, so they let the party win. I just have too much fun with phantasmal killer not to use it. Rather than making the hags weaker and letting the party win a stand-up fight, why not have the party get their asses kicked and then wake up in a big animal pen, with the hags getting ready to cook them for dinner, and then give them a chance to escape, or bluff, or turn the hags against one another? When one player talked Bella into mouthing off to Granny Morgantha, I had Granny unhinge her jaw and swallow her impudent daughter whole, while Bella shrieked and begged for mercy. Then the bloated Granny lumbered upstairs to sleep it off. The party talked Ofallia into letting them out of the cage so they could help her finish her chores and avoid her sister's fate, then they shoved her into an oven. Technically, it wouldn't hurt a night hag, but it's a classic fairy-tale kill, so I went with it. Then they snuck upstairs and tried to chop up Granny in her bed. A bunch of lowbies against a single night hag is a pretty fair fight. Unfortunately for them, Granny got away and stalked them in their dreams Freddy Kruger-style for a while.
Remember that everyone in the valley is trapped inside the self-portrait of a madman and there's no happy ending.
I'd also recommend doing the Tarot reading ahead of time so you can sort of plan how things are going to go no matter which directions the party heads. Maps for this adventure can be really tricky to as there are a lot of multilevel ones that can be very hard to draw out if you are using minis and battle grids.
I forgot to mention this, this is so important. My original drawing for the campaign had two of the artifacts be in the tombs of Castle Ravenloft. This also allows you to pick who their ally may be, which can help serve as a mouthpiece for the GM depending on who you select.
In addition, predetermining the tarot reading allows you to script that scene better instead of flipping through the book back and forth.
I've just started my campaign, we just completed our second session, they've made it out of Death House. In a couple sessions from now, they'll meet Ismark in the tavern and he will share some info about Strahd, and ultimately it'll be the first they've really heard about him. So how much is too much? I want to tell enough to make them afraid, and most likely they'll have their first encounter with him at the end of that session. Thoughts?
I've just started my campaign, we just completed our second session, they've made it out of Death House. In a couple sessions from now, they'll meet Ismark in the tavern and he will share some info about Strahd, and ultimately it'll be the first they've really heard about him. So how much is too much? I want to tell enough to make them afraid, and most likely they'll have their first encounter with him at the end of that session. Thoughts?
Strahd isn't a mystery in Barovia. Everyone knows who Strahd is. Everyone knows the rumors about him though some are accurate and some are not.
When I ran this, I had the party see a man watching them as the exited the death house as the mists receded. He was some distance down the street. Dressed very well (far better dressed than any of the other inhabitants of Barovia). Well groomed and handsome, staring at the characters in a way that gave them the shivers. When they moved in his direction he stepped around the corner of the building down the street where he was watching from and the characters could find no sign of him.
Ismark can tell them about Strahd as can anyone else that will talk to them. However, Ismark does have more personal reasons to share and needs help. Many of the inhabitants won't speak out of fear of Strahd. The Vistani are unlikely to give straight answers since they are typically servants of Strahd - like the wolves and werewolves etc. The exception is the woman who leads the Vistani camp near the village of Barovia.
Anyway, adventurers are the only fun that Strahd has in his centuries of misery imprisoned in a world that is partly a product of his own mind. (read the section on him flooding the river in Berez and the nature of the inhabitants with or without souls). He has a vague hope that perhaps an adventurer might arrive worthy of taking his place while also knowing that this is impossible and none will be found worthy. Strahd plays with his food, tests out the characters. At the beginning he can kill them all if he wants but where is the challenge in that? However, the seeds of Strahd's destruction are buried in the items scattered across the land which the adventurers eventually find - usually tied to the Tarokka card deck reading.
On thing to keep in mind is that a party at level 10-11 towards the end of the adventure, equipped with the items that can be found, will typically find Strahd as written to be too easy to defeat. In which case, Strahd is actually too smart to let the encounter happen. As a result, in my run through, I made some changes to Strahd towards the end of the game as he realized that perhaps he should take things a little more seriously. (I re-arranged the spells he had since he has access to all spells at the Amber Temple - bumped his caster level a bit - and had him come up with a plan calling in some of the druids that worship him and elevating a couple of vampire spawn to vampires and teaching them some magic - it made for a fairly exciting final fight to end the module - the characters advanced to level 12 afterwards).
Anyway, at the beginning the characters NEED to know to fear Strahd. They have to also know to not go to the castle since a low level party will die there. Ismark and others can let them know that there are dangers throughout the land and death could lie around any corner. He would let them know about the relatively "safe" villages of Barovia, Vallaki and Krezk. He might warn them not to go to the ruins of Berez (it is a village that Strahd destroyed and now inhabited by a powerful witch). He would also warn them about not approaching the castle and perhaps might mention the failed "revolution" from the previous year. All of this is common knowledge to inhabitants of Barovia and hints at both places they might visit and places to avoid until much later. Emphasizing to the players that there are locations where they will die instills some fear and caution and helps the game run better since the DM typically doesn't want a TPK and there are places in Strahd's domain where that will happen if the characters go there too early.
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I am a new DM and will be running Curse of Strahd. I have read the entire adventure, but don't know how to prepare for the campaign, and prepare session to session. What should I do before and week to week for campaign/session preparation?
Welcome to the world of DMing - you're in for a great adventure. Well done for taking up the mantle.
The fact you're using a premade campaign works in your favour. That means a lot of the world building is done for you - but there's still some important things to consider before you all get together. A few tips for you as you start to think about your first session:
1. Don't over prepare. This is always my first point - there is loads you can do before the first session - but probably plenty you shouldn't do. Try to get into the mindset that you're not crafting the perfect adventure from start to finish for your players. Not every decision has to be thought of in advance. Not every interaction or encounter has to be meticulously crafted. Along with your players, you are weaving a unique narrative - while you know the plot, the story is something you all write together.
2. Know your strengths. What you'll need to prepare more extensively will depend on what you're naturally good at - or not so good at. Are you amazing at improvising characters on the fly? You might not need to think so much about NPCs. Do you think you'll struggle with all of the combat rules? Maybe a reference sheet containing all of the available actions available, initiative rules, and the like will help you in the heat of battle.
3. Understand your players with a Session Zero. A session before your official first session is really helpful to everyone invovled. In this 'Session Zero', you can roll your characters, talk about your DMing style, and what you expect from them. It'll let you hear what they're looking for in the game - whether they're more interested in hack n' slash, or more of a slower narrative driven game, and you set out some expectations early on. If your players don't know each other, it's a great way to break the ice too. It also helps you know in advance what race and class your players are going to be playing, so you can learn the important mechanics of their characters before you start playing. You can also lock down logistics, such as whether you're playing in Theatre of the Mind, or prefer Grid Map and Minis.
4. Have a rough overview. You've read through the whole adventure - which is helpful - but jot down a basic framework for the first session, and what you expect your players to achieve and do. CoS is pretty free-form, and so having your own framework along with the campaign book will help you keep a track of what's coming up in the adventure, and help you gently nudge players along the plot. But remember to keep it loose, because players can and will go off piste. And remebering tip #1 - that's fine.
5. Get yourself some handy resources. There's loads of additional resources that can help you - and some you won't you need until you start playing. But I can almost guarantee that if you think you need it after session 1, someone else will have thought the same and made it available. Battle mats, Initiative Cards, DM Screen additions - a quick search of what you're looking for will bring up plenty of helpful resources, most of which are free.
6. Make cheat sheets for towns. For towns, make a list of important locations in your notebook, with a list of important NPCs and the information they have. That way, when your party is chatting to the Barkeep, and your rogue decides to strike a conversation with someone else, you won't be left struggling to find what information they're supposed to have, and you can focus on roleplaying.
7. Make cheat sheets for dungeons. Same tip as before goes for dungeons - make a list of the rooms, and the main features, encounters, traps, and treasures. That way, you can have the campaign book open on the map, and not have to flick between pages to see what's coming up. You'll know exactly what they're about to face, and can have creature stat blocks to hand etc.
8. Keep a notepad handy. A simple notepad is your best friend during a session. You can record important points and conversations and their outcomes. Jot down important events and NPCs you've made up on the fly. Encourage your players to keep notes too, and then at the start of each session, rather than you recapping, get your players to recap. That way you'll get their perspective on what they think is happening, and what they'll likely do next. You can add any goals or information that they've missed in their recap, to remind them of what they should be looking for next time.
9. Reflect on the previous session. Following on from the previous tip, reflect on what went well in the session - and what didn't go as expected. You can ever ask your players for their thoughts - and especially in the earlier sessions, what they felt went well, and what could have been better. It's great to get this feedback, so you can prepare the next session more effectively, knowing what works, what doesn't, and what your players appreciate.
I'm running a CoS game at the moment. here's some tips for you.
Handouts: prepare all the player handouts beforehand. I did this for the letters, wax sealed them, and then just attach a post it note to them to keep track of them. Also, weather the Burgomeister letter they can find in the mud on the way to the Village of Barovia. Put that handout above some steaming tea, crumple it up, make it worn out, it stands out better compared to how clean all the other notes are.
Quest log: There are a ton of sidequests in CoS, recognize what they are and create and maintain a quest log that you can hand out at the start of every game.
Ask your players what they want to do: When you're getting closer to wrapping up one thing, ask your players to decide on what quest they may want to do next. This can really help out since it will allow you to specialize your game setup.
You should also check out the Elven Tower's guide on Curse of Strahd, it's a pretty solid supplement in running it.
https://www.elventower.com/curse-of-strahd-guide
I'd also recommend doing the Tarot reading ahead of time so you can sort of plan how things are going to go no matter which directions the party heads. Maps for this adventure can be really tricky to as there are a lot of multilevel ones that can be very hard to draw out if you are using minis and battle grids.
Good practical advice above. What follows is more about theme and feeling.
Watch a bunch of horror movies and steal images and scenes hand over fist. Hammer and old Universal are good for the overall Central European mood, but anything that scares you or creeps you out goes into the gumbo pot. Lots of D&D monsters were written with a horror movie in mind, so lean into that. A CoS campaign isn't one six-month long horror movie. It's a collection of tighter, shorter ones. Find the structure of each episode, find the horror movie in it, and underline it. You're like the host of the midnight movie. The Cryptkeeper or Elvira or whoever.
Second vote for pre-doing the tarot reading.
I found it useful to have a mentor character, either van Richten, Ezmeralda, one of the Martikovs, or whoever, to tell players what order they should be doing things in, so they don't start off at the Amber Temple or charging headfirst into Castle Ravenloft. That probably means taking the initiative to try to gain their trust when they arrive in Vallaki (at the same time the Baron and Lady Wachter are also trying to gain their trust and manipulate them).
I've seen a lot of people nerf the coven fight because it's the first big setpiece on the road to Vallaki and lowbies charge in to the windmill full of righteous fury. DMs don't want a TPK in the second week, so they let the party win. I just have too much fun with phantasmal killer not to use it. Rather than making the hags weaker and letting the party win a stand-up fight, why not have the party get their asses kicked and then wake up in a big animal pen, with the hags getting ready to cook them for dinner, and then give them a chance to escape, or bluff, or turn the hags against one another? When one player talked Bella into mouthing off to Granny Morgantha, I had Granny unhinge her jaw and swallow her impudent daughter whole, while Bella shrieked and begged for mercy. Then the bloated Granny lumbered upstairs to sleep it off. The party talked Ofallia into letting them out of the cage so they could help her finish her chores and avoid her sister's fate, then they shoved her into an oven. Technically, it wouldn't hurt a night hag, but it's a classic fairy-tale kill, so I went with it. Then they snuck upstairs and tried to chop up Granny in her bed. A bunch of lowbies against a single night hag is a pretty fair fight. Unfortunately for them, Granny got away and stalked them in their dreams Freddy Kruger-style for a while.
Remember that everyone in the valley is trapped inside the self-portrait of a madman and there's no happy ending.
I forgot to mention this, this is so important. My original drawing for the campaign had two of the artifacts be in the tombs of Castle Ravenloft. This also allows you to pick who their ally may be, which can help serve as a mouthpiece for the GM depending on who you select.
In addition, predetermining the tarot reading allows you to script that scene better instead of flipping through the book back and forth.
I've just started my campaign, we just completed our second session, they've made it out of Death House. In a couple sessions from now, they'll meet Ismark in the tavern and he will share some info about Strahd, and ultimately it'll be the first they've really heard about him. So how much is too much? I want to tell enough to make them afraid, and most likely they'll have their first encounter with him at the end of that session. Thoughts?
Strahd isn't a mystery in Barovia. Everyone knows who Strahd is. Everyone knows the rumors about him though some are accurate and some are not.
When I ran this, I had the party see a man watching them as the exited the death house as the mists receded. He was some distance down the street. Dressed very well (far better dressed than any of the other inhabitants of Barovia). Well groomed and handsome, staring at the characters in a way that gave them the shivers. When they moved in his direction he stepped around the corner of the building down the street where he was watching from and the characters could find no sign of him.
Ismark can tell them about Strahd as can anyone else that will talk to them. However, Ismark does have more personal reasons to share and needs help. Many of the inhabitants won't speak out of fear of Strahd. The Vistani are unlikely to give straight answers since they are typically servants of Strahd - like the wolves and werewolves etc. The exception is the woman who leads the Vistani camp near the village of Barovia.
Anyway, adventurers are the only fun that Strahd has in his centuries of misery imprisoned in a world that is partly a product of his own mind. (read the section on him flooding the river in Berez and the nature of the inhabitants with or without souls). He has a vague hope that perhaps an adventurer might arrive worthy of taking his place while also knowing that this is impossible and none will be found worthy. Strahd plays with his food, tests out the characters. At the beginning he can kill them all if he wants but where is the challenge in that? However, the seeds of Strahd's destruction are buried in the items scattered across the land which the adventurers eventually find - usually tied to the Tarokka card deck reading.
On thing to keep in mind is that a party at level 10-11 towards the end of the adventure, equipped with the items that can be found, will typically find Strahd as written to be too easy to defeat. In which case, Strahd is actually too smart to let the encounter happen. As a result, in my run through, I made some changes to Strahd towards the end of the game as he realized that perhaps he should take things a little more seriously. (I re-arranged the spells he had since he has access to all spells at the Amber Temple - bumped his caster level a bit - and had him come up with a plan calling in some of the druids that worship him and elevating a couple of vampire spawn to vampires and teaching them some magic - it made for a fairly exciting final fight to end the module - the characters advanced to level 12 afterwards).
Anyway, at the beginning the characters NEED to know to fear Strahd. They have to also know to not go to the castle since a low level party will die there. Ismark and others can let them know that there are dangers throughout the land and death could lie around any corner. He would let them know about the relatively "safe" villages of Barovia, Vallaki and Krezk. He might warn them not to go to the ruins of Berez (it is a village that Strahd destroyed and now inhabited by a powerful witch). He would also warn them about not approaching the castle and perhaps might mention the failed "revolution" from the previous year. All of this is common knowledge to inhabitants of Barovia and hints at both places they might visit and places to avoid until much later. Emphasizing to the players that there are locations where they will die instills some fear and caution and helps the game run better since the DM typically doesn't want a TPK and there are places in Strahd's domain where that will happen if the characters go there too early.