I ran I6 back when it came out, many, many moons ago, and have always loved Ravenloft.
I'm about to start running Curse of Strahd (though in GURPS, not D&D) and wondering if there are any major red flags, in D&D, that I need to keep an eye out for? Any stumbling blocks you've encountered? Areas that seemed to be in the wrong place? Anything hilariously bad (or just plain hilarious) happen in your playthroughs?
Well, most of the problems have to do with extremely dangerous encounters with very little warning -- it's easily possible to run into a full night hag coven or a half dozen vampire spawn at level 3-4 -- and in GURPS you don't have the same monster writeups and probably aren't planning on as much power gain over the campaign as you'd see in D&D.
I think my worst 'how is this supposed to make sense' issues is the wizard of wines winery, because supposedly the Martikov's have been driven out of their home by some druids and army of blights. However, they're all wereravens with immunity to normal weapons, and thus completely immune to blights.
The night hags can be a problem depending on the group.
My players managed to take them on but the hags weren't together when the combat broke out which reduced the spellcasting options (2 were up in the tower). In my run through the hags were over confident, one went down and the other two were angry enough to fight on (there was still a chance of winning). When the second hag went down the third fled into the ethereal plane deciding to rebuild the coven or offering their assistance to Strahd. They showed up in a later encounter. I didn't use the Nightmare Haunting ability since it explicitly states it work on creatures on the "Material plane" and I decided that the demiplane of dread didn't qualify. "Strahd's domain is considered its own plane." The Nightmare Haunting ability would be too much for any low level party since it could TPK them eventually without them ever having a chance to engage the hag.
The wereravens can be a bit more problematic to explain but they are all part of a secret order that hides from Strahd, works to oppose him, and assist adventurers without giving themselves away. Although the blights can't hurt them, the druids with shillelagh can. In addition, if they don't at least act like the blights are a threat then their secret is going to be found out and Strahd would probably enjoy killing all the wereravens as much as Baba Lysaga who is already hunting them. This actually motivates the wereravens to get the PCs into the fight at the Wizard of Wines Winery as soon as possible since if the PCs fight off the druids/blights, the wereraven secret is maintained. This is probably an additional motivation for the innkeeper in Vallaki to send the PCs to the Winery to help deal with the problems.
In my playthrough, the ravens never ended up revealing themselves.
----
Overall, the storyline holds together pretty well but it is important to keep in mind that Strahd is bored, overconfident and that the adventurers that occasionally show up in his domain are almost his only source of entertainment and excitement. Strahd will toy with the adventures as long as possible, having as much fun as possible, showing them how invincible he is. The characters get gradually more powerful until they ARE actually capable of defeating Strahd only he doesn't realize it - which sets the stage for the final encounter.
The biggest concern with the module are the many tropes used that some may find offensive or triggering these days. So you have to judge whether it is a good fit for all of your players.
Some examples:
Cannibalism of children
Forcing children to fight to the death
Mishapen/insane creatures at the Abbey - general portrayal of madness
Fallen celestial trying to create a bride for Strahd from the body parts of villagers (Frankenstein)
Possible drowning of a child as a sacrifice to appease Strahd (depends on whether the characters stop it or not)
Very thin reskinning of some stereotypes of real cultural/ethnic groups
The wereravens are easy enough to deal with. Changing them from wereravens into just shapeshifters with a raven form and the ability to speak with birds solves that (and that's only 31 points, so nothing major if one of the players needs a replacement character). On the other hand, the artillery fire mage will be the general answer for that area: "TOWERING INFERNO!"
Come to think of it, that's probably going to be a recurring theme.
I see I'm going to have to sit down and do a hard-conversion of the Hags to make life easier. Seems like they're going to be the number-one problem. Especially since one of the items is in Old Bonegrinder (the card reading is part of the prologue, so it's predestined).
Mordenkainen is right out--got a different mage to replace him (and no, not Tim, the Enchanter). And the person to assist the party is someone else the players may recognize, but their characters won't know. But, the three new traders I'm adding to the towns, Louis, Hubert and Dumont are a little obvious . . . but should blend well adding a little humor to an otherwise horror-esque setting.
Strahd is a super villain. I play/run a lot of supers games, so, he's going to be handled like a super villain. Full-on Play Dirty mode. Strahd is "Dire Peril." And, to be fair, high level D&D is basically just a supers game.
As for the "triggering" events--meh. I do appreciate the warning, because, yeah, "current-year." But, I know my players and none of them are snowflakes, and I'll leave it at that.
As someone who has played this but not DMed it, I would suggest doing as much DM injection as possible to keep things moving along. It is a dreary place and the multiple random encounters of wolves gets very old.
I’d agree with the comment above, as written there’s a lot of zombies in locations with not much explanation why beyond it’s horror. As DM mix things up, my group have encountered revenants, werewolves, ghosts of dead’s NPCs etc to keep things interesting. When they have encountered zombies etc it’s either been a cake walk or a slog if the zombies roll well for their reanimate ability.
I've not finished playing the campaign with my group but reading the module, because it’s a sandbox a lot of things can happen but not a lot of things need to happen. As such I’ve tried to give more motivation for my players to explore and find cool things, like giving the party cleric visions of the Amber temple and the dragonborn in the party dreams of being Argynvost.
That was one of the reasons I pre-determined the reading. I'm using it to move the party around.
But, yes. Keep the players involved. Listen to what they're saying, and play off of their fears and beliefs and move the game along. I don't do much for random rolled encounters. If there's an encounter, there's a reason for it. Even if that reason is for Strahd to deliver an invitation (the King of Worms method). There will be other people around to encourage them to explore other areas, when they're prepared for it.
I can see that the numbers of enemies will have to be tweaked. Though, some of them that are vulnerable to fire will have to be tweaked upward. Artillery Fire Mages, man, they just like to watch the world burn. When the GURPS-equivalent of Fireball (Explosive Fireball) is their opening attack, and they immediately set the Paladin/Holy Warrior on fire so they can stride into combat like a Flaming Parade Balloon . . . you know things are going to be interesting. I just hope this party doesn't turn into "Eclectic Mayhem II."
I can see that the numbers of enemies will have to be tweaked. Though, some of them that are vulnerable to fire will have to be tweaked upward.
The only enemies I recall being vulnerable to fire are twig blights... which have 4 hit points, making their vulnerability pretty irrelevant since they die in one hit even without vulnerability.
I can see that the numbers of enemies will have to be tweaked. Though, some of them that are vulnerable to fire will have to be tweaked upward.
The only enemies I recall being vulnerable to fire are twig blights... which have 4 hit points, making their vulnerability pretty irrelevant since they die in one hit even without vulnerability.
I thought I saw more, but I could be (and probably am) mistaken.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
What it says on the tin.
I ran I6 back when it came out, many, many moons ago, and have always loved Ravenloft.
I'm about to start running Curse of Strahd (though in GURPS, not D&D) and wondering if there are any major red flags, in D&D, that I need to keep an eye out for? Any stumbling blocks you've encountered? Areas that seemed to be in the wrong place? Anything hilariously bad (or just plain hilarious) happen in your playthroughs?
Well, most of the problems have to do with extremely dangerous encounters with very little warning -- it's easily possible to run into a full night hag coven or a half dozen vampire spawn at level 3-4 -- and in GURPS you don't have the same monster writeups and probably aren't planning on as much power gain over the campaign as you'd see in D&D.
I think my worst 'how is this supposed to make sense' issues is the wizard of wines winery, because supposedly the Martikov's have been driven out of their home by some druids and army of blights. However, they're all wereravens with immunity to normal weapons, and thus completely immune to blights.
Monsters are the easy party--just converting from D&D. Easy peasy.
I was concerned about the Night Hags--it did seem a bit . . . extreme. Glad to know I'm correct on that.
Will have to re-read the Wizard of Wines section and do a bit more analysis.
Appreciate the info!
Warning: SPOILERS below
The night hags can be a problem depending on the group.
My players managed to take them on but the hags weren't together when the combat broke out which reduced the spellcasting options (2 were up in the tower). In my run through the hags were over confident, one went down and the other two were angry enough to fight on (there was still a chance of winning). When the second hag went down the third fled into the ethereal plane deciding to rebuild the coven or offering their assistance to Strahd. They showed up in a later encounter. I didn't use the Nightmare Haunting ability since it explicitly states it work on creatures on the "Material plane" and I decided that the demiplane of dread didn't qualify. "Strahd's domain is considered its own plane." The Nightmare Haunting ability would be too much for any low level party since it could TPK them eventually without them ever having a chance to engage the hag.
The wereravens can be a bit more problematic to explain but they are all part of a secret order that hides from Strahd, works to oppose him, and assist adventurers without giving themselves away. Although the blights can't hurt them, the druids with shillelagh can. In addition, if they don't at least act like the blights are a threat then their secret is going to be found out and Strahd would probably enjoy killing all the wereravens as much as Baba Lysaga who is already hunting them. This actually motivates the wereravens to get the PCs into the fight at the Wizard of Wines Winery as soon as possible since if the PCs fight off the druids/blights, the wereraven secret is maintained. This is probably an additional motivation for the innkeeper in Vallaki to send the PCs to the Winery to help deal with the problems.
In my playthrough, the ravens never ended up revealing themselves.
----
Overall, the storyline holds together pretty well but it is important to keep in mind that Strahd is bored, overconfident and that the adventurers that occasionally show up in his domain are almost his only source of entertainment and excitement. Strahd will toy with the adventures as long as possible, having as much fun as possible, showing them how invincible he is. The characters get gradually more powerful until they ARE actually capable of defeating Strahd only he doesn't realize it - which sets the stage for the final encounter.
The biggest concern with the module are the many tropes used that some may find offensive or triggering these days. So you have to judge whether it is a good fit for all of your players.
Some examples:
The wereravens are easy enough to deal with. Changing them from wereravens into just shapeshifters with a raven form and the ability to speak with birds solves that (and that's only 31 points, so nothing major if one of the players needs a replacement character). On the other hand, the artillery fire mage will be the general answer for that area: "TOWERING INFERNO!"
Come to think of it, that's probably going to be a recurring theme.
I see I'm going to have to sit down and do a hard-conversion of the Hags to make life easier. Seems like they're going to be the number-one problem. Especially since one of the items is in Old Bonegrinder (the card reading is part of the prologue, so it's predestined).
Mordenkainen is right out--got a different mage to replace him (and no, not Tim, the Enchanter). And the person to assist the party is someone else the players may recognize, but their characters won't know. But, the three new traders I'm adding to the towns, Louis, Hubert and Dumont are a little obvious . . . but should blend well adding a little humor to an otherwise horror-esque setting.
Strahd is a super villain. I play/run a lot of supers games, so, he's going to be handled like a super villain. Full-on Play Dirty mode. Strahd is "Dire Peril." And, to be fair, high level D&D is basically just a supers game.
As for the "triggering" events--meh. I do appreciate the warning, because, yeah, "current-year." But, I know my players and none of them are snowflakes, and I'll leave it at that.
As someone who has played this but not DMed it, I would suggest doing as much DM injection as possible to keep things moving along. It is a dreary place and the multiple random encounters of wolves gets very old.
I’d agree with the comment above, as written there’s a lot of zombies in locations with not much explanation why beyond it’s horror. As DM mix things up, my group have encountered revenants, werewolves, ghosts of dead’s NPCs etc to keep things interesting. When they have encountered zombies etc it’s either been a cake walk or a slog if the zombies roll well for their reanimate ability.
I've not finished playing the campaign with my group but reading the module, because it’s a sandbox a lot of things can happen but not a lot of things need to happen. As such I’ve tried to give more motivation for my players to explore and find cool things, like giving the party cleric visions of the Amber temple and the dragonborn in the party dreams of being Argynvost.
That was one of the reasons I pre-determined the reading. I'm using it to move the party around.
But, yes. Keep the players involved. Listen to what they're saying, and play off of their fears and beliefs and move the game along. I don't do much for random rolled encounters. If there's an encounter, there's a reason for it. Even if that reason is for Strahd to deliver an invitation (the King of Worms method). There will be other people around to encourage them to explore other areas, when they're prepared for it.
I can see that the numbers of enemies will have to be tweaked. Though, some of them that are vulnerable to fire will have to be tweaked upward. Artillery Fire Mages, man, they just like to watch the world burn. When the GURPS-equivalent of Fireball (Explosive Fireball) is their opening attack, and they immediately set the Paladin/Holy Warrior on fire so they can stride into combat like a Flaming Parade Balloon . . . you know things are going to be interesting. I just hope this party doesn't turn into "Eclectic Mayhem II."
The only enemies I recall being vulnerable to fire are twig blights... which have 4 hit points, making their vulnerability pretty irrelevant since they die in one hit even without vulnerability.
I thought I saw more, but I could be (and probably am) mistaken.