Hello everyone. After some time I'm currently running CoS once again. We've recently passed barovia and are heading out to vallaki. Now, there have been some run ins with strahd so far, even if the players might not 100% know about it. An encounter with a pack of wolves, lead by a particular massive one, more interested in observing them than joining the fight. A shadowy figure, watching the burgomaster's funeral from the distance and paying their respect to a fallen dead noble of the land. And one or two run ins with strahd just watching from afar without getting directly involved. However, i'm planning to have him appear in person soon and confront the group directly for the first time. Problem is, the last time i tried that, it got the group so spooked, they decided to beeline it towards vallaki, without interacting with anything else. They ran right past the tser pool camp and old bonegrinder, since they didn't want to risk strahd catching up with them while they were investigating. This time I'd like to avoid something like that again, but I'm not 100% sure how. The only thing i could think about is to place the strahd encounter later, until they already visited all those places, but at least old bonegrinder is too close to vallaki to have them run into strahd there, seeing as vallaki is supposedly a safe place from strahd. Or I guess i could drop the strahd encounter completely, but i feel they should meet strahd at least once in person, so they fully understand the situation they are in. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to get rid of the encounter, but it seems to cause more bad than good. is there any way for me to handle the situation differently? As always, thank you for reading.
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Hello everyone. After some time I'm currently running CoS once again. We've recently passed barovia and are heading out to vallaki.
Now, there have been some run ins with strahd so far, even if the players might not 100% know about it. An encounter with a pack of wolves, lead by a particular massive one, more interested in observing them than joining the fight. A shadowy figure, watching the burgomaster's funeral from the distance and paying their respect to a fallen dead noble of the land. And one or two run ins with strahd just watching from afar without getting directly involved. However, i'm planning to have him appear in person soon and confront the group directly for the first time.
Problem is, the last time i tried that, it got the group so spooked, they decided to beeline it towards vallaki, without interacting with anything else. They ran right past the tser pool camp and old bonegrinder, since they didn't want to risk strahd catching up with them while they were investigating.
This time I'd like to avoid something like that again, but I'm not 100% sure how. The only thing i could think about is to place the strahd encounter later, until they already visited all those places, but at least old bonegrinder is too close to vallaki to have them run into strahd there, seeing as vallaki is supposedly a safe place from strahd. Or I guess i could drop the strahd encounter completely, but i feel they should meet strahd at least once in person, so they fully understand the situation they are in.
I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to get rid of the encounter, but it seems to cause more bad than good. is there any way for me to handle the situation differently?
As always, thank you for reading.