Hello fellow DM's! I am currently running two Curse of Strahd campaigns, and am getting ready to run the dinner with Strahd from chapter 4. Any advice on how to make this smooth yet still instill the players with a sense of fear? Early in the game, I took personal items from the characters for Strahd to use for scrying purposes, so I am wondering if I can incorporate those somehow so that they can find out that he was the one who had the items stolen. Any tips or advice would be very much welcome!
Play up the horror over any display of magic power. I thought unseen servants making the food appear to float would show off how magically powerful strahd is. Instead the party started singing “be our guest “ and any attempt at making strahd scary was pointless.
keep your cool as stahd, the party may use a dinner party as an up beat to any recent scary down beats. I tried to make it special but the players needed a bit of levity, if I could replay it I would embrace the humour more.
strahd is playing his own game, trying to size up the party, who is the weakest link, who might take his place etc. so let the party have fun whilst Strahd watches them, and learns the party dynamic. Afterwards stahd can be more tactical and if the players accuse you if meta gaming p, remind them strahd has been watching, he invited them to dinner, he knows who is the party joker, the face and the healer
Play up the horror over any display of magic power. I thought unseen servants making the food appear to float would show off how magically powerful strahd is. Instead the party started singing “be our guest “ and any attempt at making strahd scary was pointless.
Yeah I wouldn't go with floating in I would probably just have the lights turn on suddenly and reveal the food already waiting.
Hello fellow DM's! I am currently running two Curse of Strahd campaigns, and am getting ready to run the dinner with Strahd from chapter 4. Any advice on how to make this smooth yet still instill the players with a sense of fear? Early in the game, I took personal items from the characters for Strahd to use for scrying purposes, so I am wondering if I can incorporate those somehow so that they can find out that he was the one who had the items stolen. Any tips or advice would be very much welcome!
As for making it scary, the way Dracula the book does it is a slow burn. There is nothing initially wrong except for some minor odd features of draculas appearance but the main character finds that he is trapped within the castle and slowly discovers things while there. He over hears conversations about victims and he sees monsters crawling over the castle. The climax of the first part of dracula is that dracula just barely wards off his hungry brides by locking the POV character in his room but is over heard saying that they will have their chance tomorrow night. At which point the point of view character changes.
To replicate this in curse of strahd I would simply have strahd insist the players stay the night, if they accept he departs to let them finish their meal and has them escorted to their room by Cyrus Belview if they refuse he uses a powerful sleep spell after which point they wake up in one of the sleeping quarters locked inside. Either way when they could wake up to hearing strahd warding off his spawn and have a chance to explore the castle and escape. The main challenge with this is that there isn't really an empty room to put them in. I recommend moving the witches and Escher up stairs and putting them in the guest room as well as putting a locked door in area k58 with the sound of a heart beating if they listen through the door . It's not a huge deal if they try the heart but depending on their level it could be very dangerous. The witches up stairs can also have their personal items in the elements room.
As for the dinner itself strahd can do things like
Ask them questions about where they are from
tell some stories about his heroic past
Challenge the players to a game like a riddle
During which he should just be a little bit weird. Things like he doesn't eat any thing, he has very fine sharp manicured nails ect.. If you want you can also do secret charm rolls to see if the players are effected by his charming look. Rolling things that the players don't know can freak them out but the effect of it would simply be they can't attack strahd and from that point on they fail to see anything odd about him and get only positive answers from any kind of investigation ect.. for 24 hours.
Strahd doesn't need anything to scry on them. He can watch them anytime he wants to. And he does. The entirety of Barovia is his lair. All those weird illusions they keep seeing is Strahd testing them... or trolling them for the lols. Just have him hand back the items and say he punished the thief that took them. And that the thief will never steal from anyone again. Strahd runs a just domain and that sort of behavior isn't tolerated. If they ask doesn't he need them to scry on them he can smile and say "I am the land. What item does the very air you breath need to be with you?"
The point of the dinner is to just get them into the castle to explore it because most players are going to avoid it like it's some sort of death trap. It's where Strahd tells them the history of how he conquered the land. He lets them know they are there because he brought them there. They can not leave unless he allows them to leave. Strahd can calmly let them know that he doesn't expect their immediate loyalty. But they will be loyal to him. They have no other choice. Since Strahd is judging them because he wants one of them to be his replacement, he can patiently explain anything they have done wrong. He can say that he is very disappointed with one or two of the characters and that the rest should do their very best to not fail like they did. (Strahd will eventually find fault with all of them because nobody can be as amazing as himself. But they don't know that yet.)
And then invite them to explore the castle. They are his chosen ones after all.
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Hello fellow DM's! I am currently running two Curse of Strahd campaigns, and am getting ready to run the dinner with Strahd from chapter 4. Any advice on how to make this smooth yet still instill the players with a sense of fear? Early in the game, I took personal items from the characters for Strahd to use for scrying purposes, so I am wondering if I can incorporate those somehow so that they can find out that he was the one who had the items stolen. Any tips or advice would be very much welcome!
Play up the horror over any display of magic power. I thought unseen servants making the food appear to float would show off how magically powerful strahd is. Instead the party started singing “be our guest “ and any attempt at making strahd scary was pointless.
keep your cool as stahd, the party may use a dinner party as an up beat to any recent scary down beats. I tried to make it special but the players needed a bit of levity, if I could replay it I would embrace the humour more.
strahd is playing his own game, trying to size up the party, who is the weakest link, who might take his place etc. so let the party have fun whilst Strahd watches them, and learns the party dynamic. Afterwards stahd can be more tactical and if the players accuse you if meta gaming p, remind them strahd has been watching, he invited them to dinner, he knows who is the party joker, the face and the healer
Yeah I wouldn't go with floating in I would probably just have the lights turn on suddenly and reveal the food already waiting.
As for making it scary, the way Dracula the book does it is a slow burn. There is nothing initially wrong except for some minor odd features of draculas appearance but the main character finds that he is trapped within the castle and slowly discovers things while there. He over hears conversations about victims and he sees monsters crawling over the castle. The climax of the first part of dracula is that dracula just barely wards off his hungry brides by locking the POV character in his room but is over heard saying that they will have their chance tomorrow night. At which point the point of view character changes.
To replicate this in curse of strahd I would simply have strahd insist the players stay the night, if they accept he departs to let them finish their meal and has them escorted to their room by Cyrus Belview if they refuse he uses a powerful sleep spell after which point they wake up in one of the sleeping quarters locked inside. Either way when they could wake up to hearing strahd warding off his spawn and have a chance to explore the castle and escape. The main challenge with this is that there isn't really an empty room to put them in. I recommend moving the witches and Escher up stairs and putting them in the guest room as well as putting a locked door in area k58 with the sound of a heart beating if they listen through the door . It's not a huge deal if they try the heart but depending on their level it could be very dangerous. The witches up stairs can also have their personal items in the elements room.
As for the dinner itself strahd can do things like
During which he should just be a little bit weird. Things like he doesn't eat any thing, he has very fine sharp manicured nails ect.. If you want you can also do secret charm rolls to see if the players are effected by his charming look. Rolling things that the players don't know can freak them out but the effect of it would simply be they can't attack strahd and from that point on they fail to see anything odd about him and get only positive answers from any kind of investigation ect.. for 24 hours.
Theres also some nice online guides
https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/8tswyo/megamegathread/
https://lunchbreakheroes.com/dinner-with-the-devil/
Strahd doesn't need anything to scry on them. He can watch them anytime he wants to. And he does. The entirety of Barovia is his lair. All those weird illusions they keep seeing is Strahd testing them... or trolling them for the lols. Just have him hand back the items and say he punished the thief that took them. And that the thief will never steal from anyone again. Strahd runs a just domain and that sort of behavior isn't tolerated. If they ask doesn't he need them to scry on them he can smile and say "I am the land. What item does the very air you breath need to be with you?"
The point of the dinner is to just get them into the castle to explore it because most players are going to avoid it like it's some sort of death trap. It's where Strahd tells them the history of how he conquered the land. He lets them know they are there because he brought them there. They can not leave unless he allows them to leave. Strahd can calmly let them know that he doesn't expect their immediate loyalty. But they will be loyal to him. They have no other choice. Since Strahd is judging them because he wants one of them to be his replacement, he can patiently explain anything they have done wrong. He can say that he is very disappointed with one or two of the characters and that the rest should do their very best to not fail like they did. (Strahd will eventually find fault with all of them because nobody can be as amazing as himself. But they don't know that yet.)
And then invite them to explore the castle. They are his chosen ones after all.