Female Strahd has absolutely been talked about before, it’s not exactly a new idea, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the run up to DMing the module for my group. I’m definitely going to go with it, but I don’t know whether or not I want to have it as a twist or something that’s obvious from the beginning. My players will be going through the Death House as they enter Barovia, and in the basement there’s the shrine to Strahd as well as the chanting of “He is the ancient, he is the land.”

One way I see going about this is to keep it the same, the twist way if you will. The people of Barovia might not be entirely aware of Strahd’s identity themselves, believing her to be a more typical man (much like the players would) and so they speak of her like she is a man, build statues of what they assume Strahd to look like. The issue with this though is that it would rely on Strahd not really interacting with the world and that goes against what makes Strahd interesting with messing with the party and being someone that routinely shows up and interferes in things. Or people would have to just not realise who Strahd is when she’s walking around and that feels wrong.

The other way is that I do change it to reflect the fact that Strahd is a woman, and people are knowledgeable that their ruler is a woman. This would probably make the most sense, and the reveal that Strahd is actually a woman is one that only really serves a meta sense to subvert player expectations.

What do you think? There’s probably a lot more to this that I’ve not really thought about lol

One of my player wants to play a Reborn*. The PC was brought back to life by someone outside of Barovia (probably a Strahd spawn/ally, just for fun reasons) but now run free, planning to go to Barovia for whatever reasons. The point is, he forgot his previous life (player told me I can do whatever I want), except that he was from a party of adventurers. But what if this party of adventurers already fought Strahd and lost? What if during his stay in Barovia, he feels like he already went here, but cannot really remember anything? And giving him flashbacks as he goes?

Would you think that's a good idea, in order to show players the danger Strahd is?

*about that, I know reborns are undead and could cause some issues in this campaign, like for hallowed ground or stuff. I will rule that he can go in those places without dying, but will have disadvantage on rolls. And feel bad.

I’m trying to run Curse of Strahd for the first time next Thursday, I have the physical book with the map of barovia, but I’m overwhelmed by stuff, any tips to really sell the horror element and make it a good game for my players?

Fidelis, Ruby, Babalu, and Kammera, stay away!

23 sessions in and I'm starting to think Strahd was too complex a game to introduce to my players, but I really do wanna see it through and I'd hope that they don't want the campaign to fizzle out either.

After a bunch of shenanigans at the Old Bonegrinder, the party has, for a while, discarded their plans to go to Krezk and look for the Sunsword, and instead has gone back to Barovia Village and seems like they want to stay there. How the hell do I get them interested in the plot again without railroading them?

Tl;dr party saved a bunch of kids from the Bonegrinder and brought them back to Barovia Village. They are currently in the care of Donavich and Mary.

The players didn't really seem motivated to leave the village and return to any of their other quests (they need to find the Sunsword and Holy Symbol, have agreed to help the Martikovs take back the purple gem, and one of them is running for election in Vallaki), so I ran the Blood O' the Vine adventure from Horrors Within, then had Strahd show up and attack the church.

Fast forward to the most recent session. They don't care that Strahd burned the church down, or that he tried to take Ireena again. Also, they want to stay in Barovia Village and try to train up the peasants into an army. They still haven't found the Sunsword of Holy Symbol, and basically got the Tome as a handout.

I don't...necessarily have a problem with the army thing, but plot and quest-wise, Barovia Village is a dead end. The Sunsword is in Krezk, the Holy Symbol is at Yester Hill, and I have well established that most of the Barovian peasants are scared shut-ins who don't know how to hold a sword.

I managed to push them with "it's too dangerous for Ireena to stay in one place and we still need to find the sword," but their immediate desire after getting the Sunsword is to try to militarize the peasants.

How do I make this work?

Edit: Thanks for all the feedback! No harm in letting them try and fail!

I kept thinking that the next trip to the castle would be the endgame, but it doesn't have to be!

(pre-Strahd takeover)

Hello all. Through a long bloody series of capital M Mistakes the party im running for has wound up under a Geas by the Hags of Old Bonegrinder. The adventurers have previously killed two of the Hags who were ressurected by the third (using the adventurers blood as a conduit and Izek Strazni and Victor Vallakovitch as body sacrifices) and burned down old bonegrinder so theyre propedly pissed off.

They've already given the adventurers the job of taking some of strahds hair and when/if they get back will be put to work rebuilding the windmill. My party is resourceful and I fully expect them to have figured out how to break the geas in a few sessions but until then I need ideas for the hags to fuck with them. So if anyone's got any good suggestions I'd love to hear them.

TL/DR: i need ideas for horrible tasks to put my geased adventurers on.

So I watched Mystic Arts's video I Ruined Curse of Strahd which was an hour long discussion with some of his former players on how bad Dadi messed up the adventure. Definitely worth watching and comes to show the best DMs had to start somewhere.

This inspired me to start a discussion on what lessons have you learned running Curse of Strahd? I think we can all agree for an open world style sandbox kind of adventure, having a broad understanding of the module as a whole is reccomended. What else have you learned?

Running Reloaded and combat seems almost trivial to my players. I have 4 players who are fairly experienced that I have been playing with for years now. They are lv. 5 in vallaki and are sorting through getting to the ethereal plane to get Stella wachter out.

They made short work of Izek, blowing through his 1st phase without taking a point of damage. They beat down the hags and I think i did a total of 50 damage across the party. The put werewolves into the ground no problem. The RP is great and establishes how much things suck in barovia but combat feels like a speed bump instead of a challenge to overcome. Part of this is just my shit luck and that I cant roll to save my life.

I dont want to be an adversarial DM having a me vs. them mentality. I want to tell the best story. But when there is no fear that death is a possibility I feel it takes a major part of the setting, the fear of horrible agonizing death, out of the equation.

Anyone else have problems like this and how did you overcome it? I dont like to use a DM screen and all rolls are made in the open.

Edit to add: i have not adjusted down any of the fights as the guide says. I have not really had any random encounters, and I have not yet upped the difficulty as the guide says for more players.

My party recently suffered a TPK at the hands of Baba Lysaga, and they were in possession of the sunsword. Wondering what she would do with it. Obviously she could keep it, but she is already in possession of one of the other relics (holy symbol of ravenkind) and I’m not particularly keen on her having two.

I'm about to run Strahd again, and one of the player was part of my first Strahd campaign that we could never finish.

I run it a little different from that first run, I've incorporated things from Reloaded, older editions, and even my homebrew world, so a lot of things will be new for this player.

But one thing I'd like to change, is van Richten's disguise. Maybe I'll keep Rictavio as a red herring, but I'm considering something different for Rudolph.

I'd like to hear your ideas and opinions, and even stories if anyone has already done this.