Strad is in my opinion best D&D villain of premade modules not because he's most powerful it's because he's part of the story and players has a chance to learn much about him long before final confrontation and have lot of character development from mr nobody to arch nemesis.
Very interesting to listen to the ideas of how others run a campaign starting from a modal or just in general running a game. The viewpoint of letting the villain attempting to understand who the players are and what they are motivated by as the players are trying to understand your villain was the most significant point that i found interest in, keep up the good work!
Thank you very much! Glad you could gain something, I’ve noticed even more now that the best villains across media are usually the ones who are present throughout a story and not a faceless evil!
my last campaign I introduced the main villain in the very first session, the players were assisting the quest giver in a sealed cavern when they got to the book everything came to a stand still and they came face to face with a powerful cult wizard hell bent on bring forth hell on earth. it was an interesting first session and great way to set up the rest of the game.
Did you play or run it as a DM? I've always been worried that I could never play it having experienced it from one side of the screen but would love to!
Were there any specific weak points in the adventure that you've moved past or think should be improved? I'm more familiar with the original, called just Ravenloft before the setting was made, that has some random elements and other incentives to do the adventure multiple times. Not sure if it's the same for this edition. Would it stand up to multiple playthroughs with the same party/players? I've learned I prefer to bulk up the improvisational side of things to let players sort of go where they want to, rather than plan out quest lines, and let whatever natural ability I have to guess what a character might reasonably do in response to a player action fill in the gaps. Better that than create a bunch of paths that remain unseen. Good advice, especially like the reminders about important NPCs not stealing the limelight
One of the things I felt was quite weak was the links between different sections of the adventure, if you had a less motivated party then getting them to head all the way to Krezk or Berez would be really hard as there's not a lot built into the module that forces players to go there without specific planning from the DM. Having more impactful events or motivators for your party with specific 'triggers' would be really helpful to inexperienced DMs trying to run the module There are random changes but really they are negligible, things like where some items lie or where Strahd is in the final castle, or who might be an ally. I had a look through and thought which one would be the best experience for my players for their first playthrough of the game, and as someone who does card tricks used some sleight of hand to rig the 'random' shuffle into being those cards that were pulled (don't tell my party lol). But on follow up playthroughs it might change how certain NPCs come into the limelight! Thanks for your feedback, really appreciate your insights :)
@@naturalonedungeonsanddragons If anything I think classics like this could expand upon the randomness. Have secret motivations change, maybe alternate, mutually exclusive areas to explore. Or maybe I play too many video games and this would be tedious for some players. :) Thanks for the vid, appreciated you keeping in the pet cameo :)
Nice video! To bad the book is really bad at giving advice on how to get most out of Strahd. I am 75 x 3 hour sessions in, party almost killed Strahd in 3 rounds, in the catacombs of Ravenloft. TBH I look forward to being done with CoS soon. The book is only for very experienced DMs. I missed so much valuable info in the book.
Fi is the best companion ever. I knew there was something toxic about this video and when you disparaged the herald of the goddess I realized what it was
You knew there was something toxic about the whole video because I agree with a very common opinion that Fi is an irritating companion? Say sike right now 🤡
I'm gonna go against the popular opinion here a bit. I think Curse of Strahd is not a good module. Not because it doesn't deliver on a somewhat sufficient skeleton to build the campaign around, but because it gets overhyped into the ground when everything special about it is 100% the DM's work. Most of the lore surrounding the module is pretty much exactly taken from various Dracula adaptations. The characters, just going by the information in the module itself with no further input, are rather one-sided and not necessarily believable. Barovia is designed like a Sandbox but gives you little incentive on it's own to explore. More often than not any reward you could hope to claim by doing so is death or lacklustre loot or lore. There is a loose narrative thread but unless the DM makes their own adjustments, it hardly is alluring enough to make the adventurers really seek adventure. Especially in the endgame it just loses a lot of steam, which makes things very videogamey as you're just farming for levels and items to finally walk up to the endboss. Obviously, there are great DM's out there who use this framework to craft a most beautiful campaign. But why praise a framework that often even requires changes? If even the foundation needs adjustment why even build on it in the firstplace?
You are 100% correct. This is a problem with many of WotC's modern modules. There's not enough straightforward information for GM's to run an effortless module while simultaneously lacking enough openness to be a competent setting book. I am "running" CoS for my wife, but it's more or less just a homebrewed campaign set in Barovia with a vampire antagonist.
DMPCs are an excellent tool to add more emotional stakes or moral imperative to the game, you just don't have the talent to run them properly evidently
As I said, your mileage may differ, I personally found and learned that they're best avoided in my games. If you can run them then do so, but save the hostility and non-constructive critisims for different spaces please.
