Lore You Should Know - Barovia 

Just what we needed, a way to make Barovia scarier.

Domains of dread would be a good band name.

I usually like to have player's find the books in-game when they are written by in-game characters like volo's guide to monsters, xanathar's guide to everything or mordenkainen's tome of foes. But it's gonna be a bit weird introducing this book in-game to my group since Strahd managed to capture him in our game. I had Van Richten propose a plan B for dealing with strahd along the lines of how Chris Perkins and the waffle crew (Dice camera action) dealt with him. the party decided to gather the items necessary for the plan but ultimately decided against it as it required murdering a vistani of the oldest bloodline in barovia and performing essentially blood magic to trap strahd in a blinsky doll that looked like him. The party preferred to pursue the card reading plan instead, but they neglected Van Richten when there were signs of possible trouble headed his way, so he was captured. Esmerelda blamed herself for not reaching him in time and failing to kill strahd herself. She saw it as her final duty to him to inform the party of his death, then departed barovia in defeat because they rolled really bad to give her a pep talk to get her to stay. they then found van richten on their way to their final confrontation with strahd dead in the torture chamber in the catacombs strung up on the back of a cadaver collector. soooo yeah, they are probably gonna have to find the book left somewhere he has been, or maybe strahd will have it and be using it to plan future conquests of one of his neighbors.

The problem I have with Barovia being Strahd's prison for the purpose of torment is... he doesn't seem all that tormented. Annoyed and frustrated here and there, sure, but not tormented. Yes he will probably never have Tatyana, but he has a grand old time trying to get her anyways. If on the other hand he was allowed to finally die and was sent to the hells or became a part of the Wall of the Faithless... THAT seems more like torment to me. And he still would never get Tatyana.

wait did he just say borca is in the book?

I get that LYSK often ties into and promotes the new book, but this was painful. This was 3 minutes of lore and 22 minutes of "In this book we talk about..." I walked away from this with so little new background on any of these characters or the setting.

Ah Van Richten's guide to Ravenloft. I'm running Curse of Strahd tight now for the first time and this book is a good place to go for inspiration. The book has some great material but suffers the details. And the details is where GM's need the most support. We get some great new character classes and monsters, all of which are wonderfully thought out. Unfortunately the domains are sketches at best and could have been developed more. I did appreciate this interview though, it gives a bit more understanding in the creators process behind the characters, but again suffers from lack of detail.

Make tatyana’s reincarnation one of your player characters. You’ll thank me later it makes the story so much more engaging and it makes the party hate Strahd even more, especially the Tatyana character.

Is Wes standing up through out this interview?

WOTC D&D horror has always been rather mild. I suppose because their products are supposed to be family friendly & open to all ages including youngsters. But adults playing with other adults will find WOTC horror, as written, as very PG-rated. Of course your DM could make it more terrifying if they choose.

In my most recent running I made Rahadin female, and Tatyana was inside the Sunblade instead of being reborn as a soul.