Thinking of Increasing the Map Size of Barovia in Curse of Strahd? Be Sure to Watch This First! 

Sound cool! Might have to look into those monsters - they sound brutal. 😁😈

@@DMoftheMists Skin Kites, Spawn of Kyuss, blood golems…there are a lot of nice adds for an undead campaign. I’m an old school player from 3e and although i find 5e to be more elegant as a ruleset, one of the things that i’ve a complain for is the Monster diversity and complexity; luckly 3e is full of inspiration for clever evil dms Who want to be creative 👹

That's a good point as well, RE: the time crunch element - I think that's a part of it as well.

Sounds like you've got a good handle on the situation. And I'm a big fan of both I, Strahd novels (and wasn't the first Lord Soth Ravenloft novel set in Barovia as well?), so I can completely understand matching that scale.

Thank you. For the 2nd one I have planned, I'm going to do something similar where I make an argument for something but there'll be some thought behind it and I don't think it's a perspective anyone's talked about before (but I won't be able to hide behind game design/mechanics on this one, haha)! 🫣

Thank you! 😃

Fair enough. Although on the "horizon line" point, the map as a whole very hilly/mountainous - so it's not like the people of the Village of Barovia can see all the way to Vallaki (I think people travelling to Vallaki can only see it once they're near the windmill, which is most of the journey there). I found this 3D map to be handy for getting a feel for this: www.zootlocker.com/barovia/1barovia.html

Yes! That's a good point and I think I've seen people suggest making those changes to rests when increasing the map size especially. It makes sense to do that. Gritty Realism I believe it's called, and it's in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

@@DMoftheMists The problem I have with this idea of long rests outside needing to be harder, is that realistically, most settlements of this time period would only be about one day apart, especially in horror type settings. In less horror type setting, where settlements might be a couple days apart, I would imagine that merchants would setup up safe locations along main routes between settlements so that they can transport merchandise between settlements in relative safety. How many trips of sleeping outside and losing goods before a group of merchants decide to set up safe spots to protect their goods? As for sleeping off of regular routes, that is what setting up a safe location with traps to warn your party and taking watch is for. Long rests say that you only need 6 hrs of rest and can take 2 hrs of keeping watch. What else is that for other than setting up a somewhat safe location while traveling outside. And, yes, I can imagine sleeping inside dungeons would be a bad idea. I'm just commenting on sleeping outside.

Great points.

Ahh man, that's such a shame. 1 hex = 1 _day_ ? Ouch. That's a long walk.

Thanks! Yeah, I'd say if you do increase it, just doubling it is enough and is probably the maximum someone should consider (given all the reasons I said). It's riskier if it gets much bigger than that.

That sounds like it could work. A few people have commented about the "less than a day for Ireena" aspect now. I get what people mean, but surely that just goes to show how scary Barovia is as-is? That Ismark and Ireena are too scared to take a 7-ish-hour trip without help? Because Barovia is that scary; _Strahd_ is that scary. That's what the players should be thinking/realizing IMO. Sure, extending the distance / number of days justifies it even more, but I don't think it's needed. If the DM - through I&I - makes it clear how dangerous the roads might be, there's no need to make it longer. IMO anyway.

@@DMoftheMists Well, then to bring up your point "spend a few nights outside of settlements and realize they aren't that dangerous", if they travel to Vallaki in one day and don't really feel it's that dangerous, you also break the illusion that "it's even too dangerous to travel during daytime". Another point is that this old kind woman travels to her windmill and doesn't need any escort there. Let's say we upscale the map so that Barovia Village > Old Windmill is one day's travel, and Vallaki is one day plus an hour or two, Morgantha can keep up her ruse that she can make it to her home during daytime when it's not as dangerous.

100%. At least two groups (one I played in, one I ran) can attest to that.

Depends on how much imagination one has. Those will little imagination go down into the basement when they hear a bump in the night.

That's true! A lot of it comes down to what the players are like and prefer, what the DM's like... It's certainly not a clear-cut thing and I don't think there's any 100% right answer for 100% of people.

Indeed. I've heard of some DMs who do that. E.g. there's a town called Immol, right? If any DMs who did this read this, I'd be curious to know how it went in your games.

@@DMoftheMists the base game is fine as it is. Expanding the hexes to a larger size doesn't make the story better. It's just more flavor. Adding more regions does add more content, which causes another problem. The players need room to grow, which means they will be higher level when they confront Strahd. There was a remake in the 90s of the original Castle Ravenloft that had a low level campaign and a high level one, I believe level 15, that could be used to adjust the difficulty of the castle. Do you and the players want to spend more time in Barovia? Do you want to add homebrew. Personally, I have run COS 4x now and already homebrew the crap out of it so it doesnt bother me. I have been a Ravenloft DM since the mid 90s so I know my way around pretty well. Last game, I took the players into neighboring domains.

Sounds cool. I'm much newer to D&D (only started playing in 2018 & DMing since 2020), but I'm running a post-CoS Domains of Dread campaign at the mo, and the players and I are having a blast. They're Level 14 and in Valachan right now.

@@DMoftheMists it's all good. Would really recommend checking out some of the 2e and 3e resources. 5e did a good job making the domains more interesting but they really watered down the domain lords to a pg rating. The domain lords were a lot scarier and more tragic in older editions.

Thanks. Yeah, I've been doing that already to an extent. I tend to use 5E's VRGtR as a base / starting point, but look at older lore for further inspiration. When I ran Markovia I borrowed from Neither Man Nor Beast (especially the maps and info for the estate and the monastery), and I'm gonna do the same with Castles Forlorn when I run Forlorn. Helps to flesh it all out a bit more.

One hex = 1/2 mile instead of 1/4 mile. Bigger, but not so big that moving at a fast pace isn't a viable option for covering the distance before nightfall

Can I ask what your reasoning was for increasing it to 1 hour per hex?

Oof, that sounds brutal (but in a good way)... 😈 If people never get to long rest, then how do you handle stuff like Hit Dice recovery, spell slot recovery, etc.? EDIT: Ohh unless they eat a dream pastry. Got it. Ohh that _is_ evil...!

@@DMoftheMists the players have been forced to accept that they just don't have any other choice, so they have been buying and eating the pastries from morgantha. I have planted a plot hook in which if they manage to restore the three fanes then the ability to long rest in Barovia will be restored. Once this happens I'm certain they'll go after the hags with vengeance on their hearts.

Thanks for passing on your thoughts, and also for doing so in a respectful way. Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been sick the last few days. You make some well thought-out points, and removing long rests from journeys would indeed entirely side-step the main issue I raised, but your version sounds brutal, perhaps too brutal - in an already brutal campaign. Now I'm not saying that means you're wrong, but out of interest, have you run CoS, and if so, have you run it in the way you've described? And if so, how did it go? I'm not meaning to sound gatekeepery at all, but because I think it's one of those things where DMs _think_ making it harder than it already is automatically makes it better (in theory), and that not making it near-impossibly hard isn't true to the CoS spirit, but the way you describe it - while it sounds awesome running it as a DM - sounds like it'd lead to burnout and frustration for the players, so that'd be something I'd be conscious of. But then again I guess it depends on the players as well. If you have veteran players who want a challenge and love horror, they'll probably welcome it. Other types of players, not so much. My video was more aimed at DMs who may think "I want to make the make bigger" without giving it much further thought beyond that, not realising the wider consequences of doing so. In your case, you've obviously thought about it and suggested measures to counteract it (by not allowing long rests at all) - in which case power to you. I meant to mention this in the video as well but forgot, but I read a thread once where a DM said they made the map bigger to "make Barovia scarier" but also didn't bother with on-the-road encounters because they didn't like them(!), soo… y’know, that's not good. Maybe that's an extreme example, but my advice was meant for people who increase the map but then maybe also keep everything else as-is (the random encounter types, their frequency, etc.) or make other changes that actually undo the effect they’re going for. In your case, while I don't think I'd ever run it the way you've said, with the right DM and players, it could work well - but I don't necessarily think it'd be that way for everyone. Here's an analogy I thought of. RAW CoS (and RAW CoS map size) is Dark Souls. Your version is Dark Souls on hard mode. When people make the map larger but don't compensate for the change they've made, they think they're gonna get Dark Souls on hard mode but may be accidentally making Dark Souls on easy mode. That's what I'm trying to get across. I don't think that means my way is easy - it's just not as difficult as yours, as yours is harder still. I've also seen stories (on Reddit, etc.) where CoS DMs complain that their players get to a point where they don't want to leave settlements. Now this might be due to lack of direction, but I bet once or twice it's been because the journeys have been too long and too tough. Every DM wants to make CoS scary and hard, but making it _too_ scary and hard can equally bring problems and bring campaigns to a halt. I do also partially disagree with - and could argue against - the points about Ismark & Ireena "hopping down the road" and what you said about the trade between towns, plus there's the fact that making the distances longer risks drawing out the campaign (which may be fine for a long-lasting campaign and if the players are fine with that and invested), but this comment's already pretty long as it is. Thanks again.

@@DMoftheMists Hey thanks for the long reply. I definitely respect your opinion. Yes I have run it twice this way. Neither time would I say it was too brutal. In neither campaign was there a TPK and actually none of the players had to roll up a new character, they all survived till the end. Also you don't have to throw a deadly encounter at them every time they step outside. I am not fan of random encounters .I feel as a DM you should know your players, the characters, and their current status before deciding what they might or might not encounter on the road. As an example in one of the campaigns, while on the road they stopped for the night to make camp and they were pretty beat up. It was on the way back from Berez so they were not in the best shape. My players were all talking about where they were headed and what they were going to do next and when they said they were taking a long rest I gave them plenty of opportunity to say it but they never said they were going to post watch. They all went to sleep. so they awoke to hearing logs being thrown onto the fire and poked their heads out of their tents to find Strahd sitting in a chair poking at the fire. They were shocked and horrified for sure. Strahd was just there to express his impatience that they had not yet accepted his invitation to dinner and maybe they needed a little incentive. It was also a moment for him to let them know that one among them could not be trusted and had already made a deal with him. Once the conversation started to become rude, mostly because of the parties Paladin, Strahd got annoyed whistled into the night then vanished in a cloud of mist. A pack of wolves then came crashing into the camp. At this point the party was high enough level that the fight only last a round but it ended their chance at a long rest. My point being that each encounter on the road at night doesn't need to be deadly. Another night they got drunk with a group of traveling Vistani. That night they did get a long rest on the road. I also expanded COS in other ways and have implemented some of the suggestions from Lunch Break Heroes here on RU-vid. They have many great ideas for giving more depth to the campaign. I don't follow all their advice but a lot of it was really good.

Chuck a zero at the end of its range, and it's a hard maybe for sure.

@@DMoftheMists one of the invocations: Eldritch Spear + Spell Sniper, gets halfway there (600ft), so not fully middle to middle, but that's a lot more than I expected.

Holy moly. That is indeed about halfway there. (Note to self: don't sing Bon Jovi, don't sing Bon Jovi, don't sing Bon Jovi...)

8mins...

so like, I think the better solution is either adding in longer long rests, or only long rests in "safe" places, ie towns, look at Darker Dungeons (homebrew packet) so you can have a camping system to get some hitdice back, but you long rests you need to wait a week so be in a safe space, tho I also like just take a day in a fortified place. This both makes travel important, and means that the party will have lost some resources by the time they make it to the sites

Thanks for your feedback. I do - after a brief intro and then explaining why people do it, I explain it's because of the long rest and Hit Dice recovery issue. That's about 5 mins in (bearing in mind the intro is the first 1-2 mins). It's not 8 mins (as per your other comment). It wasn't my intention to pad out the video or "edge [people] on" or anything like that. But sure, I'll bear this in mind for future videos I put out. Thanks again.

Also what you are describing about players going from site to site is the players actively making decisions to make the game harder, with such a small map there is nothing stopping them from just taking a long rest and going to and from safer places to long rest each time, or to travel up and down the map long resting before taking on things on opposite sides of the map, same as your problem of larger spaces

I do think that you can also mess with strahds stat block, there's isn't really a reason you cant say that his mist form couldn't last longer, or move faster then the basic vampires one, when I played in the game my dm buffed the hell out of strahd, and we still kicked his ass, so I would say that I see some merit to your point of view if you consider game rules immutable, but I think in this case changing the game rules to fit the campaign better is actually the better move, If I went to run this I would actually consider looking into older maps tho and also adding in the extra settlements as if the map is bigger the kingdom might start to feel empty

I take it you're referring to poor Granny's old, tired legs...? 😉 That's another reason for not increasing the map size. The trip between the two doesn't become feasible - when it comes to 'shopping' for 'ingredients' - if the distance is made even longer than it already is. Good catch with that one.

@@DMoftheMists Granny's old tired legs you say? sure sure