Campaign Diary: The Story So Far - Running Curse of Strahd & Ravenloft from Apr 2020 to present
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- Опубликовано: 8 июл 2024
- The first video of a semi-frequent campaign diary series. This video talks about my campaign to date, starting with Lost Mine of Phandelver in April 2020, then moving onto Curse of Strahd, and then a wider Ravenloft Domains of Dread campaign.
On the CoS front, I cover: the Village of Barovia, the tarokka reading with Madam Eva in Tser Pool Encampment, Vallaki, Wizard of Wines, Yester Hill, Van Richten's Tower, the Festival of the Blazing Sun, back to the Village of Barovia, the Ol' Bonegrinder (a.k.a. the windmill), return to Vallaki, the coffin shop, the dinner with Strahd at Castle Ravenloft, Krezk and the Abbey of St. Markovia, a Vistani trial, Lake Zarovich and the Mad Mage, the Werewolf Den, Argynvostholt, and Castle Ravenloft for the endgame and epilogue.
On the Ravenloft front, I cover: Markovia, Falkovnia (5E version, so Vladeska & zombies), a second tarokka reading, return to Barovia (to do Berez and the Amber Temple, plus a return to Castle Ravenloft), the Carnival, Mordent, the Sea of Sorrows, Niranjan, Dementlieu, back to Falkovnia (followed by the Carnival, Mordent, the Sea of Sorrows, Barovia AND Markovia again!), then onward to Valachan.
Here's a link to my write-up of the Candlekeep Mysteries one-shot I inserted into CoS: / how_i_incorporated_a_c...
00:00 Intro
02:55 Lost Mine of Phandelver
03:44 Curse of Strahd
18:08 Ravenloft
35:29 Outro
Music credits - "Ossuary 1 - A Beginning", "Heroic Age", "SCP-x1x (Gateway to Hell)", "SCP-x7x (6th Floor)", "SCP-x3x (I am Not OK)", "Long Note One" "Long Note Two" and "Long Note Three" - by Kevin MacLeod (a.k.a. Incompetech) licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/...
All images, logos, etc. are the copyright of their respective creators, the vast majority of which will be from Wizards of the Coast, as per their Fan Content Policy. 
Игры
I'm going to reveal what I did for this campaign. I didn't like it as written. I ran it as the first campaign for a new group I formed 2 years ago butI had to change things a lot. As written the entire campaign is basically Dracula's story which was boring to me and it also takes ideas from other horror stories like Frankenstein. So I just removed or replaced things. Goodbye Van Ritchen aka Van Helsing. Goodbye Abbot and his Bride. Goodbye Ezmerelda, and Ireena aka Mina. All this was also before Van Ricthen's Guide came out as well. It got released when we were halfway through the campaign.
I made this all a larger campaign that used CoS as the major jumping off point to something bigger. The premise was, what if one of the Dark Powers was trying to regain their godhood by creating new worshipers. This Dark Power had been secretly experimenting with ways within the domain of dread to obtain followers. So I stole the idea from Sunless Citadel where there is a tree deep in this lair. The tree has fruits that turn those who eat them into mindless worshippers. The big bad leader for this portion is the first worshipper on this plane. I had the adventure start out with the players being prisoners who escaped. Once they got through that, they would be whisked away to Barovia at level 3.
Now in Barovia I needed to do something about Ireena. Here is where I had one of the female PCs suddenly develop red hair. In folklore red hair is seen as a bad omen. Tatyana had red hair so Strahd's obsession with trying to find her reborn I decided led to a string of women that had red hair being taken, developing this superstition about red hair being bad. Tatyana's soul was just waiting for someone new to enter the domain and one of the PC's had this bad luck.
Because this made the town of Barovia somewhat useless, I decided to remake that part too. I used the concept of a ravenloft adventure from 2E where a woman is set to be killed due to a high priest blaming her for a curse. It all is false of course and the real instigator of everything is the high priest himself due to a daughter he abandoned as a baby. However My players kind of blew past everything I prepared and decided while questioning the priest they would try to use Charm Person on him which failed (he is a cleric with high wis save after all) and blew the whole thing up and they had to flee the town.
The hag's hut got changed. I kept it as a windmill but instead of hags I had it be a Lamia. She was a worshipper of this Dark Power that wants to be a god again and as Lamia are part of desert culture folklore, I decided she would have been from Har'akir which is where I was going to take the players at the end of Curse of Strahd as a surprise. This was the first hint in that direction because her type of monster had no place here and I also dropped some symbology for Har'akir as being on her person. At the windmill the lamia is using children as labor and as 'ingredients' for making those special cakes mixed with the fruit of the same tree the party saw in Sunless Citadel. All attempts to destroy this tree result in failure. Also this tree is a not quite perfected attempt at produce fruit that affects the mind. This one only works on the still developing minds of children and even then not all of them. The perfected version was the one they had first encountered so the party is essentially working backwards.
After this I still used a lot of the same stuff in the campaign book for the important elements. I introduced other things I found on the internet for CoS like the Three Fanes which would be the party's way of further restoring Barovia and weakening Strahd. Since I removed Van Ritchen, instead of his wagon area I used that Puppet Darklord from old Ravenloft, Maligno, in this section. You know that murderbot in Strahd's Castle? He was the first attempt at making a sentient puppet. Maligno was the second attempt who later imprisoned the druid master who made him and is now trying to make children 'happy' by turning them into mindless puppets. This wagon area was now a stage where people would be coming to witness a puppet show. Here is where I also hooked the abbot in. The abbot is a fallen celestial creature who tried to kill Strahd and failed. Strahd tortured him for his amusement, ripping off his wings, and then when he grew bored, let him go. Now this 'abbot' runs the prison and still tries to help the people but is also quite insane too. He works with Maligno unwittingly. See the Abbot's monestary is a former prison for the criminally insane. Their ghosts still linger but his presence keeps them from hurting the town (not that he knows this). But Maligno is using their haunted remains (bone splinters) by embedding it into marionettes. This marionettes can inject little needles into its victims to make others more submissive. Once Maligno makes them, he gives some of them to the abbot who gives them to the kids of the village as presents. So the PCs now are involved in stopping this plot.
I also replaced Mordenkainen with my own archmage NPC from my own homebrew world. She is a war criminal that got sent to this domain. Strahd's brides also got changed based on other stuff I found. They were boring as vampire spawn so I made them full vampires who Strahd had allowed control over specific creatures of Barovia although he could assert control back if he wanted to. One controlled bats, the other wolves and the last rats. The one in control of rats though resented being given control over vermin and was the traitor seeking to replace Strahd someday. This allowed me to work in some angles for the party working with her.
So in the end after the party righted all the wrongs and everything was good, they still had the unanswered questions about the Lamia and the tree with the 'groovy fruits' they called it. As tried to leave Barovia, the mists reformed and they found themselves in Har'akir.
This is where I basically made many things up as we went. We still had the same darklord and I used the old adventure for Har'Akir as my baseline for what was I was going to do. So we still had Anhktepot and Senmet here. But inserted was another one of the trees. This was the original try but the tree produced terrible fruit that changed people. The Dark Power's worshipper that is here is mutated and curses her. But this worshipper had an apprentice that still believed who escaped Har'Akir (remember the Lamia?) and tried again elsewhere. Once the party dealt with things here they left and found themselves in Tepest.
In Tepest I wholly made up things. Here Mother Lorinda is an avatar of the Dark Power. They also encountered again my Archmage who had escaped Barovia with the party but I decided time works differently on the domains of dread so she had been in Tepest for hundreds of years and is now dying of old age (she is a gnome) whereas the party hasn't aged at all.
The campaign ended at this stage. During the final battle against this dark power, one of the party members struck a deal with another dark power for its help when the party was having a rough time. So once they beat the BBEG and everyone was finally able to leaving the domains of dread, this party member plus murderbot (who they still had) got instead taken to Falkovia and landed right in the middle of a wave of zombies. The end.
Wow, epic comment! Thanks for sharing. I like the sound of your changes. I haven't included Har'Akir and Tepest as part of my run (and currently don't intend to) - but if I do, I'm going to come back to your comments on them for added inspiration. Thanks!
@@DMoftheMists Don't get me wrong. There are some aspects of Curse of Strahd that I liked such as how once you get past the town of Barovia, the adventure can be opened up more to allow the party to go anywhere. Princes of the Apocalypse did something similar. But in Curse of Strahd I felt like you were also held back by having to look after Ireena while the overall plot of the story was just 'been there, read that'. I can barely think of any vampire story that isn't them just kidnapping someone they are obsessed with. If I could go back, I'd consider changing Strahd into some kind of psychic vampire with further reaching psychic powers to mess with the party more and he could be leaving like drained husks of his victims behind instead of a more classical bloody mess.
Knowing some of the classical Ravenloft and Domains of Dread lore helped me put together a better idea for a more far reaching campaign which all came from with some snippets I found on the internet for expanding the CoS campaign and that initial Sunless Citadel adventure then asking 'what if' questions. We were not quite in Har'akir when Van Richten's Guide came out which helped in the way of a nice map of it. Before it was basically just one run down town and a massive desert. And I was quite possibly going to use Kartakass before I brought them to Tepest since we had a bard in the group, plus a light domain cleric who took the performance skill so performed with the bard which could have been fun for them. But I couldn't quite think of an angle for going up against the dark lord there so we just went into Tepest after Har'akir which was easier since it didn't have quite so many towns and locations I had to work on.
So, I'm just gonna give a couple of thoughts that I hope will be useful.
This is very shallow seeming in terms of content, it's described as the story so far but then you omit sections of the story. Don't "maybe tell it another time", script and structure it so you can deliver it clearly.
If you can't recall a name pause the video, research it and insert it with a little editing.
Highlight which parts of your campaign were plucked directly from all the sources you listed last video, show maps of the sections you describe so it's more evocative.
Take more time and give more detail, the whole of Curse of Strahd shouldn't be that short, this is your chance to let each one really shine.
Hi from r/Ravenloft by the way.
Thanks for the feedback. I tried a scripted approach (see my first video) and I felt that it came across as rigid, so I wanted this video to be more conversational and free-flowing instead. Also, I'd argue that "maybe tell it another time" means that people will be intrigued in seeing more videos in the future. I thought sharing sources, maps, etc. for every single part of a nearly-40-min campaign diary video would be overkill; my other videos do that (I'm currently working on a Carnival video where I share what maps I used, what source I borrowed from, etc.). Anyway, thanks again for your feedback.