cold1029
2019-11-16, 06:48 PM
Curse of Strahd is sort of a masterpiece. As I read through it, every chapter made me more and more excited to run the game. I found the ending kind of annoying, though. I felt like it pointlessly undercut the heroes' victory. So when I ran it for my group, I seeded some hints throughout the story. In addition to that, the more I thought on it, I ended up expanding on the cosmology and lore in a few areas where I felt that the book leaves things open to GM interpretation. There were also a few characters and areas where I, as DM, did not really provide the experience the writers intended, falling short on accident. Finally, while Strahd himself is Capital E Evil, and it works very well for him, I found that many of the conflicts in the game were about Capital E Evil versus Capital G Good. I'm going to discuss some ways to make the secondary villains somewhat more varied than Team Strahd vs Team Not-Strahd. Below you will find a list of homebrew expansions I've made to the lore of Ravenloft, as well as a few tips and tricks to help you avoid some of the mistakes I made. This is going to be very spoiler heavy.
The following are Homebrew changes, take them or leave them.
First thing, the broad-strokes cosmology of the gods of Barovia is not really expanded on. We know that Good guys worship the Morninglord, and the Bad guys worship the Nightmother. I like stories that play with your expectations for Light and Dark, Good and Evil. So here's the changes I made: The Morninglord was a great and powerful god, whose strength was rivaled only by the Nightmother. His followers amassed tremendous wealth and favor, and during the reign of King Barov, they were a majorly contentious faction within his domain, and beyond his borders. King Barov spent much of his reign struggling against the Church of the Morninglord and their agenda. A young Strahd came to resent the Church, and in time, came to hate the Morninglord himself.
When Strahd took the throne, he decided he would eradicate the faith that had been a constant foil to his late father. He and his armies sacked every temple to the Morninglord within his domain, and when this was done, Strahd turned his attention outward. He went to war, conquering lands and rooting out followers wherever he could. After decades of campaigning, only Barovia remained as a bastion for the faithful. Strahd descended in force. The war was long, but he emerged victorious. He built the seat of his empire on the graves of his enemies. He had not completely destroyed the worship of the Morninglord, but the Church was in shambles. His followers met in secret on fear of torturous execution.
After decades of war, Strahd had finally achieved his goal, yet he still felt unsatisfied. By this time, he had a loftier goal in mind: he would kill the Morninglord himself. To this end, he traveled to the mountains and sought out the Dark Powers, requesting the strength he needed. The price was great, but he would stop at nothing. It took him time to gather the will, but on the day his brother married his beloved, his rage fueled him to fulfill the final requirement. Upon Strahd's conversion to a vampire, the Morninglord was desperate. He had been watching from above, advising and guiding his followers with a gentle hand, but was bested at every turn. Now, greatly weakened from the loss of so many followers, facing a grave existential threat, and metaphorically cornered, the Morninglord was forced to directly intervene.
He didn't dare try to destroy Strahd directly for fear of further underestimating him, so he imprisoned the vampire within a demiplane from which Strahd could never escape. Only Strahd's death could reunite this demiplane with the rest of the world. In doing this, the Morninglord doomed thousands of his loyal believers to eternal torment by Strahd, a vengeful and enraged demigod. The Morninglord can hear the prayers of his faithful in Barovia, but rarely listens. He is so filled with regret and remorse for his actions that he drowned out their voices. He instead turned his attention to rebuilding his faith in the wider world.
Formerly, as equals in power, the Morninglord and the Nightmother loved and respected one another. However, on seeing the crushing failure and desperate actions of the Morninglord, the Nightmother grew disdainful and disgusted with her partner. As her former lover's behavior became more frantic and discordant, she grew to hate him. He had been weakened, but she decided she would destroy him herself. The souls of the Morninglord's faithful in Barovia were trapped by the demiplane's borders, but the Nightmother now held greater power than him. She sought to undermine his plans. While the Morninglord focused on rebuilding in the wider world, the Nightmother turned her attention to Barovia, and hatched a plan to free the souls of the thousands within the valley.
She infiltrated Barovia, drawing forth many hags, werewolves, and other foul creatures. These beings were instructed to seek out those with souls, and kill them in sacred rituals. These rituals offered up the souls of the victims to the Nightmother, and could free them from Barovia. However, these souls would go to the Nightmother's realm unless they were claimed first by another god. Since the Morninglord paid no attention to Barovia, his faithful were sent to her domain. Upon the enactment of the curse, Strahd realized he had made a mistake. He had moved too quickly, gained in power too fast. He had made himself too much of a target. He spent several years brooding in his castle, thinking on his failure. He knew that his prison would last as long as he did, but eventually a revelation struck him: he did not have to die, he only had to make the Morninglord believe he had died. From this day forward, he got to work on his grand plan. During the time that Strahd spent brooding in Ravenloft, the faith of the Morninglord was revitalized in Barovia. New chapels were built on the ashes of those sacked during the war, and the priests became important figures within the community. These chapels remain in the cities as the most conspicuously new and well-maintained structures in the valley. Very few of the priests would ever actually be blessed or even noticed by their god, fewer still would be granted the power to cast spells. When Strahd reemerged from Ravenloft and reasserted his power within his realm, he allowed the chapels to stand, knowing that the hope they provided served only to deepen the despair of the citizens of the valley.
Oh, I get it: the Morninglord is actually the Bad guy, and the Nightmother is the Good guy, so we've just subverted the expectation. Yes and no, mostly no. The Morninglord aspires to lofty ideals, but fell short when he acted out of fear. Rather than trying to fix it, he chose to try to forget. To the people of Barovia, he is a symbol of Light and Hope, albeit a false one. The Nightmother isn't really Good, either, though not intrinsically Evil. Where the Morninglord draws strength from Light and Heat, the Nightmother draws strength from Cold and Dark. Her goal is to free the trapped souls of Barovia, but her methods are questionable: she enlisted the help of beings known for their hatred and cruelty. These beings delight in the suffering they are permitted to unleash, and the Nightmother turns a blind eye to this. She believes she is doing a good thing by freeing the victims upon death, and her realm is not a hellish nightmare.
That's all well and good, but how do I even get this information to the players? That can be a tricky one, most of the friendly NPCs are going to support the notion that the Morninglord is their savior and many of the hostile NPCs are going to support the Nightmother. Strahd himself has a warped point of view, believing the Morninglord to be wholly evil, and he cares little about the Nightmother. Generally speaking, the only characters that would tell them about the Morninglord's sins are characters that the players will not trust, or who would clearly have a motive to lie. This actually works pretty well in my opinion. Characters like the Abbot and Madam Eva could easily serve as a more reliable source of this information. It could also help to show an internal struggle in the faithful within Barovia, have them discuss questioning their faith and state that they have never heard the Morninglord speak to them.
On to the recommendations:
As the title character, Strahd is pretty well perfectly written as is. He can be very formidable, especially when played as a support character for the hordes he summons. That said, in my game there was a direct confrontation with Strahd and the party in which Strahd had no support. Action economy became an issue, and Strahd was properly running for his life by the end, down to jumping out of a window to get away from Ismark wielding the sun sword. The edit I would suggest is against the philosophy of some DMs, so I can understand not implementing this: but I would give the Heart of Sorrow infinite hitpoints, but the crystal encasing it can be broken with 50 damage. This means that Strahd has an infinite Soak Pool until the Heart is destroyed. This also gives them more incentive to go to the Temple, so that they can discover his weakness, i.e. that his infinite health comes from a somewhat fragile artifact.
As I hinted at in the Broad Strokes Lore, Strahd's goal is to be "killed" by the players, so that the Morninglord will lift the Curse. However, in order to successfully trick the Morninglord, he has to make it believable. To this end, he has been luring adventurers to his realm to torment and provide him with entertainment. His goal for these adventurers is to eventually raise up a party that can "slay" him. This helps to explain why Madam Eva, a supporter of Strahd, would point the characters to the artifacts that can be used to destroy him. It also explains why none of the many other parties that traveled in Barovia seems to have uncovered any of these items, because someone keeps putting them back in their hiding places. Since the whole thing is a charade, I would be careful in the few moments where Strahd flexes his true strength, like the event in Krezk.
She's a great character, I wish I had actually used her more in my game. As a Noble, she has excellent social stats, but her skills don't really reflect her character art, which depicts her as a confident warrior. I would actually change her to the Veteran template, and switch Ismark to the Noble. This is supported in the book itself, in which Ismark becomes the Burgomaster of Barovia (town) after Strahd is "defeated". This also helps her to be much more capable, and she becomes a valuable member of the party rather than a Damsel in Distress. I also recommend making it clear early in the story that she is the reincarnation of Tatyana, in order to up the stakes and provide the players with a ethical conundrum in that they can ease up the attacks on themselves by turning her over.
In my game he was just kind of a petulant childish murderer, and I tried to have him come to his senses, but the party had already made up their minds that they were going to team up with him for as long as he was useful, then kill him down the road. If I could do it again, I would portray him as a bright, young, gifted boy struggling with crushing mental illness. He's struggling constantly with the crushing despair as well as depersonalization and derealization. He inherently has trouble understanding that those around him truly exist, and has become aware of the soullessness of most Barovians. He believes that all the people of Barovia, souled or not, are broken, hollow things, spirits with form but devoid of substance. His father provides no help, and in fact mostly just makes things worse, always insisting on putting on a happy face. The changes to the Nightmother's lore also gives him an option to leave Barovia if the players can learn the rites, or give him over to someone who knows them.
The intro module features a mimic, but these iconic monsters don't really appear anywhere else in the setting that I can think of. There are many different lore theories for mimics in different settings, but my favorite is from Dark Souls. In DS, Mimics are the cursed followers of a lost god of Wealth, who were turned into Mimics as a punishment for their crimes born of unending greed. To this end, I would add many more mimics around the setting and maybe homebrew some ones with better stats. In this setting, Mimics are the priests of the Morninglord who turned away from their god and joined Strahd's armies, often serving as spies or double agents. Upon the enactment of the Curse, these traitors were turned into Mimics as punishment for their deception.
This is one of my favorite characters, and my group went to him fairly early on to request a few scrolls of Greater Restoration. He gave them two, but the spell caused its target to become insane. After seeking help and learning some information about the scrolls, they came to the conclusion that he was a demon in disguise, which I found much less interesting than the truth. If one of your players have the ability to read his aura, I would describe it as a Holy aura of a being of Law and Good which appears shattered, with the shards of his aura directed inwards, at odds with itself. This helps sell the idea that he is a corrupted angel, rather than a being borne of the Abyss and masquerading as a holy man/angel.
The following are Homebrew changes, take them or leave them.
First thing, the broad-strokes cosmology of the gods of Barovia is not really expanded on. We know that Good guys worship the Morninglord, and the Bad guys worship the Nightmother. I like stories that play with your expectations for Light and Dark, Good and Evil. So here's the changes I made: The Morninglord was a great and powerful god, whose strength was rivaled only by the Nightmother. His followers amassed tremendous wealth and favor, and during the reign of King Barov, they were a majorly contentious faction within his domain, and beyond his borders. King Barov spent much of his reign struggling against the Church of the Morninglord and their agenda. A young Strahd came to resent the Church, and in time, came to hate the Morninglord himself.
When Strahd took the throne, he decided he would eradicate the faith that had been a constant foil to his late father. He and his armies sacked every temple to the Morninglord within his domain, and when this was done, Strahd turned his attention outward. He went to war, conquering lands and rooting out followers wherever he could. After decades of campaigning, only Barovia remained as a bastion for the faithful. Strahd descended in force. The war was long, but he emerged victorious. He built the seat of his empire on the graves of his enemies. He had not completely destroyed the worship of the Morninglord, but the Church was in shambles. His followers met in secret on fear of torturous execution.
After decades of war, Strahd had finally achieved his goal, yet he still felt unsatisfied. By this time, he had a loftier goal in mind: he would kill the Morninglord himself. To this end, he traveled to the mountains and sought out the Dark Powers, requesting the strength he needed. The price was great, but he would stop at nothing. It took him time to gather the will, but on the day his brother married his beloved, his rage fueled him to fulfill the final requirement. Upon Strahd's conversion to a vampire, the Morninglord was desperate. He had been watching from above, advising and guiding his followers with a gentle hand, but was bested at every turn. Now, greatly weakened from the loss of so many followers, facing a grave existential threat, and metaphorically cornered, the Morninglord was forced to directly intervene.
He didn't dare try to destroy Strahd directly for fear of further underestimating him, so he imprisoned the vampire within a demiplane from which Strahd could never escape. Only Strahd's death could reunite this demiplane with the rest of the world. In doing this, the Morninglord doomed thousands of his loyal believers to eternal torment by Strahd, a vengeful and enraged demigod. The Morninglord can hear the prayers of his faithful in Barovia, but rarely listens. He is so filled with regret and remorse for his actions that he drowned out their voices. He instead turned his attention to rebuilding his faith in the wider world.
Formerly, as equals in power, the Morninglord and the Nightmother loved and respected one another. However, on seeing the crushing failure and desperate actions of the Morninglord, the Nightmother grew disdainful and disgusted with her partner. As her former lover's behavior became more frantic and discordant, she grew to hate him. He had been weakened, but she decided she would destroy him herself. The souls of the Morninglord's faithful in Barovia were trapped by the demiplane's borders, but the Nightmother now held greater power than him. She sought to undermine his plans. While the Morninglord focused on rebuilding in the wider world, the Nightmother turned her attention to Barovia, and hatched a plan to free the souls of the thousands within the valley.
She infiltrated Barovia, drawing forth many hags, werewolves, and other foul creatures. These beings were instructed to seek out those with souls, and kill them in sacred rituals. These rituals offered up the souls of the victims to the Nightmother, and could free them from Barovia. However, these souls would go to the Nightmother's realm unless they were claimed first by another god. Since the Morninglord paid no attention to Barovia, his faithful were sent to her domain. Upon the enactment of the curse, Strahd realized he had made a mistake. He had moved too quickly, gained in power too fast. He had made himself too much of a target. He spent several years brooding in his castle, thinking on his failure. He knew that his prison would last as long as he did, but eventually a revelation struck him: he did not have to die, he only had to make the Morninglord believe he had died. From this day forward, he got to work on his grand plan. During the time that Strahd spent brooding in Ravenloft, the faith of the Morninglord was revitalized in Barovia. New chapels were built on the ashes of those sacked during the war, and the priests became important figures within the community. These chapels remain in the cities as the most conspicuously new and well-maintained structures in the valley. Very few of the priests would ever actually be blessed or even noticed by their god, fewer still would be granted the power to cast spells. When Strahd reemerged from Ravenloft and reasserted his power within his realm, he allowed the chapels to stand, knowing that the hope they provided served only to deepen the despair of the citizens of the valley.
Oh, I get it: the Morninglord is actually the Bad guy, and the Nightmother is the Good guy, so we've just subverted the expectation. Yes and no, mostly no. The Morninglord aspires to lofty ideals, but fell short when he acted out of fear. Rather than trying to fix it, he chose to try to forget. To the people of Barovia, he is a symbol of Light and Hope, albeit a false one. The Nightmother isn't really Good, either, though not intrinsically Evil. Where the Morninglord draws strength from Light and Heat, the Nightmother draws strength from Cold and Dark. Her goal is to free the trapped souls of Barovia, but her methods are questionable: she enlisted the help of beings known for their hatred and cruelty. These beings delight in the suffering they are permitted to unleash, and the Nightmother turns a blind eye to this. She believes she is doing a good thing by freeing the victims upon death, and her realm is not a hellish nightmare.
That's all well and good, but how do I even get this information to the players? That can be a tricky one, most of the friendly NPCs are going to support the notion that the Morninglord is their savior and many of the hostile NPCs are going to support the Nightmother. Strahd himself has a warped point of view, believing the Morninglord to be wholly evil, and he cares little about the Nightmother. Generally speaking, the only characters that would tell them about the Morninglord's sins are characters that the players will not trust, or who would clearly have a motive to lie. This actually works pretty well in my opinion. Characters like the Abbot and Madam Eva could easily serve as a more reliable source of this information. It could also help to show an internal struggle in the faithful within Barovia, have them discuss questioning their faith and state that they have never heard the Morninglord speak to them.
On to the recommendations:
As the title character, Strahd is pretty well perfectly written as is. He can be very formidable, especially when played as a support character for the hordes he summons. That said, in my game there was a direct confrontation with Strahd and the party in which Strahd had no support. Action economy became an issue, and Strahd was properly running for his life by the end, down to jumping out of a window to get away from Ismark wielding the sun sword. The edit I would suggest is against the philosophy of some DMs, so I can understand not implementing this: but I would give the Heart of Sorrow infinite hitpoints, but the crystal encasing it can be broken with 50 damage. This means that Strahd has an infinite Soak Pool until the Heart is destroyed. This also gives them more incentive to go to the Temple, so that they can discover his weakness, i.e. that his infinite health comes from a somewhat fragile artifact.
As I hinted at in the Broad Strokes Lore, Strahd's goal is to be "killed" by the players, so that the Morninglord will lift the Curse. However, in order to successfully trick the Morninglord, he has to make it believable. To this end, he has been luring adventurers to his realm to torment and provide him with entertainment. His goal for these adventurers is to eventually raise up a party that can "slay" him. This helps to explain why Madam Eva, a supporter of Strahd, would point the characters to the artifacts that can be used to destroy him. It also explains why none of the many other parties that traveled in Barovia seems to have uncovered any of these items, because someone keeps putting them back in their hiding places. Since the whole thing is a charade, I would be careful in the few moments where Strahd flexes his true strength, like the event in Krezk.
She's a great character, I wish I had actually used her more in my game. As a Noble, she has excellent social stats, but her skills don't really reflect her character art, which depicts her as a confident warrior. I would actually change her to the Veteran template, and switch Ismark to the Noble. This is supported in the book itself, in which Ismark becomes the Burgomaster of Barovia (town) after Strahd is "defeated". This also helps her to be much more capable, and she becomes a valuable member of the party rather than a Damsel in Distress. I also recommend making it clear early in the story that she is the reincarnation of Tatyana, in order to up the stakes and provide the players with a ethical conundrum in that they can ease up the attacks on themselves by turning her over.
In my game he was just kind of a petulant childish murderer, and I tried to have him come to his senses, but the party had already made up their minds that they were going to team up with him for as long as he was useful, then kill him down the road. If I could do it again, I would portray him as a bright, young, gifted boy struggling with crushing mental illness. He's struggling constantly with the crushing despair as well as depersonalization and derealization. He inherently has trouble understanding that those around him truly exist, and has become aware of the soullessness of most Barovians. He believes that all the people of Barovia, souled or not, are broken, hollow things, spirits with form but devoid of substance. His father provides no help, and in fact mostly just makes things worse, always insisting on putting on a happy face. The changes to the Nightmother's lore also gives him an option to leave Barovia if the players can learn the rites, or give him over to someone who knows them.
The intro module features a mimic, but these iconic monsters don't really appear anywhere else in the setting that I can think of. There are many different lore theories for mimics in different settings, but my favorite is from Dark Souls. In DS, Mimics are the cursed followers of a lost god of Wealth, who were turned into Mimics as a punishment for their crimes born of unending greed. To this end, I would add many more mimics around the setting and maybe homebrew some ones with better stats. In this setting, Mimics are the priests of the Morninglord who turned away from their god and joined Strahd's armies, often serving as spies or double agents. Upon the enactment of the Curse, these traitors were turned into Mimics as punishment for their deception.
This is one of my favorite characters, and my group went to him fairly early on to request a few scrolls of Greater Restoration. He gave them two, but the spell caused its target to become insane. After seeking help and learning some information about the scrolls, they came to the conclusion that he was a demon in disguise, which I found much less interesting than the truth. If one of your players have the ability to read his aura, I would describe it as a Holy aura of a being of Law and Good which appears shattered, with the shards of his aura directed inwards, at odds with itself. This helps sell the idea that he is a corrupted angel, rather than a being borne of the Abyss and masquerading as a holy man/angel.