Curse of Strahd

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

by Wizards of the Coast, Christopher Perkins (Lead designer), Tracy Hickman (Creative consultant)

Unravel the mysteries of Ravenloft® in this dread adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game
 
Under raging storm clouds, the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich stands silhouetted against the ancient walls of Castle Ravenloft. Rumbling thunder pounds the castle spires. The wind’s howling increases as he turns his gaze down toward the village of Barovia. Far below, yet not beyond his keen eyesight, a party of adventurers has just entered his domain. Strahd’s face forms the barest hint of a smile as his dark plan unfolds. He knew they were coming, and he knows why they came — all according to his plan. A lightning flash rips through the darkness, but Strahd is gone. Only the howling of the wind fills the midnight air. The master of Castle Ravenloft is having guests for dinner. And you are invited.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Horror, Gaming, Fiction, Reference

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2016

About the author

Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one bleak adventure. But, we're going to run with it anyway! Wish me luck as I DM for the first time in about 20 years...

[Shadowdenizen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open disclosure: I'm an avowed "Ravenloft" fan, from the 1E module, to the 2E and 3E Setting line, and everything in between.

That said, this is a surprisingly decent adaptation (and homage to) the classic 1st Edition AD+D module "Ravenloft."

"Ravenloft" was a module that was ahead of it's time in many ways, including being much more open-ended and "Sand-Boxy" than other adventure modules of the time. It also featured a fully fleshed-out antagonist in Strahd Von Zarovich, complete with specific (but variable) goals.

This sourcebook maintains those memorable elements, and expands the surrounding environs to intrigue and challenge the players, and give them measurable milestones to strive for throughout the adventure

After a shaky start (Hoard of the Dragon Queen/The Rise of Tiamat), the 5E D+D Adventure line has begun to come into it's own ever since Out of the Abyss and now this.

The one caveat is that most of these 5E Adventures are not especially geared towards Newer DM’s; with such a sandbox environment, the DM really has to be prepared for anything, AND have a flair for the dramatic, both to kepe the adventure running and to portray the many NPC’s available in all the major locations.

[Diz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This adventure setting for Dungeons & Dragons has both good points and bad points. The best thing about it is that Strahd, the antagonist of this adventure, is a much more developed and interesting antagonist than we get in most other D&D adventures. Another good point is that the writing really sets the gothic horror tone for the story. This makes it feels very different from the usual high fantasy adventures that we usually get in D&D, so this adventure is good for groups that would like a change of setting without changing game systems.

Where this adventure falls down is in its depiction of the Vistani, which are basically an ethnic group formed around stereotypes of the Romani. Apart from one exception, the Vistani are depicted as evil. When they appear in the story, it gets uncomfortable, especially if someone is trying to act them out with an accent. I'm guessing that when the 6th edition eventually comes out, this adventure will be rewritten with significant changes to the Vistani or even rewritten without them.

There's one more negative point to mention. The main adventure is designed for characters at 3rd level and above, so if you're starting out with a new group, you can't get into this adventure unless you have players start their characters at 3rd level (which is fine). The book tries to make up for that by including a low level adventure in the appendix called Death House. This adventure is way too difficult for 1st level characters, so I would just recommend skipping it and starting characters at 3rd level.

[Jack Lanigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doesn't really count as a "proper" book but I've been doing plenty of reading through it as I'm currently running a Curse of Strahd campaign so I figure I should say something about it.

It's the first time I've run a full campaign module and I've got to say, I think I would struggle to find one that I would enjoy to run more as a first adventure. It's very good. There's plenty of detail given for every area as well as some nice looking maps, NPCs are nicely described (though I think there could be a little bit more information on how the DM should go about role playing some of the characters), and it's just a very well made sandbox adventure.

Once your players break through the initial phase, which I'd say is getting to Vallaki, things open up a lot. I've never felt like I would have to handhold my players through the adventure to get to somewhere fun or interesting. All the locations have lots of hidden details and backstory to give you, the DM, an idea of how to flesh out whatever needs fleshing out, even if the players are never going to see it.

There's a few odd design choices at times. An encounter with some hags at the start seem near likely to kill every party (so much so that the designer of the campaign nerfed them for the game he streams on twitch.tv), and certain areas do have a bit of an overload of enemies which can make something a bit dull. But for every dull encounter due to health bloat there's five neat things which lure players in and spark their interests.

Good stuff. Very good stuff. It's probably not as combat heavy or magic item filled as some of the other modules (I've peeked through Elemental Evil and there's a lot of enemies!) but it's a nice shift from the usual D&D expectation and allows plenty of interesting roleplay/talking segments.

Plus I get a chance to do my Transylvanian voice without feeling like I'm shoehorning it in so that's always good.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, story over mechanics. It really comes as no surprise that the first setting to be tackled in 5th Edition after the Forgotten Realms is Ravenloft. Though the campaign focuses entirely on Barovia and quite a bit of it on Strahd von Zarovich, this is still the closest any of the new installments has come to capturing the story feel I always loved about D&D. Even the introductory adventure, "Death House", has its twists and turns and macabre truths to discover.

My only peeve is they felt the need to use the Shadowfell instead of the original pocket domain inside the Ethereal, because once, again, everything needs to be tied product-wise to the Forgotten Realms. However, one can easily disregard that concept and use the otherwise excellent adaptation to recreate 2nd edition's Ravenloft.

[Benedict Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently running (and recording) this game with a bunch of fellow fantasy authors. Look out for a podcast of our game in early 2018!

[Celestine · Rating 5 out of 5]

man, dm-ing this will be a wild ride, especially with my group lmao

[Max]

The return of Ravenloft has me more excited to run a D&D game than I've been in years—and unlike the last time this happened (Dark Sun 4E), I'm dealing with a system I'm actually excited to use!

Curse of Strahd is an old-school horror adventure: dungeon maps, traps, a sandbox world for the players to navigate, rather than a branching story. Which is good! Easy enough to retrofit a story *onto* the provided material.

Most GMs will want to reconsider and revise the book's material about the Vistani—they're presented as in-setting equivalents of the Universal Horror version of Romani, which is to say, a portrayal every bit as steeped in xenophobia as it was in Bram Stoker's day.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m excited to run this module! I can definitely see why this is beloved classic, it contains so many interesting settings and ideas for running an immersive gothic horror adventure.

Points taken off though for mediocre to poor writing especially in regards to heavily sterotyped and superficial depictions of peoples and cultures with clear real world analogues. Even the new version does next to nothing to actually fix the racism present in this book, all it serves to do is remove all character and unique traits from the already one dimensionally written vistani. Step it up wotc, it’s not that hard.

[Taddow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearly three decades ago my Ranger character, Jerrak Kreene, and his band of adventures were pulled into Barovia by the mists and sought to rid the land of its vampire lord, Strahd. Alas, (like many others I'm sure) they failed in their quest (the closest they came was an epic session that ended with a failed attempt to destroy the vampire by holding him down submerged in the nearby river). Despite this defeat, the Ravenloft adventure and its terrible villain, Strahd von Zarovich, would be the highlight of many future discussions of adventures past.

The Curse of Strahd is the newest (5th Edition) revision of Dungeons & Dragons' classic vampire adventure and it does not disappointment. The book is gorgeous and retains all (the feeling of horror and helplessness plus a rich setting) that the original had with the addition of new personalities to meet (and fight) and new places to explore.

I would really like to run (or even play) this adventure but Dark Heresy (with an occasional foray in AD&D 1st Ed.) is the main game that I play with my gaming group at the moment (though I have entertained potentially converting the adventure to fit that game system). Regardless I'm glad to see what Wizards of the Coast has done with this classic (the nostalgia was worth it alone).

[Tor.com Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The one that got away! I've made two attempts at Castle Ravenloft, in both AD&D & 3e, & both times were thwarted. In the 3e adventure, it was a real PC grinder; I was the only one who didn't die. The AD&D campaign I had to leave early, but I kept my character & took them to the Temple of Elemental Evil as an ethnic Barovian... --MK

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can a TTRPG module be good if nobody runs it the way it's written?

Curse of Strahd is the most famous of all D&D modules, and if we're being honest it's not because it's actually that well-designed. The lore is incomphensibly contradictory from five editions worth of incompatible revisions; the story provides no ready means of incorporating character backstory into the narrative; the book gives frustratingly little advice on how to play Strahd or when and how to introduce him to the players, the 'Vallaki Knot' arises from the city having so many overlapping NPCs and questlines that it become nearly impossible to actually get your players out of there to move the plot forward even when that's what they're actively trying to do, and you would have to be the dullest knife in the kitchen cupboard to ever run the best set piece (the Dinner at Ravenloft) as written in the book.

As if that wasn't enough, the book carries some typically racist baggage through its recreation of classic gothic horror tropes. The Vistani, an obvious stand-in for the Romani, are literally all sadistic drunk criminals in blind servitude to their vampire overlord with the one exception of a Mary Sue DMNPC. Meanwhile Van Richten goes around with a Vistani-munching tiger without the book seeming to bat an eyelid at the implications of that. The entire scene in the Krezk abbey is a one-note jibe against the disabled, ugly, and insane. Not only that, but, as written, 99% of Barovians do not even have souls and are instead just unfeeling automatons- a bizarre, classist snobbery that unintentionally makes the worldbuilding less horrifying by cheapening the horror of Strahd's regime.

Beyond that, the world is full of inconsistencies. The overland map is hilariously miniscule, and so linear that it's not clear why it is framed as a hexcrawl at all. The Wereraven conspiracy makes no sense unless you assume that Strahd is in on the joke, and dear god is that Tome of Strahd handout an underwhelming bore! (However terribly written, the sheer earnest charm of the teenage angst in I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire makes for an infinitely more compelling chance to gain some insight into Strahd's contorted psychology). And while Van Richten running around this tiny space in an absurd disguise trying to take refuge in audacity is a great bit, how does Strahd, who is actively on the look out for Van Richten, not notice this flamboyant newcomer suddenly materialising in his realm and put two and two together with his 20 INT score?

Things only get worse the more you try to find answers. I made the mistake of trying to understand this campaign, which entailed a great many trips to the Ravenloft wiki which compiles a wealth of resources from D&D's much more colourful and inventive past editions, only to find that these answers were wholly insufficient. Nevermind, thinks I, Wizards of the Coast released a modern sourcebook for the Ravenloft setting: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft; surely that will have some answers?

Dear reader, it did not.

There I found retcons of Strahd as secretly being a noble warrior paladin fighting against Osybis, who is related to the Dark Powers, but also not because the mainline adventure implies that Strahd's crimes are what first brought the Dark Powers to humanity, but maybe they proceeded him and just assembled the Dark Domains in his image; but if that's the case then what are the vestiges in the Amber Temple? Are they the Dark Powers entombed, aspects of the Dark Powers, or something else entirely? Are the Dark Powers a cosmic horror that can never be defeated because everything in this adventure literally resets as soon as the party leaves, or are they a big fantasy monster to be fought by a level 20 party that uses Tarassque claws to pick their noses? Are the Dark Domains neighbouring countries with international relations between their darklords who can send troops and spies through the mists to mess with one another, or are they mini-pocket dimensions with no interaction at all outside of what the interdimensional Wereraven conspiracy allows to happen?

In the early stages of running this thing I quickly escalated from a fellow traveler to an ardent zealot for M. John Harrison's disparagement of naturalistic worldbuilding as an artform, and I'm still recovering from the symptoms of that hostility. How was one supposed to manage this tangled mess?

The answer, of course, is that none of it matters. Canon is whatever the DM says, and what the DM says is always going to be a hasty bricolage of meal-mouthed improvisations assembled from off-the cuff answers to awkward player questions. Everyone's Curse of Strahd is their own Curse of Strahd. The story is a vibe more than anything else, and that's probably the key to its success - because the vibe of Curse of Strahd is exquisite: a vampire overlord brooding in his castle; a set of low-level adventurers abducted and forced to survive in the dark forests and diseased villages amongst suspicious peasants; hounded by monsters in the woods; witches in windmills; cultists in the cities and werewolves in the caves beyond; slowly finding themselves assembling the pieces of a prophecy until they have learned enough about the land and accumulated enough holy artefacts to break down the door of the vampire's castle and battle him all through dusty halls, through blood-stained ballrooms, through haunted crypts, and then up, up, up until spells are shaking the castle's battlements and the fighters are clashing swords with Strahd on the very roofshingles of his castle in a grand cataclysmic showdown for the fate of the world.

What a vibe, right? Except, as written, the adventure states that as soon as your players defeat Strahd and leave Barovia... the Dark Powers that cursed him bring him back to life and reset everything. Yeah, that two year long campaign you ran with your friends? Literally nothing was achieved. Hope you enjoyed the character arc. Bye!

To summarise the main problems I had with all this:
- (1) The lack of a consistent lore made it difficult for me to establish a world that made sense. This was annoying as I wanted to make physical handouts for my players, but this inconsistency was particularly important because any players being abducted into another dimension are always going to be pretty invested in understanding the world they've just arrived in.
- (2) The ending felt insulting, not horrifying. If there's any rule to storytelling at all then it's to not waste the audience's time. I read that ending and even with all my pessimistic sensibilities I could not stand the thought of telling my players that in their epilogue.

Fortunately, Curse of Strahd's fanbase agrees with all of this. One trip to the /r/Curseofstrahd subreddit will bring out a mountain of questions and critique that has resulted in three different revisions of the entire campaign. The first two, 'Fleshing Out Curse of Strahd' by Mandymod, and 'Curse of Strahd: Reloaded' by Dragnacarta were godsends to me and I pilfered from them relentlessly, though I can't say I was a fan of the whole 'Fanes' storyline which I quietly dropped when my players weren't looking. Dragnacarta has since published an even more ambitious reconstruction of the campaign from the ground up, but that came too late for me to use.

Instead, I cobbled together a hodgepodge homebrew wherein the people of Barovia (all of which have souls and are perfectly capable of suffering, thank you very much) had already been through multiple 'cycles' of the module's ending, and hence had little interest in the party's heroic quest. After all, Strahd would always return. All that killing Strahd would do was provide the players an opportunity to escape Barovia while the mists were clear and return to their own lives, knowing that any Barovians they tried to rescue would only be reincarnated back into Strahd's realm anyway in some horrible Bram Stoker Saṃsāra.

Establishing this despondency front and centre allowed the players to engage with the bleak theme directly, as they discussed how the cycle might be broken. Every NPC encounter is reframed by this setup: Lady Wachter leads her cult under the delusion that Strahd can be made a benevolent ruler (after all, in his infinite boredom, he has experimented with being kind in previous cycles), the Wereravens worship a cult of the Fanes which they believe can break the cycle; and Rosavalda and Isidor (whom my players 'adopted' by allowing two of them to be possessed by the siblings, carrying them around inside their bodies to get them out of Death House) provided a moral foil for the party's escapades as all of their actions were watched and judged by two deathless, yet still innocent children who have seen ten thousand years from the space of the small, cramped attic wherein they starved. The Abbot, a rather dull figure as written, became a lot more sinister in this context when he quite persuasively told the cleric that their harbouring of the undead within them was a crime, and nearly convinced them to exorcise his inner child right there in a scene that had the party in tears, something I wasn't aware TTRPGs could actually do.

Other important changes that I made included:
- (A) Make a party member Ireena/Tatyana. I cannot overstate how important this is. If you don't, the game turns into a dull escort quest with Ireena as the protagonist of the whole story. Making a player (whoever they are and whatever gender/form they take) possess Tatyana's soul, and therefore become the target of Strahd's attentions, narratively foregrounds the party and creates immediate stakes for everyone to get involved in.
- (B) Flesh out the Vistani as a refugee minority allying with Strahd to escape from their persecution in the wider D&D multiverse. Treating them as a nomadic oral storytelling culture made them friendly to the party as a source of potential entertainment (they were always sincerely eager to hear what the party had got up to when they met, so as to make a puppet play or song about it to show the adventurers of 'the next cycle'), while keeping them aloof enough to not assist them in their quest. This also helped add extra tension to the relationship of Ezmerelda and Van Richten over the hypocrisies of his zealous bigotry, especially as a player rolled up a Vistani leaving her tribe on a vendetta against Rahadin as a replacement character. The book as written struggles to create meaningful attachments to the world and story, so you have to give your players tools to make these for themselves.
- (C) Change up the tome. Once you've figured out what kind of Strahd you want, make a new tome. There's some good rewrites out there. I took inspiration from this to make a physical version with text cobbled together from various rewrites as well as my own additions, before I aged the paper with teabags and oven-baking, rough-cut the edges of the paper, and then bound in leather as an artefact for my players to peruse for clues.
- (D) Write up a previous adventuring party for Strahd to keep around as enslaved zombies. Whenever we didn't have a full party one week, I'd run an improvised one-shot where the players would adopt those characters and week by week figure out a way for one of them to die horribly, which became the cannon backstory for their present-day zombie counterpart.
- (E) Find out which NPCs your party likes and squeeze horror out of them. 5E characters are functionally superheroes, so if you want your party to feel dread then you've got to focus on the squishies. In my case, Donavitch was on his way to help the church bell make a final, heavy toll when our cleric stopped him and fostered him into the party. I didn't expect the guy to survive, but a storytelling contest with some Vistani offered a chance to give him a backstory, giving him some unpleasant history with them that had resulted in his wife leaving to become a bride of Strahd. The Feast of St Andrals offered a chance to have Donavitch die at her hands and get turned into an enslaved spawn that Strahd was able to use as a bargaining chip against his friends - 'Complete this task for me, and if Donavitch verbally consents, I will allow him to die' - which, of course, only led up to an encounter where the poor enslaved sod was unable to physically compell his own mouth to beg them for death while Strahd smirked in the background. I wish I could say things fared better for Thornbaldt and Rosavalda, but even I was shocked by the stunts pulled by my party in the final depths of their depravity by the story's end.
- (F) Corrupt your players' characters. Figure out their moral weaknesses, and craft some extradimensional entity that offers help. A voice in their head. A whisper from beyond. Give them compelling reasons for doing bad things. Give them rewards when they do - new powers, multiclassing, forbidden magic; and rot their souls in the process. By the end of my campaign, one artificer was stomping around in an exosuit trying to resist being transformed by her mechanical cheshire-cat patron into one of its innumerable, creepy 'Blinksy' avatars; our cleric allowed Thornbaldt to be hollowed out as a vessel for some chameleon goddess of undeath called 'The Lady'; our monk sank into rot and gained a Midas touch that turned everything he held to mould and decay; our druid sank into an abusive relationship with a fire-based fetch; and the wizard tore apart the soul of Rosavalda as a sacrifice to the Raven Queen to become a bird-faced were-abomination avatar in his goddess' service. None of them were heroes by the end. Their bodies survived, but Barovia still broke them.
- (G) Run the dinner as an actual dinner. Get Strahd to give them a quest over the vittals - I had him ask the party to locate a traitor amidst his brides. This offered players a chance to peacefully explore the castle and socialise with all the villanous lieutenants of the campaign on neutral ground. Afterwards, Strahd offered each of the players a bespoke magic item (cursed, obviously) as thanks before sending them on their way, unnerved by their peek behind the dark curtain of his tyranny.
- (H) Figure out your Strahd. Once Strahd starts appearing in the story, he needs to be making regular visits. There's some great guides out there to figuring out his psychology as an unholy terror or aristocratic psychopath. I settled on a mercurial, bored trickster; something with the smirking smarm and smugness of an Alastor or Hannibal Lector; witty, sly, and sadistically addicted to the thrill of corruption. By the end of the campaign, his frequent visits had probably stopped instilling dread in my party as much as igniting the frustrated paranoia of a spontaneous visit from your overbearing landlord, so some DMs might prefer a little more distance, but that worked for us because...
- (I) Purists reject the Vasilli von Holtz alter-ego, but I relished it, portraying him as a bumbling, but well-meaning fool befriending Ireena through the blustering charm of his booming voice and the rambling mannerisms of Matt Berry. The party loved him. He was their best friend. Ireena snuck into Strahd's dungeons to rescue him. They even invited him on the final trek to the Amber Temple. Strahd had kept up the act for almost two real-life years until our Ireena stumbled onto the truth in the final sessions of the campaign. As one of my players quipped, "Strahd knew how to get Ireena all along; he just had to stop being himself..."
- (J) Open up the ending. Halfway through the campaign we were sick of the Gothic aesthetic. I asked my players if they wanted a change-up and promptly blasted Vallaki with cosmic horror as Azalin Rex invaded Barovia, fresh out of escaping his own Dark Domain, with the intention of destroying Barovia and using the resulting destablisation to launch himself back into the mortal world as a Dark Power himself. Since my players had already been dealing with Dark Powers for over a year, this set up a merry little-team up with Strahd in a final battle that descended into a 4-way battle between Azalin Rex and his minions vs Strahd and the party vs our were-raven queen avatar and his supporters in the party vs Ireena and her supporters, with these mutual battle lines playing out simultaneously in the catacombs of the Amber Temple. I had no idea how it would end (Ireena won, becoming the new Vampiric Dark Lady of Barovia and replacing Strahd, while our Vistani character, having slaughtered Rahadin, became her right hand lady in a completely unintentional echo of Rahadin's role), and the thrill of seeing my players engage with the theology of their world throughout the campaign to carve out an ending I never saw coming remains the highlight of my TTRPG experience.

Everyone who runs Curse of Strahd has their glory stories, but those stories are made by uprooting portions of the campaign to make something more dynamic and exciting. Curse of Strahd, as written, substitutes pre-session 0 RNG for actual reactiveness in its game world. There's weird one-shot death traps (a legacy from older editions), and nonsense non-sequitors like Mordekainen's cameo or the ghastly rendition of Ireena's 'salvation' in Krezk. All the same, it's hard not to acknowledge that even if the book itself doesn't work as a framework for running a successful campaign, its contradictions do create a fertile ground for inspiring something more impressive on the ruins.

[Dominic Bellavance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Très différent de Storm King's Thunder, aventure que j'ai arbitré précédemment. Beaucoup plus axée sur l'ambiance et le dungeoning. Je prévois déjà que quelques scènes seront mémorables. Kudos aussi pour la touche d'humour subtile qui se retrouve un peu partout. Très hâte de la commencer!

[Virus Visal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creo que está ha sido mi campaña favorita de las que he estudiado/ dirigido hasta ahora.
No es perfecta pero tiene excelentes fundamentos desde donde desarrollar más a los personajes, sus motivaciones y los posibles horrores con los cuales atormentar a les jugadores. Muy emocionada de a dónde llevará Barovia a mis amigues.

[Noctowl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy buena campaña, mi parte favorita es cuando strahd sirve strudel de manzana.

[Douglas Cosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than Princes of the Apocalypse, Strahd is still a lot of work for the DM -- I guess it is the nature of these huge D&D 5E adventures to be sprawling and non-linear. While their massive scope allows characters to start at Level 1 and work themselves all the way up to Level 10 or even 15, these new 5E modules are heavy lifting for even the most experienced DM . The atmosphere and story of Strahd is top notch, occuring in an alternate dimension infused with sinister events and populated by desperate peasants, mystical gypsys, and various witches. And in the prototypical spooky castle on the hill lives the vampire Strahd, who reigns through terror and other various means of nastiness.

Recommendations for the DM:
- Definitely augment this book with the many tips and tricks available online.
- Believe it or not, you may actually want to buff Strahd a little bit (and their are a few articles out there on good ways to do this) as he ends up not being as tough as you would expect the strongest vampire in all D&D to be.
- Watch the Dice, Camera, Action episodes on YouTube that feature Chris Perkins himself DMing Strahd with five fun players. There are over two years worth of weekly sessions; and aside from being good fun, they provide loads of info that help preparing a DM for Strahd.

[Richard Radgoski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant module expanded perhaps a tad too much for 5e. The land of Barovia partly funnels players to certain locations, and partly leaves other places open for exploration...but why would you go over there when the castle is calling to you? I think this could have been stronger with a bit more of a binding storyline.

Still, the brilliance that is Castle Ravenloft and Strahd earns this grade.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A of all, I will never be able to run this game, it needs way higher levels of both charisma and evil than I have.

B of all, this is amazing.

C of all, I am delighted by how if the book says at any point “[character] kindly [x]” it is followed IMMEDIATELY by a betrayal.

Gothic.

[Ryan Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read. Looking very much forward to running my group through this. Amazing sourcebook.

[Bettendorf Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dungeons and Dragons often gets saddled to its high fantasy premise full of magic, epic quests, slaying monsters, and a largely Western European high medieval aesthetic. D&D however has always been an adaptable beast; being a role-playing game, D&D is just a set of rules to play a game in. You can use those rules however you wish and set a game in any setting you want, sci-fi outer space, post-apocalyptic wasteland, a modern day high school where fighting monsters is part of the curriculum. The makers of D&D know this and have made settings of all the previous examples and more. The book in this review concerns when D&D delves into Gothic Horror, with amazing results.
D&D has been published by multiple companies over its long life. Wizards of the Coast may have put out this most recent iteration of the Ravenloft setting, but it's really a loving remark of the previous publisher, TSR's, landmark release in 1983. Ravenloft began life in the early 80's when husband and wife team Tracy and Laura Hickman were trying to make vampires frightening again for the D&D adventure they wanted to write. The result was the I6 Ravenloft adventure module which went down as one of the best adventures in D&D history. Wizards of the Coast used the original adventure as a framework and built onto it to create a magnificent adventure that tries its best to scare the hell out of its players.
The land of Barovia is cursed. Not because the people were sinful, or that the land was the site of tragedy; it is cursed because of jealousy and obsession of one man: Count Strahd von Zarovich, the vampire lord who rules over Barovia and keeps its people in abject terror. The curse of Strahd surrounds and encloses Barovia itself, dead-grey mists border the land on all sides in an impenetrable forest. The mists themselves are said to be alive, swallowing up those who try to escape the cursed land. Some are simply deposited back in one of the few villages in Barovia, full of cowering peasants. Other are never seen again. Strahd rules here, but is just as much a victim of the curse as his poor subjects, never allowed to leave, and never allow to truly die.
It's this setting that the players are dropped into, or rather pulled into. While the adventure does recommend that the players are pulled into Barovia by the mists against their will from another D&D setting, such as Forgotten Realms, it does have options if players want to be native Barovians or the Romani-esque Vistani. From there the players pretty much have total freedom to accomplish their goals, namely escape Barovia, and in the process hopefully lift the titular curse of Strahd. The adventure does have some guidance for the players. The DM (Dungeon Master) can have them led to a Vistani camp where a fortune teller reads them their fate on the Tarokka deck, the setting's equivalent of Tarot cards. It's here that the genius of the adventure reveals itself. The Tarokka reading directs the players to treasures, allies, and weapons, scattered across Barovia they can use to defeat Strahd and escape. The curse is strong however, and the mists don't give up their grasp so easily on Strahd or Barovia. It's implied that events repeat themselves over and over again and this makes the adventure re-playable. Normally, D&D adventure are one and done, you really can't play them over again. This structure, where the Tarokka reading randomizes the locations, enemies, allies, and treasures each time the adventure is played; ensuring that the adventure can be played through with the same players, but that the experience will be different every time.
If you couldn't already tell, I love this adventure. It drips with atmosphere and personality and the replay value with the Tarokka deck mechanic is what puts it over the top for me. If the adventure has a downside, it's that I would not advise either new players, and especially new DMs to attempt it. The adventure is largely free roaming and both novice players and DMs can get lost in the sprawling nature of it. This demands a lot out of both players and DMs so I would say that newbies stay clear until you have some experience running and playing a game with this moving parts. That being said, if you're not scared off by the scope of the adventure, and you want to inject a lot of Gothic Horror into your D&D game, I can't recommend Curse of Strahd highly enough.

-Jesse

[Allyn R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

more like a 3.5, but how do you even review a d&d module?

obviously i like it or i wouldn't be running it but the layout of this module is actually horrendous sometimes, especially when it comes to castle ravenloft lol. i had to print out the maps physically to even get an idea of what was supposed to go where because the room descriptions written out were absolutely not doing it for me. it's hard to actually use and at some points the scale of the maps either made them completely useless practically (how the hell am i supposed to use a map whose scale is 100ft per square effectively for combat? the module provides no other closer-up maps for berez so u end up having to go find another one to make up for it) or sometimes they weren't actually ON the map and i had to dig through the room descriptions to find them. i'm also kind of unsure why the chapters were laid out the way they were? it's not by difficulty (as if the werewolf den (ch 15) could possibly be more dangerous than the amber temple (ch 13) as long as the pcs have silvered weapons) and it's not by narrative order (because if it were castle ravenloft would be last) and it's not by physical distance so why they're ordered the way they are kind of eludes me.

i could nitpick narrative things but those are less important. the module on its own isn't bad at those and i think it's more important for a d&d module to be practically useful to a dm running the game and curse of strahd does indeed give dms (most of -- damn you berez map!) the tools they need to run the module as it's written. however. the way it's arranged SUCKS (or it does for me, at least), so 3.5

[Mac]

Been running this for my DnD group this year, I've read this and reread individual chapters so many times that I'm just including it in my challenge haha. It's a pretty good adventure. It can be run without modifications depending on your group, but I changed some things. I'm enjoying it a lot and my group seems to be as well, so I recommend. Barovia is a very interesting place and Strahd has been so cool to play.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not as high on this one as some out there, but it’s still a really great adventure. Very atmospheric and allows a good RP table to create a really good story, moreso than a lot of other modules.

[Aron Steinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Þessi var flott

[Mimsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Running this starting in Feb! Just finishing giving it a read, also plan to read Van Richten's Guide and I, Strahd.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one rate a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that they 1) haven’t ran and won’t in any foreseeable future and 2) don’t have anything else to compare it to?

[Alex]

An utterly fantastic plot with the most charismatic villain in Faerun.

[Tom]

haven‘t run it yet, but I love the set up so far

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite DnD modules to run. I changed some of it, but it is quite good!

[Cian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah it's ok