#Strahd vs dracula

[oxventurequotes]

thinking abt oxventure × curse of strahd nobody text

[horrorvillaintourney]

DRACULA SMACKDOWN ROUND 1 MATCH 6: Dracula (Jetpack Dracula) vs. Count Strahd von Zarovich (DnD 5E: The Curse Of Strahd)

PROPAGANDA FOR JETPACK DRACULA:

“They have a jetpack.”

PROPAGANDA FOR STRAHD:

“As THE iconic villain of D&D's Ravenloft gothic horror setting, Strahd is fully just Dracula slightly reskinned for trademark purposes. [...] He checks boxes from history AND the source novel AND pop culture at once. Ancient vampire who slides easily between the full dramatic gothic bitch black and red formal-wear aesthetic and vague Eastern European Armoured Warlord Vibes, check.  Kidnaps, torments and murders people for entertainment.  Has a cadre of subordinate vampire "consorts" and enslaved vampire spawn.  Ancestral castle on a sheer cliff.  Can control and/or turn into wolves, bats and mist. King of the gaslighters, and add a heaping scoop of manipulate & manwhore in for good measure.  Extremely punchable!”

[mx-lamour]

Costuming Strahd: Part 1 An "I thought too hard about this" adventure.

I recently picked up some fabric for Strahd (because you know I gotta dress up when my players eventually come to dinner).

A "fine black linen" for the shirt (from here if you want to grab some for yourself), and a black jacquard chenille (kind of a mid-weight upholstery fabric) for a classy vest.

I started doing some visual research on traditional clothing in Slavic and Southeastern European regions, hungrily compiling whatever I could find to build some pattern recognition.

Having a little bit of trouble reconciling traditional peasant garb with "but what would nobility wear" and "what year is it", plus the obvious influence of Dracula and his early cinematic adaptations on descriptions of Strahd von Zarovich (which are decidedly Western), and the need to remind myself that I am building a fantasy costume not some historical reenactment.

1937 print of a Wallachian peasant vs. a portrait of Vlad Țepeș noted 1466

The vague description from I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin gives me a neat little list of his layers: "cloak, outer coat, embroidered vest, and . . . a very fine black linen shirt."

The "outer coat" threw me. I suppose it shouldn't have. But it didn't quite mesh with the Ottoman influences in Vlad Țepeș portraits nor the stout vest and almost oversized coat ensembles I'd been looking at in peasant images from Romania and Hungary. Instead, that kind of layering really read Western Europe to me, so I was shunted directly back to Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula (in which his costume really is black-on-black-on-black, apart from the barest hint of a white shirt beneath the squarely Victorian suit, which easily consists of both a vest and jacket and, in this case, a cape).

Side note: Nowhere have I (yet) found mention of any sort of necktie. Just the Bela Lugosi style crest (but on a gold chain, not a ribbon).

There's just something about that 1930s white tie, folks. Mm.

Anyway, I figured it was safe enough to start with Strahd's shirt. Well... but, herein lies still the same conundrums: shirts aren't all the same spanning eras and regions. I did stumble on this, though:

I love me a pattern.

What I like about this in particular is that it's structured in a way that makes me believe Strahd was inspired by a man who lived in the 1400s. These sort of blocky, pieced shapes were how shirts were commonly built throughout much of history, with various amounts of gathering and whatnot, so it could be pretty versatile in terms of "what year is it".

I like the embroidery on the neck, cuffs, and over the shoulders. And I like that the split in the neckline is centered. I've seen examples with the split at the side of the embroidery panel that are really intriguing, but while a few have been noted as Ukrainian or Polish, most of the examples I've seen have been Russian, and I'm trying to avoid anything overtly Russian. (Russian garb is yummy, but it's not Barovian.)

The lighting on that third one is either ominous, suggestive, or both.

What I don't like is the open sleeve ends. There are certainly worse offenders (there are some HUGE open sleeves in some of the folk ensembles, like, unconscionably long and billowy), but even this kind of straight sleeve doesn't feel... I don't know... organized enough for Strahd.

I have a Viking style shirt with straight open sleeves like this, and it bothers me to no end. The material over the thin part of my forearms and wrists is floppy. It crumples and rides up (maybe they're just too big overall, but that's a risk to consider). I usually just roll them up to my elbows to have done with it, but that's a move for casual wear. I could see Alek Gwylim sporting open sleeves, but not Strahd. Strahd needs cuffs. Or if not cuffs, the kind of sleeve that narrows tight around the forearm and probably has at least a dozen buttons running up the length of it... but that's hardly practical, either, is it? Strahd treads that infuriating middle ground somewhere between comfortable and elaborate.

So anyway, I'm probably going to enlarge the sleeves. Not a lot; just enough to get a little bit of that "poet shirt" gathering on the shoulder and allow some extra movement in the elbow. And it's going to have cuffs that button around the wrist. Turning it into something a little more suggestive of the Renaissance (though I'm sure as hell not adding ruffles; I'm sure Strahd would think them frivolous).

Side note: Cuffed sleeves are not unheard of in folk garb from Romania and surrounding areas, but it still felt like a very deliberate choice to make. There's certainly a noticeable trend of open-sleeve styles, especially in Transylvania, if I understand correctly.

That first image is from I Do Declare. Great stuff.

Ultimately, the slightly tucked, cuffed sleeve should also bleed well enough into late-1800s suit territory, at least in spirit. The sleeves should have the approximate volume as (or perhaps a little more than) a modern button-down shirt.

Little concept sketches.

Building up from the body, the vest is the next most important thing (aside from pants, but I'm just looking at his torso for the moment; you can fake good pants, especially at the table).

Whatever happens, I knew the vest should be at least these two things: black, and embroidered. Why not blackwork on black fabric? And, since I've picked out a jacquard fabric that already has some texture to it, let's just keep piling on that subtle intrigue. That's right: get up close and personal, look at that mesmerizing detail... lol.

I do not have an actual plan for any of the embroidery yet. That's a problem for future me. (Good luck, sucker.) What I would like to do, vaguely, is take some of the traditional/folk embroidery from that southeastern region and combine it with more western Victorian elements. Haphazardly span worlds to mimick the elvolving lore.

Soutache, anyone?

The style of the vest I sketched out is based on the below examples of traditional Romanian outfits (from what region, I have no idea). The nubby little lapels reminded me of late Victorian waistcoats (which button up rather higher on the breast than modern suits), but with the added fun of a standing collar. That thick black embellishment also caught my eye, of course.

Look at that dapper little guy.

I would like the vest to be more fitted, though, rather than the boxy, open-front (and often sheepskin or fur-lined) style of traditional peasant dress.

Along a similar vein as "the man needs cuffed sleeves", having a more tailored vest seems practical and organized. Crisp might be the word I was looking for. And he's a lord, he can afford the extra effort. A fitted waistcoat would also play along with the little fantasy Renaissance lean and nods to Victorian fashion.

Strahd said trunk hose were a thing of the past, but made no mention of doublets one way or the other.

That's it for now. I was definitely just going to do a quick intro this morning, but here it is, evening again. Joy of joys. This is my work.

. . .

[Next - Costuming Strahd: Art Addendum]

[ghostofcinders]

I read "Knight of the Black Rose" and its sequel before I had *any* idea whatsoever of what D&D (and Dragonlance or Ravenloft, for that matter) was, so it's no wonder I love Lord Soth and Strahd ever since then.

I actually followed Soth into Dragonlance from there, which I guess was my gateway into D&D much later on. My first RPG still was - obviously - Call of Cthulhu and the WoD/CofD happened soon after. The rest, including a certain Scion game that prompted me to write homebrew and...we can say led to places followed right next.

But yeah, a give a 13-year old nerdy goth teen a book whose premise is "Darth Vader VS Dracula" and you've got yourself a hooked fan for life.

(Note: me reading those books also is a reason why I'm not ok with 5e Dragonlance book downplaying the splendidly vile & tragic villain that is Lord Soth into a knight that "just happened to remarry very, very fast after his first wife died, because he was already in love with Isolde"

I *know* what that gothic villain of a knight did, and "hasty second marriage social faux-pas" ain't it)

[vivianvixen]

Now that the SRD is under Creative Commons, and they mention Strahd in there, I can finally publish my Count Strahd vs Count Dracula novel, "Fang Bang: Destinies of Blood."

Before you get too excited, by which I mean horny, it's actually about them as old west gunslingers in a town that ain't big enough for both of 'em. Sorry if you were expecting them to do the sex.

For that you'll have to wait for the sequel, "Fang Bang 2: Blood Moon Rendezvous."

[burlowbeanie]

My impression that Taz vs Dracula is just public domain Curse of Strahd continues to grow.

[undeadswagtourney]

The bracket is here! A proper image will be posted tomorrow, but here is the match list!

Round 1:

The Lich(Adventure Time) Vs. Belonging Guide(Sky: Children of Light)

The Knight(Hollow Knight) Vs. Azalin Rex(Dungeons and Dragons)

Edward Cullen(Twilight) Vs. Lup(The Adventure Zone)

Captain Barbosa(Pirates of the Caribbean) Vs. Kaname Modoka(Madoka Magica)

Laudna(Critical Role) Vs. Sans(Undertale/Deltarune)

Frankenstein’s Monster(Aka Creature)(Frankenstein) Vs. Skelly(Hades)

Dracula(Dracula) Vs. Papyrus(Undertale)

Marceline(Adventure Time) Vs. Chara(Undertale)

Flowey(Undertale) Vs. Wen Ning(The Untamed)

Seed of Hope(Sky: Children of Light) Vs. Owen Harper(Torchwood)

Emperor Belos(The Owl House) Vs. Something(Omori)

Count Strahd Von Zarovich(Dungeons and Dragons) Vs. Specter Knight(Shovel Knight)

Ghoulia Yelps(Monster High) Vs. Vecna(Dungeons and Dragons)

Otto Chriek(Discworld) Vs. Skeleton King(Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go)

Micheal Afton(Five Nights at Freddy’s) Vs. Danny Phantom(Danny Phantom)

Draculara(Monster High) Vs. Jack Skellington(The Nightmare Before Christmas)

The character who got the most submissions was Sans UNDERTALE, with eight submissions.

Polls will go up tomorrow.

[anddreadful]

once again ruminating on the mediocrity of Frank Wildhorn’s dracula and Curse of Strahd as an adaptation not of Dracula but of Dracula’s cultural footprint: I think COS’s approach of completely gutting and restructuring the “dracula” mythos with the origin of The Reincarnated Wife Thing as the lynchpin (not just of the plot, but of the supernatural underpinnings of it) is THE strategy if you want to DO The Reincarnated Wife Thing. 92 dracula tries to do this, with the addition of Elizabeta’s fate as the origin of drac’s vampirism, but it just doesn’t gel as well as a tweak vs a major structural consideration. it’s very, very hard to square the basic events of the novel with a secret romantic motive, even a very tortured, toxic one, in a way that’s satisfying or thematically coherent, and I don’t NOT enjoy watching people try anyway, but there are other options

also fuck that one book I read where mina and dracula were celtic fae or something and also they never boned. what was that about

[asktheancientawoo]

OOC- 2 am (ish) idea getting is the best. Gotta say, for my Let's Play A Game chapter of my DnD campaign. A few things I expect to happen.

Edit: I call my campaign When Worlds Collide, since I use things from DnD 5e AND Pathfinder 1e and a teeeeny bit of 2e.

1) Walter gets revived by them killing stuff.

2) They end up in a mishmash of Castle Kroquist/Ravenloft. (Because my wonderful campaign is basically Drac bringing different worlds together, just to destroy them)

3) The players making a DEAL with Walter (may be sooner than this chapter), as one of my players possesses the candle that summons him.

4) ALL. OUT. VAMPIRE WAR. Strahd and Walter vs Drac and Maylas, the LEVEL 17 ANTIPALADIN RULER OF CASTLE KRONQUIST. With the players choosing a side of course.

5) Walter kidnaps and possibly killing Lisa. Again. Sparking the war.

6) Somehow, Castlevania getting transported INTO Barovia. So the playing field will be even between the two main Vampires of that arc.

7) Basically when the players get trapped in Barovia, Strahd being an ass and playing a Jigsaw-like role (giving him MUCH more magic power, and buffing him SIGNIFICANTLY. Giving him Detect Desires as well just because~)

8) I'm evil. I will have Dracula have a good 1 braincell to RETREAT and use his Philosopher's Stone to rip open the Infinite Corridor to allow Castlevania to escape Barovia. With or without the Players in it (We'll see)

[j-esbian]

taz vs dracula is also making me really want to try to run curse of strahd again. like i have time for that 😔

[cyberkevvideo]

There was a question posted on Reddit that I saw the other day. It asked, “What should I play at my table’s upcoming Ravenloft ‘Curse of Strahd’ campaign?” This person answered a few probing questions regarding what was already called for, and what was left. All the key classes were already there so someone said, play a shifter, then ask the DM if the blood hunter and Order of the Lycan class/subclass was on the table to play. If not, go Path of the Beast barbarian. Either way, go full werewolf--To do a Universal Monsters era scenario of Dracula vs. the Wolf Man. Or, to a lesser extent, the Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman.

Seeing this picture reminded me of that conversation, and it’d be a cool concept to see that transpire in a Ravenloft campaign.

Mike Ploog, Fight for the Night

[the44thpilot]

So with this new entry, we’ve gotten a good look at the [redacted] people, who are a pretty clear inspiration for the Vistani within CoS. One distinction I’m noticing right away is that the Vistani seem to be more willing to help the player than the [redacted] are willing to help Jonathan. My only exposure to the Vistani though has been how my dm portrays them; I’m not sure to what extent he’s tweaked how they act. Knowing what I know about how WOTC has made changes to their sourcebooks to reduce xenophobia and racism, I can imagine that earlier editions of CoS Vistani had many more similarities to the [redacted].

Edit: just saw a post saying that the word used in the book to refer to the group of Romani helping Dracula is considered a slur, so I have taken it out of this post.

[horrorvillaintourney]

DRACULA SMACKDOWN ROUND 2 MATCH 3: Draculaura (Monster High) vs. Count Strahd von Zarovich (The Curse of Strahd)

PROPAGANDA FOR DRACULAURA:

“Pink <3”

PROPAGANDA FOR STRAHD:

“As THE iconic villain of D&D's Ravenloft gothic horror setting, Strahd is fully just Dracula slightly reskinned for trademark purposes. [...] He checks boxes from history AND the source novel AND pop culture at once. Ancient vampire who slides easily between the full dramatic gothic bitch black and red formal-wear aesthetic and vague Eastern European Armoured Warlord Vibes, check.  Kidnaps, torments and murders people for entertainment.  Has a cadre of subordinate vampire "consorts" and enslaved vampire spawn.  Ancestral castle on a sheer cliff.  Can control and/or turn into wolves, bats and mist. King of the gaslighters, and add a heaping scoop of manipulate & manwhore in for good measure.  Extremely punchable!”

[tea-with-eleni]

Curse of Strahd vs Dracula

Spoilers for Dracula AND Curse of Strahd. 

Curse of Strahd is a vampire story clearly descended from the same genetic stock as the original Big Bad Evil Vampire, Dracula. Many characters have direct parallels. Others are unique to either one story or the other. Still others have been decomposed into multiple characters to allow full utilization of their rich individual stories in a new context. Consider Lucy.

Lucy’s most obvious parallel is Ireena Kolyana, especially if one looks at the text of the Curse of Strahd adventure. As written, both are passive, both have been fed upon by the vampire, and both are ultimately doomed. Lucy is sweet, a people pleaser, and more or less housebound by the time anyone starts to do anything about her blood loss. Ireena is more action-oriented, in that she does leave her village in a bid to find somewhere safer, but does so largely at the urging of her brother. Complicating Lucy-as-Ireena is Ireena’s ultimate fate. Most of the time, Ireena does not die at the hands of Strahd, nor is she made into a vampire spawn. It is for this reason that I suggest Lucy’s character has actually been split into a few other people for purposes of Ravenloft: Stella Wachter and Doru Donovich. 

Part of Lucy’s narrative role was an element of mystery. Dracula is a slow-burn story reliant on suspense and the slow reveal of lore. We don’t initially know what Dracula is, nor what precisely is happening to Lucy. Curse of Strahd doesn’t have this luxury; everyone knows from the start that they are about to play a vampire story. Thus, the role of a slow-burn mystery regarding a mysterious ailment has to have a different source and a different target. Stella Wachter fills this role. The player characters have no way of initially knowing the source of her madness or its precise nature. They know little to nothing about its source (Viktor Vallakovich) or said source’s capabilities. They have the opportunity, like the Dude Squad, to save Stella or leave her to her fate. The only difference between this aspect of Lucy’s characterization is that Stella’s fate is open-ended - a key requirement of a DnD game. Just as Stella’s madness could not have been caused by Strahd in order to maintain a true mystery for player characters, she cannot be forced into an ultimate fate to maintain true player agency. 

Lucy’s ultimate fate, the Bloofer Lady, could not belong to Ireena or Stella. Ireena must live for most of the story, as Strahd is motivated by love rather than... whatever motivated Dracula. (Hunger?) To turn Ireena would allow Strahd to win. Stella could not turn into a vampire spawn because, as stated above, her madness was not Strahd’s fault. Therefore, the role of the Bloofer Lady must go to someone else. While a case could be made for the vampire spawn unleashed at the Feast of St Andral, a better case can be made for Doru Donovich. The point of the Bloofer Lady in Dracula is to allow the Dude Squad to face a vampire in the flesh for the first time. She convinces them that vampires are real, a threat, and need to be dealt with. Doru Donovich offers a similar narrative role. Many players will encounter him as their first major fight against anything vampiric. He also has similar threads in his backstory to evoke player sympathies. Players may not have known him in life, as the Dude Squad knew Lucy, but Doru was an adventurer. This is a deliberate inclusion to invoke player empathy; he could have been one of them. 

I’m also reasonably convinced that Mina was decomposed into at least three other characters (Ireena, Arabelle, and Ezmerelda d’Avenir), Strahd and Dracula are more different than they are similar, and modern takes on the Brides of Strahd borrow and diverge heavily from the Brides of Dracula. There’s also the significance of Jonathan Harker’s arrival and meals at Castle Dracula vs the significance of the players dining at Castle Ravenloft.  I’ll save those for another time tho. 

[the44thpilot]

(I’m about to do a lot of comparisons to Strahd Von Zarovich because my brain is diseased, bear with me)

I think that CoS really captures that feeling of being at the mercy of a ridiculously rich, ridiculously powerful, ridiculously old man who can do literally whatever the fuck he wants with you. It really puts you in Harker’s shoes, especially when you’re forced to wander around Ravenloft not knowing which hallway will kill you, bearing witness to wild supernatural shit. What’s fascinating is that, at least with the party I’m playing with, we’re all having the exact same reaction as Jonathan; we have a job to do, the only thing to do is process what we can and keep moving forward or else the weirdness, dread, and things much worse will swallow us.

Ok, so in this post I wrote how I was dreading catching up with Dracula, but I just did it, and I actually really enjoyed it! It has its comical moments, but overall is really atmospheric, and the main horror right now is not from (spoiler) the Count being a vampire, but from Jonathan being just TRAPPED with this WEIRD MAN, who is very welcoming and his smile says "I dare you to step out of line. I dare you to try to escape. I want you to.". So Jonathan being like "what the fuck what the FUCK" at finding out he's alone in the castle with no servants, is totally understandable for me. The mirror thing was weird, but it was so weird, that it's easier to pretend it was a dream.

Also, I found out that Discworld vampires are very Dracula-accurate, at least the old-fashioned ones! I feel like a lot of vampire media has forgotten what vampires actually mean- drinking blood is metaphorical, it's all about power and control over people. Dracula's rant about how peasants need leaders, and how glorious are battles won by blood spilled was very telling. Without the lizard-climbing, superstrength, and all that, the Count would still be scary- because he's a powerful, rich man who thinks his life is more important than others', and who feels entitled to controling them.

At least I think so.

[churchyardgrim]

thinks about.... how one of the key elements of OG dracula’s villainy is his mobility. the scariest part of the story, to its original 19th century victorian audience, was the fact that this figure of bygone eras, opulent and powerful but diminished and almost grandfatherly, ethnically ambiguous and strange in his customs and religions, is coming to Jolly Good Modern Protestant England and bringing his corrupting influence with him.

it’s an element that gets kind of lost with modern adaptations, it doesn’t land quite right; we’re not scared of the same things, after all-- but in the right hands, he becomes instead a figure of white colonialism, a literal bloodsucker to mirror what western european and american cultures do to the countries and communities they invade.

but it’s also an element that is completely absent from curse of strahd. strahd doesn’t invade anywhere, he physically can’t leave his house! which i’m betting is a factor that hickman was not at all aware of, judging by some of the other things he’s said. which skews strahd’s story wildly off-course from that of his main inspiration, and it’s fascinating to me. CoS isn’t a story about Tradition VS Modernity, it’s not a culture-clash, it’s much more personal than that. dracula is a symbol; strahd’s just a Guy.