#just barovia things

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

okay since I'm running a PG-13 Curse of Strahd game in which my players specifically asked for it to not be too scary, and this party of ex-burglars and thieves responded really well to their old boss being the one who sent them to Barovia, I'm gonna go full-speed ahead on a pretty big tone change

which is that instead of this campaign being a horror crawl

I'm gonna try to frame Curse of Strahd as a giant heist mission

THEIR MISSION (should they choose to accept it):

Steal three magic artifacts out from under the noses of Strahd's associates. The first is in a hidden safe in the Abbey, the second they'll have to sneak out past Baba Lysaga, and the third is in a high-security treasure vault deep in the Amber Temple.

Assemble a crew. They'll meet many people in Barovia but there are two fated companions who'll be of the most help: Pidlwick II has intimate knowledge of the layout of the castle. Ez has experience dealing with supernatural bullshit and can advise on how to get past all of Strahd's goons.

Case the joint. Somehow they need to get invited into Strahd's castle so that they can poke around, learn about his defenses, plan their entry and exit, and figure out how to best dismantle his entire operation from the inside without him catching wise to their plan.

Then, once the final plan is in place, they strike.

And then idk they kick his ass, take over his castle, take all his money, steal his carriage, and ride off into the sunset.

[thrumugnyr]

We had our first player death in our Curse of Strahd campaign (we're only 3 players) and it wasn't even a Barovia or Strahd related one, but us trying to save his soul from some eldritch horror. Which was also kind of Patataj's idea so....he's not having a good time right now.

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

BTW, for those following along at home: the rogue in our Curse of Strahd game has apparently reconsidered his situation wrt the group (by means of our DM YET AGAIN sending some very comprehensive messages about the expected tone and playstyle of the game to the player in question) and we have finally taken our first steps outside of Vallaki since arriving!

Wyn was maybe not TRYING to go to that creepy old wizard tower west of the city, but she wasn't NOT trying to go either, so. hopefully she does not regret letting the party wizard's curiosity get the better of him!

[huntedsmark]

being slammed by life stuff but can i just say. everyone talks about getting screwed (lol) by the vampires in strahd but absolutely no one talks about how fucked up the houses are. everything is booby trapped. our party keeps getting eaten alive by these home alone castles and towers and we were NEVER WARNED!!!

[crowholtz]

i so desperately want to talk about my CoS pc Helene and her desire to save and 'redeem' Strahd bc she loves him and they're so insanely compatible vs. her struggle with the fact that he's literally a soulless monster and has done terrible horrible things to so many people (and some terrible things to her too tbh)

Helene is in an constant eternal struggle with herself and what she wants, what her duty is, and what she is willing to accept. It drives me crazy

[faithchel]

have to make a call on amara & kieran’s fate(s) in síle’s canon worldstate. sound offs welcome

[kolyyanas]

pov you are me, 19 year old girlboything, stumbling and eating shit while getting up after taking my sixth shot of the night and promptly breaking down crying because i’m such a fucking mess

[xyanmajor]

So it begins.... ( '-')

you are personally and directly hit by a bus¹ and isekai-ed, via resurrection, into the body of the main character your most recent WIP

reblog and tell me: on a scale of 1–10, how screwed are you right now?

¹ this is, transparently, a plot device, so if you are about to tell me "joke's on you, I never leave my fifteenth floor apartment!" then you may rest assured it will have tremendous comedic value when the bus is launched into the sky and crashes through your apartment wall to flatten you anyway

[thefruitypebblescastleoftorment]

Ask game for CoS DMs (because you know we all want to talk about our campaigns)!

How much of your campaign is RAW, how much is other people's homebrew, how much is your own homebrew?

How long has your game been going? Is it finished or unfinished?

What did your players do with Doru?

How did things shake out in Vallaki? Who's currently in charge of the city (if the city is still standing?)

What's the biggest curveball your players threw at you? Or just something wild/funny they did?

Did you make any NPCs more sympathetic than in cannon? Or less sympathetic?

What's your named character death count so far? (Players, friendly NPCs, villains.)

Did your players try to romance any NPCs? (Successfully or unsuccessfully?)

Did you genderflip any characters, or make anyone more queer?

Is there an NPC who's minor or forgettable in cannon that ended up playing a huge part in your game?

What, in your opinion, is the wildest change you made from cannon?

What is your favorite part of the RAW module? (Or one of them, if your favorite part is something big like "the tone" or "all of it.")

How did you play Strahd? What's his attitude towards the party, Ireena, the world in general?

How did you play Ireena? Did she stay with your party much of the time, or did they stow her someplace while they went off adventuring? (Or did she get kidnapped early on?)

Did your party attend dinner at Ravenloft? How did it go?

Did you leave in or take out some of the more unpopular parts? (i.e., Mordenkainen, Something Blue, Strahd always coming back after being killed.)

How did you handle the more problematic content?

Which NPC (or NPCs if its multiple) is your favorite to play?

Who is your party's fated ally? Did they successfully meet? How do they feel about your party?

Did your party reach the final fight yet? Who was with them? Did Strahd die, or did the dark lord of Barovia prevail once more?

[pompadorkery]

Yo what happening to dionys

I’m assuming you’re referring to the art that I posted on IG and Twitter and forgot to post here lmao.

So, Curse of Strahd.

Basically, Dionys finally got confirmation that a certain dark power that connected with him(when he multiclassed into Warlock), is Vampyr. And it seems as if Vampyr is setting him up to be their new champion, cause Strahd’s power is waning as the party makes their way through Barovia. He’s a very self-important prick, being a prince and also considering himself a champion of Corellon (the biggest Elven deity).

He’s had a bit of the complex through the entire campaign, feeling like the doesn’t have enough power to do things, or being told that he’s not good enough. (Though, mechanically it’s just that he didn’t have components or ran out of spell slots before he could revive certain party members, or just didn’t have high level spells yet). So when he found out that like, THE big bad evil power wants HIM, he’s started to go a little nuts and have a villain monologue out in the snow away from the rest of the party.

We’re nearing the end of our CoS campaign, so it’s very exciting :)

What will happen, who knows~

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

okay so I'm still figuring out some stuff for my mostly-safe-for-work CoS game and I just finished reading the Krezk chapter, and

it's like

it's like a clown car

except all of the clowns are horror tropes

and they're all fighting over each other to get your attention and prove that they're the nastiest boy, but you can barely see into the metaphorical car to begin with because it's absolutely packed

and then you read the "Something Blue" section and the metaphorical car is suddenly hit by a semi that ran off the road

GANG

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M GONNA DO WITH THIS CHAPTER

[sapphim]

#greyhawk common exists in ravenloft too for sure but darkonese is an infinitely more bugfuck dialect than vaasi due to darkon's whole. deal #darkonese is 42069 languages in a trench coat and it's not mutually intelligible with ANY of them

actually I've changed my mind. as much fun as it is to joke about 42069 languages in a trench coat I think it's more likely AND more funny given Darkon's "whole deal" that acquiring perminent residency in Darkon DOES, in fact, immediately magically download perfect Darkonese fluency into your brain, and it has therefore undergone shockingly, suspiciously little linguistic drift from its Oerthian language of origin.

that said, if you were some asshole from Oerth who got sucked wholesale into the Mists and had your entire life's worth of memories sucked out and replaced with the Welcome To Beautiful Darkon You've Always Lived Here Forever welcome package then how would you even know. the coincidence. you wouldn't know anything about the coincidence. that's crazy. anyway Vecna noticed the coincidence for sure he probably was like "huh. that's crazy."

OH my god. they canonically speak forgotten realms common in ravenloft. of course they do, why wouldn't they. there are > 5 domains whose rulers originally hail from Faerûn specifically and they all share the same dominant spoken language between them. that's. the common language of faerun. Vaasi is, to be sure, the most bogwild bugfuck dialect of FR common it's probably possible to encounter, but it IS a dialect of common. out of my gourd over here that I had to, for the sake of making my campaign actually playable, handwave a mystical translation convention to explain why my player characters were all mysteriously fluent in Balok despite Barovia originating in a prime material nobody's ever even HEARD of and meanwhile two of my pcs are literally from the sword coast. they could have landed in Kartakass or Nova Vaasa or something and it would have not even been a thing. fuck

[utilitycaster]

You've mentioned a few times about Matt making this the Moon Plot Campaign and the cast not realizing it was the Moon Plot Campaign and how the characters aren't necessarily the best for a Moon Plot Campaign and I'm just curious: if you could pick what type of character build the cast played to best fit a Moon Plot how might that look?

Oh man I think I've answered this before but I will always answer it again because my answer is evolving.

The first two things are just general advice:

In retrospect I think Matt should have treated this campaign as sort of a semi-module format. If you will be playing a module (eg: Curse of Strahd, Call of the Netherdeep, etc), your DM should tell you this and essentially say "you can have your own character struggles - in fact you should - but they should be largely internal/things that can be addressed without you going on an extended quest." For example, you can (and should) play a character in Curse of Strahd who is struggling with self-esteem, or religious faith, or cowardice; but you can't have a character who, to address these things, must confront their father, because they're going to be in Barovia and he's not going to be there. I recommend checking out the rivals in Call of the Netherdeep, because their throughlines are great examples - they' develop and engage with the story, but it's very much driven by the plot of the story and not a delving into their backstory. So essentially, have simpler backstories or backstories that inherently tie into the quest, and let the players come up with that by giving them the most spoiler free outline. I think Matt tried to do all that tying up himself, and at times it made things a little too pat; or those characters who had elements that couldn't be woven in as gracefully (Chetney and the Gorgynei; Laudna with Delilah; some of Ashton's stuff) got very brief arcs so we could get back to the main moon plot.

Do not dump intelligence. DO NOT DUMP INTELLIGENCE. Have at least one PC in your party who is not just intelligent but like, educated. Percy, Beau, and Caleb all fit this. Chetney's pretty smart but not terribly educated so he's great at investigation but he's not going to do very well on religion checks. This party should have had a fucking wizard or artificer or cobalt soul monk or knowledge cleric, but also every party should unless you're going full murder hobo. I think it's valid to be into actual play (or d&d itself) for the character moments and the romance but you know what makes that possible? FIGURING OUT WHAT'S FUCKING HAPPENING INSTEAD OF DICKING AROUND CLUELESSLY. My one true house rule for myself as a DM is that one person in the party has to have high intelligence (or like, be a bard or rogue with decent intelligence but expertise/jack of all trades in everything). Play a high int character for the sake of your DM, PLEASE.

On a more specific note:

would have been good to have more Marquesian characters, but also someone from the Empire would have added a significant dimension. I do love Chetney, and I think Travis is the player who pivoted fastest to fit better within this campaign and has a good understanding of what it could have been with a bit more commitment, but yeah I think if Matt had told them a bit more of what was going on he'd have made like, a more serious werewolf member of the Gorgynei who had noticed lycanthropes becoming susceptible to Ruidus and decided to investigate, for example.

I think having more divinely aligned characters would have just made for much more fun interactions. The issue with the god debates wasn't that they were having them, for all I think that anyone who wants to kill the gods is a fucking idiot. It was that none of them knew jack shit about what they were talking about so it turned into an unending Emperor's Nose discussion. Having either someone who was actually trained (a la Braius, who is a welcome addition for this reason, among others) or again just. a person with religion proficiency and a decent INT score would have made it an actual compelling argument of different perspectives, and not a bunch of idiots yelling out nonsense.

It honestly wouldn't have looked much different. In fact, I think you could have kept the bottom table mostly as is with just tiny alterations, and done the following:

Make Chetney a Marquesian member of the Gorgynei with a mission tied to investigating what's going on with Ruidus. He could still be a weird woodworker.

Entirely rework Laudna's premise. You could have kept her creepy and undead, even, but get rid of Delilah and make her a wizard instead. Make her tied to the Grim Verity or an archaeologist who got kicked off the Tishtan site. You could even keep her aligned with Imogen although I'd have made it a more recent meet up of her being on the run and having gone through Gelvaan in trying to avoid the Grey Assassins

I like what happened with FCG ultimately but I think a different subclass would have still helped; make them a knowledge cleric and more intelligent.

Make Imogen and Ashton much more aware of the Apex War and Otohan's history from the get go. Also give Laura a heads up that her character's going to be super central and she will be in the hot seat for much of the campaign.

[venisonhare]

one of my favorite things to talk about when it comes to curse of strahd is literally him and rahadin. There's something so unique about how everyone on this site portrays them, and I love nothing more than to see drawings and discussion posts about them and how each dm views them. That, and how the dynamics of their relationship change with certain factors in regards to their identities. Is strahd a woman, queer/gnc. Is rahadin undead/ a vampire/ an ancient elf? How do their faiths intersect/conflict? What were the circumstances of their meeting pre-Barovia? I've seen them portrayed as dedicated brothers in arms, lovers, doomed friends, weird toxic third thing (which I adore). They're just so-man. I love these complicated old men, and I'd love to see how people portray them in their campaigns.

[luckyblackcatxiii]

Hello! Sorry in advance if this has already been answered somewhere. I really admire the way that you design outfits for your characters and wanted to ask if there were any reference sources that you recommend for designing D&D-ish fantasy outfits. Have you just picked up trends/patterns over time? Are there a certain time periods or fashion eras that you like to emulate in your designs? Media that has inspired the designs? Thanks for sharing your amazing art with us!!

Hey there!

No apologies needed, you'd be the first to ask me this (that I remember in the last couple of years, at least)

I think my biggest suggestion to anyone who wants to design outfits for characters--fantasy or not--is to first do some studying on how clothing is structured, as well as historical and/or regional fashion. Whether that's taking a class or just going through various medias that cover the topic, such knowledge helps you get an overall roundness on the basics of how clothes work, how they can be applied to the human figure, and just why certain fashions became in vogue via the times, emotions, economies, psychology and culture they reflected. All which can then serve as inspiration and guidance on how to go about clothing your made up person/society/etc, because after all: not only do we dress ourselves to reflect our own individuality, but people have been doing that for generations before us. Whether it's the fabric used or the shape of the silhouette, clothes tell a story! And a lot of it is interesting!!!

Also, the more you understand clothing, the more believable and strong your designs will present themselves.

(You'll also suffer the curse of recognizing how inaccurate a lot of historical TV shows and movies are with their depictions of costuming, then have to stifle this down so as not be obnoxious to those around you! Yay!!)

When it comes to designing fantasy things though, the best part of drawing from reality and historic fashion is you can have references without the feeling of having to be entirely beholden to accuracy (while still--I should hope--being respectful enough to avoid borrowing more personal aspects of cultures who may not appreciate parts of their identity being used without knowledge/context applied). I often like to mix and match different time period/regional aesthetics and mesh them into something that becomes seemingly familiar yet unique enough to call my own, and it seems to pay off in the long run.

Aside from that, I like to keep in mind the practicality of an outfit--why is it being worn and what is its purpose?--while also making sure it defines the most important aspects of my character, as well as has a nice shape/sillhouette. After that, aesthetics, personal enjoyment, easter eggs, and overall fun make up the rest of the designing process. Be sure to indulge once in awhile, if not always if that's your vibe!

On that note: I personally like to depict western clothing between the 15th-early 20th century, with the Georgian and Edwardian era being my favorite. Though, thanks to my VtM game, I've definitely grown a deeper appreciation and affection for the 20s more 'recently' and with Curse of Strahd, I've been having a ton of fun getting more familiarized with Slavic and Eastern European clothing. I have a lot of CoS NPCs that need designing (and I'd like to do a fashion zine for Barovia someday, so I've been doing a lot of research as of late...)!

If I'd have to give credit to any media that's inspired my own designs, I'd have to say Odin Sphere (or any fantasy based Vanillaware game, really) is always there in the back of my mind when I'm tackling a fantasy look. I'm absolutely blanking on anything else, but i'm sure there's plenty of inspiration that subconsciously sits in my brain just Ratatouille-ing my hand when I decide to design things AHAHAH~ I'm sure once this is posted, it'll all come rushing to me...

This has gone on pretty long and I admittedly feel like an unqualified egomaniac after yapping as much as I have, but I hope this helps, if not offers some overall insight on my own process! Thank you so much for your inquiry and kind words, I'm so glad you enjoy my stuff and look forward to supplying you more in the future! :,3c <3

[thestuffedalligator]

Hey so I’ve been looking into hexbloods in D&D for a thing I’m working on, and how am I supposed to interpret “You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you gain this lineage.”

Like is that supposed to mean “You are the size you were before you gained this lineage, so choose the size that’s appropriate,” or does that mean if I’m playing a gnome who turns into a hexblood, I can choose to be a medium sized hexblood? If I’m playing a human and Strahd von Zarovich turns me into a dhampir, does he have the option to turn me into a short dhampir?

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the thing I’m working on, I just can’t stop thinking about it. “Strahd von Zarovich made me three feet two inches tall. Can’t have shit in Barovia.”