Don't end Curse of Strahd without watching this

curse of straw campaigns typically last a year or more i've heard of some lasting two years in fact it's not really all that surprising there is a lot to unpack in this book over here there's a lot of quests a lot of history a lot of lore a lot of npcs just a lot of everything and it's no surprise that it is wizard of the coast's most popular adventure module despite how wonderful it is however all curse of stride campaigns have to come to an end one way or another ending your curse of straw campaign is no small feat or at least it shouldn't be there has been months upon months of collaborative storytelling and all these meetings between you and your players lives lived and lost in this world of imagination and all of that deserves some way to wrap it all up into a nice little package with no loose ends how do you put the final nail into the coffin so to speak with panache and style how do you give a memorable ending to this most memorable of campaigns well let's find out first off what is an epilogue an epilogue is the very end of a story that's used to bring closure to the whole thing it pulls back away from the major plot and it focuses on the small things individual characters and their lives now that the main story has been resolved in the context of a tabletop role-playing game you are wrapping up your campaign story and focusing on the npcs and the player characters and their lives now that everything else has been resolved where do they go what do they do how are their lives changed not only that you're looking at the world as a whole what effects have these player characters and their adventure had on the environment the world the politics everything so what do you do in epilogue obviously you don't do it before you've wrapped up your campaign that's kind of a given it has to happen at the end but more specifically you have a choice to either do it during your last session as sort of an improv back and forth thing we're all just making things up on the spot or you can have it in its own session later on personally i like to do it during the final session everybody's still riding on their high from completing this big campaign and everything's still fresh in all of our minds this way we get to sit there and improvise and go back and forth on what's happened to the characters what's happened to the world and really collaborate on it and build it together right there on the spot it's a lot of fun and then at the end of the session we know everything is done we have closure and it's all over now on the other hand maybe you want to have a bit more planning involved you could all go off and have it in a different session you know two weeks from now you'll have your epilogue everybody goes home and writes their characters stories and you get to write what happens to all of the npcs that they encountered along the way and what's happened to the world and whatnot both of these approaches improvising on the spot and going home to write your story for a future session have merits it's really up to a personal taste it's up to you there's no right answer here one way or another all right circling back to curse of straw now before you and your players sit down and go back and forth on what's happened after straw's demise figure out what kind of ending they've actually earned throughout their journey in borovia did they do a lot of good things and get a good ending do they do a lot of bad things and get a bad ending i don't know it's entirely up to you there's a really wide spectrum of endings that any party can get there are so many quests and npcs that all of it really ranges from yay straw's dead and we get to go home hooray all the way to oh my god this is so terrible can we bring straw back please he was so much better than what's going on right now so yeah lots of room on the spectrum before you deliver your epilogue go ahead and take a look back on everything that's happened during your game tally things up and figure out where on this spectrum they sit now here are some signs that maybe they earned a bad ending while all the other planes of existence are at recess borovia is still eating lunch by itself in the library one or more of the characters has started recruiting for vestige's multi-level marketing scheme the abbott is still building frankenstein's blow-up doll everyone in borovia is vibing to dream pastries hirostoyanovic is running a daycare the town of lockheed is now the charcoal pit of valaki winter splinter is now the chief grape stomper at the winery there's a new dark lord and he's using straw's corpse like it's weekend at bernie's then again on the other hand maybe they reached a good ending here are some signs of that strawd's dead straw's consorts are dead baba lazaga's dead the hags are dead kiril is dead the abbott is dead the druids are dead vargas is dead hang on hang on there's gotta be more to getting a good ending than just killing people right let's try this again borovia rejoins the material plane there might have been a village or two where it now sits but hey that population gain right argan vostolte is now the world's biggest flashlight the marta cops get to go back to making everybody drunk and they don't have to worry about the blair witch showing up to ruin their day gertrude goes home and mary stops all the flowers in the attic crap literally any functioning adult is put in charge of vlocky irena gives up all semblance of her own personality for a man she neither knows or remembers wait that last one was a little dark i'm sure she'll be fine before we move on with our next session you should know you can get this guide and all of the other lunch break heroes guides for just a dollar over on patreon but not only that i have a very special piece of news for you we here at lunch break heroes are creating our first physical product something that you can hopefully buy in stores at some point in the future our kickstarter for the deck of many quests is kicking off in march so definitely check out the link in the description down below every copy of the deck of many quests comes with 200 cards in this nice little box here or one kind of like it this is actually just a proof print it's not necessarily the final product anyways there are 50 quest cards 75 item cards and 75 creature cards if you're low on inspiration or time go ahead and draw a quest card and then read its description it'll tell you how many creature and item cards to draw then go ahead and do that fill in the blanks basically and create your own quest with a little bit of imagination it's basically cards against humanity meets dungeons and dragons minus the bathroom humor now to give you a little bit of a demonstration here i've got a quest card in my hand called now where did i put that this is a researcher who's lost their item while out studying creature in its natural habitat the researcher wants the item back but the creature is really really attached to it the item in question here is a totem of the gods this is a little figurine that gives its owner a direct line to a god of their choice they can talk directly to the god and the god can answer through the totem it crumbles to dust after a single use the creature card here is a celestial it is a bloodthirsty unicorn corrupted by demonic influence now the demon infesting this unicorn would definitely want this totem they would probably want to talk to one god or another to what end i'm not entirely sure but you know what in your world maybe they have a really good reason or if you don't want this particular creature or that item by chance you can draw another card draw something else that makes sense or something that just tickles your fancy it's a very flexible system and it is system agnostic there is nothing in here that ties it to dungeons and dragons or pathfinder or dungeon world or whatnot it is entirely open to any system whatsoever and any addition whatsoever all right that's it that's my spiel about the deck of many quests definitely check out the link in the description down below we'd love to have your support behind this project i this is my first sponsored video i guess is it really a sponsorship if it's my own product i don't know in any case on with the rest of the guide now that you know what kind of ending your party has earned through their actions in the campaign it's time to put it all together and figure out what's happened to borovia and its people as a whole if your players have written their own epilogues for a separate session go ahead and read them all over and weave them in with your own epilogue figure out what works best make it all gel together it's basically what you did with player backstories at the beginning of the game except in the other direction at the end of the game on the other hand if you're improvising at the table go ahead and go first as the dm to kind of set the stage and let them know what has happened in borovia in the days and the weeks following strong's demise then let them feed off of that and start giving you their characters information first figure out what's happened to the land of borovia after straw dies what happens to the mists for example do they disappear if they do what lies beyond is it the homeland of the player characters or is it another domain of dread perhaps or does borovia just blink out of existence although if it does it's a really short epilogue so maybe don't do that next figure out what's happened to the important npcs that your parties run into during their journey these are the npcs that they've interacted with or adventured with or who were just really important to the players themselves maybe they really latched on to that lovable shopkeeper bartender or whatnot they're going to want to know how those stories resolve are these characters are live or are they dead are their lives better for having run into the player characters or are they by chance worse do they leave borovia as soon as they can or do they stick around take esmerelda and van richton for example do they reconcile are they off hunting monsters once again or do they go their own separate ways what's blinsky up to everybody wants to know what's up with balinsky next try to tie up loose ends if your party abandoned a quest line like let's say reuniting gertrude and mary how did that turn out did they find each other eventually or is gertrude just roaming castle ravenloft taking care of it as best she can just in case mr straud returns if they didn't investigate the werewolf den are they now running amok now that straw is not there to keep them in check go ahead and explore stuff like that and bring a resolution all those pieces that your party came into contact with but maybe didn't bring to a close themselves then of course there's the character epilogues every player should have a chance to go over their own character's resolution they can read it from their prepared statement or they can improvise it there on the spot however you end up doing it but let them work with you while you're telling the tale of the world just as if you're dming a scene during normal gameplay go ahead and stop and let them have a turn at an appropriate moment did they for example run away with esmeralda to fight monsters or did they settle down in vlocky and open up a shop or something or did they hightail it home as fast as they could go there's no combat here during the epilogue there are no high stakes there probably won't be a single die rolled the entire time it's all just fluff just a bunch of people sitting around making up stories and you know what that's my favorite part of the whole game

Channel: Lunch Break Heroes

Views: 24,213

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, dnd, dnd5e, campaign guide, dm tips, dungeon master tips, strahd, cos, curse of strahd, epilogue, campaign epilogue, dnd epilogue, barovoia, barovia, mists

Id: qUVWJcyVfq4

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021