Fortunes of Ravenloft (Curse of Strahd DM Guide)

hi welcome to how to D&D my name is Fred wheeler and today I want to talk about Dungeons & Dragons but I'm not just going to talk about Dungeons & Dragons we're going to court talked about the Cookie Monster no no no not at all no this is fortunes of Ravenloft there is a curse of Strad Dungeon Master guide there are going to be spoilers in this if you are a player this is not the right video for you and go and watch one of my other videos and come back when you're finished playing the curse of Strad or even Ravenloft because there would be elements to Ravenloft that you would you get information on so it is time to make your Taraka card dick reading your already you've got your dick you're prepared and you're going to find most of the information for the tarot card deck reading is sitting on page 11 through to page 18 of the cursive Strada now this card reading changes the nature and the way that cursive Strada will play out as an adventurer and the rationale behind that is that what you want to do is have a different experience each time you play the cursive stride to be honest i don't think that players want to play through the cursive stride more than once but if you are a dungeon master and you like running the adventure then it will certainly allow you to change things up and make things a bit more interesting so when do you actually perform the card reading for the cursive stride with a Taraka deck well there are a couple of times you can use it and on occasions as it happens you can sort of make adjustments as well and I recommend that Dungeon Master's do in fact make adjustments to their adventure so before you start running the adventure I recommend that you do a card reading which is exactly what we're going to do today I'm going to show you a card reading and how to lay everything out and figure it all out it's all pretty well detailed but I'm still going to show you when you first meet met them Ava this is the vas teeny seer that you will encounter at some point you can make a reading there as well which will change the outcome so you still do your reading at the beginning before you run the adventure but you can make another reading if they talk to Madame Ava now if they come across Esmerelda or is Morel doe they can also you can make an another reading there you can change the card readings so it doesn't have to stay exactly the same you can also use a regular dick for your cart reading so if you don't have the special cards that they put out for thus adventure then that's fine you can use a standard card deck and it does give you some guidelines and instructions and box text on how to do that I'm not going to cover that I'm using the real tip for today so what does the five cards that you draw tell you well is a five different things that it's going to give you and the first one is going to be the location of the tome of Strada this details or leave the the really important information on Strad the second item location that it's going to give you is the location of the holy symbol of Raven kind this is really it's more like a protection from that dastardly vampire so it's important to have this particular holy symbol of Raven card and it will give the players a huge advantage the third item which is the Sun sword it's the carding and reading is going to give you the location of the Sun sword and then the fourth card is going to give you who is Strads enemy who is potentially the players characters ally now this could be Rudolf van ricktum it could be Esmeralda it just depends on your reading and this will give you Hooters and the location and the adventure when they come across them to a large extent mostly like that although Rudolf van vecten really encountering that character is really only about two different locations you can encounter that character without the dungeon master making adjustments the final reading is going to give you the location of we Estrada's himself throughout the adventure this basically means that they should be able to figure out where to find stride at any given time if they ever need to go and find him and talk to him which most players won't want to do but if they want to they will be able to do that because they will know where he is but this card reading is cryptic so it's not going to give them the exact location they're gonna have to figure this stuff out okay so how do you go about doing your your reading well the first thing you're going to need to do is have a look at the diagram and the book on page 11 and it gives you a guide as to where basically how to lay it out it's basically like a diamond a lot of diamonds more like a cross actually more like a cross and you lay it out and it gives you the different locations so you want to separate the high deck in the the common deck now which cards are the the high deck cards well as it happens the high deck cards are supposed to be marked by a what looks like a tiny little crown in the top corner or the bottom corner of each card now if you can't see that or don't know what I'm talking about just turn to page 243 of the cursive Strada and that will provide you with the exact cards gives you the name of them and everything so you don't have to figure it out the hard way and look for that little tiny crown if you don't want to now the the first drawing is going to consist of three cards being drawn from the common deck and they will be for positions one two and three that will give you the locations of the magic or artifacts within the adventure and then you draw two cards from the high deck for positions four and five and they are going to be covering who is the enemy of Strad or who is the ally for the players characters and where is Strad actually located within the adventure okay enough enough let's get on with doing this card reading shall we we've been mucking around long enough and I know you're all eating and waiting so here it is this is our first job our first job consists of dividing the cards so these are the common cards and I'm just gonna give them a good shuffle and we'll draw one card at a time and model diagram sort of shows you which position indicates basically what item or what it's going to be representing okay so it's a bit easier for you to follow as we go this is the high deck which is a lot smaller and we'll give that a bit of a shake in a shuffle as well there is a game in here as well that you can play I've never really played the game but I have used these cards for other adventures and just for twisting things around and making things a little bit more interesting for me okay so the very first card that we have to draw is position one position one is for the tome of Strada the tome of Stroud comes from the common deck so we just take a card off the top here and we'll place that down so I've got the philanthropist so once we've got the philanthropist within look on page now it's going to be pages 11 through to about twelve and you're looking for the philanthropist sorry they thought a lot of a man purposed and you're looking for the position of treasures the once you find the right card it'll tell you the location for that particular item and it's it's a bit of a oh here we go alright so I found it on page do team and the philanthropist that so that the tome of Strada is going to be located look to a place where sickness and madness are buried we are children once cried the treasure lies still so this is what you read out in the Box text is what you read out to the players characters now to give them some sort of reference as to they're looking for you would read out the box tix for the time stride which is this card tells of a history knowledge of the ancient will help you better understand your enemy so that's really those two beasts apiece 'as of information what does that tell the dungeon master that tells them that the tome of Strad is going to be located in the nursery of the abbey of st. Markovic okay and it gives you the exact chapter and location which is always nice okay so that's the first card we've dealt with okay number position two which is for the holy symbol of Raven kind so we draw another card from the common deck and I got the mercenary so then we're looking for the missing Arry and shuffling through a little book here and there scenaries there's always ha you wouldn't think it'd be hard to find a missionary okay so the mercenary is on page 12 so we will read out to the players character and to the to the players basically the holy symbol of Raven kind you just say this card tells of a powerful force for good and protection a holy symbol of great hope so that's going to pretty much give them a good idea that what I love you're looking for you know what they're looking for they may not okay that's all you have to read out to them as for its location you can read out for the mercenary the thing you seek lies with the dead under mountains of gold coins okay so that's going to tell you that it's going to sit in the crypt it's a castle Ravenloft and it gives you the area and it's crypt duty one or something like that so that is our first first two cards we've just got the third card to do which is going to be covering the Sun sort so we draw another card and I got the soldier so I'll read out the section for the Sun sword this card of power and strength it tells of a weapon of vengeance a sword of sunlight that'll pretty much give them a pretty good idea of what they're looking for it's not going to be very hard to understand that okay so we now have to find the soldier so whereas the Sun sword going to be located and we just here we go it's on page 12 and we just read out to the players characters go to the mountain climb the white tower guarded by a golden Knight or golden knights okay so this then tells us that they have to go - gosh - sloka pass yeah that's a sloka pass the guard tower and it gives you the area I hope I got that pronounced right probably didn't I'm not going to worry about it it's not worth worrying about half a time okay so those are the first three cards for the location of the artifacts we now have to do our drawing four four and five so we start with Strads enemy so we go with a high deck and we turn over our card and I got the innocent okay so for the fourth card we're going to read out to the players characters the following this card sheds light upon one who will help you greatly in the battle against darkness so that's the LI now where will they find our ally so you look under the innocent now for that area you have to so skip past the treasure locations you have to go a little bit further and you're looking under the section where it says Strads enemies that's on page 15 yep that's right and we're looking for where is it where is it where is it the innocent where is the innocent nobody's innocent nobody's innocent I can't find the innocent there we go there it is took me a little while but I did find it okay so it's very very simple all you can read out to them is evils bride is the is the one you seek so evils bride is the one you seek so this card is referring to Irina kalana called collec collect kalana yeah it is cool Anna was always fun it difficult so you she's she's actually going to be a character they'll come across pretty quickly they may actually meet Irina before they actually have to deal with a car reading from madam Ava now your card reading at the very beginning of your adventure can set up you don't have to make another reading you can use that for any of the readings that met them Ava or is morale to make you don't have to do it all over again there could be just a bit of a drag okay okay the final final location is for and would take it from a high deck and that's for stripes location which is the marionette so you're looking on page 17 now and we're looking for the marionette and we'll actually will read out the section for stride it should be clear then watch what they're dealing with and the following is this your enemy is a creature of darkness whose powers are beyond mortality this card will lead you to him so they they'll know that it that means they're going to be able to go to Stroud with us piece of cake right so we now need to find the marionette and we'll just cycle through it's not on 15 so here it is no 17 so it's gonna be on 18 here we go marionette here we go look to the great heights find the beating heart of the castle he waits near nearby okay so that basically tells you that they have to go to the North Tower peak and it gives you the location it's a particularly nasty location unfortunately that particular reading means they're going to be dealing with Stroud and they may also have to deal with for an awful lot of animated hell Brits oblivious polearms so could be a bit rough so that's how you do your reading it's it's pretty simple it's not terribly difficult and the reading that you do at the very beginning before you run your campaign would be the reading that you apply for when you're dealing with Madame Ava or is morale de all you can redo it again if you want to and change things as you go that's perfectly funs nothing wrong with that the only time I would suggest not to do that as if you have got the players have already played through a good portion of the adventure and you have already had them locate one of the items or the Li or even Stroud in some cases so you don't worry we don't necessarily want to change things if they supposedly already have one of those items that could be rather confusing so if you have any questions or feedback put that in the comments I have many videos for Dungeon Master's and players and I do have a growing video list for the cursive Stroud if you need help with running cursive Strub also the lost mine offend Elva I have a patreon account so you can go and support me there so I keep doing videos like this and if you do I will probably find myself doing this full-time I have affiliate links to the Book Depository in Amazon where you can buy stuff online and I get a small commission so yes help out the channel and sheer like and subscribe hit the bell button to be notified when I go live and when I published new videos and I go live a lot and hey till next time keep rolling those 20s

Channel: How to RPG

Views: 28,819

Keywords: dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, curse of strahd, d&d adventure, ravenloft, preparing curse of strahd, dungeon master guide, dm, dm guide, gm guide, dm tips, gm tips, dungeon master, dungeons & dragons (game), dungeon master tips, game master, curse of strahd dm guide, horror adventures, wizards of the coast, d&d curse of strahd, strahd von zarovich, fortunes of ravenloft, tarokka cards, tarokka deck, d&d fortune telling, d&d fortune teller, d&d fortunes

Id: 4Uf7krs9PL0

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2019