How To Prepare To Run Curse of Strahd!

hail heroic humanoids welcome to crits corner your place for everything dnd 5e i'm your host ningun pc or npc and i'm your dm roland kritz today we are going to discuss one of dungeons and dragons most popular pre-written campaigns curse of straw this video is intended for dms so if you are going to be a player in curse of straw then like subscribe and send this video to your dm before you dip out and avoid spoilers we're planning to do a whole video series on this amazing campaign and today we will start at the beginning today we will discuss several things dms should think about when starting to plan your upcoming game so roland what drew you to curse of straw and what's your experience with it yeah so cursed straw was actually the first campaign that i ever dm'd um one of the reasons that i ended up picking it is because one of my pcs wanted to make a monster hunter character so it's just completely fit and then with it being so highly ranked um among the other pre-written campaigns it it was just a perfect fit you know something we decided to run got you now how would you quickly summarize what curses straw is about to those who might not know yeah so curses straw is a game that re revolves around chad bonzarovic which is a very strong vampire and he's in charge of a land called borovia and brovia is very unique because it resides in a demiplane in the domains of dread and what that means is that all of barovia is surrounded by these mists that keep everybody inside in and do not let people out so when your party enters borovia they're going to be stuck there and as opposed to a lot of d d campaigns that are very much more of an adventure tone curse astrad is more of a gothic horror in in tone got it so when a demon gets the book for the first time how do you suggest that they approach it so i suggest that dms read the book cover to cover probably a couple times and the reason for this is because you're going to want to get familiar with a lot of the different locations and several things that can happen there cursed straw is known as being one of a more like sandbox style game as opposed to a linear story so your players are going to get a chance to go from locational location as they see fit within borrovia and so that's why i recommend that you take the time on the front end to become at least passively familiar with all of it before they dive in and this way um as you go from session to session in between sessions you can open back up the next section that you think that they're going to go into get more familiar with it again but i definitely recommend that you become familiar with it on the front end first got it so roland you know talk to me about what kind of notes would make you ready for a campaign like this yeah so for me a couple things that you want to make sure that you're ready with uh for each location is knowing what the important events that can happen there are gotcha and especially knowing what the important npcs are in every location right and we'll get into npcs in a minute here um because they are extremely important um we are for sure yeah um but the other thing too that i did that really helped me was writing out a flow chart okay so each location connects can connect up to multiple other ones and you want to have what those links are what the plot hooks are that can send you know your group of pcs from one place to another gotcha right so like if you're a crazek um you might be able to link to the werewolf den because sheep are missing um or it can link to the wizards of the wine because they you know are lacking their delivery of wine gotcha so if you know what those different places are when your pcs get to a location you give them the different plot hooks to potentially go other places you see what they're interested in and then they go from there oh okay gotcha so with curses strive it sounds like they have a great cast of npcs so what notes do you suggest making on them to have ready to play for the course of strat camping yeah so like i said you definitely want to make sure that you know what the key npcs are in the different locations and then once you know who they are you want to know what their individual goals are what their individual secrets are and if these npcs can be recruited to join the party or not gotcha because with the with cursed straw it's built to where it's meant to have at least one faded ally of an npc to join your party okay but what i like to do is in addition to that faded ally it can be really fun if with a little more work you can recruit other npcs to help you out yeah and they might not be with you the whole entire time like your fated ally but maybe if you you know pull your strings right you play the right cards maybe they come with you for different things or maybe they're trying to manipulate the party for their own ends right um and you find that out along the way right exactly and really depending on what's your role yes exactly so when planning the start of the adventure you've told me that there are two main things to consider which are running death house or not and which side of the map to start exactly so with death house you could put death house on either side of the map um the module has you start on the east side of the map but i'll get to that in a second um but the thing about death house is it's a level one through three kind of mini dungeon where you work your way through a haunted mansion and for you guys i i just skipped death house how'd you start out at level three right right and the reason i did that is because death house doesn't actually link to a lot of other things in the campaign it's kind of a standalone event and for me i figured you know you're almost just as good off just skipping oh okay got you so how would you link death house to future plot points to make it more relevant i guess yeah so if you did want to run death house i would definitely recommend taking some time to put some extra things in there to link it to future things okay so for example you can have you know there's there's parts where there's a family study and you can have your pcs be able to find like information about some of the families in brovia or some information that might even link to one of your pc's backstories okay there are some specific npcs that are very important that you can easily link to the story of death house which are lady watcher and ezek who both live in vallecki because of their stories and because the story in death house you can say that they're descendants of the people that lived there um so you could kind of put in some teasers there as well got you yeah so can you see things in that relate to npc backstories then yeah yeah so yeah so with with deathhouse like i would only really run it if you did link it to other people got it other things that would happen because otherwise again it's kind of a standalone thing and also it's because you're starting at level one there's some things in there that could easily kill your pcs right right that's nice and dealing with the pc death that quickly can be a little tough right right yeah okay so you're talking about location what's the difference where the party starts out yeah so the module tells you to start out on the east side of the map which is by the city of borovia you could do that or you could also start on the west side of the map which is by the city of krisk and there's a couple big differences that happen depending on where you want to start one of them is going to be the way it affects the tone of the campaign okay because the city of borovia is a very downward down place and it really sets a lower mood for the campaign in general because you're gonna go in thinking oh all of brovia is absolutely terrible and hopeless which it's not great but if you start out in cresce they at least have more going for them because they're not literally in the shadow of stride all the time right and so starting over there can be it can give your pcs a little more freedom and be a little lighter of a mood to start in and then also a huge difference is how quickly they'll start to interact with uh the key npc irena now how does the choice of starting locations affect irena yeah so irena is the reincarnation of tatiana which is straub's long lost love and it's his main driving force so that's the main thing that straud wants and we'll get into that later um is irena and so if you start out on the east side where by the city of borovia you're going to meet irena immediately and when you do that irena becomes the main driving force of the campaign where she's her needs and wants are going to kind of direct where the party goes more often than not right where if you start out on the west side of the of brovia your party will be able to explore much of brovia before they get a chance to meet irena in the city of borovia so this gives them a whole lot more freedom a whole lot more chance to explore brovia as they see fit without having irena's the driving force behind the action got it and that's what i did with you guys is where you didn't end up meeting irena until about the halfway point of the campaign and now once you do she becomes the driving force of your conflict with straw going forward right exactly so curse of straw has a large variety of battle encounter difficulties and possible long stretches where there are no preset encounters so how do you suggest dms approach this the absolute most important part about this is being aware of what the toughest encounters are and being prepared in case they go south and then also just having extra encounters in your pocket to be ready in between things for example while your party is at valeki it's potentially it's possible for them to have several sessions in a row where there's no combat because you're just interacting with different pcs there right um and the events that can happen there are are extremely impactful for the state of lucky and the rest of the game and they're not ones that i suggest you necessarily rushing so it's good if you have little things along the way maybe throw in an encounter with the brides of straw because they don't have anything that's preset for them um or other things that might happen along the road while your party's traveling back and forth between places gotcha so speaking of combat and cursive stride how do you suggest dms prepare for the possibilities of character deaths yeah so especially in a few key places through curse of stride character death is definitely possible or even a tpk um and especially with and you guys know because you guys definitely had one of those tpks and we'll talk about that in a sec um uh so just because of the way borovia works death shouldn't be the end in curse of straw there's so many different ways that you can prepare for that in case something happens um people's souls cannot escape the mists of burobia so maybe they become ghosts and uh someone's soul is a ghost until you can find a way to to actually resurrect the person or there's the dark powers that were that actually set up all of the domains of dread and maybe when your character dies one of the dark powers reaches out to them and they can create their own pact there that makes sense yeah and as you remember you ended up with a couple people in your party yeah that ended up with their own past yeah exactly right yeah especially when we tpk yes especially pulling that out when when someone goes down and absolutely dies in battle you can have a dark power reach out to them in their moment of need and create that pact and bring them back up with some new abilities but some new uh potentially things tied to it too that can that can be uh very impactful it's true all right so roland what are some of these big battles that can tpk your party yeah so some of the ones that you should be aware of um one of the ones that can happen very quickly especially if you do start on the east side of the map is a battle against a group of hacks and my plan there they are very tough even for several levels in you guys were mid game when they took you all out they literally won two rounds maybe i think um the the thing that you should have in your back pocket there that i did when they tpk'd you guys is i made you all wake up now indebted to the hags and from there they had a mission a very important mission that they sent you on um and until then they held onto one of your npc comrades uh as a hostage and some of your items until you fulfilled your debt to them right um other important ones if you start out on the other side of the map on the west side the wizards of the wine fight will happen very quickly and if you run that one as written for a lower level party a level three party it can be very very difficult especially getting into the winery itself if they just stand and fight which is what you guys did yeah and again almost started out very quickly tpk yeah that was a that was a very real very quick uh awakening of reality i guess you can say for how difficult these fights could be yes so a good backup there and the same thing with yester hill is having some of the brothers of the feather uh be able to come in and save you guys right if if things do go downhill um other than that the uh argenvost hold the actual battle against argenvost can be very very deadly and a good backup there is being able to get saved by godfreed so everyone wipes out you wake up and godfred has pulled you out of there and can help you from there also the fight against baba lasaga can be very very difficult as well and again this is just a good place where if you fall to her she's gonna make you indebted to her and send you on missions herself got it so what if the party was foolish enough to fight straw himself yeah so you can you should definitely have straw to interact with the party along the way not just at the very end as a final boss and if your party does fight straw along the way i would recommend that you make him spare them uh when he has the chance to kill them or not because that's not really his goal right but then when it comes to the final final battle when they've crossed him for the last time and you're fighting it out tooth and nail and castle ravenloft pull out all the stops because if he can tpk your party which if you're playing him smart he can losing is a very legitimate way to end the game if you've gotten to that point right exactly so far we've mostly discussed prep work a dm can do before engaging their party much let's talk about things to cover in a session zero and beyond so tone is very important in cursive straw do you suggest talking about this in a session zero absolutely if you want to really have a dark gothic horror campaign you will absolutely need buy-in from your players to do it because all of us want to make jokes all of us are going to say things that are inappropriate or might be inappropriate for the setting yep and unless you really have that buy-in of things are going to be scary for your characters and they're going to act as such you're probably not going to get it right so if that's what you want and that's what everyone wants and agrees on you need to talk about that ahead of time but if you're fine with everything being sunny and brovia and having a more fun light-hearted cursed straw game you can establish that too that's true so with cursive stride being a horror setting there are several terrible and potentially triggering things that can happen in it do you also suggest addressing these a little earlier cursed straw is absolutely a game where you should take the time during your session zero and address potential triggers i suggest uh writing out a form ahead of time with several potential things that are already written into cursestrod as well as things that aren't on there but that therefore it won't just give away everything hey all these things are going to happen are you okay with it because there are several things that are just built in that can be very triggering to people even simple things like specific insects or spiders to more drastic things like child murder which happens a lot in curse of straw two other things too that not everyone would think of which is just abuser tendencies and manipulation and ways that straw himself could be interacting with the party that might remind people of you know potentially traumatic things in their own past right so putting that out there ahead of time getting permission from your party members of what they are or are not okay with and then maybe also having a way in game that someone could discreetly say hey we're we're coming up to a line that i don't feel comfortable with or i no longer feel comfortable that can be very good at just putting your people at ease right even if you've known them or played with them for a long time i mean you definitely want to make sure you're always safe exactly so curse of straw has the taroka deck mechanic that hugely influences the campaign how do you handle that yeah so if you just read the campaign what it directs you to do is to separate the taroka deck into a couple different sections based on the types of cards and then from there you're just going to randomly draw with your party and what you draw will determine some very key things about the game one of the coolest parts about this is it it really mixes things up so that as you play the game play it multiple times things very different things can happen your party will be drawn to different areas of the map based on where key items are placed okay now the thing about this is with if you do just do it completely random it can create some wildly either very simple or very hard situations for your party for example if the most amazing magical items are very easy for them to get you know they could run around a couple of places in borovia grab them all and be ready to go and have a sun sword and the the uh ravenloft crest very easily or it could go completely the opposite direction where everything is at the castle itself and you don't want them to have none of these items and have to go to castle ravenloft and try to deal with straw while they're getting all this stuff that would be very difficult yeah and then this also determines your npc ally as well and the npc allies have a huge range of power level for themselves or ease that you can recruit them or not right and if your destined ally is a ghost that's in castle ravenloft it's going to be a while before you potentially get a chance to even interact with them right but if you're a potential ally and they're only going to be so good right if your potential ally is um van richton you're going to get to interact with him a lot earlier and he's going to be way more impactful if he travels with you for a longer period of time so how do you recommend balancing this experience if it's random uh what i usually do and have done every time i run the game is i will pull from the deck randomly ahead of time before you're sitting in front of your party look up what your results are and then from there decide if i want to change any of them because i'll be honest when i did you guys first pull and most of the time when i do a poll it's not usually a good balanced experience so i'll usually just change one or two of them to to make it to where you guys maybe have to explore a little more of brovia or you get a better companion so again i just recommend do it ahead of time write down what your results are and then if you need to tweak it you know no one's gonna know and it might ultimately end up better for your party yep so a big part of planning any engaging campaign is linking things to character backstories this can be a challenge for curse of strod as it takes place wholly in its own demiplane what are some tips you have in this area exactly so if you were planning a normal campaign and your you know pcs give you their family backstory you could actually pull in their family members later along the way but you can't do that really in brovia because the whole entire setting is walled off so unless you had specifically strad went out of his way to send his agents to go abduct your character's family which you could do you're not going to have a lot of those casual background people that are just in their story that are going to appear in the game that being said a lot of times it can take a little extra effort maybe a little more work with your pcs to link their stories to brovia so a couple ways you could do this is by looking for npcs that they could link up with like ones that they would associate more with right so for example you know with your character you were wizard what were some of the things that your character was most concerned over uh spells first and foremost because my wizard was addicted to spells he would actually we'll go into that later but uh spells and also uh just different types of magic yeah so so for you it was very very easy to link you with straw himself right and his ability to then become that potential mentor figure and unlock a bunch of you know ways to learn different kinds of spells and maybe more forbidden magic exactly that being said too you ended up recruiting victor i did yeah i had my own uh you know pata one might you say uh for my wizarding guy yeah exactly so with with victor's story as a key npc that was fun by the way victor was a good one yeah so he was uh he's trying to learn himself and find his way out of brovia he comes across someone that's a much stronger magician than him and you ended up with that link yeah and if you look at it you can try to create those potential connections between your pcs and some of the key npcs if you plan that ahead of time awesome so yeah i mean and i remember before the campaign you sent me my own individual taroka reading exactly so what i did uh to kind of prep things before we had our first session is i crafted a personal taroca reading for each and every individual party member so when they hooked up in the first section they were all able to say oh man i i actually remember that same uh lady read these different cards to me in a dream recently and you can put together a customized reading that foreshadows some of the connections and things that they should care about in the game ahead of time it's a really great way to give the party another excuse to be together because they all have this shared experience and this idea of things to look out for as they're going through the game that retain that pertains to them personally it really lets us like dive into the game even before we even start playing it which was awesome curse of straw has a robust community that has grown around it what are other resources a dm could seek for information and more content to add to their game yes so uh there are tons and tons of fans of cursestrad it's been around for several years now just in the fifth edition version much much longer than that it goes back several several editions and there's tons of fans that have written their own content for it a great place to start is the reddit r slash strod look up stuff by dragna carta and by mandy mod my personal favorite where they've written the whole entire you know ways that they expand every single aspect of the game give you a lot more encounters um going to whole extra things uh including the fans which are great to build into it that are completely outside the pre-written module also check out the lunch break heroes here on youtube or as patreon really great stuff there i've used a lot of it myself and then one particular other little mini thing that i built into mine is uh yeah the real housewives of raven loft by first ones entertainment that is a very very fun thing to add in especially if you are doing you you can make it more comedic or darker depending on you know what the tone of your game is yeah really fun stuff we've covered a lot of ground today to help you prep for your next game of curse of stride but we have talked very little about this rod himself and that's because we believe he deserves his own video if you're interested in seeing that video like subscribe and hit the little bell icon to be alerted as soon as it drops also let us know in the comments what other cursive straw topics you would like us to cover

Channel: CritzCorner

Views: 3,634

Keywords: Curse of Strahd, Dungeon Master Guide, Dungeons and Dragons, DnD 5e, d&d 5e, Strahd, Barovia, Dungeons, Dragons, Critz Corner, NPC, Rolan Critz, cos, cos5e, DM guide, critz, crits, crits corner, critzcorner, curse fo strahd guide, starting curse of strahd, planning curse of strahd, dm curse of strahd

Id: xKfvs6LKKHw

Length: 26min 51sec (1611 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021