DAG: S1E16 | Curse of Strahd

Decking Awesome Podcast Why Curse of Strahd is Awesome

Today we are talking about the Dungeons and Dragons campaign Curse of Strahd and why it is awesome. We are going to discuss what makes it different to other dnd campaigns, what we did to make it our own and some fun times we had playing.

Transcript

hello and welcome to the decking awesome

podcast

my name is kira and i’m joined by the

awesome brian and owen

hi hi today we were talking about the

dungeons and dragons campaign

istrad and why it’s awesome we are going

to discuss what makes it different from

other dnd campaigns

what we did to make it our own and some

fun times we had while playing it

a quick note that there will be spoilers

ahead so watch out

it’s an awesome campaign and we wouldn’t

want to ruin your experience

so what is crystal strat it’s one of the

most popular d d campaigns

around it’s pretty much a dracula-esque

style story where strad is

dracula and you’re in a spooky land

that is filled with werewolves and

ghosts and everything that you’d expect

in a dracula style story

it’s a long enough campaign in a spooky

world called

brovia it’s been around a really long

time so it’s it’s pretty well refined

and there’s a lot of world to explore

there’s a lot of plot to explore

and it’s open for any style of play

i like that you say it’s a nice long

campaign where we settled into it

thinking it was going to take us three

months and probably a year and a half

playing it

amazing though yeah it’s really really

powerful stuff there’s so many cool

memorable experiences in cursive strat

there’s like loads of different d d

campaigns out there

but kirsten strat is is a classic it’s

been around since the very start of d

yeah and they keep updating it and i i

would consider it the most compelling

campaign

currently out there for d d yeah it’s

great as well that i think if you want

to just

if you’re looking for a campaign that

you can just focus on

completing it and playing through it’s

got a good long story to it

but if you’re like us and you have to

explore every little side quests and

nook and cranny in the whole place

there’s loads there in the map for you

to explore to

roots to go down people to meets that

you didn’t even know

are going to be there it’s great for all

levels and all types of players

yeah i think it’s very unique in the

fact that you know you have

the campaign is called cursor strat and

strad through the entire campaign is

sitting in this castle and you can see

him

and he’s just watching over you guys

throughout the entire time in brovia

it’s a very not many campaigns do that

where they just have the

super villain just sitting there looking

at you try the entire thing kind of

screwing around with your plans yeah

that’s kind of that’s super rare usually

there’s a overarching plot where you

visit lots of different locations that’s

kind of still here in broadview

but you know you’re kind of stuck you

can’t you can’t go visit the

big water deep to get like loads of

different reinforcements and come attack

them

no you just got to deal with what you

have inside bro very cool yeah i like it

like there’s trout over there he’s the

guy you’re trying to stop

good luck figure it out so strat is

one of the key elements that makes

chris’s strad pretty awesome

what are the other reasons that chris’s

rad is so awesome

i i love the idea of a brooding vampire

you know like the the curse of the strat

himself

is such a cool character the whole

reason that curses was originally made

was because vampires were

they appeared in some sort of dungeon

and

they attacked the players but there’s no

like why is the vampire in that dungeon

and the writers of this decided vampires

are way cooler than this

so they had to have their own castle

they’re like the masters of an army

they’re much more into subterfuge and

deception

all this kind of stuff and they kind of

really added on all these massive

amounts of layers

around strad based on like obviously

dracula and stuff like that

but it was a it’s a really cool

character yeah i i like

i like he’s he’s such a foreboding

character like he’s always kind of there

in the background the odd times you

you bump into him you’re like oh nuts

he’s going to kill us now oh oh no okay

he didn’t he ran away okay

but like i mean you’ve got you’ve got

strat and like they they put so much

effort into making strad such a good

strong character but like

they really write the smaller characters

and the npcs and stuff like that really

well they’re

you’ve got some really interesting

people you meet along the way and

you’re never you’re never going into

town going uh i’ll just you know

take a box here and then i’ll leave

again and i’ll go

it’s all just progressing towards you

meet people and they’re like oh you know

please help me out i’m

really struggling we’re stuck here under

the cursive strat and

you’re like you know what i’m gonna go

help these people too maybe i have to go

get a sheep for them but you know what

i’m gonna help them

i love it as the dm of of christmas

tread and i

love there’s one scene that kind of

brings this of strad to life for me

anyway

was when the parody was in valacki

and the vampires had just broken loose

and started spreading around and

doing some damage they were trying to

get the these bones

if you played search right you kind of

know what i’m talking about one

character was chasing after a guy with

the bones

and then as a dm i just said it was

gonna like have dark weather come in and

there’s lightning and then suddenly in

the sky

there’s a big firing arch and it was

strad on a fire horse

and that was just a really cool

experience because the characters

apparently i could see them discussing

it of deciding whether they should just

leave valaki

or they should face the strap

it was very cool and he’s such a

foreboding character that he can just

appear

on by himself on a fire horse and just

cause like

the whole town isn’t panicked now yeah i

still think that’s one of the best bits

where he rides in on this big fire horse

and i was like oh crap we have to

have to get out of here we’ve barely

survived to fight with these vampire

spawn you know we’re not going to

survive a fight with strad let’s just

run away it’s like oh no one of our

party ran that direction we need to go

make sure they’re not just going to be

murdered so let’s chase after them and

then

you’re just following this trail of

destruction and fire from this horse

and i was the member of the party that

was way out there i had

i had transformed into a wolf so i was

miles away from everyone else because i

was chasing the vampire just having to

get to the

to a church and i was face to face with

strat

all by myself and yeah and then you got

the bones and you were actually face to

face with strad

and then the session had started and you

had to decide what to do

as strategy looking at you saying i want

the boss

very cool very cool very interesting

kind of decisions you have to make

because you don’t know what level stras

strides at you know if you’re that kind

of meta gamer

you don’t know how powerful this guy is

and why is he on his own

with all his vampires and then you guys

you ended up being in the church with

him

it’s conversing with him because there’s

so there’s so very few super villains

out there in these campaigns that you

can actually converse with

instead of like you know if it’s like a

giant dragon or if it’s a thing you

might get some dialogue

but this guy he wants to kind of deceive

you he wants to make

it make it look like he’s on your side

and he you know what can you get out of

this relationship and stuff like he

doesn’t want to just kill you guys he

wants to use you guys

and so it’s very cool to have all six of

you guys just talking strat trying to

figure a way

trying to convince him irene is dead i

love that i love that threat the whole

campaign up to this point

you know all of us have been rolling

terribly we’ve been lucky to even

walk without tripping over our own

shoelaces and

we encounter strad and he’s trying his

mind control powers on us

and all of us just rolling natural 20s

and 19s and everything with bonuses to

resist his mind control powers and just

nothing that was it was impressive

because

his you had to grow like 18 19 or 20 to

survive i was like

i’ll you know charm a few of you get

them onto my side

i did it twice you guys are fine

powerful stuff yeah so i think even

without

the main plot of strad there’s like

loads that goes on in the campaign

the campaign has been around there’s

loads of like little side quests

little stories and while the events are

moving on you don’t have control

over that so it’s going to be different

for everyone who plays i think that

makes a really

big difference so like i guess if we

knew what was coming or

there’s spoilers on the internet all

over the place for this campaign podcast

spoilers

and it does it just meant that you

couldn’t really tell that much from the

spoilers because

everything was so unique to your

experience there was like

we got to borrovia and some of the

things we were able to do other things

we couldn’t do

baleki those load the things that we

didn’t get distracted by things we

progressed that we didn’t mean to

progress

and it just felt like it was kind of

more real because because you didn’t

have control over that

obviously that meant it was probably

loads of reading involved in the

inside of it but there was definitely a

real feel for a unique experience i

thought

yeah that was it was cool like with the

the lady watcher where you’re like

oh you have to go rescue her and you’re

like oh yeah we’ll get around to that in

a few minutes you know we’ll go explore

over here first and all of us was like

no she’s gone she was arrested

oh but wait what no i wanted to i wanted

to go there was like no too late

yeah and in the campaign they kill her

but there’s a really cool

addition to that which is the prison the

blacky prison you guys didn’t visit

but it’s cool to have it there just in

case you guys wanted to go rescue her

and you didn’t really know who she was

at that point but it i think those kind

of additions

to it really help and it’s it’s easy

enough for uh dm to handle

because there’s not a whole lot of

overarching things that change

but you do have lots of events that the

players don’t need to be part of that

will just

happen there’s lots of npcs in this that

have their own motives

that are trying to do something you know

it doesn’t really relate to the players

if the players want to get involved they

can

but it doesn’t really affect so so like

you know lady watcher in vallecki

she was trying to get the baron out

regardless of what you guys do she might

take some advantages here and there

strad he doesn’t really have an

overarching thing he just wants to mess

with the players

so that was much easier to kind of

handle and there’s loads of other kind

of and all the npcs want to do some so

it is like a real world

pro via where things are happening and

it’s not just this kind of

blank slate there’s everything’s going

to change the longer you play in this

world

the more things are just going to be

totally different yeah i really liked as

well that like

one great feature of it is that it’s not

just a

walk-in smash and bash campaign you’re

not just walking from fight to fight to

fight

you know if if you’re a player who

really likes going

in and just taking out the sword and

smacking things

it has a ton of fights in it but you

know if you’re a character who likes

stealthing around and likes you know

trying to manipulate people and

find out all the backstory and try and

get around it without having to

draw your weapons there’s a load of

options for that as well you’re not

you’re not stuck going one path or the

other or punished heavily for going one

path or the other you have so many

options to do both

i think that works out really well for

for so

it’s very accessible i suppose it’s

going to describe it’s very accessible

no matter what type of play style you

and there’s loads of opportunity if

you’re like me and obsessed with trying

try each spell that a druid has for some

random reason to stick it into the plot

each time

so i got to use a pretty full range of

weird spells at weird times

and keep them learned to to use i think

that that sort of thing is

is really good but even on a on a lower

level than

what sort of game that you want you can

just role play like a really honorable

person or

like a devious money hungry whatever

and it can still the plot can still cope

with that

it doesn’t need you to be chaotic or

chaotic evil or

anything in between like it allow for

anything in between it really really

gives you a lot of role-playing

opportunities that you don’t find in

similar campaigns where you have to go

help the village

in some back arse of nowhere

it has a lot more opportunities than

that yeah i totally agree with that

i think the one of the reasons i love

christian strat was is because of that

the fact that

almost any player can get what they want

out of it

so you’ll have some players most players

new players anyway start off and they

want to hack and slash they want to go

they want to kill a few goblins they

want to get the feel for the game

and then um but as they play more and

more they want to get into the more

social aspects of it

which is conversing with npcs seeing

what the problems are

and then as they go along they’re trying

to come up with these creative solutions

to problems

and no matter what kind of player you

wear the dm will have something to be

able to give

them which is kind of rare in games

usually they’re kind of combat focused

or social

encounter focused you know political

entry that kind of stuff this has

it has everything but the dm doesn’t

have to include everything

so based on the players and how they

play they can do whatever they want a

good example is the witches

so they had you know just this old woman

selling dream pies

you guys were kind of cool that like we

had even he had people in the backstory

who were like addicted to things

so that kind of stuff integrated

perfectly into the story but then i knew

because you guys were

in these kind of social situations that

if i included a social interaction with

the witches

where they pretended to be old ladies in

a windmill

you could end up having a conversation

with them and trying to figure out are

these old ladies

good or evil or what are they to make

some damn good pies

and then they go in and they show you

the pies and stuff like that and then

like you know you’d have to do some

searching around and as you’re as

one part of the group is conversing with

them trying to see

if they’re going to get anything out of

it another person is like sneaking

around the back

and they find like old children’s

clothes and then like

you’re starting to add up and like you

guys already had your hunches but you

don’t

you’re just trying to kill old ladies on

a hunch so until you find proof

yeah it’s like a detective story when

there’s like there is no law

but there is like this kind of moral

kind of social thing that you guys are

struggling with so you named your quaint

little cottage

bakery bone grinder

you didn’t find that out until after

yeah

yeah yeah it actually leads into one of

the other things that makes

curses right pretty cool is that the

combat is incredibly dangerous so

that encounter turned out to be very

close to a total party kill

we absolutely i think at one point

only one of us was alive and at another

point only a different character was

alive

and we were trying to do everything we

can to just revive

people and we came so close to debt so

many times

that and it was really really tough to

get through

i’m very sure we finished that fight

with only one person left standing on

one health or something like that and

then

it was just a frantic wake everyone up

and it was so scary having

so when we were playing that there was a

third woman who lived there and we knew

she lived there

and she wasn’t home one of the

characters was waiting at the door

and him seeing her in the distance and

us going

we can’t handle the two people who are

here what the hell are we gonna do if

she comes up the road

that’s why it’s so good for there’s a dm

because you can foreshadow events like

that

and then it’s up to you if combat does

happen you can bring in another

they’re called hags pretty much like

witches but yeah

when she does arrive it’s not a surprise

to the players

they’re not going oh like more the dmg

is sending more people at us

just because he wants us dead yeah and

this is actually meant to happen in the

story

it feels more kind of relevant and more

believable for the players

and yeah i was worried about that a lot

because you guys were

like it’s only because there were six of

you if there was five of you you’d all

be dead

but like just because there were so many

of you you you man managed to get

through it curses tried is massively

difficult combat encounters almost

through the entire campaign

and god yeah and some of them were

surprised

heart we were in a vin in the vineyards

later on

and there were twigs that seemed so easy

to kill

like no problem to any of us but there

were just so many of them that we nearly

died in that battle

we came pretty close to running out of

spells and running out of everything

to attack them because they just kept

coming and that

seemed like once we had killed the

druids it seemed like whatever to walk

in the park

and it was not like that’s it’s the age

old debate

how many seven-year-olds could you

legitimately take in a fight

like one or two sure you probably have

the upper hand but if there’s 30 of them

now they’ve got the number advantage and

those twiglets oh god there was just

like you’d wipe out an entire wave of

them and you’re like yes that’s it we’re

on our oh god there’s a hundred more

yeah it got messy it got messy very

quickly so many so many combat

encounters are like that that was it it

brings me back to the the that’s one of

the reasons i love the

group that we’re playing with because

the social encounters are always part of

it so i knew that

you know i could troll lots and lots of

cool things at you and give you kind of

interesting ways to get out of it or

make it easier so that you could survive

and that kind of stuff you can add in

quite easily to cursor strat one is

the thing that brings me to that point

is argan vasalt who’s a dragon

who doesn’t exist he’s dead you’ve been

dead for like thousands

maybe hundreds of years and you guys

resurrected harry potter dragon

and i’ve like you know obviously he’s

pissed off because he

died you guys could easily have gotten

into a combat encounter with him

and he’s probably stronger than strad

so it wouldn’t have gone well i i like

that we forgot to

rescue him before we resurrected him so

instead of taking his bones out of the

castle we resurrected him he just

resurrected in the middle of the enemy

army that killed him in the first place

oh my god i’m still alive oh god

yeah why do you think it was the

campaign was so compelling for players

i guess that me and brian were the with

two of the players it was quite a big

party it was six people uh what did you

think

like this this was my first big d d

campaign like i played a few smaller one

shots or you know maybe it’s a couple of

sessions

but i never really played a big long

campaign i honestly didn’t know

what to expect i thought will i get

bored you know what if i’m killed really

early and then i’m just sitting there

watching everyone else play

but chris’s stratos is it’s brilliant

because it’s such a big

open world like i love a good sandbox

game where you know you’ve got your

objectives

and you can just explore you can look

anywhere you can do whatever you want

you know

go off and explore the woods stab a lot

of squirrels until you level

up you know if that’s what you really

want to do it’s going to be a boring

campaign but yeah

and but it’s brilliant because you can

play whatever way you like you can

go off and do all the side quests you

can just follow the main quest

it’s it’s brilliant it really really in

no matter what

way you like to play no matter how

you’re playing whether you’re

attacking whether you’re trying to make

peace with everyone

there’s there’s options for everyone and

you can really you can really enjoy the

campaign no matter what style

character whatever it may be that you

that you jump in with

um so i hadn’t played d d for a few

years before

i we played chris’s strat it had been it

had been a while

and i found that like the setting was

really easy to get comfortable with

so when i was worried about how much i

need to remember or

how much i need to know and i felt like

there was a good few new players so then

the balance was kind of worrying but

actually it was really easy to get that

lane because you kind of

you know the story of dracula who

doesn’t and you knew where you fit in

the world

pretty quickly and the start of the game

is a dead house or

what’s not called dead house but this is

this very linear path and i guess

on our first fight we had no idea what

we were doing

we like we it was like the most

hilarious fight with an armored armor oh

we were we were basically just tripping

over ourselves trying to

three of us grappled them to the ground

was it any use who knows

we don’t even know if that helped the

situation and we sent off

oh the wizard got a really good idea at

the start of the fight that maybe we

need the sword from downstairs that had

the same symbol as the

coat of armor did so the wizard ran

downstairs to go get it which meant the

wizard

who was the only one who could get past

a really high ac of the armor

was gone for like three rounds four

rounds

we were just shooting it with little low

damage bows and stabbing it with daggers

and stuff it’s just

chinking off its armor doing no damage

whatsoever at one point i think when we

had that

when we had a grapple to the ground we

were literally just trying to

dismantle the armor like just take off

body parts to

i think at one point someone rolled

really well and just took a sword out of

the

hand of the airport

and then followed shortly by the armor

just disarming us back

but it’s a nice progression there was no

you felt like

even though some of the fights were

tough the plot line followed along

nicely

at the start you were in kind of a

closed world and it opened up

so it was a good one to start back to d

d and it was a good one for the new

players i i definitely think

to to start into and to get a feel for

what they like about d d

because it has everything it has

detective

it has fighting it has it has people who

just want to like

really really role play their role it

has

the ability to be the person who just

wants to steal gold the whole way

through the campaign

rob every treasure they find and i know

you’re listening to this

you know who you are

thanks for the support so

like it just meant that everyone could

find their place

without it ruining the game for everyone

else you know i was going to say

because it’s such a big open world and

you have so many different things you

can do you never

feel railroaded like you’re being forced

to follow this path

but your eyes have to start at the start

is good you’re kind of you’re forced

into borovia and then you’re forced to

fight your way through this death house

but

you kind of come through it at the side

and then you’re basically just

in this new world so you’re kind of

you’re introduced to it by

just being shoved through the door and

you follow the path and escape

and that’s really the end of the

railroading you’re you know the world is

yours to explore after that so

you get escorted through the initial

attack and then you’re free to do what

you want so

you can and i i’m sure the dm if you

know we had wandered off

one more time following one more side

quest was just going to send something

to just hoard us

towards the castle but that’s that

probably not no no you guys are having

fun that’s all right that’s what i

care about there’s one more campaign one

more night one more session

i realized month six i was like this is

not gonna

last three months

[Laughter]

we were all lulled in with that three

month estimate we said it was

like most people said they were like

takes three months but now i think that

house is really cool

it’s it’s supposed to be a railroad a

lot of people online give out about it

but i think for new players it really

adds like what is d d about

and it puts them into it and goes you

know when you’re fighting that animate

armor

it’s not about like you know you know

your attack roles and damage and stuff

like that but it can be about just

grappling them down

you know go and find the magical sword

it can be creative it can be totally

different

your action doesn’t have to be attack it

can be anything and i think that kind of

mentality house kind of gives you yeah

it’s very cool yeah

and the fact that you can talk to some

of the bad guys so like

we met a ghost and i guess we kind of

was it our fighter started fighting or

something like that

so we came into the room and then we

realized we could actually just talk to

the person

like it was perfectly acceptable to i

think i think even i attacked

at some point but it was actually then i

was like oh we could find our plot

it was pretty cool i didn’t ask how big

the room was i said i cast fireball

yeah i’m glad you don’t get fireball at

level one

everywhere you went it it felt like

there was something going to happen

there was always something to

really in or to attract you or you know

you’d go to a new town you’re like oh

you know we have to go here and we have

try and find out what happens down at

the vineyard

but you end up getting dragged into

another another side quest another

combat another you know are we going to

arrest these guys or

we found these traders or trespasses and

you’re you’re always

kind of going oh i don’t want to go

somewhere else because it’s just going

to be another

thing we have to do but i also really

want to do the thing

own so you were doing your master for

this campaign why do you find it so

compelling well i think the problem i

had

was there was six players coming in and

there was

five new players so yukira were the only

non-new player

pretty much and it was tricky to find

the compelling story

that was kind of open to allow anybody

to do anything i didn’t know what people

would want to do

i knew that they were socially they

worked well together and they come to

compromises

but i wanted to make sure no matter what

compromise they come up with the

campaign would have something for them

and i think for new players it’s

absolutely incredible

it gives them so many different options

to be who they want to be and to get

what they want out of the game

because there are no real rules in

dungeons dragons it was my first time

dming a campaign as well

so we’re kind of making up the rules we

went along too and that kind of freedom

and improvisation

curse of stride really helped it it

didn’t hinder it didn’t force you onto a

railroad path

it’ll let you let strad be whoever you

wanted to be

and you can change them later it let

people come up with their backstories as

at later points

and integrated into the plot and there’s

lots of hooks into it you can kind of

build curses right however you want into

kind of

and you can also bring in npcs and

locations

and turn them into things that you want

to represent

and kind of interesting choices that the

players had to make

so you could have like you know the bags

they were kind of

old ladies so people don’t hurt old

ladies but they’re evil

and so like you know you have all these

kind of social dilemmas that people had

that were absolutely fantastic yeah

so yeah new players totally welcome yeah

don’t hurt all ladies until i find out

they’re cooking children and then hell

yeah

then i’m throwing them to the fireplace

yeah but those those pies are quite nice

though yeah

yeah because those kind of interesting

plots are fantastic they’re like side

quests

but they also integrate into the team

and the plotline of it

and they’re so great because so many

campaigns you see online

are especially when it comes to random

encounters they’re just like

here’s five werewolves and they attacked

the priority

in the forest and you’re like they never

asked why

you know i know i know it’s kind of

pedantic kind of slightly especially for

a dm

sure these people just want to hack and

slash but i love to ask the question why

so when you have this like old lady

giving out pies it’s great because she

has a backstory and she has all that

kind of stuff and maybe the players

won’t know about the backstory

or where she came from but it’s good

that it’s there and it’s good that you

can customize it to be whatever you want

it to be

that creates some memorable moments

because you know we had like firewalls

in the forest and they were cool because

they’re very

difficult combats but no one cared about

why the firewolves were there

but you want those kind of random

encounters to be memorable to be part of

the story

to kind of enrich the gameplay and i

think as players there were some people

where we

absolutely became obsessed with their

backstories and then other people like

the crazy person who came by the church

and banged on the door

we just completely blew her off we were

like oh she sounds a bit crazy

okay just pretending we didn’t hear that

knock okay yeah you know that’s mad mary

shielded

a big backstory and she knocked on the

door and the guys were like no

we’re not opening we’re not here we were

pretty sure it was going to be evil

she was mad married she’s crazy but

she’s a nice person

who wouldn’t be crazy living in brovia

but i think i think the the cool thing

not only can you modify the current

cursor shroud with npc’s locations you

can also modify

the player’s backgrounds to be part of

the story

so as a dm i absolutely love the fact

that i could go like

the wizard was trying to get into the

dark arts and so i linked it to van

richten

who was like a dark arts dealer and that

kind of thing was kind of plain on the

background but you can also have

like here your brother ash was uh

he supposedly died in a caravan thing

which you never tried a body so you

weren’t really sure and so i could just

include that in but it was a trick you

know

all this kind of all this kind of reason

i was lulled in by that trick and

devastated when you

un-tricked me yeah because i because i

invented a new thing which is the

symbol of all which isn’t like first

edition curse of strategy

but what i did was i had like as on like

creatures

and to say that it was like strad’s army

and it was his his ways controlling

monsters and npcs in the game he would

uh kind of tattoo

something on it and i i showed them this

giant cavern once with this giant

skeleton and it’s on the skull was

curved in revolt and that was like strad

trying to

control this mighty beast so that when

it was like foreshadowing so when i

brought it up later

it was pretty obvious i could just put

it onto ash put him inside the

vineyard and they would all go oh he’s

being controlled by strad

even though yes he was but also he’s bad

and evil and older

he was a doppelganger yeah yeah those

kind of things it makes it really

compelling for characters

and it’s really easy to integrate into

cursive strat because that stuff isn’t

in the in the campaign

because a team because of how it’s laid

out i can just put that in

and it fits perfectly and you feel like

it’s part of the campaign

yeah and i think even subsequent

like one shots and scenarios that we’ve

done have proven that sometimes

there’s not enough going on or enough

side issues or side

quests kind of style that we can end up

with not being able to integrate

character background in

in some scenarios where the with the

plot is so dedicated

it can be really hard to to add that

sort of background in

especially compelling side things unique

because they can’t just be slapped on

like oh there’s a

goblin’s attacking this village to the

side it’s not really compelling you but

like whereas if it’s my brother

and he’s got a thing on his head you’re

like oh i really need to resolve this

i went all about the resolving yeah we

did when we when we came across

any of our background stuff it was

really great to try and

get some closure on it like i came

across like my background was the whole

my whole village had been destroyed by

an evil corruption i came across the

same corruption of barovia and

found out this is the source of it and

these guys are responsible for everyone

i know and love

dying yeah a bit of a murder spring fit

to the murder spree

yeah i think i think the character

creation as well is what makes

chris stroud really great because you

know you’re talking about the

backgrounds but also the characters

themselves

i think a lot of new players when they

come to dnd campaign they’re not sure

what to create

they’re not sure what would work well in

a kind of balanced team

and when you throw at them like

werewolves and like ghosts

and people who can control minds and

stuff like you start to drink like you

know there’s obvious choices like

paladin cleric

uh we didn’t have a cleric

of variety and inaudible it’ll work but

also if they really cared about like you

know

the team and stuff like that they want

to pick cool things for them

so all that kind of stuff works really

well together and we kind of got lucky

sometimes like there’s you picked the

druid kira

and it turns out there’s a very heavy

druid side plot to it yeah that was pure

chance yeah

pure chance but i think it all works

together then we believe i

believed i was one of their druids

though i tried to trick them

but they weren’t having any of it they

tried to do a

persuasion wrong like a sick or

something yeah yeah it was really bad

i too am a druid natural one

yeah yeah there’s lots of other things

as a dm it’s really handy the fact that

it’s sandbox like i mentioned before

you can’t go to water deep and get the

help from people in your backstory

it’s great which means you can pick you

can you can be a noble you can be like

an old

military guy but no that’s going to help

you and broke you unless the dm

specifically integrates into the plot

but yeah i think all that kind of stuff

really really helps so one of the big

advantages i i would imagine to dming

curses strat is that

because it’s been around so long and so

many people have played it there is a

good bit of help

online that you can you can access you

can

find you can incorporate their ideas and

stuff they’ve done to

to try it out yeah definitely like the

good thing about new players as well as

they don’t google

cursor strat and they don’t have ruin it

for themselves which is great

because it’s very easy to ruin like you

know you find these podcasts and ruin it

don’t do this unless you’re dming or

if you’re listening to this point i’m

sorry maybe

just look back there to to what brian

was saying

what were the mods and extra stuff that

you added in that you thought added to

the crystal stride campaign that were

aren’t in the main quest

so very specifically you know if you’re

going to dm’s guild

which is a place for dnd kind of

community created content i found elven

tower

which is really good that kind of gives

you a

an easier summary of cursor strat easier

to manage gives you more background

story and kind of puts it in a nice way

so if you’re just trying to dm trying to

figure out

what does valakki do and how does

blackie work eleven tower is great for

that

then there’s also reddit posts called

mandymod and dragnacarta

who uh definitely check those out i’m

sure if you just google reddit

cursestrad

you’ll find it they added in so much

cool new content

so they’ve added in lots of different

like buildings into valacki

and lots of different side quests they

also change some of the backgrounds and

it just gives you more options

and gives you more choices to make

during christmas tread so

when when like the characters went to

valacki there were so many cool new

things that they could go and visit like

the prison and like uh you know

an armory and you know if you go into

the normal shop now there’s a guy there

and he’s like a dwarf and he’s got like

a backstory

and all that kind of stuff means you

don’t have to think as much also some of

the cool things we had

in was jenny that wasn’t she wasn’t part

of cursed shroud

but they are our players obviously

players you can never tell

as a dm who they’re going to gravitate

towards jenny was a big one

she gave like magical items to people

like you know put stuff onto their axes

and did all sorts of cool stuff and she

wasn’t part of it

but i think the biggest one obviously is

lancelot

definitely is a dog that i put in a

death house

and the idea behind it is you know it

gives the players a choice to sacrifice

the dog

at the end of their house to escape

if they want to no one ever does it but

that dog went all the way through brovia

and ended up

helping defeat strat which is absolutely

incredible and she like the dog met its

owner and there was like a side story

and i met with jenny and became par

faye like there’s a whole backstory that

the characters really engaged with

and you can really can’t tell who

they’re gonna like in the npc’s but yeah

you put a dog in

they’re gonna like that dog and we bent

over backwards to protect that dog

the dog was supposed to be able to help

us in combat and then when i met jenny

it got super powered and

still no you just you stay there

lancelot we’ll protect you don’t you

worry

yeah we wouldn’t we didn’t trust anyone

near near lancelat

and we all learned like skills to try

and

you know we learned to train lancelot

for combat we still didn’t let them in

combat

we did like animal handling and we

learned to talk to animals and

and we it was he still had to do

everything from the back he was allowed

sniff things and do investigation and

that was it

on a saddle you put a saddle on there

put a saddle on him for our little

hobbit that was running along with us

their tiny little legs harvard is

copyrighted

they are halflings

i don’t know how to copyright but there

you go

so we’re probably leading in a little

bit to some of the favorite memories

that you have

and playing chris stratt if you want to

share some of those with me

i think i think some of my favorite

memories were just some of the more

ridiculous things that happened

like a brilliant one was when strad was

you know he showed up in valacki we were

all terrified you know we’d

survived his mind control attempts and

we’d convinced him that irena was

actually dead

through some amazing persuasion roles

and he was just like

okay well i’ll leave so and he just

disappeared into a wisp of smoke

and then we were all just standing on

okay and then he just reappeared and

goes oh god damn my horse

just hops on his horse and flies out

[Laughter]

and he was so cool disappearing the

first time

that was hilarious i actually that was

also one of my

favorite early experiences because we’re

trying to hide arena so you’re trying to

convince strata irena was dead

and she was in the background and like i

rolled a really good like oh i turned

into a giant spider

and because they have like extra bonuses

for

stealth checks and we climbed up the

side of the wall

of the church and looked in from the top

so that chad couldn’t see us

and we were completely hidden from and

uh and it was all the like weird stuff

we got to do that

in that one and like our wizard tried to

convince strad that irena was the head

by handing him my arena sword

going you know totally dead absolutely

yeah and he strat ended up taking that

sword and using it

yeah it’s cool yeah that kind of stuff

obviously

that strat turning into smoke and then

getting on the horse was an accident

it was very cool very funny yeah yeah i

think that that whole scene was

was very really cool and very memorable

just because i didn’t know what was

going to happen as well

so try the entire session you’re like

you know i’m just going to say strat

appears

and he’s going to be there and he’s

going to want the bones i don’t know

what’s going to happen and it’s great

the whole whole like two or two sessions

or three sessions

was just improv which was just awesome

yeah i liked as well

we came across a big cave full of blind

bears

and we were like one of them one of them

chased us outside and we were we were

trying so hard not to kill it we felt

really sorry for this bear

and so we were just trying to knock it

out so it would stop mauling at us

and we knocked the bear out we were like

okay thank god the bears

the bear is fine we didn’t kill him

he’ll wake up he’ll have a sore head

everything will be fine

and it turned out that we’d knocked him

out and left him face down in the river

and completely forgotten about him

and then we’re just so remorseful over

accidentally killing her after going to

so much effort to knock him out and not

kill him

we just left him face down in a river

well i think

what happened was he did get knocked out

into the river and then

pandora decided to you know make sure he

didn’t drown

yeah but then i just kept constantly

pushing the idea that you know the

bear did drown but i don’t think it did

i think it was okay

i know we were so sad though it became a

recurring joke of just like

remember that time you drowned a bear

but i don’t think you actually did i

think

we tried transformed into a bear to try

and calm the dra

the blind bear and it didn’t work it

only added to the confusion of the whole

thing

that bear was really confused you saw a

bear and a lot of people was like what

is going on

which was blind but yeah sensed

i loved it i loved our fight on yester

hill as well we were fighting the

archdruid

and like we were we were getting our we

were

we were being beaten i don’t know if i

can say ass

we’re getting our asses kicked i think i

said it earlier though

we were getting our necks kicked

we were losing badly and our wizard

decided to cast a

last-ditch hail mary spell and

rolled like a 2 or something like that

then that one was in that one and that

one

and we’re like oh my god this is this

he’s going to absolutely destroy us

that was our only chance to survive and

she’s like wait

wait i’ll use my inspiration dice and

roll the inspiration dice and rolled a

natural 20.

and just massive massive damage on the

archduke it was the only thing

the only reason we survived that fight

at all it’s a chromatic orb

and it did massive amounts of damage i’m

actually looking at a picture right now

of the uh sketch a bit of that exact

same scenario

but yeah that was that was crazy because

that dragon was

huge because yesterday it’s another

thing about christmas strat is that

there wasn’t anything at the top of

yester hill

in the in the book there’s you walk up

to the top there’s nothing along the way

you get to the top there’s like

three druids and two barbarians and it’s

really easy fight for

for the people so it’s like you know

gonna have this tower filled

with all sorts of people and then at the

very top there’s a dragon

i didn’t do a whole lot of foreshadowing

for it because i only came up with that

idea

mid-session so i couldn’t really

prepare the characters for a dragon

but it was really it’s really cool

really cool because yeah the israel was

this kind of cool

hill in the middle of nowhere and it’s

like this druid thing which is like

mandy mud i think it is or dragon the

character i can’t remember

put in like a ghost at the bottom of the

hill who would

kind of give you some history and

background and then also you gotta put

the

soul to rest and all that kind of stuff

and no nuts in it so i think

yeah adding in that background is really

cool and creates a really great memory

for people yeah i i also like dm how

fast we killed

the other archdruid and his rook it was

a rook was it

yeah yeah so we he was

flying around on this thing we were

getting close to strad

we were crossing a somewhere and it was

he flew down and we started attacking

him and everything and he just flew

too close and our fighter jumped on and

we had already done like damage and it

seemed like he was going to be really

hard to kill but we went straight for

the true actor

we didn’t touch the the bird and we’d

absolutely destroyed him

straight away it was it was like the

shortest fight

and it was supposed to be so long it was

going to be incredibly difficult and

then just a series of really fortunate

roles

yeah you blinded the rock oh yes he

landed down yeah

and then it crash crash-landed and then

had the druid got on top or the fire got

on top and then just took out the druid

yeah i planned that because the rock was

really powerful the droid was really

powerful

and i made sure that druid could fire in

a distance and to keep a range comeback

kind of thing and then you guys

because i make sure all my combats are

really deadly

just because it keeps in team with what

the book says the fight should be

and you do you guys took out the archers

so quickly

and we were worried we’d have to kill

the rook but we didn’t he flew away

he was fine because we we just once he

was at a the spell’s control he was just

like oh okay yeah see you later

yeah there’s so many cool things that

was on the on the road to amber temple

yeah i remember amber temple was kind of

cool that was one

as the dm i didn’t really understand why

it was there yeah so it’s kind of very

optional i was kind of i wasn’t really i

wasn’t pushing it at all no i didn’t put

any story against it

players still decided to go to amber

temple and it was one of the most

kind of most popular sessions we had

kind of traversing amber temple

it was very very combat heavy and very

difficult

and i don’t know how they survived they

got around so many cool things

we nearly got our asses kicked in the

first fight so we were

scared the whole way through the whole

temple so like as soon as that first

fight was over and we

like nearly died completely those guys

destroyed us at the start

and then we were like okay we are super

cautious from now on

everything is gonna be like stealth

sneak we’re gonna

you’re gonna give us a little bit of

like we won’t run into anything at all

we went in to see the leech or lich we

were just like

trying to be friends with him

we didn’t want annie sort of fighting we

did definitely didn’t want to hurt him

i liked that we walked into a room and

there’s just like two floating flaming

skulls there it’s like

this will be an easy fight this will be

over in no time just like

knock them out of the sky and go yeah

the flaming skulls do 60 damage

to all of you that’s fireball that’s the

hammer template shows your firewalls

the most powerful spell on the indies

it’s so so damaging

yeah so amber temple also has some

really cool choices to make

but it’s kind of rare for people to pick

the sarcophagus yeah

and to pick the powers of the dark gods

because they’re very kind of

evil and they’re very foreboding and

they have all these things saying like

this is a bad contract

you know with the devil you’re making

here and we had one player who was

role-playing arena the actual like one

of the main characters in cursed strides

and she took all of them you know i love

the paladin just standing there going

guys i sent some serious evil from this

we should just stay away we should go

nowhere near them and i really just

ducks under the paladin

i take the power she has a camera it was

a four or five i can’t remember

like she had like ice powers oh but by

the end of it she was

actually dead she was a zombie she had

zero life force going through her

but she could do all these kind of crazy

things but then she also brought back

argent boston yeah which was a really

distraction key to us

getting to raven loved yeah that was

kinda i liked that she also got like

charisma of 25 or something like that

ultimate charisma she could persuade

anyone of anything

yeah yeah every time is really cool it

changes the game

so much like before amber temple if you

guys had gone and continued on the plot

it would have been a totally different

game

than after amber temple it changes

everything and like you only get like

i think i gave you guys two levels going

through humber temple but yeah

it changes it changes the whole campaign

in number tempo we found the map of

ravenloft which was really like key we

actually were able to use it to

come up with a really good plan to get

in but yeah

we lost pretty much irena to the dark

forces in it but she seemed cool with it

and i think if she hadn’t got that lucky

role at the start she would have been

more hesitant but

she came away from the first thing with

no bad effect

so she just went all in i love that she

got the charisma of 25 like amber temple

changes the game so much

if you remember to use the abilities you

get like

we we put irina up the front of a

operation dragon wagon where we were

just

we were rolling an explosive barrel up

to the walls of

ravenloft to try and get through their

defenses and

we were gonna have irina with her

massive high charisma

just convince everyone that oh no we’re

supposed to be here we’re just making a

delivery nothing to worry about

and irina got up to the first checkpoint

and the guard was like oh what are you

doing here and instead of using any of

her christmas she said

ah i panicked and just charged

cherish the wagon straight down the the

driveway

just zero zero use of her

massive persuasion of it that’s one of

one of my

favorite memories true did the indie

campaign was when people

did things that was against their skills

you know they got like a negative one in

something or a negative two and

something and they’d try it anyway

even though there’s like someone else in

the party who’s like got a plus four

yeah

they were the one like convincing

someone else to do something or

deceiving or

trying to do a sleight of hand even

though they have no sleight of hand

those kind of scenes in the in the curse

of trans

are so memorable and so great i i’m if i

was to do

a big session like that again i’d

probably push that even further and i’d

make sure that people have more

negative attributes associated with them

so instead of everyone being like zero

or minus one

get a minus two in there just because

it’ll just it changes things and it

creates these memorable moments

and that there was one that and again

it’s just brilliant like that where we

were i think it was when we were in

vallecki with strad

like we myself and uh our fighter

pandora we were

we were sitting at the opposite end of

the table the paladin was doing

something

and they were discussing the whole thing

with strad and

our fighter leans over he goes oh here’s

a great plan what if we try to deceive

them and we’ll

we’ll make this coming from we came up

with this great plan i was like are you

going to do it i was like oh no no my

charisma is zero i was like oh

my charisma is minus one

and the two of us had this brilliant

cunning plan and we were separated from

the rest of the party so we couldn’t go

and tell them to do it

so the two of us here with negative

charisma going up and trying to convince

people to do everything our way

as a dm you know what was what were your

kind of favorite moments from

oh well as a dm i loved the fact that

new players doing this and i could put

in the tropes of d d

into it so there’s lots of different

kind of things that are

constant whenever you do dnd campaigns

so one of them is the interrogation

scene

which is you know it’s where you grab a

guard or whatever and you got to

interrogate them for information about

the king or whatever

and this in this you had one which is

the vistani going around

and you guys managed to get like six of

them i think it was or three three three

and and then you ended up doing an

interrogation scene and what we did was

we had

one in each room and we had two people

in each stanley

and it gave everyone their own kind of

experience of it and i

actually quite like that because it

split the parody up so they all got

their own thing out of it

and the mixture of them was fantastic

there was like you know

you brian where with the hardcore don’t

hurt anybody first

and you were a hardcore just kidding

i’ll threaten them until they give you

information

yeah so you had that that was the first

one that happened and there was lots of

trending and you got let’s

i made sure to have enough information

for everybody when they’re doing the

interrogation but yeah

those kind of trope scenes are so good

and they’re so memorable because you’re

trying to

convince them and there’s lots of

dialogue between you know the paladin

and then of course there was a

the last one was the magic pupil magic

people tried interrogating the person

and it wasn’t going so well and they

choose magic

the charm the person and they’re like oh

this is taking too long

you’re now my friend so these were some

pretty memorable amazing things that

happened to us throughout the campaign

but what if anything would you have

liked to see included in chris’s strat

that wasn’t there yeah i think as from

at least from a dm point of view

there’s a bit of a problem when it comes

to how the

dnd campaigns are structured it’s not a

huge issue because you can find

stuff online but the problem is npcs

are not really given their own rights so

you get an npc block in the back and it

shows our stats

and i might give a bit of a background

on them but the problem is they’re

kind of they’re a lot more integral into

social

games like we played in a hack and slash

game

you probably don’t need it but it’d be

nice to see like where the npcs are

in certain locations and during events

sample dialogue

they might say can i do it in a more

like more like a script in a movie kind

of way

where at the start of every place like

valaki you get like a little kind of

overview of the people there here’s a

couple of sample things they’re saying

and what they’re trying to do so if

there’s like an event that’s happening

and you’re like lady watcher

she’s there trying to get rid of the

baron and become the top dog

and she’s also getting orders from strad

while she’s there

that kind of stuff just bullet points to

start give a few things

means that if some improv does happen

you’ve got somewhere to go because

if it’s all written down and it’s deep

in some paragraphs on a specific page

that you’re not sure where it is

it’s hard to remember yeah you just need

that and the problem is npcs

they don’t have to be a certain location

they can move around and if you put that

in the overview on the start or made

npcs a bit easier

you could put like isaac stressing who

which are

apparently quite liked using a few

different places you can just

drag and drop them everywhere and just

make sure he’s part of the thing yeah

yeah i guess one of the things i found

out after cursed strat

was that owen had put in a lot of more

interesting random encounters

than were in the christie chrysastrad

scenario book

so i guess we really didn’t get driven

early on by any of the kind of just you

know

you settle down a camp for a night and

you’re attacked by some wolves

when there wasn’t any reason to wish

that really didn’t like sit that well

with the party

we’re just like oh okay so we’re just

gonna go through the fight

and like some of the party really

enjoyed the fighting but like

a lot of us were just like oh like what

is the point

yeah nice yeah and then we found out

that

early on in the campaign um owner added

in some extra layers to this so

things like the mark of uh val on on

foreheads

that sort of stuff really made a

difference so then we were like oh

there’s a nest of creatures and there’s

a skull there was a whole sculpting

and that really really added to us

because it just felt like you were

getting clues

to everything that was going on in

brovia slowly so

yeah there were big plot points you were

getting in like amber temple or whatever

but you were also getting these little

tidbits being fed to you

whenever like random things and it just

kind of gave you a bit more drive to not

oh there’s another fight again yeah yeah

i agree with that it was tricky to make

them because there’s nothing out there

for

random encounters that seemingly work

well with the

kind of plotline and so not only did i

have to create the ones for the plotline

which was kind of like

tricky to do like we were putting

griffins and wolves and stuff but at

that point

it wasn’t great so i ended up having to

create people like werewolves

who were actual people and then they’d

be following along with you guys

and everyone knew he was werewolf and

then night came and he turned into a

werewolf and you’re all shocked

we tried to chain them up yeah but i

love that i love that because you guys

you’re not gonna you

you have a very big hunch to use the

werewolf but you’re not gonna act on it

because there’s no proof

which is a really strange thing because

you can do whatever you want in d

and we didn’t we were really strict in

our we went in

assuming everyone was a good guy until

we had absolute proof i think that’s why

strat occasionally lulled us into

thinking he was a good guy

he was like oh no it’s not me this is

these are other people who are really

really bad and we’re like

oh there’s other people they’re like no

hold

an evil person wouldn’t invite you over

for dinner an evil person wouldn’t go to

dinner

yeah you guys didn’t go

yeah yeah and there’s some other cool

events that are kind of added in which

are more related to the players we had a

goblin

who’s wearing a hat of disguise oh yeah

and yeah it was kind of cool

and like you know we had this kind of

old man he can tell the story

because there’s actual kind of

background stories about like

mordechainen that an old man would know

about and instead of just giving an old

man on the right side i wrote it i

decided to put a goblin with a hat on

he would tell the story and then as you

guys are eating soup

i think you all rolled for perception

but it was only goblin slayer that found

out that he started to smell the smell

of goblin

and he didn’t he didn’t seem like he was

coming from the soup and after anyway

after some chaos and stuff turned out he

was a goblin

that kind of random encounters those are

very kind of

engaging by players because not only do

you get to ham fist in some plotline

which i

really wanted to do to tell them about

the story of mordekais but you also gave

them something intriguing that they want

keep engaged in they don’t they didn’t

even i don’t think any of them

remembered the plot line of

mordekaiser or the whole thing but they

remember the goblin story a lot more

and so you know it helps them remember

it helps push the plotline a little bit

forward yeah yeah i think for me

kresk was a little dull i mean it’s

supposed to be this

great sanctuary and that’s where you’re

trying to get irena to to

keep her safe from strat and it’s the

one place you can’t get her you’d expect

there to be

something to it like you know it’s got

this mystical force or

you know it’s got this big army or

something but you kind of land and

there’s just

you know a few boring people nothing

really exciting happening and

some guys sawing body parts together and

you know nothing too exciting

but even even the like body part sewing

bit there wasn’t

much to it no like we couldn’t really

do anything or effect any change yeah

during the trip to the abbey like we met

them and we were like

questioning it and stuff but it was just

like whatever

this is normal i’m helping people

helping

yeah you you what you didn’t you don’t

really feel like anything

particularly interesting happened there

i mean what did we buy some griffin eggs

off him

we used his boiler to warm our griffin

eggs that was it

there’s a dwarf who uh who’s part of the

armory who i added in not

nothing but a book and he kind of took

care of the griffins

which is totally a separate side quest

well it wasn’t quite there was quite a

lot going on and it was still very well

tied out but it probably wasn’t the most

interesting of all places that we’ve

been i think we got to interact a lot

S1E16 | Curse of Strahd | RPG Review

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