Відео

Im planning on running strahd as my first campaign as dm in a month or so. One of my players asked if they can play a vistani. I was like "c'mon, im not an idiot. I see what youre trying to do." Should i circle back and maybe hear them out?

My players are in the middle of wave echo cave and will soon adventure to Thundertree, thank you for this advice, but their plan is to I presume kill it, if Venomfang gets low enough should I divert them to the young white dragon living on icespire peak? or should I save that for another adventure?

I like skill challenges, and this is pretty on point with how I run them. It's of the few mechanics my group liked from 4e, so we kept them as we moved back to 3.5 and into 5th. Each of us who DMs runs then differently, but we kept the core idea. One of the best decisions my group ever made. It helps us to avoid getting caught in combat ruts, besides being really easy to improvise. Another tip: let your spellcasters cook on these. If they have a spell that is an action or less, could be useful, and they are willing to blow a slot, let them do it for a success.

Death House was good but Durst Manor is incredible!

Someone has probably commented this already, but I'll say it just in case. One problem with the druids wanting the wereraven power to transform is that they could just check in with the nearby werewolves for that power to transform. I imagine the werewolves would not be particularly picky about it. But if the druids wanted flight, I suppose it could still be a thing. Also wouldnt it be a bit conflicting if they wanted to be wereravens when Baba Lysaga wants to kill all ravens? Otherwise, these are interesting ideas It gives a lot to think about. Thank you.

I could have used a bit more intro at the start to maybe explain why we need/want this and what it has to do with TTRPGs?

I love the idea! I am starting my CoS campaign soon. We plan to play with the Stress system. I plan to make Dream Pastry lower the stress level to zero. This way, players can treat it like a free jail card for a short time. Until addiction and the truth about baked goods drive them crazy.

I am going to run this, with one amendment, i will substitute the vampire spawn with Strahd. Yes, multiple Strahd, like multiverse of madness, each representing a version of Strahd that was killed by previous adventurers. This implies there were several iterations of adventurers who defeated him and subsequently fell to Vampyr or simply left Barovia, allowing the curse to continue. I will use Strahd's stats, but not his legendary actions. My party is a group of 8 level 10 characters with all three artifacts, I'm sure they will be fine >:)

You mention a +14 Stealth check - but I don't see where Strahd's stat block is that you use. There are so many varieties when I search the nets.

Another speech disorder is using a w sound instead of an r sound, or s instead of sh. Have both that I went to speech therapy for. Also, if you do a character with those quirks and they've been working on fixing it, it's not unusual to hear them mix up the sounds. For example, pronounce white as right or sea as "she". When talking without thinking, it's very easy for our brains to go "no s only sh" or something similar

What a _brilliant_ fucking idea to have the dinner scene while your play group actually eats dinner.

During my dinner, strahd will give each player a present matching their playstyle. For example a ring giving an additional wildshape, or plate armor for the fighter. During the finale, those Items will work against the party. The armor turns animated or damages the player via spikes, the wild shape goes out of controll etc... think this will be very fun :D

I hate the notion that talking to yourself is crazy. Especially since talking to yourself actually is healthy and largely beneficial. Edit: Not talking to yourself in a multi-personality disorder kind of way but more like an, “ahh i better run before the store closes.” Type of way.

I disagree with the persuasion rule because the “auto success” is based on the player’s persuasiveness and not the character’s. I think a better approach would be to just use the player’s argument to flavor the success or failure of the persuasion

Advantage gives an average of +3 to the roll. 1d20 averages 10.5 where Advantage averages 13.825

Rudolph Van Richten is also heavily inspired by Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula. There's a fantastic audiobook of Dracula where the narrator gives him a musical Dutch accent to fit the character. I try to incorporate that: light and whimsical when he's in disguise as Rictavio, dark and withdrawn when he's Van Richten.

You are not correct: you don't raise or lower your pitch by raising or lowering your larynx, but by closing and stretching your vocal chords or the opposite. Raising or lowering your larynx can help you both with your high or low pitch in different ways, but not necessarily its "height".

This is divine. I LOVE this take!! Much more fun 💜

Don't put the dragon skull in the swamp. It's a poor idea. The heist for the Argynvost skull from Ravenloft is a brilliant mission that both my parties loved. So what if there is a giant skull in the swamp? Not one player even asked, they were too busy trying to stay alive.

So, I need advice. is Strahd still showing up and assisting the druids when the player arrive at yester hill or would that be too challenging for the players

When my party first came to Vallaky i had just introduced Vasili Von Holtz, so while they did their downtime, Strahd just went on dates with Ireena behind the party's back

For goblin voices, I try and replicate that bit from the Korn song where he’s basically skatting like in jazz, but with a metal ‘push’ to it from the arytenoids

The module itself has the invitation but ZERO comments about what the dinner is like or why players would go or what happens if they don't go. It feels like the players will simply say "um, no" and not go until they are ready to kill Strahd. It is about the worst "let's get on some tracks" after letting the players go sandbox on every single other part of the campaign.

I'm using the march of the dead as a Chekov's gun for a siege of Ravenloft at the end of the campaign. I'm running the fanes and binding of Vampyr (Making my Eva the forest fey) as options towards a good ending where the party actually kills Strahd and frees Barovia permanently. If they do all that, Strahd being the general he is, will realize he's vulnerable now and shore up his defenses/rally his forces. The party will need to find a way to orchestrate a siege of Ravenloft with all their accumulated allies over the campaign to even get into the castle proper, and Mordy's contribution (So his power doesn't overshadow the PC's, but he still get's to flex who he is) will be using Wish and exhausting himself in the process to give the march physical form and their will back, so they can become an army of the dead for the siege, RotK style.

Oh hell naw they turned Der Freischütz from Lobotomy Corporation into a patron. In all seriousness I'm super excited for the campaign setting to be fully released. I've been a fan of your stuff for a while and a patron for around a year now, and this setting sounds like one I've been legitimately wanting to do for my next campaign for a while now. The one I'm making took place primarily in the Underdark, and I might link the two settings in my campaign once Lothburgh comes out.

Well, this is certainly an unexpected surprise! :-D I had no idea you were working on such a thing. Have you made subclasses before in the past that I missed? Good luck with this endeavor, sir. How long have you been working on these with your group; is your group using a mix of WotC subclasses with these or exclusively using these setting-subclasses now?

Hot damm these are nice sound fun as heck.

Hi brasilian love u work tks.

Hey hey ✌️

They started their adventure where our last campaign ended. There they met a woman. It was predictable that a friend of mine would try to take her to his room. There it turned out that she was a vampire. When they were following her, they got caught in the fog and fainted. After they woke up again, they were in Barovia.

Death House takes players fomr LEeel 1 to dead... lol

Blew up a PC in Vallaki town square that was exiting the campaign. Turned into combat with 3 vampire spawns. At the end each turn I rolled a 20. Had the party guess high or low on the roll. If they got it wrong something bad happened. They got it wrong on the second turn. So so Strahd showed up on his horse. Party was like we’re just going to ignore him and deal with the vampire spawn. They all rolled bad on a wisdom saving throwing. Strahd cast fireball and downed two PCs. One of the newer PCs to the campaign decided to try and reason with Strahd and was like “Can we grab dinner”. Strahd agreed and they walked through Vallaki and invited Fiona to dinner lol. We ended the session as they were all standing outside the dining hall. They have no idea who all is at dinner. Probably going to have Ismark be there and kill him to start dinner and then proceed with dinner. As soon as a servant messes up, Strahd is snapping a neck and still going on like nothing happened. Dinner should be fun

My player bullied me into running this adventure. Even if it is the best adventure written over all 5 editions (6 if you include HackMaster), I will always hate it.

Impact Winter has been a fun listen on Audible.

Oh, this is OLD Dementlieu, back when the writers were pussies. I see.

Thank you so much for this!! One thing I would love to mention is to please stay critical while watching Split. While being fantastic at showing voice acting tips, it's a really horrible movie that has caused a lot of discrimination and pain for the DID community. I would alternatively highly recommend the Jumanji series. On both an audio and visual level, not to give spoilers, but outside of the whole "playing a movie character who's inside a video game character" there are scenes in the sequel in which movie characters A & B are in video game characters A & B and then they swap, and the only way to tell who is inside which video game character is based on their mannerisms and quirks of speech, involving both gender and personality differences. it's really fascinating!!!!

Do you guys think Strahd sounds more like Béla Lugosi or Christopher Lee?

Some of fthe things my group did during downtime in Barovia included a beach episode/session at Lake Zarovich, exploring caves and oasises under the mountains, attended festivals in Vallaki etc. One of our favorite places to camp or relax was a "spirit oasis" of sorts we made up/found under Mount Ghakis. One of the PC's, Alexander, knew where we could hide from Strahd after an intense encounter and led us to one of these springs. We stayed there for a few days or weeks until we could figure out a plan. The cavern spring/spirit oasis became one of the safest places in Barovia for my party and inspired a lot of roleplay situations.

For the aspect of manipulation i had a near tpk when i was dming and only the warrior survive, stradh come and offert him some magical scroll of résurrection for each party member -1 so he had to decide which character would die. just after the character made his chose and resurect the party stradh take another scroll and tell the one who was abandoned what just happened and it was a really cool roleplay moment.

I heard this one voice actor give Strahd a voice that was somewhere between Death the Wolf and Valentino Hazbin Hotel and I was just 😭💀⚰️ CRYING THAT IS TOO ACCURATE HELP

My favorite tidbit was -and always shall be- the Ravenloft Readings that were done at GenCon in the early 90s. The creators of the campaign setting would write, act, and perform a play with characters. I distinctly remember someone (a TSR game writer) playing as Strahd, casting a polymorph other spell on one of his minions, turning the minion into a toad, a summarily stomping on the toad with his boots! It was awesome. They had sound effects and music and great laughs! Those were the days!!! They did the readings for many years though I do not know what was the last year they did them.

I actually am considering putting a false hydra into Berez. Make it an ungodly terrifying place, that made its home in the bowels of the once great city. Everyone believes Berez was destroyed in a great flood... but the actual story was it devouring folk 1 by 1. It has since moved beneath the mansion and made its nest there, and only 20 survivors remain. The only reasons Baba has survived is because shes a powerful creature in its own right, one the FH knows not to go after. Also, because Baba has grown near deaf in her old age, so she easily evades the FH. Idk if anyone else has had this idea, but would love to see your take on it!

I Jeremy Crawford spun out an entire campaign with his party using the megaliths - do you know anything about that?

ill be running Curse of stradh very soon and these ideas are golden thank you

During my group’s game we had several nods to lore and characters beyond what was in the 5th edition book. Jander Sunstar made a small appearance and had descendants mainly Evelyn Sunstar, an elf vampire who joined the party. Additionally Strahd had a second brother who was originally named Sturm Von Zarovich. We changed this lore and name to Alexander and made him younger than Sergei instead of older. Furthermore, Alexander had a much larger role than Sergei which involved him joining the party, falling in love with the heir to Neverwinter and much more. These changes added a level of intrugue that isn't explored in most Ravenloft campaigns. Other changes included adding more domains to our game and the ability to travel across the planes.

How do you play I6 in an evening? You will have to cut half the content if not more.

I am combining LMoP with DoIP and Venomfang is going to try to recruit the players to drive Cryovane from "his" domain

I've been working on text to reintegrate Zeidenburg, Teufeldorf, Immol, and Orasnou (and maybe Hoessla and Korfburg if I have time) into 5e. When I'm done, it will allow DMs to choose which towns (or all of them!) to integrate into their games!

No more decks - restock soon?

The Smokestack reminds me of a story I heard of a CoS campaign. They tried to Santa Claus their way into Ravenloft after Skydiving from the back of their druid in giant owl form, going down the chimney after taking on a few gargoyles. The smoke mephits were a hilarious surprise