Curse of Strahd: Opinions?

[Resonant Curse]

Got my taroka deck this afternoon

Cool object, cool drawings, but ...it is small! The images on the cards are barely bigger than CoS's appendix.

Joël

They did say they would release a "premium" full sized set at some point... guess we know why.

[Hell_Born]

The Watcher's have Leo's bones in one of the rooms inside Vallaki, so that he could not be ressed as a punishment for betraying Strahd. (I'd really like to make Leo an ally against Strahd in this campaign just need to figure out how to convey the information, that it might be a good idea to resurrect him....) Though my players just got to Vallaki and have not quiet gotten to the politics.... They were amused by Blinsky's shop however....

That actually reminds me... what do people think of Blinsky? I mean, he's not a bad guy (Chaotic Good alignment, canonically), but given his somewhat crazy belief that macabre/scary toys are "more fun", wouldn't he probably have gotten burned at the stake in the campaign setting version of Barovia?

[Guardian of Twilight]

Personally I read this adventure with a very specific head cannon. The Time of Unparalleled Darkness occurred on schedule and almost everyone in Ravenloft managed to make it out in some form (actual escape or death being the most common). It was such a complete collapse that the Dark Powers almost ceased to exist, but as it turns out their favorite plaything, Strahd, rather than try to escape made one more grand attempt to claim Tatanya before everything went to hell. He failed of course, and the DPs were able to hold onto Barovia. In the chaos reality got a soft reboot and bits and pieces of the old reality survive, bleeding through into "new" Barovia. some souls tied tightly to the demi-plane were drawn back in and the Dark Powers decided to make escape even harder by populating the world with mostly empty shells and never, ever, letting go of the souls of the departed who actually had them (hey you never know when you'll need to reincarnate someone). In essence they created a stronger, but smaller prison. They may attempt to expand, but for the time being they are so weak from TToUD that they don't dare try.

I really like this. I was kind of working on something similar, but this is wonderful!

[Joël of the FoS]

The Watcher's have Leo's bones in one of the rooms inside Vallaki, so that he could not be ressed as a punishment for betraying Strahd. (I'd really like to make Leo an ally against Strahd in this campaign just need to figure out how to convey the information, that it might be a good idea to resurrect him....) Though my players just got to Vallaki and have not quiet gotten to the politics.... They were amused by Blinsky's shop however....

That actually reminds me... what do people think of Blinsky? I mean, he's not a bad guy (Chaotic Good alignment, canonically), but given his somewhat crazy belief that macabre/scary toys are "more fun", wouldn't he probably have gotten burned at the stake in the campaign setting version of Barovia?

It's not the only strange thing in this... There are a few things that feel out of place. As I wrote on our private FoS board, CoS really reminds me sometimes of 1st edition adventures as far as realism is concerned.

But that said, I like this NPC and will probably put him elsewhere, like in Borca. I think ermordenungs would fancy these.

Joël

[Hell_Born]

Something else I was curious about; what do folks think of Curse of Strahd's reinvention of the Vistani?

I mean, whilst they still have Evil Eye and Curse racial powers, they've lost a lot of their enigma and magical mojo. They don't even have the Static Burn phenomena, where they are metaphysically forced to exist as nomads or become just ordinary people (which is what I meant to touch on in my review on page 1, but forgot).

Personally, I rather like the new take on them. Even though Van Richten's Guide gave them some very interesting cultural explanations and details, which I can still use the best parts of, I never really liked the "classic" Vistani, which were a combination of unintentional racism (if perhaps not quite so bad as the Aperusa of Spelljammer) and hamfisted "game's master's tools!", like an entire culture of Elminsters, that I just found... let's be polite and say "awkward".

These new Vistani still have a mystical edge to them, and still have their mysteries, but aren't so above it all. I could see actually playing a Vistani as possible now, rather than having to be a half-Vistani with all of the forced background elements (you were shunned and hated by both sides of your parentage, probably the result of rape or manipulative seduction, etc) that implies. Even the question of why they continue to live the nomadic life in the Demiplane of Dread becomes an intriguing mystery, now they no longer have the "because they lose all of their magical powers if they don't" answer, which was rather trite.

Of course, in my "5eification" of Ravenloft, I still let them escape domains and have at least some control over the Mists - but their control isn't as good as they allow outsiders to think, and the origins have to do with Barovia's status as the literal heart of the demiplane; just as the CoS Vistani can enter and leave the Mists as a reflection of their relationship to Strahd (and as part of Strahd's curse), so to are "my" Vistani ignored by the shackles placed on other domains.

[alhoon]

I would agree with you. Vistani are more usable now. The weird things and mystical stuff? Throw them on the Raunies and Dukkar. And perhaps Darklings. That way we have both Mystical vistani and vistani that can, actually, exist. If Vistani were so untouchable, then every Talon grabbing one to send to Maloccio would turn to water.

[Pauper]

I picked up Curse of Strahd, though I haven't read through it with any great detail, given that I'm more focused on running the Season 4 Adventurers League modules set in Barovia.

(For the benefit of Guardian of Twilight -- yes, previous seasons of AL are all still legal as of this writing. My own FLGS is still going through Season 2, as an example. Season 4 brings some big changes, though, so be sure you're using the current AL Player's and DM's Guides rather than a Player's Guide from a prior season.)

This has been a cool thread to eavesdrop on, and I'd like to suggest something for those who want to make this part of a full-fledged 5e Ravenloft setting -- say, a Dread Possibility (if I may be allowed the hubris)?

Strahd's curse is that he will continually seek after Tatyana, find her, and lose her again. What if the domain mirrors that? Things in Barovia change, adapt to new information, and then strangely wend their way back to an older time. Madame Eva is killed, then comes back to do the Tarokka reading for the next generation of doomed heroes planning to assault Castle Ravenloft. Time passes, but nothing really changes, because the domain is fixed on a specific event and the aftermath of that event that everything ultimately bends back to that event, no matter how many times the domain has to re-create it. (I can see that this makes Castle Ravenloft oddly similar to Castle Tristanoira, but that's not automatically a drawback in my view.)

(I could go on, such as how the dissolution of the Core suggested by 5e Barovia being presented as basically a stand-alone demi-plane answers some questions left over from the 3E Gazeteers, such as how Borca could survive a military invasion from the allied domains of Falkovnia and Invidia, but I'll save those for a more appropriate thread. The only point being that you wouldn't have to necessarily throw out things from Curse of Strahd or declare them non-canon to get a workable 5e Ravenloft setting.)

--
Pauper

[IrvyneWolfe]

I would agree with you. Vistani are more usable now. The weird things and mystical stuff? Throw them on the Raunies and Dukkar. And perhaps Darklings. That way we have both Mystical vistani and vistani that can, actually, exist. If Vistani were so untouchable, then every Talon grabbing one to send to Maloccio would turn to water.

Yeah one road block I've run into running ravenloft games lately is people are actually pretty sensitive to the things that have happened to real world Roma and are somewhat put off on the classic vistani which more or less embraced the stereotype 110%. A more humanized Vistani (like in CoS) actually sidesteps that problem to a large degree.

[Dreamakuma]

Just got my cards. They feel like ordinary playing cards with size and thickness. Which could be a bad thing for some but I'm happy to finally have my own set of tarokka cards. The art is really good, and the price is nice.

If there's a premium set, I'll gladly pick it up.

[De Montour]

I still haven't managed to get a copy of CoS. No idea what is going on at my FLGS .

Anyhow, I'm hoping to add a few extra bits into it. Not because I believe that it needs extra bits, it sounds like it's chock full of hooks. Just because I like to tinker. I'm already set on adding Horror's Harvest from Dungeon #38. It's a quite easy fit.

However, in the 3.5ed Heroes of Horror, there is a little adventure involving a Gray Jester, a Green Hag and a bunch of kidnapped children. From what I've read about CoS, it appears that the horror/dark faerie tale tropes explored in it might already be covered by Jenny Greenteeth and Old Bonegrinder. Is anyone familiar with both pieces? Is there too much of an overlap and would the introduction of this bring anything new, or just more of the same?

Grimley Feendish, the Gray Jester, is planned for a Haunted One background for one of my PCs.

[alhoon]

Just got my cards. They feel like ordinary playing cards with size and thickness. Which could be a bad thing for some but I'm happy to finally have my own set of tarokka cards. The art is really good, and the price is nice.

If there's a premium set, I'll gladly pick it up.

Could you post a photo of a couple of cards, compared to normal playing cards for us to compare?

[Joël of the FoS]

The new ones are the same size as the 2e tarokka.

Here's the new one, 2nd edition, and 3rd edition size.

[alhoon]

Interesting. I... don't have a deck of cards to measure though. But 9cm sounds small for a playing card.

[Dreamakuma]

I surprisingly don't have any playing cards at my home. I hope maybe a magic card can help a bit.

[alhoon]

Helps... Although magic cards are kinda small, they are serviceable.