Our ShadowDark-based Curse of Strahd (COS) campaign ("Holiday in Barovia") has been motoring along at a fine pace. We're very consistent, playing most weeks, although the sessions are short. The party is well into the mid-game, with most characters now 4th level. (That shows how far behind I am on written updates!) They call themselves 'The Drips', let's check in on what's happened.
Cast of Characters
Miral - elf fighter in plate mail with great axe.
Glaud - Glaud is a human priest of Ord, neutral god of secrets.
Claren - elf ranger. Quiet but effective bowman.
Tzip - human wizard - the party's hulking (17 strength) wizard.
Ergamal - human bard - lost his lute but recently gained a fiddle.
Cassius - human fighter - new player, a basic "sword & board" front-liner.
Critical Infrastructure
There are a lot of moving parts to this campaign. There are two critical pieces of infrastructure we've put in place to keep things organized; I use them in every campaign but here in COS they put in good work. First is player facing - their Campaign Google Sheet. They'll use a multi-tabbed Google sheet to track marching orders, camp procedures, party treasure (and who is carrying), session notes, a quest log, and similar information. For a dense sandbox like COS, where there are side quests to the side quests, keeping everything on a quest log and making choices is a critical skill. I used Obsidian Portal (a campaign wiki site) a long time ago but ultimately decided Google Sheets is free, has zero learning curve, and works fine. I still keep DM-facing notes in a paper notebook - those $.99 marbled composition notebooks - to track hit points, luck, conditions, monster HP, and similar ref stuff.
The other piece of critical infrastructure is a calendar. I build a simple campaign calendar in Excel, and keep a diary of player accomplishments. But the real power is planning out future events - weather, phases of the moon, and time-bound events, like "the festival will happen in village X in 3 days", or in 5 days Count Strahd will send a horde of zombies to attack the player's location. If there are many quest ideas, representing opportunity costs (if the players choose to do X, situation Y will deteriorate or someone else will do it) managing a calendar is invaluable. There are many of these types of opportunities in and around Vallaki, for instance. I find it really helpful, using the calendar, when there are various factions and villains, to put their upcoming plans on the calendar so the campaign feels like things are happening elsewhere in the world and villainous plans continue to march forward while the players are out doing other things.
Ok - those are just two important tools to manage the mid-game, applicable to any sandbox campaign.
The Winery
One major campaign arc so far has involved the Wizard of Wines Winery, a location in central Barovia. The whole site is a big easter egg to the Hickmans, with call-backs to B3 Rahasia. Prior to visiting the winery, though, the players helped a church in Vallaki, destroyed a vampire nest, saved a Vistani girl from a psychopath, and finally had their Fortunes of Ravenloft told.
The winery caper itself involved liberating the location from a bunch of evil druids, who mopped the floor with the players and dragged their cleric, Glaude, off as a sacrifice to an evil tree (the Gulthias Tree). Unfortunately, Glaude was carrying one of the legendary Ravenloft items, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, so when he was dragged off to Yester Hill and bound to the Gulthias Tree to feed the roots and spawn more "blights", little evil plant monsters. When they stripped his armor and gear, the dark druids discovered the Holy Symbol and sent an envoy to the witch Baba Lysaga, to discuss a trade. (As my kids would say, the players "took an L" over that one).
The rest of the group recovered and healed, scouted Yester Hill, and planned a bold rescue of Glaude. Not only was Glaude freed, and the evil druids defeated, but Glaude was chosen by the spirit of an ancient warlord to excavate, claim, and wield a relic called The Blood Spear of Kavan. Glaude had an interesting couple of days there.
They don't believe they're powerful enough to wrest the Holy Symbol back from the witch, so that mission went onto the quest log for a future day...
Aroo - Werewolves of Krezk
Another fun story arc kicked off during a night of carousing back in Vallaki. I made a random table of different ways Strahd would attack or undermine the characters, and one of the methods involved a werewolf infecting a player character with lycanthropy. The attack happened to coincide with a carousing night, so whoever rolled the worst carousing result would find themselves jumped by an unfortunate drinking buddy. (Note that carousing is an important XP opportunity for lower level ShadowDark characters).
There was lots of hijinks and comical situations as we worked through each player character's circumstance, leading up to Glaude and his drinking buddy wandering into an alley to relieve themselves, only for Glaude to be sucker punched by a bottle to the head and then savaged by "Dragomir" who changed into a wolf-man before bounding off into the night.
There was a moment where all the former 5E characters wanted Glaude to host a werewolf party (like a chicken pox party, where everyone can get infected - "I want to be a werewolf, too") until I reminded them there would be none of that nonsense; in an old school game you have 2-24 days before the lycanthropy is permanent and the character becomes an NPC monster - and I've already rolled, the results are secret, and Glaude's infection could be permanent in 2 days. Party plans were quickly canceled and real panic set in - was there even a cleric in Barovia high enough level to cure lycanthropy?
Their hopes seemed to coalesce around a hasty trip to Krezk, the most remote village, where a nigh immortal (and mildly deranged) Abbot presided over a monastery/prison populated with half-human insane hybrids (mongrelfolk). The Abbot cured Glaude (sigh) in return for promises of services that will complicate the player's lives further.
The comical part was that when the players finally left Krezk, "Dragomir" and a gang of his werewolf brethren were waiting on the road for them, ready to initiate Glaude into the gang; they expected his infection to be well along. "How are you feeling, Glaude? Taking your steaks very rare I imagine, yes? We're here to take you home with us." The players ended up fighting the werewolves; Glaude is infected again, along with several other player characters. It was the kind of fiasco of which D&D games are truly made.
The Pressure Builds
We're at a point where pressure is building on the player characters. They received an urgent invitation from Count Strahd to go to the castle for dinner. They're on a quest to find a bridal gown for the Abbot's bizarre flesh golem "Bride-of-Strahd" - this is how Glaude got cured of lycanthropy the first time. There's the knowledge they've lost a critical artifact, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. Finally, most of them may be infected with lycanthropy and don't know how long until the infection becomes permanent. Muhahahah.
I've been spending most of the time on my YouTube channel, please check it out if you haven't seen it - thanks! However, I'm going to get back to posting campaign updates and the occasional post here in Blogger.
Next up will be something for the B5 Horror on the Hill gang.
