Curse of Strahd Campaign (ShadowDark) - Mid-Campaign Update

 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. 

LichHouse on YouTube

Next up will be something for the B5 Horror on the Hill gang.

Resource Files - Running Curse of Strahd for ShadowDark

Here are some overdue files that support running Curse of Strahd... for ShadowDark.

Monster conversions

Plot hooks

XP Tables

You'll still need your own copy of the WOTC hardcover book.  The monster conversions are straightforward; I took a lazy approach on the spell-casting monsters by pointing to an existing spell-casting monster so I could crank out all the conversions fairly quickly.  I may customize them and update the files as we get closer to encountering them in the actual campaign. (I wanted to at least have a 1.0 version for each converted monster up front).

The plot hooks represent those critical nuggets of information pointing to adventure sites in the valley of Barovia; it's basically a printable page of the ideas in this post (Enabling Curse of Strahd as a Sandbox).

I found the last document interesting to develop, the one on XP.  The original I6 Ravenloft is for characters levels 5-7, as the campaign provides them super-weapons like the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind and the Sunsword so mid-level characters can take on a powerful vampire-wizard.  These items are carried over to the Curse of Strahd campaign, so ShadowDark characters of a similar level to AD&D  (maybe even a nudge below that) should be fine for completing the campaign in the same level range.

I added up cumulative experience across the Curse of Strahd adventure sites, as characters will need to clear 210 XP in ShadowDark terms to get to level 6, to confirm there's enough XP from treasure out there in the valley, plus some added XP for Boons and Carousing.  Key things I learned - 1) as there's ~275 XP out there in the sandbox, characters should be able to get to levels 5 and 6 without being "completionist"; 2) a few classic adventure sites suffered from 5E's aversion to treasure and will need to have some treasure parcels added... examples would be Argynvostholt, Old Bonegrinder, and Tsolenka Pass.

My Horror on the Hill campaign is languishing a bit in "adult scheduling purgatory" - we've had to miss a bunch of game nights for various reasons.  The Strahd game keeps trucking along and I'll post another update on that one shortly.

ShadowDark of Strahd - Game 2

If you're new to this series about running Curse of Strahd as a sandbox for ShadowDark, there have been a few other posts (here).  The previous post relayed the "gauntlet" I ran for the party, which brought a set of zero-level peasants from the capital city of Specularum, in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, through a haunted house, The Death House; when they left Death House they discovered they had been displaced to the lost valley of Barovia and were now trapped, elsewhere.

The characters had an immediate interaction with Count Strahd, who was supernaturally aware of the destruction of Death House (and more importantly, it's an opportunity to immediately get the antagonist in the face of the players, establish a power dynamic, and let them know he'll be seeing them again, on his time).  Strahd welcomed the characters to Barovia, where new blood is always welcome, and he implored them to leave behind some of the happiness they brought in with them - because you've got to wave to Bram Stoker, naturally.  But mainly he warned them to stay away from his future bride, a girl in the villages, and to be on the lookout for an invite to his castle, which would come when he was ready for them.

Not from Curse of Strahd... but definitely how Strahd looks in this campaign.

The players went on to wander the darkened village, encountering an infant-stealing crone, Morgantha, whom they spared in trade for various secrets she divulged.  (Actually she just wanted to spill dirt on the Count and send them his way). They next landed at the only open establishment in town, the tavern, where they caroused.  Carousing is a ShadowDark rule that lets players burn some money and earn experience in-between adventures.  Through carousing, they met the mayor's son (Ismark), who introduced him to his sister (Ireena), whom they quickly figured out was the village girl being courted/stalked by the vampire.  They helped the pair bury their dead father, the former mayor.

At the village church where they buried the mayor, their first brush with horror was the priest's son, Doru, who was trapped in the undercroft of the church after being turned into a vampire some time ago and sent to terrorize his father.  His mournful wails of hunger from below the floor drew them like moths.  Since the players purport to be vampire slayers, they eagerly descended into the undercroft and slew Doru, but not before Imthal, their thief, was in-turn killed by the vampire spawn.

By the time they were ready to leave Barovia, here are the various plot hooks and ideas the characters had accumulated through these interactions:

• Castle Ravenloft is open to them anytime (from the conversation with Strahd)
• They should go get their fortunes read by Madame Eva at Tser Pool (the crone)
• Some of Strahd's enemies once lived at a ruin called Argynvostholt (the crone)
• Some of Strahd's secrets are hidden in the Amber Temple in the high mountains (the crone)
• The crone lives in the old windmills (the crone)
• A safe place for Ismark and Ireena could be Vallaki, the next village (Ismark)
• Wine is running out in the valley, there must be a problem at the winery (from the tavern)
• There's a magic pool and holy abbey in the village of Krezk far to the west (Donavich the village priest)

If you look online for Curse of Strahd advice, most of it is targeted at structuring it more like a story-driven adventure path with a pre-planned plot.  I'm committed to going in the opposite direction and leaning into the sandbox elements; therefore it's important for the players to have enough information about their options and to be free to make plans.  As I relate these reports, I'll continue to point out things I'm doing to make the sandbox approach work.

After the death of Imthal at the hands of the vampire spawn Doru, Imthal's player converted one of the surviving peasants (who also survived the Death House gauntlet) into a bard, Ergamal, and he joined the others.  They decided the trip to the next village, Vallaki, made the most sense; they would be escorting Strahd's target, Ireena, away from Barovia, doing what he expressly asked them not to do, so they wanted to put some distance between them and the ominous castle towering over the village of Barovia.  They also figured that Vallaki was centrally located and would be a good place to pursue all the other ideas.  They're reconciled to the idea that they're trapped in Barovia and have assumed they'll need to accumulate some levels and some magic items in order to confront Strahd and break the curse keeping the valley isolated.

ShadowDark's author, Kelsey, had previewed some ShadowDark specific hex crawl and camping rules recently; we got the chance to use them on the trip to Vallaki so I'll also do a mini-review of those next time out.  In the meantime, here is our cast of characters for this campaign:

Cast of Characters ("The Drips")

Miral - elf fighter - he's the one who declared them as vampire slayers and has been the group's combat MVP.  He got plate mail in Death House ("nice drip, dude") and this became the group monniker.

Glaud - Glaud is a human priest of Ord, neutral god of secrets, and a font of relentless ORD puns... This is no ORD-inary situation, we must restore ORD-er, stop this dis-ORD-erly nonsense.  He claimed a spear in Death House, which he named The Brittany Spear, his favored weapon.  (I let him swap longsword for spear on the priest weapons list, figuring a spear works fine for a neutral priest).

Claren - elf ranger.  Quiet but effective bowman.

Tzip - human wizard - Tzip has 17 strength and frequently does grunt work like opening doors, despite being the party's wizard.  His player jokes he was the 'sorcerer's apprentice' who never stopped carrying buckets of water up and down stairs and now he's built like a wall.

Imthal (now deceased) - human thief - Imthal's great trick was quadruple backstab, but only 2 hit points, so he was basically a yo-yo; he'd get knocked to zero, get healed, knocked down again, healed again, which was a great source of comedy until the vampire spawn chose to keep draining him unto death.  The players didn't take precautions with his corpse so he'll be back... muhaha.

Ergamal - human bard - he got his chance to shine in Vallaki, more to come on Ergamal next game report.

Curse of Strahd for Shadowdark - The Gauntlet - Let's Go!

This is part game report and part walkthrough of how I set up the campaign.  I've previously said background prep for the campaign (before the first session) involved converted all the monsters from 5E to Shadowdark; next I broke down all the plot hooks by location to  understand how the whole campaign would hang together as a sandbox;  I also tallied up the experience points available in the campaign (to make sure the players would reach an appropriate level if I ran it under the Shadowdark XP rules-as-written).  The answer was yes; sandbox-style XP for treasure would work fine, and the plot hooks would drive an interesting sandbox style in the valley of Barovia.

The players wanted to do a "gauntlet" to start, which is the Shadowdark equivalent of DCC's zero-level funnel.  Each player brings 4 zero-level characters to the gauntlet, and the survivors get to be first level characters. 

I've been on a Karameikos kick (from 1980's Basic D&D's "Known World", Mystara), and the Grand Duchy of Karameikos is a vampire-haunted, misty land reminiscent of Eastern Europe, replete with lost valleys in the towering northern mountains.  It's a perfect for hiding the supernaturally shrouded valley of Barovia and Castle Ravenloft.

The player characters were Karameikan peasants in the capital city of Specularum.  Local legend spoke of an abandoned house in the city, boarded up and home only to rats and spiders, but as the story goes, one night per year there are lights in the house and it looks the way it back in a bygone era, full of warmth and wealth.  As happens in these kinds of tales, this was that self-same night of the year, the Devil's Night, the night before Halloween, when the house supposedly changes and welcomes visitors.  One of the drunks in the bar dared his fellow revelers to go prove the legend wrong, and before you could say "I'll wager a gold Krona you're wrong", a crowd of rowdy merrymakers set off through the streets of the city, singing bawdy tunes and ready to collect.

The house was as the tale-teller described; the wrought iron gate was open, warm oil lamps stood lit in the portico, and more light cascaded from the windows.  Fine crystal decanters and expensive bottles beckoned from the parlor visible in the window.  Fog and mist curled around the street and licked the base of the wrought iron fence.

Many of the men passed this boarded up, ruined place every day... they couldn't believe what they were now seeing here in the dead of night.  Fortified by a few too many ales, they went in.  In this way, our gauntlet goers found themselves trapped inside "Death House", a one-way portal to Barovia.  Death House is an appendix in Curse of Strahd, an entry-level dungeon for the campaign, and I'm a fan of the motif of entering a supernatural house and finding oneself transported to a different time or place.  It was also used to great effect in TSR module X2 Castle Amber, also set in Mystara.

DM tip:  The players all voted to do Curse of Strahd among alternatives, so we discussed out-of-game how it involved first getting lured to the vampire's realm of Barovia; I explained my mechanism for getting them there started with exploring a simple haunted house in their home city.  In this way they happily went along with the merry revelers theme in the first session, knowing the game would become an open-world sandbox once they got to Barovia.

Death House is a 4-story affair, with a hidden staircase spiraling from the attic down to a small, two-level dungeon.  It's too big for a "gauntlet", so I ruled any peasants that made it to the attic (the halfway point) would complete the gauntlet portion and be able to advance to level 1 characters.  (The 5E version also suggested leveling up the PC's at this halfway point).  I didn't love this choice but it seemed pragmatic; I personally like the in-game fiction that after surviving a gauntlet, some weeks or months pass, the zero-level characters go off and learn an adventurer's trade and return as level 1 adventurers.  However, I felt the haunted house was dangerous enough for zero-level characters, and the players would need level 1 characters to survive the dungeon, so I got over it.

Death House is linear but works well as a haunted house; the first two floors are warm and well-appointed and lull the explorers; floors 3 and 4 are cold, aged, grey, and full of cobwebs, decay, and baleful spirits.  There was a shocking moment on the 3rd floor when the characters went out on a balcony, and no longer saw the crowded streets of the capital city.  They looked out at a somber mountain village, with an imposing gothic castle perched high above them, and the mournful sound of howling wolves wafting from the nearby forest.

Many of the peasants died in Death House; there's a haunted suit of platemail on the 3rd floor stairs (animated armor), and it was tossing characters over the stairs like sacks of flour.  If you're running a gauntlet or funnel, one thing you need to decide is what the "extra characters" are doing.  For instance, I had 5 players in the gauntlet, with 4 zero-level characters each to start.  They only played one active character.  What were the other 15 doing?

In Dungeon Crawl Classics, the funnels seem deadlier and the players actually use all 4 characters at once, so combats can be sprawling affairs with tons of casualties.  My players had their "extras" choose to stay downstairs, enjoying the comfort of the first floor, while 5 of the braver zero-level characters explored (at least until a replacement was needed).  It worked fine.

However, at the end of Death House, after the player characters defeat the spirit of the house deep in the cellars, the entire house goes haywire and tries to kill everyone in it with chopping blades, poisonous smoke, rat swarms.  At this point, the level 1 adventurers were able to fight their way out of the house.  The remaining ordinary townsfolk, waiting in the downstairs dining room and parlor, endured a gauntlet of horrors trying to escape.  It was great fun as the referee.

Our Curse of Strahd game officially began as the newly minted level 1 characters (with a few surviving zero-levels with them) stepped out of the fenced yard and onto a cobblestone street in the village of Barovia.  Death House collapsed in on itself behind them, it's animating force destroyed.  Around them, the night-shrouded streets were dismal and abandoned; most of the homes were boarded up and abandoned.

We ended this first phase of the campaign with the clop clop of horse hooves on the cobblestones, a nightmare pulling a black carriage.  Count Strahd von Zarovitch, the walking corpse, welcomed the characters to Barovia - where new blood is always welcome, and may they leave behind some of the happiness they brought with them, too.  He pointed out it was his castle overlooking the village, the doors would always be open to them, and he intended to invite them to a formal feast after some of his other affairs were resolved.  He expressed regret at the demise of Death House; while he was no friend to the foolish cultists that once lived there, he found that the haunted house was a useful vector to bring willing victims into Barovia from the outside world, and now his Vistani allies would need to work harder to lure outsiders through the mists.  He left the players with an admonishment... after decades, he was again in the mood for love, and had set his eyes on a girl right there in the village.  She was off-limits to them, and he would be displeased if they meddled.  Strahd's carriage again rode off into the night.

Of course, the surest way to get players to engage with something is to tell them not to engage with it, as we'll see next game report.  This is the way.

The Death House gauntlet and dungeon took 3-4 sessions of game play, so this is long enough for an initial report... I'll introduce the player characters and their first moves in Barovia next time out.  Hope this one provides some useful ideas on how to launch a COS campaign and leverage a gauntlet approach for level 0.  Until next time.

Enabling Curse of Strahd as a Sandbox

One of the most important things I needed to do for myself to simplify Curse of Strahd (COS) is related to the book's presentation.  It's presented as a sandbox campaign, with a full-sized hex-crawl wilderness map (the Valley of Barovia), a full-sized dungeon (Castle Ravenloft), and then 12 other adventure sites comprising villages, smaller dungeons, or wilderness sites.  The issue I've found is there's a lot of text in the book, making it too easy to overlook critical information that acts as connective tissue between locales - ie, the plot hooks.  I see that as the #1 job of a sandbox referee - making sure the players have opportunities to learn things about the game world so they can make meaningful decisions about what to do.

I broke COS down two ways - the first was by settlement, what are the most important nuggets of information they'll learn at each location that could lead to further adventures.  I also organized the plot hooks by adventure site, to identify what are the ways characters can get pointed at a particular locale.

Here's an example: one of the locations is a werewolf den far to the west.  Players could stumble upon it if they crawl hex by hex.  The werewolves kidnap children in the valley, make them fight each other, and adopt the survivors into their werewolf clan to become werewolves.  There's been a recent power struggle between leaders in the clan (with the former leader now imprisoned beneath Castle Ravenloft).  Unless the players stumble upon the werewolf den, there are scant plot hooks that point to it.  They could meet Emil, the deposed leader, while exploring the prisons beneath Castle Ravenloft... although by the time they're exploring the castle, they're probably out to kill Strahd and not interested in a werewolf side quest.  The only other clue pointing to the den is if they have a random encounter with a werewolf in the wilds and are able to interrogate it.

The werewolf den shows up in the "tarroka readings" the referee can use to scatter various helpful items around Barovia and randomize the campaign.  In the original I6, everything is contained within the castle, but in Curse of Strahd, helpful items (including a potential ally) are split between the wilds and the castle.  One of the werewolves appears as a potential ally against Strahd (the enemy of my enemy...) and the werewolf den appears as a location where a quest item can be placed.

It wasn't obvious on first read-through that the touchpoints leading out to the remote werewolf den are so tenuous, or dependent on random chance.  If the referee wants to ensure the players learn about its existence, they may need to add an explicit plot hook to a location.  Perhaps the wolf hunters in the tavern of one of the towns (Vallaki) could be a good option for rumors about a vicious werewolf clan in the western wilds.

Anyway, I'm sure you get the point, dear reader - until I went through the book and organized the plot hooks, I wouldn't have noticed how prevalent or scarce are some of them.  The information pattern creates a likely "flow" through the campaign.  Here are my notes organized by site on plot hooks that are over and above the ones from Madame Eva's tarroka reading.

BAROVIA

• Death House
• Learn about the Durst Windmill (now Old Bonegrinder)
• Tavern
• Madame Eva's camp
• Vallaki is a safe city (Ismark and Ireena)
• Wizard of Wines (wine is scarce - added by me)
• Church
• Krezk Abbey is safe and holy
• Mad Mary
• Daughter is in Castle Ravenloft
• Night Hag Peddler (Morgantha)
• Strahd has a secret at Amber Temple
• He has an enemy at Argynvostholt
• Madame Eva has a Vistani camp
• She and her sisters are at the Durst Windmill (Old Bonegrinder)
• Strahd
• Invitation to Castle Ravenloft

VALLAKI

• Tavern
• Wine is scarce - visit Wizard of Wines
• Possibly cross paths with Rictavio (Van Richten's tower)
• Wolf Hunters may be aware of the werewolf den (added by me)
• Kasimir
• Quest to visit Amber Temple
• Luvash
• Needs wine - visit Wizard of Wines
• Town Rumor
• The ruins of Argynvostholt

KREZK

• Needs wine from Wizard of Wines Winery

WIZARD OF WINES

• Can learn two additional quests, Yester Hill and the ruined village of Berez

ARGYNVOSTHOLT

• Learn about the Amber Temple
• Quest to Castle Ravenloft to retrieve the dragon skull

WANDERERS

• A revenant can reveal Argynvostholt
• A werewolf can reveal the werewolf den

There is a lot more information in the book and additional side quests and smaller incidental sites to investigate, but the items above represent the major ones.  If you want to make sure your players hear about the Amber Temple, for instance, as it's one of the more important dungeons, the people who know about it are the night hag in Barovia (or at Old Bonegrinder), Kasimir the elf outside Vallaki, or talking to the ghost of the dead dragon at Argynvostholt.  I find this kind of "cheat sheet" helpful to ensure I don't overlook critical information about the sandbox.

The general flow of the adventure I've perceived is characters get many future plot hooks during their start in the village of Barovia, with one the most accessible and reasonable things being to get out of town and go to Vallaki; the next most likely destination after Vallaki is the besieged Wizard of Wines winery, where they can learn about two additional quests involving Yester Hill or the ruins of Berez.  There are plenty of side quests between Barovia and Vallaki, including visiting Madame Eva, Old Bonegrinder, getting caught up with the mayor of Vallaki's madness, fighting off vampire attacks in Vallaki, traveling with Ireena in tow and keeping her safe from Strahd,etc.  Some of these are best represented as events -  having a list of events off to the side to "keep the world in motion" is the next cheat sheet to build.

One thing my players do to stay organized is they use a shared Google sheet for posting marching orders, party treasure, game notes, screen captures of handouts, and plot hooks.  I like their approach and it should work well keeping track of all the things they can do during their "Holiday in Barovia".

All of this advice is system neutral; Curse of Strahd was published for 5E, I'm converting it to Shadowdark, and it seems like you could do the same for any OSR game.  Shadowdark and 5E have similar wealth expectations, making that piece of the conversion easier.  We did our pre-Christmas game last night so next post I'll log our adventures in Barovia to date.

Curse of Strahd - for Shadowdark

I started running a game with my neighborhood gang for Horror on the Hill, a classic module from the 1980's.  Meanwhile, my high school group voted to do Curse of Strahd.  The high school gang was formerly "The Pillories", the party that played Lamentations of the Flame Princess over the past year and recently wrapped their campaign.  Originally we were going to do a Call of Cthulhu next, but I wanted to get some more "drive time" with the Shadowdark rules set, and we talked about several different campaign ideas.  They ultimately picked Curse of Strahd.  Curse of Strahd (COS) was originally written for 5E, but don't hold that against it, and it seems like it will work fine using Shadowdark rules.  We're 3-4 sessions into the campaign, but this post is about the conversion process and getting the campaign set up.

There are a  few good 5E campaigns that lend themselves to a retro style of play and sandbox gaming - Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Tomb of Annihilation, and Rime of the Frostmaiden, for instance.  Curse of Strahd occupies a nearby place - it’s a little verbose and almost wants to be a plotted or scripted scene-based campaign, but it's also set up as a hex crawl in the valley of Barovia, with Castle Ravenloft and several dungeon sites.  There's a small cottage industry in the 5E crowd of converting Curse of Strahd into a full-blown scene-by-scene adventure path, but it seems easy enough to go in the other direction too, and bring to the foreground the sandbox elements and player agency.

As written, the campaign suggests gifting experience levels to the players as the players wander Barovia and do stuff - it's more exploration focused than the scene-based milestones that show up in adventure paths, but doesn't go all the way towards an "XP for Treasure" mode like I'd want in a retro sandbox.  The first thing I wanted to figure out was how much experience the campaign gives out naturally if you tried to run it as an XP for Treasure campaign.  It was a little tedious, but I tallied the treasure finds from the hex-crawl locations and dungeons.  I also assumed characters will get to go carousing several times, as XP for carousing seems to be a default assumption of Shadowdark, and fits one of the themes in Curse of Strahd - Barovia is dreary, and wines and spirits are one of the few things that bring joy to the dismal landscape.  The total XP in COS a little light - there's enough XP for a party to get to level 6 if they "collected most of it" which we don't necessarily want to encourage.  So the XP will need a little juicing - either adding treasure to locations where it's sparse or nonexistent, increasing the reward amounts, and/or adding some boon or quest rewards for major accomplishments.  Shadowdark doesn't use a 1gp = 1xp basis; the game uses an abstract system where treasure hordes are worth either 1xp or 3xp, and legendary items are worth 10xp. I've seen where referees use a 5xp category for major hordes and I think that change could be effective at increasing the campaign's overall XP.  One thing I'll mention - the actual gold piece counts found in a 5E adventure are right in line with Shadowdark's recommendations - which is somewhere around 1/10th the amount of treasure you'd see in an old school game.

Sly Flourish has been running Ravenloft as a Halloween one-shot the past couple years and uses 5th level PC's for Ravenloft (the original I6 was for characters levels 4-6) so I imagine 5th-7th level characters would be fine for the finale of COS.  It won't take much adjustment to the campaign's XP to ensure player characters can get into that range before they head to Castle Ravenloft for the final confrontation with Strahd and the brides.

If you're familiar with Curse of Strahd, you'll know there are several meaningful accomplishments the characters can do along the way that could represent XP moments:  lighting the holy beacon of Argynvostholt, discovering Strahd's secret at the Amber Temple, finding the lost Arabelle (Madame Eva's heir), restoring the Wizard of Wines Winery, and so on.  Shutting down Old Bonegrinder or rescuing children from the werewolf fighting pits in the western caves could fit as well.

Regarding monsters:  there are online guides on converting 5E monsters to Shadowdark, so that wasn't hard to do.  I think I ended up with about 40 converted monsters in the monster document I made.

The last piece to prepare for sandbox play was to have clear notes on plot hooks and connections between non-player characters, locations, and what the players can learn.  There are 14-15 places to explore in the valley, and varying amounts of NPCs to meet in each location.  In an adventure path, the author will dictate patrons or events that push the players from scene to scene; for the sandbox, the players have the agency, they're the ones doing the pushing, and the referee's job shifts to making sure they have the opportunity to get enough information to make meaningful plans.  The hardcover of Curse of Strahd is text-heavy and verbose; I found it helpful to make an outline for each location of which nuggets of information can picked up at each locale or NPC.  There's a natural flow to the campaign, with the opportunity to engage in side quests and detours depending on player preference.

And voila - that's how I've turned Curse of Strahd into a retro style sandbox.  I'd be glad to post the quest outlines or monster conversions if there's interest.  Otherwise I'll get some game reports rolling on how we've done so far.

Mr Strahd goes to Innistrad

Death comes on blood-stained wings… that's a theme from last summer's Magic card game setting, Shadows Over Innistrad, as the angelic protectors of the plane succumb to madness, stoking the fires of inquisition and oppression.  I knew when Wizards created a guide for placing your Curse of Strahd campaign in Innistrad, this is something I would make happen in 2017.  Curse of Strahd is far and away the best thing for 5E, a sprawling horror-themed sandbox - highly recommend checking it out, if you haven't.

Here’s why ditching Barovia is a good idea.  First, it lets me place the campaign in a setting built around Gothic horror tropes without needing to shoehorn Forgotten Realmsians (ie, Ren-Fest escapees) through The Mists.  A regular Strahd campaign would have the players making setting-appropriate characters for Ren-Fair-Land, backgrounds and ties to various Realmsian organizations like the Emerald Tree Huggers and Gauntlet Knights and Gangster Zhents, just to shunt them off to Dracula-land where all that background becomes immediately irrelevant.  It sounds like I'm hating on the Realms; they're actually just fine for a High Fantasy game, and the 5E version does its job as a default setting.  I don't need 'em for my vampire-bashing game.

Wizards provided a handy guide for putting your 5E game in Innistrad:  Planeshift Innistrad.  There are no demi-humans; it's a human-centric setting with characters from the different provinces getting background abilities in lieu of demi-human abilities.  There are probably 1,000 cool pieces of artwork for Innistrad from years of Magic sets; a fair number have been collected into The Art of Innistrad, which also provides a guide to the plane (and takes the place of a gazetteer or campaign guide).  I've really enjoyed the art book.

On the plane of Innistrad, horrors stalk the shadows and scratch at doors in the night. Humanity is beset on all sides: vampires thirst for human blood, werewolves live for the thrill of the hunt, the restless spirits of the dead haunt the living, and no corpse is safe from reanimation at the hands of cruel necromancers or cunning scientists

Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast doesn't make maps for their Magic planes.  I went ahead and created my own version of Innistrad, posted above.

We kicked off the campaign last week, so I'll portray the setting as the campaign moves along.  The valley of Barovia becomes the Outland Vales of Stensia, in the far upper left of the map, with Barovia and Vallaki (two villages in Curse of Strahd) becoming Shadowgrange and Lammas, beneath the shadow of Castle Maurer (instead of Castle Ravenloft).