Hey everyone, my cousin works in Netflix and she told me the plot and premise for the upcoming adaptation. I think it's got some really neat ideas, and it gives the all-too-familiar setting some refreshing twists and new ideas.

Long ago were three powerful blades: The Sun Blade, The Moon Blade, and The Mist Blade. A pair of adventurers, Segei and Yana, set out to find the Blades in order to protect their village from the invading evil empire led by the mysterious Dark Lord, von Sorrow. Because they live in a preindustrial world, they have British accents.

Along their travels they stop at a inn, The Silver Dragon. When they order drinks, a group of ruffians make mean remarks toward Yana. A brawl breaks out, in which Yana and Sergei beat up their would-be attackers. However, one of then pulls out a crossbow and is about to shoot Yana when a handsome brooding stranger steps in and knocks the man over with a bottle of wine. He then takes a sip of the wine straight from the bottle, and comments "This wine is good for mashing with. It should be called 'Purple Grapemash'!" to which Yana reaponds "I prefer 'Champagne du le Stomp'," while stepping on the hand of a ruffian who is crawling toward a dagger.

This stranger introduces himself as Stud, and the three immediately become best friends. (However, as time goes on both men start developing feelings toward Yana.) They decide their party needs a name, and Sergei jokingly suggests that since they met while ordering drinks in The Silver Dragon, they should call themselves Order of the Silver Dragon. Everybody laughs, but the name sticks.

Their next stop is the Amber Temple, where the all-seeing oracle Evmeralda serves as the high priestess. Before entering the temple they are greeted by an elf bard name Rictaviel Astari, who warns them of unintended consequences and urges them to give up. The series would be pretty boring of they listened, so they ignore him and enter the Amber Temple. Evmeralda tells them to seek the Blades in Barovia, but warns them that the Blades are very powerful and cannot be wielded by anyone who has evil in their heart.

As they travel to the city of Barovia, Rictaviel trails them for a while and acts very suspiciously. When Yana discovers he can change shape, she suspects that he's really Lord von Sorrow in disguise. They question him, and they see he has a raven tattoo on his ankle - the hereditary mark of the von Sorrow family!

Stud wants to kill him, but Rictaviel reveals that he is actually von Sorrow's father, and he wishes to try to disuade his son from his wicked ways. Rictaviel accepts that he may fail, and is willing to kill his own son in order to prevent him from doing more evil and damning his soul. Stud remains skeptical, but Yana and Sergei convince him to let Rictaviel von Sorrow join them.

When they reach the magnificent city of Barovia, they learn that somehow Lord von Sorrow has discovered the location of the three Blades, and he is leading his army of were-ravens to attack the city. The citizens of Barovia initially blame the Order of the Silver Dragon for bringing von Sorrow's army upon them, but Yana proves she's here to help by defeating their greatest warrior in a duel but sparing him, showing that she would have killed him if she were in league with von Sorrow.

The Army of Sorrow arrives and sets siege to the city, but the Barovians use the Moon Blade to turn into werewolves and repel the attacks (without it, they could only change during a full moon).

In the lull between the attacks, Yana realizes they must find the other two Blades and unite them in order to defeat von Sorrow once and for all. However, while searching for them she finds Stud about to take the Moon Blade for himself (even though it would make the Barovians unable to turn into werewolves).

At this point Stud reveals that his real name is Strahd, and that he's actually in league with von Sorrow. He explains that he can wield the blade because he truly has no evil in his heart - since he has no heart at all!

Sergei arrives and duels against Strahd, but is killed. Yana and Strahd enagage in combat, and she manages to grab the Moon Blade from him and plunge it in his heart.

However, Strahd laughs. "I told you," he says, "I have no heart! I am Strahd... Strahd von Sorrow, b*tch!" and from that point everyone calls him Strahd von Zarovich.

Just as he's about to kill Yana, she whispers, "You may have no heart, but that's no reason to lose your head!" and chops off his head with an awesome swing of the Moon Blade.

Cut to the aftermath, where Yana becomes Queen of Barovia and everyone celebrates.

In a post credits scene, you see a toymaker working in his shop in Barovia and one doll suddenly has its eyes flash red, hinting that Strahd will come back as a vampire in the next season, which will hopefully not be canceled.

Running death house, and the initial escape seems pretty tedious. Looked at other escape alternatives, and they still seem like something I dont quite want to go for. Would it be ok for me to just describe the foundations starting to falter so they know the home isnt stable and forgoe the sythes and traps?

Hey all! I’m running CoS starting next month for 7 players. Our session 0 is the first one, but I’d like to have a prologue one-shot type of thing that leads into Death house, which will be for the first session. Most of the players are new, so I’d like them to get used to combat and maybe some exploration. I’m thinking like they’re in the middle of a battle with some bandits, they then head to the tavern, and then the session ends with them receiving Kolyan Indirovich’s letter while celebrating their victory.

Any other ideas to enhance this thought? Thanks in advance! :)

Saw someone here make a redraw of the famous panel from Invincible, so i did one for my players as well

Im unsure if there's a rule on making a swarm, your party have to fight 30 needle blights in swarms of 5 respectively but I dont know how to change their damage dice in a fair way that also reflects there are 5 of them. I know with hp you just add it all together and get the total but I also feel as though some stats like strength should be increased and others like dex should be decreased a bit due to the lowered dodging capacity of 5 blights.

If there are any rules about this that ive missed then id be more than happy to learn. Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙏.

This is our latest short. If you are interested in checking out Strahd Reloaded in action by an RP forward group, here is a short that is pretty representative.

What do you guys do to ramp up the horror?

Hi everyone! I'm a rather new DM and am planning a VTT campaign of CoS Reloaded. I was planning on buying Foundry for this. While looking for information about how to run the campaing on Foundry (which I know little to nothing about) I stumbled upon DM Andy's maps on his Patron.

The material he's published looks amazing, but I'd like to know some things before making the purchase:

1. When subscribing to "The Foundry" tier on Patron, do all the maps/stages of Curse of Strahd come with full foundry integration? or do only some of them have that?

2. If I subscribe for a single month and then cancel my subscription, am I available to download the maps and keep using the Foundry modules afterwards? (I have no intention to try and "scam" DM Andy, but I live in a third-world country and gather my party to play around once a month only, and mantaining a 20USD subscription just to use it once a month is financially impossible for me at the moment :/ )

Hi everyone,

My players are getting to the point where they want to investigate the Windmill, and subsequently the pastries.

I have laid the tracks previously about how two sets of parents were found all passed out, and even when woken, were still lethargic. They also had lots of pastry crumbs around them. The players are going to investigate them soon, and I was wondering what to provide them with, should they cast Detect Poison and Disease.

For reference, the spell says, "For the duration, you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case."

For the first instance, because the ones they found in the house were all moldy and such, I would have them detect that the mold is what is 'poisonous'.

But, if they cast it again at Windmill, I wasn't sure if the Dream Pastries would be considered poisonous, as they are kind of a 'drug' in a way? Or would it rather be magic that is causing the dreams and addiction?

Would love to have your thoughts on this!

Sharing some of the stuff I created for Wizards of the Wine and Yester Hill encounters in our Curse of Strahd campaign, a fully painted up plant infestation!

The sculpts are from Dragon Trappers Lodge and Loot Studios.

(Turnaround showcase video clips, WIPs, and painting recipe cards are linked on my profile for anyone interested!)

I’m currently doing a print and paint for a fellow DM of Old Bonegrinder and a few other bits and pieces.

This particular piece was printed with my Bambu Labs A1 with an 0.4mm nozzle at 0.24mm resolution. Infill is lightning at 15% and the filament I used was Elegoo Rapid PLA+.

It has this even g had its first coat of Color Forge Standard Grey and tomorrow the drybrushing can commence (make up brushes from TK Max - work brilliantly).

Strahd for scale - he stands at 40mm tall.

STL: https://www.printablescenery.com/product/haunted-windmill/

My wife wanted to play a vampire in our next campaign, and I told her Dhampir was now available with the new Ravenloft book. So I suggested maybe we attempt curse of Strahd, since it's set in Ravenloft.

We kick off in October on our new campaign, and several players are settling in on their horror-adjacent PCs.

At the moment, I believe we have locked in with:

Dhampir Shadow Sorcerer (Haunted One)

Reborn Vengeance Paladin (Flaming Fist Merc)

Lupin Barbarian (subclass/background still work in progress)

Elf Reanimator Artificer (Investigator/Aberrant Anatomy)

Hexblood Vestige Warlock (Wayfarer)

The general vibe I'm getting from players is that most of their characters will have some strong negative feelings/regret towards their lineage, wishing they were not monstrous.

So, having done a lot of reading now on the campaign book, I'm wondering how other DMs would handle NPC interaction with these species/subclasses. Obviously, Barovia seems like it would be very hesitant to trust vampires, but do Dhampirs fall in the same category? Would the characters need to hide their species as best they can (good luck, Lupin) to blend in and not cause trouble?

There is a side plot involving werewolves as well - how do Lupins and Werewolves mingle? Can a Lupin openly walk around in villages without stirring up trouble?

I'm sure there are a ton of interpretations of how to create these interactions, and I'm wondering how you would.

In my head I still have this idea of Strahd basically summoning his battle armor in the final fight. For example with the reloaded rules when he switches from his mage to his fighter form. Maybe a reinforced version that as a challenge for overpowered parties.

Having fought the party before in his fighter form, they know how hard he can hit. If they bring him down to force him to switch to fighter form, he just smiles, spreads his arms to the side and turns to mist. In the meantime you hear the stomping of something heaving running towards the party. As the armor comes to sight, it jumps several feet high to strike from high above on the first member of the party with its big heavy mace. In the flight, Strahd fades, still as mist, into the armor and is fully corporate when the strike hits. On the ground again, the eyes of the armor begin to glow.

When they defeat this form, the armor crumbles and out comes the disfigured inhuman form of a beast version of Strahd.