DragnaCarta
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Curse of Strahd Reloaded Update: Trials of the Mountain Begins
🕑 Added 2024-10-01 01:41:49 +0000 UTCIt’s been eighty-four years since my last Reloaded update newsletter—or at least a solid month—so please accept my sincerest apologies for the radio silence! Have an update.
I. Reloaded Update
I’ve officially broken ground on Arc R: Trials of the Mountain, which combines the players’ ascent up Tsolenka Pass and Strahd’s tyrannical tests of their will and fortitude. It’s seven thousand words long so far and still going strong, growing by another five to seven thousand words per week (at a minimum).
I’ve also finalized the scene-level outlines for Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight (including the entirety of the players’ exploration of the Amber Temple), Arc T: Dreams of Dawn (including the defeat of Baba Lysaga, the lifting of Van Richten’s curse, and the reconsecration of the Fanes), and Arc U: The Curse of Strahd (including the return to Castle Ravenloft and the final battle with Strahd). Those interested in reading more can find full flowchart diagrams of every scene in the remaining arcs in the Bronze Masterpost of the Patreon.
Thus far, I’ve completed the following work for Arc R: Trials of the Mountain:
Drafted the players’ recruitment of Kasimir, including an all-new social encounter framework
Revised and fleshed out Patrina’s history and character, including her relationship to Strahd, Exethanter, and the Amber Temple, and the reason for her death at Kasimir’s hands
Added a new scene in which the players are confronted by Baron Vargas Vallakovich
Added the Tyrant’s First Trial, in which Strahd calls the players to answer for their crimes against Castle Ravenloft in Arc P: Ravenloft Heist.
Outlined the means by which Strahd scries upon and locates the players before the Tyrant’s Second Trial
You can read some excerpts from these scenes below:
Patrina’s History
After the siblings arrived in the valley, it wasn’t long before Patrina caught whisperings of the Amber Temple—a place of ancient magic and great, but terrible power. Unable to reach the Temple due to the protection of the Order of the Silver Dragon, however, she bided her time and kept the Temple’s existence a secret from Kasimir, her rage smoldering but never going out.It was, ironically, Strahd’s conquest of Barovia and slaughter of the Order of the Silver Dragon that freed Patrina to investigate the Amber Temple at last, several months after the dusk elves had first arrived in the valley. After slipping away from the dusk elf encampment in secret, she braved the slopes of Mt. Ghakis and fought her way to the Temple’s great facade. There, she became the apprentice of Exethanter, the spirit of an archmage that once led the secret order of wizards that first raised the Temple.
Patrina spent two years in Exethanter’s tutelage, devouring every ounce of knowledge and power he could bequeath to her. The speed of her education, however, proved insufficient; determined to obtain enough power to lay waste to Strahd’s kingdom, Patrina turned to the dark arts, studying forbidden tomes sealed away in Exethanter’s library against his express commands. It wasn’t long before she began to commune with the vestige of Tenebrous that dwelled in the Temple’s amber vault, seeking the secrets of lichdom.
When Exethanter discovered Patrina’s treachery, he attempted to banish her from the Temple—but she had grown far more powerful than he. Patrina bound his spirit in amber, sealing it away for as long as she lived. With her mentor now imprisoned, Patrina set about remaking the Amber Temple in her own image, raising the skulls of long-dead wizards as flameskulls bound to her service and binding the amber golems that dwelled in its halls to her will.
The Baron’s Revenge
As the players make their way from the Vistani encampment to Vallaki or the Old Svalich Road, they pass through a wooded crossroad. Read:The grassy hill that houses the dusk-elf hamlet and Vistani encampment recedes into the distance as the gnarled canopy of the Svalich Wood swallows it up once again. The muddy, faded hunter’s trail continues north, pushing through the dense foliage.
As the northern treeline comes into view, the hunter’s trail splits, the eastern branch meandering further into the woods while the northern branch curves toward the pale thread of the Old Svalich Road in the distance. The air here is cool and quiet, with nothing but the rustling of leaves to fill the silence.
If Baron Vargas Vallakovich is alive, Lady Fiona Wachter is the current burgomaster of Vallaki, and the players made no efforts to conceal their travel to the Vistani encampment, a drunken Vargas and six guards attempt to corner the players on the road. Add:
The stillness is broken by the crunching of wet mulch beneath boots. Seven mud-stained figures emerge from the eastern trail, their faces dark and stony. Six bear spears and crossbows, their chests decorated with the familiar rusted mail of the Vallakian guard. The seventh, you recognize instantly: Baron Vargas Vallakovich.
The Baron does not seem to have endured his retirement well. His greasy hair is unkempt, and his clothes are unwashed and haggard. His jowls have grown only looser, and deep, puffy circles mark the flesh beneath his eyes, just above the coarse, messy stubble that lines his jaws and chin. He wears an ill-fitting breastplate, with an unpolished scabbard tied to his hip. Even from a distance, he reeks of sweat and stale wine.
”There they are,” Vargas rasps, his bloodshot eyes twitching. “The treacherous vermin.”
Blood, Gold & Fire
If the persuasion die reaches one, the players fail to convince Strahd to spare them. Strahd demands that the players pay for their crimes against Castle Ravenloft by suffering the same wounds they have inflicted upon his throne. “I am the Land,” he intones, “and it is my solemn duty to mete out justice. For the blood you have spilled, blood shall be spilled from you. For the gold you have taken, gold shall be taken from you. And for the fire you have brought to my home, fire shall be brought to yours.” (If the players ask, Strahd explains that “blood” must be paid in the form of a life, “gold” must be paid in the form of riches or power, and “fire” must be paid in the form of destruction.)
Strahd invites the players to name the “blood,” “wealth,” and “fire” that shall form their punishment. (If the players protest Strahd’s penalties of blood and fire, he responds coolly: “Someone must die today. In my mercy, I have given you the final decision. Choose—or I shall choose for you.”). Strahd is willing to accept any of the following penalties, as well as any other of similar severity:
Blood. Using his longsword, Strahd executes a member of the party (excepting Ireena), an NPC who helped the players invade Ravenloft, or an NPC who directly benefited from the players’ invasion of Ravenloft. (Strahd won’t accept the sacrifice of any other character, or use any other means to carry out a chosen victim’s execution.) If the chosen sacrifice isn’t present at the crossroads, Strahd finds and executes them after departing.
Gold. Strahd takes a non-consumable magic item of Rare or greater value from the party, such as the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind or Vladimir Horngaard’s +2 greatsword. (If no member of the party is currently using or attuned to the item, they must succeed on a DC 19 Charisma (Deception) check to convince Strahd of its worth.)
Fire. Strahd destroys the Blue Water Inn, the Barovian burgomaster’s mansion, or any other place in Barovia the players call “home.” (Strahd destroys the chosen location after departing the crossroads. Players who subsequently visit the chosen location find the aftermath of Strahd’s attack, which has destroyed any structures and wounded any inhabitants.)
If the players refuse to name a penalty, or if they fail to name penalties of sufficient severity, Strahd names his own penalties from the list above.
Sadly, it looks like I grossly underestimated the amount of work I had left to do, and it looks like I won't be able to meet my hopeful Halloween deadline. Thankfully, however, I've now hired an editor for Reloaded, who will be able to make requested edits to past arcs while I focus my attention entirely on the unpublished material. Moreover, now that I've completed a scene-level outline of the rest of the campaign, it'll be much easier to power through by spending my time on writing, rather than planning. (I'm now writing consistently 4-5 days a week, so hopefully we'll be able to keep pushing through to the end.)
Right now, I'm very roughly projecting to finish Arc R: Trials of the Mountain (a projected 35,000 words) by the end of October, Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight (a projected 20,000 words) by the end of November, Arc T: Dreams of Dawn (a projected 45,000 words) by the end of January, and Arc U: The Curse of Strahd (a projected 25,000 words) by the end of February. (Depending on how fast I'm able to write, my publication schedule could well move more quickly than that—but given all of the self-imposed deadlines I've broken through lately, I figured it'd be better to be pessimistic than optimistic.)
As always, you can get full access to my in-progress drafts by joining the Patreon as a paid member. All working drafts and outlines for future arcs, as well as a changelog and Trello board of upcoming edits, can be found on the Patreon Bronze Masterpost.
II. Other News
Dragna’s Blog. Since my last update, I’ve published two blogs discussing and analyzing my work on Reloaded and my IRL homebrew campaign: Method Dungeons, discussing the importance of nonlinearity and “method choices” in crafting dungeons (and featuring a preview of my rework of Berez); and Inverted Dramatic Questions, discussing the intersection of narrative tension and exploration, and the means by which we can influence our players’ psychology in the exploration pillar (and briefly discussing an issue this raises with the skeletal rider at the River Ivlis Crossroads). You can find them, as well as my thirty-five other Reloaded developer blogs, in the Silver Masterpost by joining the Patreon as a paid member.
DMG: Reloaded. The seventh installation of my textbook on game and narrative design theory, Verbs, was just posted on the Bronze Masterpost for paid members of the Patreon. This chapter discusses the fundamental “physics” of gameplay, and the means by which we can create engaging gameplay for our players (or not).
New DM Mentoring. I’m contemplating offering a (paid) private four-session mentoring course for new DMs. Current topic ideas include “how to roleplay NPCs,” “how to do voice-acting,” “how to immerse your players with narration and description,” and “how to make combat fast, fun, and flavorful.” If you would be interested in enrolling in such a course, or if you have any other requests for topics to include, I’d love to hear it in the comments!
Post-Reloaded Projects. When Reloaded ultimately wraps up, I expect to refocus my attention on a few different projects. One, of course, will be my textbook on narrative and game design for DMs (codename “DMG: Reloaded”). Another will be an original Chult adventure called The Lost Treasure of Omu, which I’ll be building in realtime as I run the campaign for my players.
I expect my biggest project, however, to be Dragon’s Den Publishing, a third-party adventure publishing platform. My role, rather than writing adventures, would be to edit and develop them, ensuring that all published modules would meet the quality and accessibility standards I’ve endeavored to establish with Reloaded.
Currently, I’m working with two other writers to create a proof-of-concept Kickstarter for three short folk-horror one-shot adventures. (I know that some people have understandably been worried about additional projects delaying Reloaded further, but the time investment is looking to be fairly minimal—and to be honest, I desperately need other creative outlets in order to stay sane, hah.) Our goal is to launch this Kickstarter around Halloween, so stay tuned for more news about it!
III. Wrap-Up
And that's all the news that's fit to print! Thank you as always for your patience, and I'll do my best to keep you updated as things continue to move forward.
Cheers,
Dragna
Comments
ROCCO MARIANI
Hello Dragna! Let me start off by saying that your CoS Reloaded has made my life SO much easier as I was VERY overwhelmed running this campaign and has 50 different resources I was stitching together! The only issue I'm having is, when I go to the URL more often than not now, it tells me that there's a security issue with the site and it won't load. I tried both using Chrome and Edge but same issue. Have you heard anything about this and is there something I should be doing to prevent this? I love your guide but it's getting harder to get to it when I need it and nothing seems to be working lately. Thanks in advance!
DragnaCarta
My gosh; thank you very much for the incredibly kind words! This really just made my night (and I apologize for not replying sooner - it's been a busy few days, haha). Creating a high-quality, low-prep experience has been my exact goal with Reloaded, so I'm so happy to hear that it's delivered exactly that for your group. I always welcome any feedback (or typo catching), so please feel free to send your thoughts if you ever have them! They're always appreciated :) Best of wishes with the rest of the campaign! I hope you and your players continue to enjoy Barovia.
Cameron Wray
Hi there! I just wanted to sincerely thank you for all your work on Reloaded. I've been running and playing D&D (and other systems, but mostly 5e) with various groups for a little over decade and I honestly think that Reloaded is by far the best third-party supplement I've ever seen. I've never had to prep so little to run my games with such polish, as I feel like Reloaded offers the most thorough "complete" experience for a varied and narrative-focused campaign I've yet found, and I always felt like I had to spend so much time modifying and/or adding to even campaigns where I was wanting to run things "as close to the book" as possible that I just don't have to do here. I've been running Reloaded for 8-9 months with mostly weekly games basically following your guide with only very minor changes and both me and my players have been thoroughly enjoying it. I feel like this is the among best D&D I've ever played with the least work I've ever done during prep. To be honest, I've completely abandoned 5e outside of Reloaded for other systems (mainly Pathfinder) because it's grown mechanically very stale to me and the main group I've been playing with for years and none of us are interested in the new direction it seems to be taking with the new PHB. However, I joined up with this new group back in February and they wanted to play 5e, so I found this and it's really brought new life to the system for me. It puts emphasis on expanding and improving the already great narrative aspects of CoS, and really helps to liven up the combat from both a GM and player perspective with your homebrew encounters. Never thought I'd actually enjoy 5e combat again! Don't get me wrong, I still prefer the complexity and variety of Pathfinder combat more, but I look forward to my weekly 5e game just as much as my weekly Pathfinder game entirely because of how beautifully crafted your guide is. The fact that you offer it for free blows my mind. Anyway, I've rambled on for way too long at this point. I just wanted to express my sincere thanks. You've helped to make our 25 or so sessions of CoS a blast for my group, and I'm sure that will only continue (for, at this rate, likely another another year...). I will forever sing the praises of this guide for those that want the best possible path through CoS (at least for those wanting a more linear and narrative-focused experience). My only faults I've been able to find have been a handful of spelling/grammar errors or a couple of errors in logic or continuity, although I'm sure all of that will get wrapped up in time, especially now that you have an editor (I actually very nearly applied for that spot, and kind of regret not doing so). In fact, I've already noticed a few of the holes I found while running things have since been plugged up when I've gone back and checked, which is awesome! If there's ever any kind of help some random person on the internet like me could offer you (like feedback or something), please let me know, genuinely, as I'd really love to give something back for such an amazing product and I'm unfortunately not in the position currently to support financially at the moment (although I did previously). Best of luck on all the continued projects, and thanks again!
DragnaCarta
Thank you very much for the interest! I'll be officially launching the first three course options tomorrow - I'd love to hear your thoughts on them!
Adam Lewis
Hello - I might be interested in your course
DragnaCarta
Glad you're enjoying it! And Soulless Barovians have never been a part of the revised Reloaded guide - not since I launched it last year. (As a general rule, at least with the revised Reloaded guide, anything that isn't explicitly mentioned or incorporated should be ignored.) I consider the concept of Soulless to be poor narrative design, since it discourages the players from investing emotionally in the lives of the everyday Barovian citizens. If you can't retcon it, though, I'd recommend just minimizing it so that it's more like 1 in every 100 Barovians than 9 of every 10.
wolfgaidin
Dragna, first, thanks for all the work on Reloaded! I have been using it with modifications and noticed a fairly recent change that I can't find a reason for when searching the changelogs or working document: why did the lore about the Souless Barovians disappear? The first example I had saved from a previous incarnation had Arik Lorensk, the tavern owner in the Blood of the Vine Tavern as Souless, but now he isn't. Also, in C4a. Arrival at Tser Pool, there is an exception regarding the Vistani Lore "soulless Barovians, which don't exist." Thanks for the insight, as I don't see myself ret-conning this lore since it has been utilized for a long time in our game.
Simone Stellin
Absolutely, i was thinking about having strahd recognize their strenght maybe giving them a prize while making them remember to not question his autority (in his eyes it was Volenta's fault so this time they pass) that's the vibe at least
DragnaCarta
Glad you like it! Though if you're running Reloaded, I'd strongly discourage having any punishment for killing Volenta - Strahd doesn't care if she dies while running her own schemes. Remember - adding *anything* new to *any* arc of Reloaded risks destabilizing the entire campaign!
DragnaCarta
We love a little Vargas. And we can definitely try to improve the changelog!
DragnaCarta
Thanks! I'll definitely keep that in mind.
Lukas Norlund Sivermark
When it comes to the ”Fire” punishment. I had my Strahd gather the party at the overlook of Ravenloft, looking out over the village of Barovia and launch multiple Fireballs down at the village below (ignoring any boring distance rules for his fireballs). Causing the players to run down in order to help escort a group of surviving villagers (+ Ismark) as refugees over to Vallaki. In Vallaki, Ismark then had an increased role, more interactions with group (and they really do like him) and he would update the group on what Fiona and her followers have been up to while the group was away.
Simone Stellin
I was just thinking about a possible Strahd reaction and "justice" for the early Volenta kill my party got (my mistake) and that text-box with blood, gold and fire comes out... Wow now i really can't wait for the next update! Thanks for all the hard work!!!
Berzingh
Awesome as always! I love that Vargas will return at some point, as the players ruined his life (and killed his friend). As you have now an editor for Reloaded, would it be possible to have a more precise changelog? As I translate and prepare in advance the arcs, it is difficult to find the changes to correct my own documents, specially the little ones. We still have half of the arc III ahead of us and we have a lot of fun ! 😁
BenD
Another thought for DM mentoring would be Game Management. How to keep ideas, NPCs, plots and more straight without memorizing everything. How to make use of spreadsheets, flowcharts, and note taking tools in your sessions.
DragnaCarta
Thank you! I might add it to my Patreon shop within the next week or two if enough people are interested, so I appreciate the vote of confidence! :)
Omar Bazavilvazo
Wow the course sounds interesting , love the idea !
DragnaCarta
I'm flattered to hear! And if you do wind up joining the paid Patreon (Platinum or no), I'd love to hear all about the players' adventures in the #campaign-help channel on the Patreon Discord :)
Grim Anubis
Your guide was the main thing that made me want to run it, so if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be!!
Grim Anubis
Yeah dude Arc B has been nuts so far!! Honestly love the changes and they came at the best time 😂 we got like the perfect anti strahd team and it’s so cool seeing how they may just be the ones to save the valley 😎
DragnaCarta
Glad to hear that the campaign's been going well so far! I had a lot of fun revising Arc B, so I'm happy to hear the players have been engaged and invested in the characters and plot. Hope you continue to find the guide useful and enjoyable!
DragnaCarta
Rad! And the current idea would be $40 per 1-hour lesson (a la carte), or $120 for the full 4-hour course (for a discounted bundle of $30/session). Would that sound reasonable? 🤔
Carbie Rodgers
I would be Interested In the dm course depending on what the price would be !!!
Grim Anubis
Honestly with how much I use your stuff I would definitely be down to look into both!
Grim Anubis
They just got the church in Barovia Village and met the Father! They’ve been loving it and have been very interested in everything going on! Honestly it’s been so much better than when I was in the normal version of the game, it makes a lot more sense and not as heckinh confusing!
DragnaCarta
Rad! If you're interested now, I currently offer monthly mentoring sessions via the Platinum tier of the paid Patreon - they're fairly open-ended, whereas the mentoring "course" I'm planning right now would be focused on a set of specific topics and course materials (and somewhat cheaper as a result).
DragnaCarta
Awesome! Hope you enjoy.
Edward
Exciting! Looking forward to DMing it!
Grim Anubis
I’d also love to potentially attend a paid couple sessions of Mentoring! I’m a pretty experienced DM but always wanting to learn more from others and would absolutely love to grow further!
DragnaCarta
Thank you!! It really means a lot to hear. How far is your party into the campaign?
Grim Anubis
LETS GOOOOO, loving this reloaded version of the game so much, thanks for all you do!
