Curse of Strahd! Roleplay, Combat, Gothic Horror! Wednesdays

I would like to welcome you into the most atmospheric and immersive D&D campaign ever created. It’s called Curse of Strahd, and it’s the most highly rated Fifth Edition campaign that exists. It’s inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and all of the horror novels and movies about Transylvania and werewolves and ghosts and the Romani people that evolved from Stoker’s masterpiece, updated for roleplaying in modern times. It is not, however, a hack-and-slash campaign, or an endless dungeon-delving campaign. There are no dragons or beholders or Underdark adventures. There’s virtually no treasure, because acquiring wealth is not a goal. Life is the goal. Ending the eternal darkness is the goal. CoS is set in a mountainous eastern-European-like settling inhabited almost entirely by humans. And their nightmares. The campaign goes up to about 11th level. It does not feature or reward the intricacies of game mechanics. It’s a deeply narrative tale of horror and woe that rewards roleplaying and character immersion. It’s about as emotional an experience as you’ll find in any roleplaying game. The setting explores fear and isolation and a deep sense of impending doom. It features the story about a handful of good people who undertake the nearly hopeless fight to rekindle hope in a cursed land. Trigger warnings include a central theme of abusive male behavior, forced marriage and , child abuse, child death, massacre and genocide, body horror, torture themes, humans eating humans, demonic-like influences over mortals, and other potentially volatile topics we should discuss and set rules for in advance. All can be downplayed to accommodate the players’ desires except for a storyline involving threats to force a human into an unwanted marriage. If you aren’t disturbed by most modern horror movies, you will likely not be distressed by the campaign’s horror themes, but discussing and setting borders up front is crucial. This is a campaign that discards D&D’s usual assumptions that the odds of prevailing are in the the PC’s favor. It’s dark and gritty. Its focused on diplomacy and guile and human interaction as much as it does in combat and magic. You may be the good guys, but your status as future heroes is very much in doubt. Some if not all of you will die before it’s over. For some of you, the best you will likely be able to achieve is dying well. And death here is not necessarily as simple as sniffing out the candle. The campaign’s lethality level and nightmarish mood feels as close to a Call of Cthulhu scenario as D&D gets. But CoS more than makes up for this by being also as immersive as D&D gets. If plunging into the mists of a Transylvanian mystery where dark is more dark than people of today understand, where monsters have teeth and hunger for all you have, and hope is slim and faltering, but you are also likely to be the only hope there will ever be, this adventure is for you. Join me in the dark. You will never forget what happens.