u/progressivemonkey

The best description I've read of dnd is that it's "collaborative storytelling".

"collaborative storytelling" with a single person is just storytelling. You can write stories by yourself!

I don't have experience with what you're dealing with exactly so please take my suggestion with a grain of salt.

It seems like everyone (you included) needs to get back into the campaign before you get to the really serious stuff, with the deal with Strahd. You say you're rusty, I can imagine that could also be the case for your players: even if they are playing dnd in other campaigns, they will have to get back into their CoS characters. But I don't see a better way to get into the story than playing some dnd, but with lower stakes.

Why not throw a few one-shots that would serve this purpose? You're the night before the Festival, you could frame it as your characters gathering before the big day and sharing stories of their past. Each story could be a one-shot adventure, that could let the players get back into character and let you regain your footing as a DM.

That would require the collaboration of at least one player character. Another thing I did one session where two players could not come at the last minute is that I made a custom prequel adventure. The characters were in Madam Eva's tent, so I had her tell them a story. They played it, though in that case they had to play different characters, and the story was obviously a bit railroady since it had to lead to Barovia's current state.

OK so why not use available maps? Why redraw them?

I infer from what you're saying that you have a screen on your table or a projector? If so, aren't there tons of publicly available maps for Castle Ravenloft (and the other areas of Barovia)??

it benefits the team to get high rolls

Nah man that's not true. The goal of DnD is to tell a great story together, not to "kill all the monsters." Getting a "win" by lying about dice rolls is like playing duck hunt with the gun pressed against the TV. Why even bother?

Well sure it's more dangerous, but MandyMod does have some good points: what the hell are a mimic and a grick doing there?? If you want danger it would be better to replace them with other monsters.

Check out Fleshing out curse of strahd by MandyMod. She has a ton of useful tweaks that both help gameplay and storytelling! After reading it the book version seemed kind of laughable tbh

https://giphy.com/gifs/J8FZIm9VoBU6Q

Also, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to know who that person is. You can DM me for that if that's ok for you (I can't DM you)

Amazing thanks, that's super helpful. One final question if I may: did you just find this coach and roll with her, or did you compare several? If the latter, what were decisive factors in your choice? Or if you didn't compare several, what did this one say that convinced you to take out your credit card?

I'm also interested in how they helped. If you could develop that, it would be extremely valuable. I've been considering getting a career coach for a while but struggle with how to find the right one, and whether what's holding me back is even addressable by one

If be kind of surprised if it weren't true

Thanks a lot, that's super valuable. I've looked into it. Revenants as far as I understand are essentially invincible until you get Wish. I would like for them to have a way to escape them before. Perhaps doing some ritual of atonement?

Have you ever run something like this, or do you have an idea what it could look like?

🙏🙏

I like that! Thanks!

Strahd owns everything in Barovia so he isn't blocked by the necessity to be invited in. Otherwise the whole campaign would make little sense.

The question is moot for CoS as Strahd is the land.

Oh yeah if you could share the map / mechanic I would love to see that. I often hear about people running battles and, as a relatively new DM, can't fathom how that is done. Even "simple" combats are tough to keep track of 😄

Aaaaah that's super interesting! I went a different way for this one but I'll keep that in mind for some other time. It's great because, while it's a complete aside, the intel could still be valuable... Thanks for sharing!

And yes absolutely they should know it wouldn't change anything. I was even thinking that an unexpected character death could be treated as in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Mme Eva just goes "oh no, I misremembered, that's not what happened", which could be fun :-)

Yeah for more or less any other moment in the adventure I would have kept the session with one player absent, but for the card reading? It feels really weird. I mean at the very least, the card reading will have to be repeated to the absent player, so why even bother.