Curse of Strahd Redux and how D&D modules are written

Iron & Gold

There are going to be spoilers for Curse of Strahd. Just so you know.

Okay, so I started Curse of Strahd as a solo anyway. I’m running it with Iron & Gold from Precis Intermdia. Iron & Gold is a level-less point-based 2d6 system (yes, it says Iron Gauntlets in the label for this entry, but I’m actually using Iron & Gold); Curse of Strahd is chock-a-block with levels and classes. Conversion between them has some mechanical differences (2d6 roll under versus d20 roll over; Iron & Gold uses only 5 wound levels, so making things tougher is a bit more complicated than adding more hit points), but the story has been the biggest challenge.

Not just because I’m a wimp and don’t want my characters doing really awful things (there is an example of that, which I’ll get to) but because of the way that D&D adventures are structured, and have been since, oh, the village of Hommlet was first written.

See, I write technical documentation for a living. In my job, we are supposed to put all available information or pointers to possibly useful information together. “Here is how you do the thing, and if you need to do something related, here are places you can look.” As a group we are more or less successful at this (my lexicon and the Microsoft lexicon seem to be vastly different, so it is often more useful for me to Google something than use the help provided by Microsoft, fr example), but that is the goal.

Adventures and modules for D&D are different. They are largely location-based, and tell you what you can see at any given moment. Great if what you’re doing is fighting something. However, the land of Barovia in this fifth edition sandbox is set up as a powderkeg, with various political factions working against each other or for each other, or pretending to ignore each other. It is complicated, and there’s no summary or links to let you know.

You have to read the whole thing, preferably several times and preferably taking notes, so that you know that, oh, the Vistani aren’t the only ones who can penetrate the mists in some scenarios. (One of the intros has werewolves doing it occasionally.) Or maybe discovering that the wedding gown mentioned in Vallakia might have some use in dealing with the Abbot in Krezk, so a GM knows to mention the wedding gown if the PCs get to a place where then can see it.

It lets you plan, is what I’m saying.

There’s also an interesting thing that happens in Krezk, which my story needs to go to because of the (cool) random fortune thing.

There is in Krezk a sacred pool that they get their water from. It’s inside the town walls, so they are pretty self-sufficient. (The village of Barovia looks to be built on a floodplain, so wells should be easy there, and I’d expect them to be in the houses. The module doesn’t mention this, though there are hints that things don’ make sense because this is actually a pocket dimension made to torment Strahd.) If Ireena sees the pool:

1. A vision of Sergei appears in the pool.
2. Ireena gets the memories of being Tatyana back (and somewhere I saw a hint that she remembers things from all past incarnations).
3. Sergei tries to pull her into the pool; Ireena wants to go.

The PCs either:

• Let her go in, and she’s safe forever; or
• The PCs stop her from diving in (this is a woman who has been charmed repeatedly by a vampire), in which case she loses her chance to be with Sergei

In either case, Strahd is aware that she now remembers her previous life (and is possibly gone), breaks the enchantment on the pool, and is gunning for the PCs as punishment, and the pool is no longer safe to drink, which means that they’ve earned the enmity of the entirety of Krezk.

I am not sure I can work either of them, so I might get her out of Krezk and up to the abbey as quickly as possible.

Or not; part of this is up to dice — I’ve already stretched things by having the thief steal Richtoven’s raise dead scroll.

The epilogue, for DM’s only, states that (because this particular dimension is Strahd’s punishment) he revives in a few months to be punished some more even if the PCs kill him. No word on whether Tatyana’s soul is yanked back onto the reincarnation machine, but frankly, I suspect it’s an ersatz soul somehow; if the whole place is constructed to torment Strahd, why not have a few souls of people who also need punishment, put them in, and mark one less-bad soul as “Tatyana’s” soul. This is the interpretation that I’ll be using: if they manage to kill Strahd, anyone who wants to leave does so, but the Dark Powers will always get a bunch of souls who need to be tortured and they get on the Bavaria soul merry-go-round.

EDIT: I misread it first time; now it’s clear that no matter what, bringing Ireena to the pool causes the enchantment on the pool to be broken, whether they let Ireena dive in or not. (I've rewritten the above to be clear on that.)

Yay.

I don’t mind if the PCs make difficult choices, but there is no way that PCs can know this is a bad choice. And one of the NPCs (Donavich) suggests it.

The epilogue does not in any way suggest what happens to the pool when the dimension re-sets, but I suspect it also re-sets. Heck, maybe the Ireena of the next iteration will be back, too — there’s so much in the module that is simmering and about to boil that it seems likely that all of it re-sets.