Strahd Von Valentines Day

In honor of Valentines Day I'd like to talk about a subject most near and dear to my heart, my unrequited love for Ravenloft and all things Strahd Von Zarovich!

On the Dead Games Society podcast #38 we talk a little about the tragic romance that is Strahd Von Zarovich's origin story.

In the original AD&D Ravenloft adventure from 1983, known among collectors as "I6," we are introduced to a most cunning Vampire Lord that harries the Player Characters throughout their journeys within the Transylvania-like realm of Barovia. The villagers name him as "The Devil Strahd," and that he lives in the mysterious castle that perches above the village like a waiting vulture. This mysterious Strahd expertly performs guerilla-like attacks on the PCs as they travel and camp at night, striking only once or twice before fading back into the shadows. Eventually the PC's may explore Castle Ravenloft and find Strahd's personal journal, wherein he describes in his own hand (and point of view) how he came to become obsessed with his younger brother's fiance as well as his own creeping mortality, and made a pact with some dark entity to the blood-drinking master of Ravenloft.

"With words she called me “brother,” but when I looked into her eyes they reflected another name – “death.” It was the death of the aged that she saw in me. She loved her youth and enjoyed it. But I had squandered mine. The death she saw in me turned her from me. And so I came to hate death, my death. My hate is very strong: I would not be called “death” so soon. I made a pact with Vol, a pact of Blood. On the day of the wedding, I killed Sergei, my brother. My pact was sealed with his blood, his…divinity.
I found Taryana weeping in the garden east of the Chapel. She fled from me. She would not let me explain, and a great anger swelled within me. She had to understand the pact I made for her! I pursued her. Finally, in despair, she flung herself from the walls of Ravenloft and I watched everything I ever wanted fall from my grasp forever."

-Tome of Strahd

During the adventure, the PCs are tasked with protecting Ireena Kolyana from Strahd's affections (who he sees as the reincarnation of Tatyana). He constantly tries to separate her from the PCs and whisk her away to Castle Ravenloft to woo her into loving him. However he thinks the best way to do that is to charm a PC into attacking her and then swooping in to destroy that PC in front of her. He's not a super lovey-dovey dude. Based on that diary passage above, I don't think the Strahd fall from grace is about love so much as obsession with her youthfulness and rebelling against his encroaching mortality. When Strahd says that he "Loves" Tatyana (Ireena), its really more about his obsession with her youthfulness and carefree life. Love is reciprocal and pleasant, Obsession is more one-sided and lustful. I think it could be argued that obsession may be a stronger emotion than Love, and I don't think Love is really a power that would create vampires, after all. So when Strahd is chasing after the PCs in I6 and trying to capture Ireena, I think he subconsciously understands this lost cause, and knows that she will never actually love him, no matter how much he whines about it. He doesn't expect to actually get her. He simply desires a justification to feel persecuted again, to be perceived as a martyr as much as possible. Of course, once he achieves that goal of being rejected and again proving the injustice of "love", he'll he'll happily rip the rest of the party to shreds. Happy Valentine's!

So that's a bit of my take on Strahd's personality, but developing your own understanding of Strahd's motivation is key to playing him as interestingly as possible if you dare take your players through the original I6: Ravenloft.

You can listen to me ramble on and on about how much I love Ravenloft (with tangential references to Valentines Day) on the DGS Podcast #38!

Curse of Strahd on Fantasy Grounds

So I've just learned that Fantasy Grounds has made the whole Curse of Strahd module available and all ready-to-go! This is fantastic news.

I used to use Fantasy Grounds to run a campaign of 3.5e D&D with a bunch of far-flung buddies. I ran them through Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Even posted a bunch of update threads on the old blog, and the screenshots I took of our games ended up on the Fantasy Grounds website (Valhallan). But for Expedition to Castle Ravenloft I had to transcribe everything by hand into Fantasy Grounds. Back then (2008) you couldn't even cut and paste from an outside document to inside, so every word, action button, clickable response, die modifier, had to be written directly into the FG program, which didn't have as smooth a typing interface as, say a Word document. It was almost a 3:1 ratio of Prep:Gameplay in those days. I would gladly pay someone else to do all that transcription for me.

 
Now you can just buy everything pre-packaged and ready to go? Kids these days don't know how good they have it. And I've been reading Curse of Strahd and I have to admit, its a really good remake of the original Castle Ravenloft. A lot more fleshed out, and even features [SPOILER ALERT] Rudolph Van Richten! I'll give a more indepth review of the book once I finish it, but for now I'm just excited that if I decide to play it remotely I won't have to write everything myself for Fantasy Grounds. Anything that results in more gaming and less prepping is aces in my book!

Game on!

Games I'd like to play

There's a thing about pen-and-paper RPGs -- They take A LOT OF TIME to play. Even a one-shot convention game is going to take 4 hours to complete, and that's if the DM has his shit together. (My one-shots usually take about 6 hours for the party to complete, because I do not.) When you are a teenager this amount of time doesn't really matter, because after school the alternative to gaming is staying at home and talking to your parents or doing chores (or play sportsball, but who wants to do that?) Neither of which are going to be able to compete with playing RPGs with your friends in the fun department. 

Ah, those were the days. All the time in the world.

However as adults we somehow have less time on our hands, even if we valiantly attempt to shirk our other responsibilities as much as humanly possible. So when we get to play RPGs we don't like to have our time wasted, and therefore end up playing the same RPG system over and over. Because why risk learning/teaching/trying some new RPG system you bought as a PDF when its already 7:30pm by the time everyone arrived and you need to be home by 9:30pm?

"What? You've got to go already? But we only just finished rolling stats... yeah, I guess I should get home too..."

Ravenloft: Night of the Walking Dead (2e) Free Until Oct. 31st

Probably one of my favorite Ravenloft adventures, Night of the Walking Dead, is free on Drive Thru RPG until Friday, Oct. 31st in their Halloween sale. Night of the Walking Dead is one of my favorites just because of sheer nostalgia. The fact that it was one of the very few published first-level Ravenloft adventures available back in the day meant that I probably read it cover-to-cover a thousand times. Plus it has giant frogs in it. Its a pretty fun adventure and a good intro to Ravenloft, and I have enjoyably run more than one gaming group through those zombie-infested lands.

In a rain-soaked graveyard, a small group of men stands round a coffin bound with heavy chains. "We are here to mourn the passing of Jean de Cardeau," intones the village priest. " Let us pray that his rest is eternal, and that he never returns."

As the pallbearers lift the coffin, something scrapes on the wood from inside. Quickly and without emotion, the attendants slide the casket into a crypt. Then they seal the door and flee. Behind them, unheard, a dull thudding begins, growing louder with the onset of twilight. There can be no peace for those who linger in the earthly realm after death. And there can be no sanctuary on the Night of the Walking Dead!

Set in a zombie-infested swampland, "Night of the Walking Dead" is an ideal first-time Ravenloft adventure. Players must unravel the mystery behind a string of murders and disappearances in a village plagued by ambulant undead—and all is not as simple as it seems!

The hour of fear is upon us. Are you ready to face the Demiplane of Dread?

Fantasy Grounds - A Tragedy in Screenshots

So back in 2007 I moved far away from where the rest of my D&D crew lived, so I had to find a gaming alternative to face-to-face D&D.  The alternative I found was the just-released program called Fantasy Grounds, which is an online tabletop for D&D gaming.  With it I ran a d20 online Ravenloft campaign online for some of my homies back in those days (and would post campaign updates on my old blog).

CabinCon10.2 Presents: Night of the Walking Dead

Night begins to settle over the swamp, cloaking the dense undergrowth in darkness and turning the water's surface to black. With it comes a clinging, creeping fog, rising from the water like a spectral steam. The fog surrounds you, its dampness caressing you like cold, dead hands. The swamp seems to retreat from the mists, its sights and sounds disappearing into some unseen distance. All that remains visible is the cold, choking fog. Even your companions seem far away. For a moment, everything is quiet. What few sounds you can hear are amplified by the surrounding mists: your own breathing, your beating heart. Then the fog begins to dissipate, fading away as quickly as it appeared, leaving you and your companions alone in the dismal swamp. A sign sticks crookedly from the mire, reading “Marais D’Tarascon, 5 miles” and pointing down the swampy river.