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Share Your Strahd Stories! (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-23 17:32:41
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

As promised during the last Short Rest, we also want to hear your Strahd stories! Did you also name him Strahdge? Tell us your funniest, weirdest, craziest Strahd moment and we'll discuss it on the show. Please keep it brief so we can pack as many in as we can!

Comments

Matti Niemi

haven’t played it yet but wanted to comment to feel included

Rintoul

Excited for the stradghe rest

Josh

We started multiple rebellions throughout the region and eventually got the dusk elves to resettle the abby and take after the “zoominoids” after womping the Abbott.

MJ

I decided Strahd wasn't a very cool villain and was too easy to dunk on so I made him a hot MILF named Katrina instead. She wears thigh-high Louboutins and everyone is scared of / horny for her. (So I caused OTHER problems.) Also, one of my players tried to argue that "a continuous stream of piss" counted as running water for the purposes of vampire rules. I had them do an insanely high constitution check and performance check to piss on command in public and they failed and it went badly for them until they decided to just use the god damn sun sword

Dave 3D Art

Howdy 2 Crew, I'll say that the times I've run Curse of Strahd have been fairly uneventful. Not bad times just by the book. I did however once run a one shot in which Strahd's brain was transplanted into a Tarrasque's body. It went about as well as expected, but it was a time, and a half.

Nick Kipouros

My party managed to skip pretty much the entire castle by getting themselves all bitten and turned into wereravens then crashing through a window into the room that just so happened to be the one where they were destined to meet Strahd. After a thorough whomping, the bard dealt the final blow by using the Animate Objects spell to animate a set of silverware he'd stolen from a noble during the very first session of the game. The objects stabbed Strahd to death as the party sang "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast.

Kippin21

One of my player characters is a druid, of course met Ismark but instead of doing so in a normal sensible way, wildshaped himself into a horse, walked into the blood on the vine tavern, and somehow utilizing Morse code. Challenged Ismark to a game of cards, and one handily by rolling 3 natural 20’s in a row.

Joe Howard

My only Strahd story(since we’re still playing it, just made it to Vallaki) is my DM misread Ismark’s statblock and thought he fought with two long swords and a third short sword. After realizing his flub, we all went in on it and every time Ismark attacked, we razzed our DM by describing him grabbing a new weapon to use this time; currently 8 swords, 3 hammers, a scythe, and I think a javelin.

Jason Rodriguez

While listening to the Trinyvale arc in Barovia, I missed playing in curse of straud. The campaign i was in broke apart and never picked up after leaving castle ravenloft. Overall it was a fun campaign, and my human scribe wizard named Irvan Jett had his fill on adventure. He was a variant human with the dungeon delve feat to reflect his background as a grave robber after his mentor had passed. What I remember fondly was looking for the bones of saint markovia in the coffin makers abode while spawn were flooding in to stop us. While the bard and the paladin were holding the line, Irvan was tasked to locate the hidden compartments for all the bones (which he had advantage on). He essentially was playing hangman while we were in combat. I definitely have more stories about Irvan and his party "The Jett Black Rose Society", but I really hope to play him once more.

thatedgydrowwarlock

We are currently on our 2nd playthrough of Curse of Strahd but with a twist: Barovia is a series of islands inside of a fantasy 'Bermuda triangle' and the campaign is like. Pirate-themed and it's so sick. In our 1st playthrough our DM made Rahadin v submissive to Strahd and when he failed to kill us, we showed up to dinner with Strahd and he was in a maids outfit. When we insight checked him after trying to persuade him to reconsider allegiance to strahd due to a poor work environment, we found out Rahadin (Reagan) had a humiliation kink.

Kyle

Our DM really leaned into Strahd showing up randomly and messing with us. He showed up and the DM secretly rolled a charm save for the the Cleric that they failed. In secret, the DM instructed the Cleric that they would spend all spare spellslots on Sending before resting to tell Strahd what we were up to, which allowed him to mess with us more. We didn’t learn this happened until 5 or so sessions

Morgan

these comments will keep me entertained in this blizzard!! stay warm everyone!!

Sabrina

Our Strahd campaign imploded after our DM did erotic roleplay as Strahd with their wife’s character during the dinner party. My first DND campaign ever btw.

Andy W.

Short and sweet: My Strahd was a gnome and his nightmare a pony. He looked normal as he rode through the sky but kept getting smaller as he got closer. Do a squeaky vampire voice to see why.

Walter Tater

One of our players was relatively new and had an underdeveloped backstory so our DM made her Strahd’s secret daughter, and once we killed him, she inherited the castle.

Michael Scarborough

I am currently DMing a curse of Strahd campaign campaign that has gotten wild. our fighter, Chad Powers has been walking around attuned to a Baba Lysaga Chicken Hut 1-2 shoting most enemies. I also included a tournament arc called blood fest in Barovista where rival lycanthropy gangs attempted to please Strahd by hosting an underground tournament!

JesterTheCleric

Hello 2 crew! I ran a oneshot called Strahd Must Die Tonight for some of my players when not everyone could make it. Its a condensed version of the castle, taking place in 4 hours as they explore and try to find and kill Strahd. I had my players be level 10 for funsies, and had them use old characters who are essentially our version of the triplets (lovable kinda evil shitheads who do the right things for usually the completely wrong reasons). When they entered the castle, they decided that it was just an escape room with bad jumpscares and pretty good set dressing. All was going well, until they went into Strahds bedroom, where they found a woman charmed in his bed. Strahd appeared to them to taunt them, and they immediately attacked him for having said woman charmed in his bed, forcing him to flee. He got chased, accidentally leading them to where the sun sword was kept, and eventually lost them. The characters eventually found and killed him, and although they were level 10, it was weirdly harder for them because someone was playing an oathbreaker paladin and their aura buffed all undeads damage, meaning that Strahd was getting buffed by a PC. It was really fun and maybe one day ill run the whole campaign for that group properly (albeit with different characters, i love the shitheads but they have enough fun as it is)

Ivan Kay

CoS was easily the most deadly and difficult adventure I have played. We still have a few sessions left, but only one character of our original party of 5 is still alive. In total, we have had 7 character deaths. Some notable deaths include my fighter who got baked into a pie by a hag, two characters getting jumped by shadows and mimics in the basement of a haunted house, and the tree killing two of our party members. We never killed the tree.

Zach

To, honestly, a great group of people who bring joy to my ears each week through heartfelt and hilarious D&D content... and Jake. I present to you: Operation GOAT Late campaign, Strahd captured and charmed Ireena, inviting our party and everyone in the land to their wedding at Castle Ravenloft. Over the next two weeks irl, our crew did more planning than we ever had before or since for a D&D game to put together the ultimate plan which hinged on a random goat we found on the road on the way to the wedding and a hag potion we previously acquired that turns a humanoid creature into a goat. At the wedding, half the party went after leads we knew of in the castle hoping the wedding would be a distraction, while the other half leaned into the wedding with their new goat "wedding gift", even dancing and making toasts to the "happy couple" that we used to symbolically embolden and prepare those loyal to us for the fight ahead. At the end of the final toast, we released a surprise fog cloud as our sneakier members used the cover to kidnap the charmed Ireena, forced her to drink the goat potion (which she failed the save on and goated up), and pulled her into the fog covered crowd where the party split Ireena Goat and Road Goat up to confuse Strahd and his forces. All hell broke loose between our allies (wereravens & townsfolk) and Strahd forces (werewolves, gargoyles, minor vampires, and other misc baddies) as they tried to figure out where Ireena disappeared to, and it was honestly one of the tougher and higher stakes fights of the entire campaign. While we did permanently lose our dhampir party member to enemies guarding the Heart of Sorrow (who we had to fight as a vampire later) and also saw the death of my goblin cleric/warlock in the escape (who the party rogue/Ireena's sister rescued my body to be later brought back), this plan's overall success as we escaped with Ireena Goat, which took over three sessions to see to fruition and escalated the campaign into the final arc, is one that our party still talks about to this day... and whose overall success still confounds our DM.

Samuel Lewis

I had to 1v3 the boy moms as a cleric because our wizard got blasted up a hill by one of the hags, the fighter went to go help him, and the other players weren’t at the session. Spirit guardians saved my ass by melting their HP. My rolls were really good all session, leaving me the sole victor of the battle for the old bonegrinder

Nicolas P.

My dad asked me to run Curse of Strahd for him 1 on 1 right as you guys started the campaign. It’s been a delight to play and listen at the same time. The current highlight has been him making a friend with a ghost that possessed Baba Lysaga and they absolutely kicked the shit out of her. He also got Pidlwick as his companion so I’m excited to push him down the stairs.

Star_Drek

We did death house before the main campaign - Our party’s mute murder hobo just sprinted around trying to steal stuff and aggro-ing enemies. By the third session of us saving his ass from a bunch of enemies we all just silently agreed to let him die permanently to the shambling mound in the basement so we could be done with it. Later in the campaign, that same player’s next (or third?) character hastily opened ezmerelda’s wagon and disintegrated himself and half of the rest of our party.

Liz

My party sort of wreaked havoc on Vallaki during our time there. Ireena (played as a PC by one of my friends) accidentally burned down half the town, including the burgomaster's mansion, while trying to cause a distraction so the rest of the party could escape imprisonment. We also kind of forced democracy on the place because the burgomaster was kind of a fascist and Lady Fiona Wachter was not an acceptable alternative because she was a nutjob necromancer who kept her dead husband's corpse in her house (presumably using gentle repose or something to keep him from rotting?). So we had them imprisoned, and now there's a town council headed by the Martikovs and some other local luminaries!

Crits

i played a cleric of selune in a game where three pcs had already died during the campaign. we were pretty desperate to beat strahd and avenge our friends so i took a dark gift. the one i took had the surprise negative effect of turning me into a werewolf. my dm said normally this would result in me becoming an npc under strahds control, but allowed me to make a plea to selune to keep control over myself. i got a nat 20 religion check and became a believer in dice christ

awhitby

First Strahd encounter: Strahd Polymorphed the Barbarian into a mule for being a smart ass. Barbarian spent the entire encounter that way, and ended up being the only party member still standing at the end. Strahd left everyone else unconscious, and kidnapped Ireena. In session 3.

eliza sleepker

hey vampires! I was DMing Strahd last year for our group, the group was having a good time until they decided to kick the doors in at the coffin makers shop. Fans of the module maybe know that the vamp nest in the attic is a notorious TPK spot. Well that’s basically what happened it was a total knock down drag out fight with 4 of the 5 players being downed after taking out all but one of the vampire spawn. It was down to just the fighter and one spawn fighting to the death, and they each had less than 5 HP. On his last turn, the fighter decided to roll the dice in our special dice roller. It’s something like a baby rattle meets a wizard wand with a d20 inside and it ALWAYS rolls horribly. We call it the Death Rattle. Everyone was screaming, begging him not to roll it and lo and behold he rolled a nat fucking twenty and ended the fight. We nearly flipped the table

Jacob Boers

I’ve played strahd twice and have some strange experiences from both. In my first time playing it, one of the other players character died in every session for the first 3 sessions and he had to roll up a new character every session. The second time through we accidentally killed the BurgerMaster of Vallaki (because of a friendly fire during nat 1 house rule we were experimenting with) as well as his political rival from the book and the campaign did a hard pivot into a political drama where we became the campaign managers of a random guard named “Guard” as we tried to get our own policies enacted in this random town.

zack proudfoot

My party took over bone grinder and began construction on barovias first gay bar, since "the name is already perfect".

Emily and Lauren

My players all banded together to kill piddlewick (he just wanted friends) and then went back in time with the fate card and when faced by piddlewick again gaslit him into joining the group because “killing a fake demonic child might have been a step too far”

Thom van Tijn

Our party had just arrived in the chapel in Valaki. We had met the Abbott and he was offering to help the party. However, he had one condition set had to workship his god. The first few party members reluctantly agreed, but then we got to my best friend's character. He was playing a barmaid from the Dragonlance setting where the gods had abandoned the world. So when the Abbott got to him, he loudly proclaimed: "Fuck your God!" and the combat started. Still one of the best role playing moments I've witnessed. Sadly we didn't get to finish the mod.

Lenora

I (the very happy forever DM) did Curse of Strahd with a group of mine awhile back. I went out of my way to set a great mood - full cosplay with fake teeth, candle lit sessions and red wine for the dinner. During their first meeting with Strahd, the wizard, who was a tabaxi former familiar cat named Whiskers, misty stepped up to the top of the chapel at the funeral of Kolyan where Strahd had appeared and proceeded ask for a roll to 'unbutton Strahd's pants real quick'... I did the sensible thing and had Strahd dangle the cat by the scruff of his neck over the edge of the chapel and threaten his life. Fun times. Also Vallaki went up in flames - it always does...

Roz Rae Powers

Okay a decade ago my sister ran an actual play podcast and played a warlock in a Strahd game, one of the few she didn't DM. This warlock was raised by Baba Lysaga, the witch of Barovia, and was not well socialized. Notably, after struggling with several interpersonal interactions in Vallaki, she bought a goat and left town to relax in the way she knew best: slaughtering a goat in the woods and sleeping in the blood. The town guards warned her about werewolves out there, but she didn't care. The werewolves did find her sleeping in the slaughtered goat remains, killed her, and nailed her corpse to the town wall. The party convinced he Abbot to resurrect her, and she came back with the new UA Undying Light patron, and the game was great fun to listen to after. (The podcast is no longer hosted anywhere)

laurel peterson

My bard dwarf tried to play the bagpipe to entertain strahd while our owlin did a jig. He was not amused and nearly killed me. We then came across gallows showing a depiction of me in a noose. Oh and the owlin was almost killed by a broom in the death house.

Fox

I was running my finally and one of my players said he wanted to die and become a revenant and join the knights of Argynvost (we had changed it to be like the army do the dead from LoTR) so I planned this really cool last stand where he had to stand on a button to keep the draw bridge lowered to castle ravenloft and have a last stand while the rest of the party made their way across and he held the line. But the thing is he refused to die, like not just was rolling well and I kept missing. He kept trying to run away instead of stay and hold the line. What should have been 20min became an entire session of me just chasing him across the castle courtyard

G.X. Barnett

There was a section in Ravenloft 3.5 where a wizard had the Summon Lesser Demon spell, but my DM accidentally chose to summon a Greater Devil instead due to a mistake on the page. Instead of retracting his spell or correcting the mistake he unleashed a CR 22 Devil into Barovia. He thought it would be funny to see how that changed the dynamics of the game and that the devil may go for Strahd himself. The campaign fell apart not long after but it’s been one of my biggest “What-If’s” in my D&D career.

Austin Powers

I ran a Curse of Strahd campaign a few years ago, and one of my favorite scenes happened on the road to Vallaki. The party was travelling with Ireena and Ismark when Strahd's carriage was spotted up ahead. Ireena took a deep breath and climbed into a bag of holding, while Ismark drank a modify memory potion. Strahd approached the group and told Ismark to pull her out of the bag, he knew she was hiding in there. Ismark reached in and pulled out Ireena's necklace and said "you must have been tracking this, Ireena is not with us" and Strahd was annoyed, but left the group. After he left, the modify memory potion wears off and Ismark pulls out Ireena's limp body, and proceeds to resuscitate her. She had fainted from holding her breath too long, but was pulled out just in time. It was really tense scene for the party of level 4 players!!

David Wieser

To serve as a plot twist, I sort of intentionally TPK'd my party. My plan was to have the dark powers revive them as a deus ex machina at the Amber Temple as a show of power, intent, and plot device that there's something greater than Strahd going on in Barovia. ... however, I did it with an hour-long drag-out fight with Baba Lysaga where she repeatedly cast Cloudkill on them in a small room. They didn't really have a chance. However, after that fight, my players left the session despondent, and I felt terrible. As an apology, the next session, I had them revive at the realm of the patron of my party's cleric: the Corn Goddess's plane. I filled it with goofy stuff I knew they'd love, like giant fields of corn harvested by corn people that gave off the corn energy that powered our Cleric, and a city filled corn people doing corny things (for example, Mayor Cobb lived in the city center called The Kernel). The party even met the Corn Goddess, who revealed that she was actually the Morninglord of Barovia, and that the party was doing her work all along to defeat Strahd. ... and then I had them come back to the Amber Temple to continue their adventure. I feel bad about TPK'ing my players, but I learned so much about how to use the rule of cool, and how to tweak a module to be what me and my players liked. In the end, the adventure to the realm of corn was my party's favorite.

Rain

Strahd was the first ever D&D campaign that we ever played, and was my first time GM'ing. There were plenty of fun moments from that campaign, but the most notable thing that we did was to cut out the Marina character and make one of the PCs Tatiana's reincarnation instead, a reveal that included Tatiana's ghost speaking to the PC in her dreams. The PC in question happened to be a half-orc teen warrior, so Strahd quickly became low-status as everyone started ragging on him for being a creep. Another player also got addicted to dream pastries, and had to hide it from her twin sister, another PC. It ended up spinning off a years-long campaign, so it's been delightful to revisit those old memories!

Crits

i’m crying

Lizzie

Can confirm, I was also a first time player in this campaign. Was quite the introduction to the game, to say the least.

Lucy

Recently my personal trainer had asked what i had been listening to while i work out and i mentioned naddpod Strahd campaign. I gave her a brief overview and explained DnD. Turns out her and another girl i work out with have been wanting to try DnD so i ran them through the death house as an intro and they are hooked. Looks like they want to play the full adventure as a regular gane night.

knitted cape

In our run through the horrors of Barovia, very early on we came upon a house and sought shelter for the night. The resident let us stay in his attic, where we were promptly ambushed by 6 vampire spawn that were hiding in barrels. It was a very tough fight, though we scraped by and stormed downstairs to confront the man about the trap that he had set, who was quickly killed by a PC whose alignment had changed to evil after pulling from the deck of many things. This player was a centaur. He killed the man by stomping him to death with his hooves. In order to cover our tracks, the party then snuck into a local stable, stole a horse, and locked it in the house with the man, hoping to frame it for our crime. It did not work, and one of the campaigns biggest hooks was a pair of local detectives hot on our trail. We really, really thought the horse thing would work.

Daoloth

When my party stumbled upon the Old Bonegrinder at only level 3, it led to my first total party KO. When the Hags revealed themselves, it led to 3 out of 4 of the party members knocked unconcious, with only the bard left standing. He found the orphan at the top of the windmill, took her in his arms, and with the hags in close pursuit, crashed through the window with maybe 5 hp left to his name. He asked to shield the orphan as they landed and volunteered to take all of the falling damage himself, knowing it would likely result in his death. He barely survived insta death, but fell unconcious and was left at the mercy of the coven while the orphan escaped.

Jillian M

Our entire party skipped death house because our DM described a run down house with the sound of a child crying from inside of it, and we collectively said “nope” and left the village without so much as peaking through a window

CamSmall

Greetings and salutations to the Two Crew. In a game of Strahd that I DM'd, my players interrupted my "introducing Strahd description" with the addition that he sounded like Joey Wheeler (from YuGiOh for those not familiar). For the rest of the game, they insisted I do a bad Brooklyn accent. Additionally, they thought saying Strahd's name was taboo and would make him appear. As a result, they referred to him IN CHARACTER as Joey Wheeler. Joey Wheeler aside, the party also polymorphed each other into TRexes, and the barbarian (a new player) needed to be reminded to rage. On multiple turns, the barbarian took lots of damage, said "Why? Oh, right, I need to rage," and then did not rage at their next turn despite DM prompting saying "any bonus action you want to do?" They also decided in Vallaki to start a revolution and spent a MONTH REAL TIME (4 sessions) crafting a propaganda play against the Burgomaster of Vallaki.

Sam Gordon

We started a Strahd campaign as three prissy rich teens who were “going to tell their father about this,” and were appalled to suddenly be surrounded by “dirty poors.” The campaign eventually fell apart, so we were thrilled to hear that you were taking the triplets to Barovia so we could live through you vicariously!

Gigi Grilli

My group also gave Strahd a nickname! We met him a few times when he was disguised as a random human man named Dominic, but when our DM introduced him, I misheard the last name as Toretto. We called him Dominic Toretto until he revealed himself to be Strahd and then we started calling him Vin Diesel.

Michael Beck

I ran a Curse of Strahd game a few years back, and in my version there was an old man who was sabotaging efforts by the town of Vallaki because he believed Strahd would win and capitulating was the only safe choice. Once the party found this out they ended up beating him up, and handing him off to the Wereravens to keep an eye on. This happened in some fashion or the other 4 more times, because rather than kill them the players felt bad and wanted to keep adopting all the weird old dudes that tried to fight them. Eventually I had to have the Wereravens tell them that they couldn't hold anymore old men in their basement in order to stop my players from backtracking to drop off every weird old man they fought. It all worked out ok but my players were sad that they could no longer "adopt" old men that were trying to kill them.

William Lambertz

Highlights from our campaign two years ago include; trying to become slum lords of the witches’ windmill, one PC decided to sleep outside of the Vallaki walls and almost got torn to shreds by the direwolf attacks, and I, as the cleric, misread the early dinner with Strahd and only prepared one healing spell. I thought it was going to be a masquerade type party and RP session, we almost TPKd but made it out all alive, from that. It was a blast listening to the Triplets take on Borovia and makes me want to revisit that book!

Hemlock

Dice Christ bless my wife, she did her best for us chuckleheads. She rolled with us dubbing ourselves the Back Street Boys and singing boy band tunes around Barovia. She straight manned our Loxodon spinning the Burgomaster's casket like a novelty sign. But she had to call it the end when we claimed the Old Bone Grinder and had the bright idea to turn it into a successful bakery that served *exclusively* cock shaped bread. In the years since, we've apologized vehemently and she says it's all in the past, but the Back Street Boys and our phallic bread adventures still hold infamy in the friend group

Peter Cornillie

I DMed strahd and told my players that I was going to actively try to kill them. One of my players made a zealot barbarian who, at one point, tanned 26 attacks from twig blights. Afterwards I switched tactics. Every time Strahd talked with the party, the first thing he would do is polymorph the Barbarian into a sheep. He never pasted his wisdom saves

Winston Hayes

I was running death house for some friends and it was our Fighters first campaign. There was a fight against enchanted armor and it pushed him down the stairs forcing him to use his next turn to get back into combat. At the end in the castle he also got pushed down the stairs during the Strahd fight by Blinksy resulting in him yelling, "Not again!" And falling out of his chair

Sabrina

BUT Lizzie and I still play together with a different group and it rules now <3

Marc Weinzapfel

My players found the people of Barovia Village so detestable that they attempted to join the hag in selling her "LSDeep dish pizza pies" (I set my CoS game in colonial Chicago). That campaign lasted three sessions before they lost interest. Strahd appeared in the town square, they elevator pitched him on joining, but they hadn't prepared a compelling value proposition so he bounced. They wanted to fight him then and there, but they were level 3 and we had just fucking started. I need to pick better friends.

Final Girl

During a raid on the town by vampire spawn, a letter from Strahd to Irina was passed underneath the door of her home where we were protecting her. We wrote 'return to incel sender' on the envope and slid it back under, then started passing a bunch of passive aggressive notes to the spawn under the door

EJ Chronister

Eight years ago, for my first time DMing, my players immediately wanted a "face" for reference, who they were up against, and general inspiration for who Strahd was. One of my players was actively doodling on a nearby magazine and effectively put blue vampire fangs on a full size print of a baby's face... Henceforth, Strahd was known as "Baby-Face Strahd." I never reclaimed the horror or overall narrative of Strahd for the remainder of the campaign. I have no regrets.

Erin Perry

In only the second session we (I) managed to start a horse worshiping cult through my druid rescuing a child being led away by a hag while she (the druid) was wildshaped as a horse. She brought the kid back to the parents and stared "horsily" at them until they repented their sins and went to church, thus becoming the Horse of Judgement. When we added a new PC he had to trek through the initial town to reach us and came across a group of both adults and children heading to the church in horse masks.

brookieblue

My character, Havis, has bothered Strahd so much that he avoids eye contact with her because he knows she's going to make it awkward. She's accused him of flirting with her and has questioned absolutely everything from his style choices to his personal life. At the dinner with Strahd, she made the chef absolutely lose his shit with all the food requests (and changed all of them and lied about ever changing them). I don't know how much of it is Strahd, or the absolute terror I've struck into my DM's heart. She's also a Lore bard with telepathy, so she's a total menace with those skill checks, too. lol

James Jones

Hey there 2 crew longtime listener first time sharing my players stayed in the burgomaster’s mansion with Ismark and Irena I told them that the devil Strahd had already bit her yet she wasn’t turned into a vampire. Too prevent her from being bitten my Druid player decided to leave her pet Octopus in the room with a wooden stake in each arm. Funnily enough she rolled a Nat 1 for perception so I decided that the Octopus familiar fell asleep

Amanda M

My players took an extreme liking to Ismark because he was “so blonde” in the book art and semi-kidnapped him from Barovia and brought him along all their adventures. During the winery fight, one of my PCs fell in lust with one of the druids and they shared one heartbreaking kiss before the druid died. Unfortunately the aforementioned PC was my girlfriend and we soon after broke up, quickly dissolving my CoS campaign.

Heidi Artigue

Dear Priests of Piddlewick, I have a confession for Dice Christ from my Strahd campaign. I ran Strahd for my friends, who were all first-time TTRPG players. Our campaign was extremely focused on the hags and on the Dream Pasties. My players spent several sessions throwing a "Festival of Babies" in Vallaki, in which they gathered all new and expecting parents into one location to lure the hags into an ambush. The campaign was a success, but I confess to fudging the numbers in virtually every combat session. My one player demanded to be a College of Lore Bard, but spent every combat getting in melee range and fighting toe-to-toe. I kept offering him to switch to College of Swords or another class entirely, or even just to use better weapons, but he spent the entire campaign using a regular Dagger as his weapon, doing 1d4 of damage per turn and nearly dying every round. I just started double-counting his damage compared to the rest of the party to balance things on the back end. He never changed his ways and never became the healer his party needed, regularly using his bonus action to do offhand attacks and 1d4 more damage instead of healing his downed teammates. My friends now all think that Bards are underpowered in 5e, and for that, I beg for forgiveness.

Lexi

The Long Game Betrayal After playing the Curse of Strahd for three years, our party had finally reached the final battle with Strahd. We were all Level 20 and had some legendary items such as the Helm of Brilliance, and our DM had buffed Strahds stats to counter this, making it a very tough battle, and a near TPK. After defeating Strahd, his armour fell to the floor and we began to pack up and put our jackets on, when the Paladin of the group picked up the armour, accepted the dark powers, regained all his health, and stabbed another PC. Safe to say that we had all forgotten that the Paladin was a Chaotic-Evil alignment. With all our spell slots spent, and weapons used, we fought the true BBEG, who had used our party for the long run for many more hours into the night.

The Crit Crew

Good afternoon Jake the Great and his three costars, about 6 years ago I was playing Strahd for the second time with my usual dnd party. Half of us had played and half were new to it, one of the newer players was playing a ranger. As we got to the church in the town of Barovia, to talk to the priest there and gather intel, our ranger decided to loudly announce to the rest of us that he was entering stealthily. Our DM said sure and we continued to talk to the priest, as we were maybe a minute into that conversation, after I heard (not him only me) his son in the basement, our ranger decided to shoot an arrow at the priest. He killed him, and we were unable to get any more info or even know about the son. When asked why he would do this he said, “That guy was sus and he needed to die.” So we lost out on any intel and help from them. P.S. The ranger did not finish the campaign cause he died to the hags at the windmill.

Meaghan Davey

I was early in dming Strahd when my Druid saw that meme going around about conjuring animals in the air to fall on an enemy. I told her she could do it once and only once. She held onto it through the whole campaign, including when she died on Yester Hill and had to be revived. The first turn of the final Strahd fight, 8 elk fell on his head.

Taylor Manes

when i DMed strahd, our barbarian romanced ireena/mireena and it was like CATNIP for me :3 i loved being able to use it against her. strahd at one point tried to tempt the pc to betray her friends and join him by being like “well if you join me, you’ll at least be near her even though she is mine.” after the session / out of character the barbarian’s player told me that for a few moments her character was genuinely tempted by the offer because at least she could try to keep ireena/mireena safe that way.

buttered-shorti

So we are still playing Strahd, but my DM had the idea that we would all be playing as commoners who grew up in Barovia! We only have commoner stats, and Madam Ava’s cards give us clues on how to gain “class perks” instead of her normal stuff! It’s really intense, but gives us lots of room to be creative with combat. We set lots of traps, and have to be super careful about everything we do because one hit can be fatal!

Tyler Jackson

I'm running a Southern Gothic version of Curse of Strahd, where the old world transylvanian vibes were replaced with a haunted bayou aesthetic. Strahd was an immortal vampire colonel intent on continuously spurring war to feed, Vallaki was a faded New Orleans stuck in a never ending Mardi Gras, and the party spent weeks trapped on a massive paddle steamer in the Ethereal plane, captained by the hags who ran an illegal gambling ring for souls and sacrifices. The party was traveling to Vallaki to drop off Marina when a disastrous random encounter found them trapped by the Cajun druids of Yester Hill, which culminated in Marina joining the party as a sidekick and shooting Strahd in the face with a shotgun. The party is actually gearing up to finally confront the Colonel in his massive genteel mansion in the swamp, with just a shitload of blessed buckshot. Wish them luck!

Jon Gravina

My Warforged Barbarian, Diesel, loves family. He also loves to do stupid shit, like lick the Black Mold, which, in turn, insta-killed our Wizard with the resulting explosion. Sorry, Dilly. I swing my silvered maul (with added piercing damaged from molded on teeth), The Dodge Charger, in your honor. Rest in Power.

Fish Harlan

I had played Strahd all the way through once before when another group I was in wanted to run it. At one point, however, the DM got the opportunity to move to Europe and would no longer be able to run the campaign, so he and I coordinated to have Baba Lysaga cast Finger of Death on my character, turning him into a zombie under her control, while I then took over DMing the campaign. It was a very intense seen that led to some interesting character development for the other players, but I do feel like I missed out on where my character could've gone.

Johny Dude-Kay

When I got out of the military after 12 years, I started going to the local Community College and the absence of a dedicated Nerd Club, I decided to to start one. I gathered up a bunch of TTRPG players, TCG enthusiasts, and fellow eccentrics, and once the club was official, I ran curse of Strahd for a bunch of early 20 somethings who had next to no experience with DnD. It was fantastic! The Party was a Half Orc Barbarian who was a former carnival performer, A Deep Gnome rogue who chain smoked like a fiend, a story telling bard who was getting really into the paranormal, and a goth elf druid who loved wolves. There was also a Human Sorcerer who the Druid was sweet on, but when she had to exit the campaign due to scheduling conflicts, we agreed that the Sorcerer would be turned by Strahd, in front of the druid, to dial up the drama and use him as a foil for the party later on. Fast forward to meeting Marina, she and the Druid became best friends. It was hinted a romance might be brewing, but that was cut short when, on account of some truly tragic rolls, Marina DIED in the Death House portion of the module. Knowing her importance to the story, I had Marina's soul join the party using modified Will O' Whisp stats, with Strahd sending a flesh Golem butler to steal Marina's body for some nefarious purpose they never quite figured out. Other things of note: -I had Father Donovich helping the Bonegrinder Hag Coven steal children in the night to make their Dream Pies, a plan overseen by an Imp who was influencing the Priest -The Baron's son practicing magic in the attic was his morbid attempt to try and find a way to plane shift of Barovia going horribly wrong and accidentally killed several members of the house staff by teleporting them places but getting stuck halfway through ceilings and walls of the house. -My play through didnt encounter Leomund. The power wizard ally was instead Mordenkainen, driven mad and wandering the Svalich Woods North of Lake Zarovich until the party found him. -I turned the battle at the Winery into a game of COD Zombies, where the party was barricading doors and picking off vine blights little by little, with additional waves of enemies becoming larger and stronger than the last. After a year of playing, scheduling ended up killing the game, but the club is still going strong, though no longer officially sponsored by the school! I'm really happy for my college kiddos and proud of them for everything they have been doing since I left the school. In case any of them listen to this, SHOUT OUT TO THE EL PASO COMMUNITY COLLEGE TABLE TOP GAMING CLUB!

Doctor Ransom

The absolute craziest thing happened in my first play through of the campaign, and my second ever D&D campaign. Our party’s rogue Rish’nan went full heel turn at the Amber Temple and made a pact with the evil Vampyr in the hopes to overthrow Strahd. He tried killing Ireena Kolyanna and his intention was to have us kill him to become a vampire lord. We got Ireena to safety with a Dimension Door while chasing him out of the temple into the cliffs to annihilate his ass. My bugbear paladin Brawlie, as well as me out of game, gave a tearful, “Are we really gonna do this?” as the undead little girl warlock Brunhilda pulled out her gun and wasted the rogue. Absolute peak D&D experience! Sorry Jeff! Fuck you I love you, eat a rat.

Reverse

My first experience with Dungeons & Dragons was as a player in a friend’s Curse of Strahd campaign, but like many early games it never reached a conclusion. After only a handful of sessions, scheduling and life got in the way, and the story quietly dissolved before we ever faced Strahd. A year or two later I decided to run my first campaign as a Dungeon Master for my coworkers, and I chose Curse of Strahd because it was the one adventure I already knew. That game lasted nearly two years, and as we approached the finale I found myself thinking about my unfinished first party. I brought those old characters back as NPCs, reimagining them as Strahd’s elite guard. My new group had to defeat them before confronting the vampire lord, unknowingly giving my original party the ending they never received. In a way, two separate tables years apart became part of the same story.

Sutton Strother

My party held an impromptu wedding in a lich's living room in the Amber Temple. Our cleric performed the ceremony, and I played best man to my husband's halfling rogue as he married Esmerelda. My date was a hag named Smelda who accidentally fell in love with me (Smelda's real name was ALSO Esmerelda, so we needed a nickname to distinguish between those two equally lovely ladies). Sadly, Smelda got murked by some vampire spawn, but I wore her stinky witch hat for the rest of the campaign in tribute. I also got the killing blow on Baba Lysaga and, as an Umberlee-touched divine soul sorcerer, got off a sick final line: "Swamp witch, meet the Sea Bitch!" I will never say anything that cool again.

Final Girl

As the module will sometimes have a running bit of not saying Strahds name because it draws his ire and attention towards you, we all called him 'Vlad' and continued to do so to his face, mainly to be cheeky, except for our Tortle folk Monk who just genuinely thought that was his name. The genuine mistake enraged Strahd much more than our petulance ever could

knitted cape

A huge plot point in our Strahd campaign came after our Druid taught some local crows how to plant seeds. Every few sessions we would check in on the local crow population to see how they were progressing as a society. Our choice to introduce them to agriculture quickly brought on a crow Industrial Revolution, Crow Wars, and eventually, the creation of the atom bomb by none other than Crowlian Murphy himself- the Crow who become death, destroyer of worlds. It was devastating.

Carnal Crew Champion #CCC

The party was welcomed to the Abbey (Esmeralda was just chilling there) and the Abbot asked for the mayor's daughters face to finish strahds bride (cause she looked like Marina) so my eloquence Bard talked the Daughter into agreeing to give up her face with a 30+persuation, much to the horror of the party. She survived the procedure. Strahd was not impressed by the bride and tore her apart. Needless to say, my Bard was no longer welcome in the village or the party. Obove table all was well an we still play years later

Johny Dude-Kay

I definitely forgot our other Rogue who was doing a whole plague doctor thing! My bad!

Ambrose Blanchard

Hi! This is my partner's account, we share cause he loves me. We've tried to play Strahd twice, but with people who we no longer talk to, and I think it's my fault for the last campaign I played in before trying to play Strahd. It was a pandemic party, so it was largely online and we were playing through the Waterdeep campaigns. After finishing Dragonheist, most of us were going to make new PCs except for one person who joined the party after being a failed Tinder date and was kind of our friend: she was going to keep playing as her rogue. After the last big encounter with a gold dragon, we made out with a lot of loot and gold in our bag of holding. Then, the rogue decided to pickpocket our bard and take the bag of holding with all of our stuff and returned to her mysterious benefactor and the session ended. Me, the bard, and our ranger were pissed, because to us, we were robbed with no explanation. So we messaged our DM and we basically said that was fucked and we didn't want to play with that specific character cause how were we supposed to trust her? The campaign ended after that because the rogue (failed Tinder date, btw) became best friends with the DM after being introduced into the group. Have I been cursed somehow by taking this in-game betrayal too hard? This happened a while ago, but the DM and the rogue maintained they were going to transfer all of the loot and such to our new PCs but I feel like they should've said something before ending the session, right? Please help me end my Cursed of Strahd Campaigns

Andrea

I actually met my gaming group through NADDPOD in the early days so thanks 2 crew for bringing us together! We finished CoS about five years ago and TrinyStrahd has been a walk down memory lane. We called Strahd “Sergei’s brother”, our warlock Gronk had a will-they-won’t-they relationship with Victor Villakovich (who ended up being reincarnated as a gnome), our artificer Ferdinand surprised us all by enlarging a massive stake above the Heart of Strahd and destroying it, and our dear fighter Lemon nearly died to a broom session 1! Shout out to our own GM Brian who fearlessly ran it for his own chaotic triplets, and thank you again for bringing us together!

Bailey Hull

I graduated a year ahead of my college friends who I met in freshman year (I did a 3 year program, while they all did 4). Instead of going to my black-tie graduation ball solo, my friends and I finished our COS campaign that night, running Strahd's castle in one massive session that ended around 3 am. Killing Strahd with my friends was a way better sendoff than any formal could've been - shoutout to Andraste & Oshus if you're listening, love you both <3

minamae

We didn't go with Straghe but someone did once call him Reginald von Strahd so Reggie kinda stuck

Joan and Sarah are Welly Hammfans

During an unfinished campaign, we had a Tortle Barbarian that insisted on continuing to eat the child-filled dream pastries. Eventually, our DM spent an hour narrating a dream of his tragic backstory while the rest of us just sat there. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t get much farther

Ben H.

my second time DMing i ran curse of strahd over the course of a year and a half. after a campaign of strahd being a very clever bastard the final battle culminated in a chase throughout the castle as strahd phased through walls and ceilings while the party was chased by wolves and archers. he went through a few phases until the party had a marvel vs capcon team move and killed him on the ramparts of ravenloft in the rain, which immediately triggered multiple glyphs of warding with earthquake stored in them. even in victory strahd still had his last laugh.

C8

less a story and more just praise but i found caldwells campaign quite inspiring. ive been trying to get a group of friends together to play d&d for the first time (their first time playing, my first time dming) and i really want to run strahd for them. we’re all women so my plan is to homebrew parts of the story and make strahdge a woman scorned by her own adventuring party. its an incredibly intimidating task ive put upon myself but listening to druncles journey with the module has really helped shape the way i want to approach the story. all of you made such a captivating and hilarious story together and i hope i can capture even as essence of that vibe with my friends.

Michelle Phelps

We're currently playing through a a Stradh campaign and when we got to Vallaki we got into a bunch of shenanigans that lead to us overthrowing the Baron and starting a democracy in the town. Now there is a planned election in Vallaki and we are campaigning to get Ireena elected baron. We've since left Vallaki to pursue other narrative threads but can't wait to get back to our election sub plot! Also, during the battle to overthrow the Barron our DM described Ractavio (our version Ezmerelda's mentor) having a gun. My bard character calliope (yes named after our favorite duck team bard-adin lol) crit to understand how guns work, and now she's on a side mission to make a gun to shoot stradh!

Final Girl

My warlock who I played with a heavy Australian accent, was offered to be made a Bride of Strahd, but turned him down because she didn't think her self esteem could handle being in a polycule if she wasn't his number one.

The Sturgeon General

My party absolutely refused to go to Castle Ravenloft, convinced that they would never come back out. Instead, they decided to hold a wedding between one of the PCs and Ireena and sent Strahd an invitation. Naturally he showed up to object to this union, leading to an enormous battle that ended in the destruction of the Lord of Barovia.

Marc

Me and my party accidently fireballed the festival in Vallaki as the Baron and his wife were 'dodgy', but had no proof. We ended up killing a lot of spectators by accident and none of the Baron's party. We were run out of town. The wereravens and Von Richten obviously refused to help us after that. We had fully broken our DM by then and he needed a few weeks off to figure out how to continue 😅. We also accidently burned the hag windmill down with the captured children inside... Lover the campaign but might not have been the right party for job

Stig

Lolol

sophielinn_

My group, leading up to the Feast of Saint Andral, joked offhandedly to the Baron of Vallaki that Father Petrovich may have stolen the bones himself to draw more attention towards the church. The Baron decided to take this joke at face value and arrested Petrovich, taking him into his personal care at his mansion. My players broke into the mansion to free Petrovich, but even knowing it was timed, the Father died from his inflicted wounds. This led to a badass sequence of the players locating the bones to avenge the Father and then racing against a mob of spawn to the Cathedral where they protected little Yeska as he channeled the small amount of the Morninglord’s power left in Barovia to reconsecrate the church. It was SO stressful, but my players kept saying that this was a moment in the campaign where they truly felt like heroes. It made my first time DM heart so happy.

Ziel R.

This is a little long, and I apologize, but so much happened at once that was so wild and funny that it'll be tough to condense it. So, things kinda went a bit crazy when we got to Vallaki. It was a normal DND campaign at first. We got to town. Did some looking around. Routed the vampires in the coffin shop. Got the saint's bones. Made friends with the local priest by returning said bones. Found out about the creepy Irena doll collection Izek was commissioning. Met with Lady Watcher, and she kinda tripped our BS meter. While there, my fairy rogue could hear the Watcher boys arguing in another room. Since I have expertise in deception in the actor feat, I asked to learn their voices/mannerisms. DM was like. You know what they sound like when yelling through a solid wall. And here's where things went nuts. We ran into Izek, and pokemon style, he locked eyes with Irena across the road and started to march over. Knowing we had to keep Irena away from him, he pulled a Thomas Crown affair. Our Alchemist, Wizard, and ranger used disguise self or alter self and they and Irena bolted to the four winds. In the confusion, Izek nabbed our ranger. Of all the people to Get Got. The ranger was probably the best. Not only were they an NB fae and so the most feminine of the group they were also 100% That Bitch. Ranger spent the next hour alone with Izek in his room reading him for filth. "I saw the dolls. I know you're obsessed with me. That's weird. Look at your life. Look at your choices." Ranger continued to chew Izek out, only stopping long enough to ask to use the restroom to re-up disguise self at which point they came back and continued to read him. Unfortunately. the real Irena got grabbed by the Watcher boys. Thinking quick, our group went to meet the burg to try and rescue our ranger and discuss his insane festivals. While there, my rogue hung back, went upstairs to knock on Izek's door, called through the door (in the voice of the housekeepeer who welcomed us into the house) to tell Izek that Burg wanted him for this meeting. While Izek was in the meeting with the rest of the party, my guy picked the lock, spoke with the ranger, and the two of us turned over Izek's room to make it look like the place had been ransacked. Ranger rejoined the party in the Burg office, but my fairy hid in the light fixture in the office and pretended to be the Watcher boy shouting to each other (as heard through a solid wall obvis) and shook and rattled the light fixture to make it sound and look like there was a lot of activity in the room above in an attempt to implicate the Watcher boys for the abduction of Irena. Izek went berserk, charged into his room, saw the place tossed, went even MORE berserk, grabbed most of the burg's guards, and charged to the Watcher house to wage war. With the Burg completely defenseless, my guy popped out of hiding and got a clean shot on him before bolting out a window and chasing after Izek. The party's alchemist instantly healed him before he could bleed out thus establishing our group as his heroes. At this point, the priest we befriended was already martialing a militia to usurp the Burg. So that force was closing in on the manor while Izek and the guard were fighting the Watchers, and wouldn't you know it? Stahj used the chaos to try and attack as well. Militia captured Burg. Priest had to hurry to re-up the Hallow spell. My guy got the the Watcher house while Izek was battling their summoned minions, managed to slip in and find Irena right before Izek could get to her, and with no time to explain the situation to Irena, my guy crawled into Irena's scarf and spent the meeting between Irena and Izek using Irena's voice to steer the conversation. Stuff like, "Hey again Izek. It's only been 24 minutes since the two of us were talking about your hangups in your room for an hour and a half. Remember what we talked about? You need to learn to respect women and their autonomy." So we held back strahj til the hallow went off. Burg was removed from power. A new tribunal was established with the priest, the burg, and lady Watcher as the three ruling powers. The party was hailed as heroes (except for my guy who took the fall for the assassination attempt on the burg and slunk off into the wilderness Incredible Hulk style and the rest of the party had to pretend to have never met him).

Bella

Strahd was my first ever DND campaign. My partner, friend, and I started the campaign with a coworker and his friends. The DM, let’s call him Brian, cursed the party after four sessions (and two PC deaths), because we saved a young Vistani girl, and refused to play into the racism of the original module. When we informed him that there were various threads and guides to make it not racist, he said “I saw them but I don’t want to use them because this is how I played.” We quickly decided we would not be playing. I told them I would not be coming back. My partner said “my girlfriend says I’m not allowed to come back.” Our friend said, “my friends girlfriend says I’m not allowed to come back.” Our homebrew campaign is wonderful. PS- Fuck you, Brian.

Tressa C.

Hey there tortles! Regarding my group’s Strahd fight, we cheesed it to a degree, and it was still pretty hard. Our fight was in the chapel area of the castle, and he had quite a bit of vampire spawn reinforcements (these were spellcasters). In our prior romp through the castle, we found a Luck Blade, which gives you a free Wish spell, which we wanted to use for this fight. Obviously we couldn’t just blink Strahd out of existence, and we didn’t know exactly what we were walking into, so we used our wish to make it so that none of Strahd’s forces could Counterspell. It’s worth mentioning our party consisted of a paladin, artificer, and my wizard (as well as a fighter) so we had a lot that could be counterspelled. We still talk years later about how clutch that wish was, since if we hadn’t done that, we would have gotten several AoE spells to the face, which would have been devastating (those vampire spawn spellcasters were nasty).

Joe Blackstock

Hey Two Crew, Got two for ya: 1. My party and I fell into some sort of crypt, and the other two players both touched something they shouldn't have and were possessed by lingering spirits that changed their alignments to evil and reoriented their goals from overthrowing Strahd to replacing him. This was mostly an issue in-canon because I was playing a paladin pretty opposed to dark magic of any kind, but we were all thrilled at the new source of conflict for our PCs. We discussed the possibility of continuing to the end with these three characters, but finally decided on some good ol' fashioned PVP. We all knew the stakes, and when my character deleted their rogue and wizard by like, turn 2, both the other players laughed it off, rolled new characters, and we finished the campaign. See? PVP can be cool sometimes! 2. SPEAKING of finishing the campaign, when we got to Ravenloft, we wanted to comb every inch of it and go as methodically through the castle as possible to make sure we saw everything it had to offer. We decided to start from the top and work our way down, assuming Strahd would be in some sort of basement dungeon or whatever. So, using our brand-new-monk's climbing speed, a pocket hole, and an immovable rod, we scaled the tower from the outside, got into the attic, and stumbled on Strahd 3 rooms in. Turns out he moves around! It was a little sad to not see the whole castle, but we all thought it was pretty funny to accidentally any% the final dungeon through the power of bullshit magic items. (And, yes, our DM though all of this was fun too!) -Joe in Tennessee

DisimpressedHippo

I played a cleric that was so boastful and dumb and impatient that he kicked the doors open in the death house and would touch all of the objects. Above table nobody wanted to open doors or touch anything in the death house, so i ended up doing it. He died a few times before the campaign ultimately fell apart.

Phillip Englehart

My major recommendation to all Strahd and potential Strahd DMs is to put a False Hydra in Krezk. Potential spoiler for players, but a False Hydra is this terrifying monster that while singing, erases itself from people's memories, and when it kills a victim, they are erased as well, so there was just a town of sad people that didn't realize they just had been missing loved ones. in my game, the Abbot had created it as a failed zoomanoid and forgotten about it. There was a deaf woman that had been begging them to look in to disappearances, but no one believed her as folks were saying "We'd know if we were missing a child, that's always just been a spare bedroom. We've never had kids." And one of my favourite D&D moments was when the party was in it's little tunnel system under the Abbey and out of nowhere it clicked for my wife and she shouted out "she can't hear, that's why she remembers! Quick cast silence!" and instantly they remembered their paladin companion (who couldn't make it to the session) and the monster that abducted him. We never finished that campaign, but Barovia still holds a great place in my heart!

Sean Morgan

I was running the campaign for some friends and everything was going really well. The whole group was more or less on the rails and following the plot. My players were even being nice to the NPCs (mostly.) Then our druid rolled a nat 20 on an animal handling check while trying to get some information from one of the Vistani horses, so I decided it would be a good time to tease the Abbott. I had the horse describe seeing a bright light and a winged man and then briefly waking up in a different place where a glowing figure was taking his measurements and making notes. I figured this would be fun to call back for when my players got to the abbey. Huge mistake. From this moment on Strahd was completely forgotten. All my players were interested in was tracking down the aliens who were abducting horses.

Fletcher Sanderson

I was the DM for our Strahd campaign and my players engaged in an elaborate barter system to acquire talking horses and a battle wagon with mounted crossbow from the Vistani. They also gathered every single NPC from the entire campaign to mount an all-out assault on Castle Ravenloft rather than just sneaking in. Also they would not stop referring to Baba Lysaga as "Baba Lasagna".

Proopypants

Dearest SheEOs and Boy Moms, in the village of Vallaki I laid out the entire political scheme - the two families, Vallakovich Vs Wachters. Things were going well enough, players treading even a little too carefully for my GM liking. Enter Clem, our new player and Paladin. He joins for a gothic dinner at the Wachters, covered in mud and blood Zudrich style, and immediately casts Detect Evil and Good. The Wachters? So evil. An epic fight thru the house involving the butler getting stuck in a painting, Strahd disguised as the (very sexy!) Vasili taking Ireena and a fight in a cloud of bats in the rain soaked grey gardens. After kicking everything off, Clem gets the killing blow - this new players first ever kill in D&D - and to my horror and delight, he bites Lady Wachters nose off - starting a chain reaction that ends with Vallaki burning to the ground and Nü Metal Goth Victor joining the party. 🤘🤘🤘

Joe McGowan

I ran a heavy gothic horror style Curse of Strahd for my friends during the pandemic, it was oddly a nice escape into a different world of problems! Our game was plagued by character deaths (six total), with one player having his characters die four times throughout the campaign. By the end I made mechanics for his infernal warlock to rise with new devilish powers and less of her soul each time, everyone had fun and we joke about my insatiable desire to kill his characters to this day. PS. My players quickly grew a fond attachment to Ismark, calling him Critmark a la Matty Big Crits from C1.

Matthew S

My first time DMing was the Strahd module and early on one of my players (a changeling) would change their appearance to Ireena’s to taunt Strahd. It got so bad I had Strahd bite them to change them into a dhampir just so my thoroughly harassed big bad could get a word in edgewise. I will note that the player enjoyed the new dhampir abilities and I did provide a route in the narrative for them to change back into a changeling.

BigBritches

My parties fight with Strahd was very fun. Strahd, as a lair action, can pass through the walls of castle Ravenloft enabling his hit and run tactics. While chasing him through the castle we were harried by many enemies but eventually destroyed Strahd. While chasing a boss may not seem like the most fun for a BBEG fight, scraping our way to victory was very memorable. P.S. please let me listen to your Curse of Strahd home-game so I can die happy. Thank you.

adrieenna (she/her)

i’ve dm’d strahd three times now, and they’ve all been eventful! my first time, a friend of mine was playing solo with two characters. their destined ally was mordenkainen. i, a fool, did not look at mordenkainen’s spell list. my player trapped strahd in a spherical wall of force and then just let the sunsword fry his ass slowly. i now always have strahd prepare counterspell and never let anyone draw mordenkainen. in my second playthrough, everybody nicknamed the amber temple lich brick storm bc we couldn’t say his name.

Amy Martin

When we arrived at the Amber Temple, my himbo paladin Gabe was keeping watch with Steve the moose (his Summon Steve) and our voice of reason cleric was out that session. That left our members with less impulse control to go ham on the dark gifts. We ended up with our elderly warlock now having: glowing yellow eyes, needing to eat a pound of bones or grave dirt every day (but got skeletal wings?), a third eye embedded in his chest, lost all of his teeth, and can only speak in a whisper. Our twilight cleric Warforged now reeks of filth and likes bullying others. This made it really difficult getting any NPCs on our side. Made more difficult by our other paladin, a gallant follower of Torm, taking but one gift, a huge boost to charisma and the inability to take no for an answer. Up to this point us two paladins would engage in friendly banter about being favored by our god with him trying to convert me. It got much trickier from there not to kill each other (agree to disagree? NOPE.)

Annalisa B

The party first interacted with Strahd (who I play as a woman in our campaign) on the road from Barovia to Vallaki. Under threat of a high level fireball which would most likely have outright killed the party's bard, she made the sorcerer state who they thought were the most and least useful members of the party. Turns out, the "least useful" monk had been grappling with feeling useless since they were a child! The campaign is still ongoing, but I am currently having Strahd use this fact to try and turn the monk against the party.

Cathy Lewandowski

THE EFFING COFFIN SHOP. We went upstairs there while at a low level and and got ambushed by vampire spawn on the ceiling. To avoid a TPK, my character made a deal to meet with Strahd alone, and ended up getting his first bite. 😩 From then on, every place we entered we would all shout "WE CHECK THE CEILING". We've been playing this campaign for a few years since continuing after Strahd, and this lesson has never left us. We always check the ceiling. (Also Ismark is my PC's long-distance bf, so it's so funny to hear y'all dogging on him constantly.)

Wordse

Me and my party hated Strahd our DM made his "I'm so cool" gimmick insufferable to the point our nearly year long run through the campaign was us going insane and having group complaining sessions at the realm of Barovia. We grew tired of the meek and unwilling members of the land and slowly kind of turned from heroes to villains wanted to leave Barovia by any means necessary. The Pastries the witches made, the puppet that whipped our asses, Strahd's old grumpy father who refused to help us fight his son because of "divine punishment". We went in as heroes and left as monsters to be sure. The story ended in a great way I was playing a Barbarian Fighter and Crit Strahd six times in a row on my turn I still have the roll 20 screen shot and me the group all screamed in jubilation after the dumb Vampire was dead. Bonus: this campaign was so annoy to the party that my friends commissioned me to rewrite the entire module and turned Strahd into a Vampire Muse who was cursed to make everyone "happy" most work I have ever done but also worth it to save one other party from the Strahd we got.

Julia D

Currently running a Strahd campaign where one of my players is his long lost daughter who has come back to collect 18 years of child support

Rafi

We had a couple of orphans we had saved in our campaign and because kids are the last thing you need in this setting we were going to drop them off with the Abbott until we met the Abbott. Where we all mutually agreed “oh brother this guy stinks”, at the same time our dm had the sunsword start whispering to us about how he was the worst in attempt to get us to plan a heist to steal the sword and the kids. We instead chose option C and stole it right in front of him and made a looney tunes style escape down the mountain the abbey is on. Shout out to our Fitbit (he was named Major Biscuits), and the rogue rolling a nat 20 stealth to hide from the Abbott with the sword in tow

Greg Lohman (tsarducci)

In our first session we did Death House as a prelude. Or so my wife thought! She was playing her CoS character, everyone else has a one shot character and the meta goal of dying horribly by the end. It worked perfectly, giving her an authentic Final Girl experience for her PCs back story!

Jordan Therrien

I played a gunslinger in our curse of Strahd campaign, got pretty drunk session 1, and pulled a pistol on Madam Eva. I get deservedly razzed about this from our table to this day.

Alex Ward

I ran CoS and had a bit of a weird ending to my game. I decided to have Strahd show up again to make his presence known. He appeared on the road while they were returning from some other location (maybe the swamp). After he taunted them the party fought some Zombies he summoned and the over confident newer party member (the player's previous character was killed by Strahd in his previous appearance in Vallaki) convinced the others to go after him. I say overconfident but they defeated him, not just defeated but killed him as they had gotten the Sun Sword from a random child. I was a little confused if dying in sunlight trumped needing to be killed in his coffin so I rolled for it and failed so the party beat the big bad in a random encounter. I did do a homebrew sequel campaign The Battle for Barovia to wrap up loose ends though.

Elle S

When I was GM for the game, my party found Van Richten's Tower on the lake, and, being the first time they found cultivated garlic, the party member with the Chef feat decided to use some of it to cook the first nice meal the party would've had since arriving. Then the other party members' competitive streaks kicked in. I thought the end of the session was going to be a debrief about vampire research. What happened was a spaghetti cooking contest, and for the next day everyone had a 10ft repellent effect against vampires with a DC13 CHA Save. The party did NOT remember to cook spaghetti before the final confrontation.

Jack H

What’s up hamburglars! I am running a campaign where the world, mythology, and deities are all home-brewed. That all changed when they were tricked into voyaging into the Shadowfell to find one piece of Wizards of the Coast-approved lore: the realm was run by a megalomaniac vampire lord named Count Strahd. They went to a banquet with Strahd with the intention of schmoozing him to offer a route back to the Material Plane. They did a great job of playing along with his ego only for the banquet to be interrupted by a reincarnation of Tatyana burning everything in the hall with a wand of fireballs. The party chose to side with Tatyana and Strahd went full bloodsucker on all the guests, leading to the party barely making it out alive. They ended up freeing Tatyana’s souls from endless reincarnation and it was a fun pivot away from homebrew.

Jillian M

Oh, I was just reminded that we were also over-levelled for it…but that’s how I remembered it!

BurnedOutYeti

Running Death House campaign hook and had to come up with a name for Strahd to use when he's in disguise. Enter Mr Diminski. My players never realised this was Strahd and after we finished the campaign they asked what had happened to him. Mr Diminski is now a running joke when we think an NPC is suspicious.

Mason McCauley

I have played 3 curse of Strahd campaigns, two in college and one right now as the current one I’m DMing. So Caldwell, I totally understand how it feels to be Strahd-pilled. As an intro to my first game, I chose the option to have my party attacked by wolves and surrounded by mist before being transported to Barovia. Since most of my friends were new to D&D, I decided to extend the encounter into a one-shot mystery with an abandoned church of the morning lord and a werewolf serial killer. I pulled one of my friends (a blood hunter) aside before the game and asked if he wanted to secretly be the werewolf and turn on the party for the final encounter. He agreed and his character was dragged away by wolves during an encounter on the way to the church. My friend then left the table and went to his bedroom (we were playing at his house) and sulked while making comments about how “of course I killed him off” (he had died in two previous games, both times to succubi). The rest of the table was concerned and kept checking in on him throughout the session. During the final encounter the players tracked down the werewolf and I did the big reveal that it was the blood hunter the whole time and handed the stat block to my friend as he ran out of his room ready to attack the party. Everyone was shocked but we had a great time as they played out the boss fight and I just sat back and helped the new players with their combat abilities. We continued to play together through the end of the school year and most of us still play to this day. The moral here is, despite what the judges of D&D Court may say, sometimes it’s fun to lie to your friends.

Vinegar Tom

I (DM) accidentally TPK'd my party right after they left the village of Barovia with a pack of wolves. Those random encounters are tough! Had to deus ex machina Strahd into saving them and bringing them to his castle / nursing them back to health so he could play with them some more. Since then, the players feared wolves and love Strahd.

Brother Corvus

Hello! First time DM, long time listener. I’m running Curse of Strahd right now as my first ever campaign DMing. I have two PCs, my fiancée and one of our best friends. The party just got to Lake Baratok and Van Richten/Khazans tower. They were out front of the tower investigating Esmeralda’s wagon, found the trap door underneath and then decided to use immense power to blow the door off its hinges (this is from a barbarian who got the belt of storm giants strength from a dream sequence) the trap door flung off its hinges, and slammed into the handle of the booby trapped front door with alchemists fire on it, dropping the alchemists fire, igniting the bottles beneath and incidentally almost TPKing the party. It was hilarious, everyone almost died and were saved by the grace of dice Christ and of my inability to roll d6s! The real kicker was once they were out of the tower that evening they were greeted by a group of wolves/werewolves lead by Kiril Stoyanovich

Jessica Petra

My first Strahd Campaign had a couple trouble players, so unfortunately it ended. However the way it ended was us being level 4, at the mill. Half of us were downed, and our ranger, a rather large and boisterous man with a Russian name that loosely translates to "Horse Dick", was rocketing from the window with a barrel full of children on his back, landing on the hag that was standing over my wizard's downed body.

ExtraKrispyKyle

Curse of Srahd was my introduction to D&D as a part of my History of Games course in college. I was DM and we were assigned to run a one shot during class. One of my claasmates played a chaotic neutural dwarven rougue named Edgey Mcdwarfdick. ( EM for short.) The party rolled poorly on a random encounter and was ambushed by werewolves but the combat ran quickly. On the last turn initiative was EM who was faced killing the last remaining werewolf. EM's solution to this threat was to macguyver a set of silver brass knuckles by putting silver coins between each knuckle and attempting to fist the werewolf. I was taken aback but I said on a Nat 20 it would do damage. Low and behold Edgey Mcdwarfdick rolled a Nat 20. Out of mercy for the werewolf I ruled that the werewolf would die and tried to move forward. EM then asked if he could see if there he could loot for more money from inside the werewolf. Taken aback even further, but eager to move past this, I said, "If you roll another Nat 20 sure you find another silver coin lodged in there." To my horror they rolled another NAT 20. After evaluating my life choices and collecting myself I narrated, to both EM and the rest of my parties glee, the successful removal of a hidden silver coin from the bowels of this poor werewolf, and for the first time contemplated who was the greater scourge on Barovia, Count Strahd von Zarovitch, or Edgey Mcdwarfdick. PS: Super pumped to see y'all live at Radio City!

Dyllan Thweatt

During dinner with Strahd, my players were trying to figure out which of his four brides had betrayed him. After they interviewed them all individually, their ultimate solution was to put them all in the same room and just prompt infighting by leaking their secrets to the others. They had me run a 4-person scene with myself because they wanted to hear the ladies fight.

Lexi!

When we got to Vallaki, we accidentally assassinated the baron (while trying to rescue Marina from lobster claw guy) and then spent several session running a political campaign for Irwin to be the new baron. Our DM ran a whole election that had ended up being rigged by madame watcher (it turned into combat). Also we helped Victor perfect his teleportation spell (our wizard rolled a nat 20 arcana check) and he teleported to an unknown location and then we gaslit his grieving mom into thinking we had nothing to do with that or the death of the baron. Happy to give more details as there was a tactical cockroach and dream pastries involved in the whole debacle!

Elle S

Baby Lasagna here.

Quest For Quests

My elven alchemist died in our first session in the Death House to a Specter. Later on my new character, a Hexblade Warlock, had Esmerelda cut off his arm to prevent lycanthropy. Gandolf Blinksy crafted a puppet arm prosthetic for him as a quest reward which was super cool.

Cup of T-Viv

Greetings Zoominoid Crewminoids! Less of a story and more a cluster of buds; I just ran my first session of Strahd! DMing a party of six bringing together old friends and new, including a forst-timer, and they're currently having fun with the rolling Belle-ladder in the library of the Death House. Making up the ranks are; a money-grubbing potion-brewinh Drow warlock and a Vedalken author of macabre stories bard, their cheerful Dwarven fighter AA sponsor, an iron-guitar-club wielding human bard songster, a hard-headed Dragonborn pugilist fighter, and an elderly omni-religious claric Pamgle (a homebrew species of my own creation based on Pangolins!) Please bless my campaign with whimsy and intrigue, and may your dice ever roll interesing

picsofish

I share with you all from my Strahd campaign the tragedy of brave Twigothy - a humble twig blight that my party "adopted". His life was brittle and thin as the wood he was made from, and though his time with us was beautiful, it was short-lived. During a fated encounter with the Gulthias tree, our party was surrounded by hordes of twig blights. We were desperate for a miracle - and we received one in the form of a massacre. Our Druid had been carrying the Gulthias staff, which has a special property - once broken, it de-animates all twig blights and such creatures in a massive radius. In a *snap* decision, the Druid broke the staff over her knee, and our party was saved... but Twigothy was lost forever. Despite having experienced multiple PC deaths over the course of the campaign, countless horrors, and the darkest corners of Strahd's domain... Nothing will ever be quite as heavy as the sorrow of losing our twiggy friend. 🪦🥀🦣

Susannah B.

Just wanted to say well done Caldwell for omitting the Coffin Maker's shop/sacred bones quest in Vallaki because that is ABSOLUTELY where my party TPKd. Although knowing the triplets they probably would have just turned the shop into a multi-level marketing scheme.

Connor Raftery

I had my party run curse of strahd x5. There were six strahds, one Strahd Prime and his five “children” which each had distinct classes and personalities. The party engaged in vampire intrigue and turned two of the children against their father, and stormed the castle. They teamed up with wizard Strahd and Rogue Strahd to defeat Sorcerer Strahd, Barbarian Strahd, then Mecha Strahd (semi autonomous vampiric exo-suit piloted by Strahd prime). After a very dangerous combat that they barely survived and some interesting applications of the alchemy jug they broke the curse and freed the land. They had no idea we were doing Curse of Strahd because Strahd Prime was named Dharts Nov Hcivoraz and I only prompted them to read it in reverse when the arc was finished.

Lil_Gordo

Still playing, but here are my similarities/differences so far: We immediately renamed him the Burger Master. No hesitation. My PC found the deed to Old Bonegrinder (hag-run windmill), got addicted to suspicious pastries, exposed child labor + rituals, and we burned it down. The fire never went out. Still not a slumlord though. Rictavio asked us to watch Piccolo “real quick.” We left him with Ismark instead and went on a side quest. As one does. We absolutely wrecked the Festival of the Sun by breaking out Ismark, who was arrested for “stealing a monkey” and sentenced to be burned alive in a wooden ball. The Amber shards are now tempting my Dwarven thief with riches for his “one last job” in Barovia. Everything’s fine. Totally normal campaign.

Drew Pate

Hi Justices/Baliffs/Triplets/Jake’s Bullies In the peak of Covid my friends and I started playing Strahd via Roll20. It was a mixed group of friends and friends of friends coming together to beat the monotony of lockdown. We did the death house intro, nearly TPKing in episode 1. After a shaky start the party grew as real life friends and adventurers in game. Once we were all vaccinated, we decided to do our first in person game. We were about half way through the campaign and were closing in on my character’s personal quest-finding my missing brother. We discovered him working with a group evil Vistani who were allied with Strahd. My rogue/sorcerer snuck into the Vistani camp with some party members and located my long lost brother alive and well-a full member of the clan at this point. As I went to get my brother out of the camp-Strahd arrived. I hid from sight as Strahd began to monologue about betrayal and what it means to be family. At which point he pulled my brother from the enraptured crowd and with no warning decapitated my brother on the spot. I have never been more shocked, upset, saddened, enraged or overjoyed all at the same time. The scene was dark and traumatic, but immensely fun as a player. It was unlike anything I’d seen in a home game and felt truly dramatic and epic. To this day our party still talks about how visibly angry/sad I became. It’s what I love about Strahd, as funny and goofy as your standard dnd game can be, Strahd allows for the truly engaging scenes of horror that entertain just as much as any meat grinding monkey can delight. In the end my character got the killing blow on Strahd, married a werewolf, and now runs an orphanage for all the orphans of Barovia, and our party of players still meet every Sunday-we’re on our 4th campaign together. Thanks and I look forward to one day listening to your show!

John Canter

Currently in a Strahd campaign as an Order of the Scrolls human Wizard with a hermit background who is 80. At first I was just going to be our groups utility wizard, but then I got the deeds to the murder house and the windmill, which we burned down. After several more burnings our group gained a reputation and started learning some hard truths, except my wizard. In my attempt at lightening the mood for others I had turned my grouchy wizard into Barovia’s first reviewer. I reviewed the tavern in Vlaki, the coffin maker, every temple or chapel, the drifter at the lake, the winery and every festival. At the winery I created Barovia’s first zine. And then dear friends, my dm let me take skywrite and fabricate. I promptly set about making sure I could make billboards, and that my skywrite would cover the skies over the ENTIRE valley. I never intended for my character to go this route, i actually berated Mordenkainen for not knowing how to be a wizard until we healed him. Needless to say, having a grumpy reviewer on hand has definitely made our trip through Barovia interesting.

Molly Oxenfree

welcome to Camp Strahd!!! (for context i ran this module pretty early in my career and was using nat 20 to skate be a success. and the players were playing - 13 year old rogue, 16 year old fighter, 18 year old warlock, and a 45 year old wizard) i ran the campaign with the party entering from the west and hotting up the winery first. after freeing it from druids blights my characters learned of the gulthias tree and set off immediately to save the wine! at the tree i decided this would be where strahd would make his entrance. the party arrived and saw the history of strahd arriving in the valley, seeing the mistreatment of madam eva and her people and washing war against the barovian lord. and then the druids attacked! as the players had reached the halfway point i had strahd enter and command the druids to stop. telling them “you’ve done well, i grow tired of this place. and you show promise, if you make it out of here find me in my castle, i feel great promise in new rule with you. and one of my players who was low on hp said “can i roll to convince him to just stop the fight?” i decided sure an 18+ and he’d set up a more fair test. but they rolled a nat 20 and i said narraite what you want. they proceded to appeal to his past defending the velaki and how if he wanted them to replace him shouldnt there be more of a training, that they know he has regrets about what has happened and maybe they should undo them like this tree. it’s a nat 20 so i said yep, and had him break down crying and fighting the druids off, from there on session began with him and his “scouts” going to locations of importance, learning their history and undoing it. which culminated in the crystal heart which sent strahd into a fight or flight and telling the players, the mist and suffering is held together by him and the only way to end it is to end him. which led to a goofy last fight of him switching between being proud of their big attacks and clever tactics and the feral demon ruthlessly going after them

Justine G

I’m playing with a DM who has run Strahd 16 times and half my party has literally never played D&D before this campaign. I’m also running Strahd separately from this so I try to take a backseat in the decision making. That said - we’ve had 6 PC deaths so far with the most recent being las night, our cleric is a werewolf, my aasimar became an actual angel after drinking the Abbotts blood, and we’ve gotten pretty much every important NPC we’ve met killed before completing their story or getting all their information (Kasimir, Van Richten, Father Petrovich, Izek who was given a bigger/different story and the only PC who knew about his connection to Ireena died 3 sessions ago but the party doesn’t know they’re dead, Ezmerelda is currently alive but hates us, Vasili, the coffin maker, Victor Vallakovich.) We’ve never talked to Fiona Wachter and haven’t made it to the Wizard of Wines or the windmill yet, but we’ve been to Mount Ghakis and the Amber Temple. We’re currently level 6.

Anastasia W.

Our party also became obsessed with opening a restaurant chain!! We had just defeated the hags who make dream pastries out of the bones of children, and our DM made the mistake of giving us an alchemy jug in our loot. The item description specifies that the alchemy jug can produce "2 gallons of mayonaise a day". Combined with our newly conquered bonegrinder flour mill, we decided to open up the best sandwich shop Barovia has ever seen, with the meat and bones provided from the enemies we killed on our adventures instead of children. I don't know what it is about this setting that turns people into small business owners and absolute monsters, but we have abandoned our tarot card objectives for months now in order to upgrade our bastion/restaurant, make business connections for our "ethically sourced" cannibal bakery, and find new ingredients to mix into our endless amount of mayo.

COOL BREASE

We decided to deal with a house full of vampire spawn in Vallaki by sealing it (during the day while they slept) and burning it down. It was only once we had set it alight, convinced of our own genius, that we realised we had not warned anybody that we were doing this. Not a soul. So everyone in this town of wooden beams and thatched roofs saw a house fire and immediately broke inside to help. The next session was a frantic battle with a house full of crazed burning vampires. The session after that, we were in jail awaiting trial. Ever since then, we have agreed as a party that we have to say our plans out loud BEFORE we execute them, just to check if they're really stupid

jared Blewett

The Skeletal Rider. One of the random encounters is a skeleton on a skeleton horse holding an unlit lantern. He doesn't attack just watches from a short distance. My players have got this encounter 5 times. I made it so it was sergei trapped between reincarnation and death. He showed up to help weaken Strahd in the final encounter giving the players the chance they needed to finish Strahd. After the fight he was able to finally able to pass on, the curse of Strahd lifted.

Mindolluin

We accidentally made a lot of enemies in our modified Strahd campaign... So in Vellaki we did NOT like the Baron, and a character named Fiona Wachter revealed that he had killed her husband. She asked for help to do a coup to make her the Baron, and she would summon a spirit of the lake to fight Strahd with. This ended up involving offering the Baron as a demonic sacrifice, which was the first sign that we had chosen a bad position morally. (Also his family tried to escape town with the wonky teleportation circle and became a fleshy horror). The were-ravens got word of this ritual and arrived to arrest us to prevent it. The Vistani (our allies until now) also arrived to take us to Ravenloft on Strahd's behalf. All this while half-heartedly will-we-won't-we sacrifice this Baron. So we ended up in combat with Fiona's cultists, our Vistani allies, and were-ravens. We cast water walk and also summoned a plesiosaur which bit of Fiona's arm with her demon book and we ran to the other side of the lake to escape! PS. All our characters took very evil deals in the Amber Temple and we're now playing a sequel campaign where the villains are our previous party. Love from Ireland!

WunDarWun

Ooooh so many! But my favorite: I was DMing, the party were all Aasimar half-sisters whose mother was an angel in service of the Moon Goddess, furious at the corrupted perpetual night of Strahd's domain. Highlight moment: The cleric casting a successful divine intervention (she was level 10) asking for a boost to a Hallow spell the whole party worked together to cast at St Andral's church that (we ruled) rendered the entire city of Vallaki off-limits to undead. That threw a HUGE wrench in my plans as I had Strahd leading a double life as a nobelman in Vallaki high-society, and he and his wives got magically booted out of the city. It was narratively beautiful, and mechanically very exciting with the 10% chance of success on that Divine Intervention roll.

Callie

I am running a Strahd campaign right now and I decided to try and creep them out by presenting the players with Strahd Zombies that looked like them. Instead they weren't scared they just started calling Strahd a creepy loser. Im trying to pivot to make him scary and its not working.

Justine G

Blinsky is also dead but that wasn’t really our fault 😹

Tyler Perfitt

Our party had a mid-campaign visit to Castle Ravenloft to dine with Strahd. As we arrived, our DM and another player revealed they had decorated their dining room to look like it was in the castle, and we proceeded to roleplay dinner with Strahd while actually eating a three-course steak dinner prepared by that player and his wife. Besides being an amazing surprise and experience, I, as the party’s typical barbarian, sat down and immediately ate the paper place name card that was on my character’s plate. I’ll never get as many laughs as I did in that moment. Side note: when we finally fought Strahd on his balcony, his vampire spawns threw me over the side into the river to my death. However, I saved on my relentless rage to pop back up to 1 HP and then led the townsfolk to storm the castle at the end of the campaign.

Spence

My party just finished up Strahd a few months ago. The biggest difference was we had a hot woman Strahd who kind of treated us as her personal reality tv show. Mostly our group was had the resounding feeling of “don’t super have a problem with you just let us out of the damn midst, Barovia sucks” our characters definitely ended up more haunted by the end. My character started out as a champion fighter and through various circumstances ended as a paladin for a god he hated because it was the only way to save the cleric. We also accidentally killed Esmerelda trying to bargain with one of the hags to save everyone. Barovia is a haunted place. we lost ismark and irina immediately to strahd

Kendall MacKay

Strahd was the first D&D campaign I ever played & the group was all of my older brothers friends from high school (we were all adults). We actually finished the whole module. During one of our travel days, we came across a little old lady selling pies out of a cart. Suspicious, of course, but all the insight & investigation checks came out alright & the Detect Magic just said they have a faint aura that didn’t clock as super nefarious. While as regular human beings we knew something was up, the rolls tell the story & none of our characters could find anything wrong so we all started buying pies, except for the Warlock. He was not content to honor the rolls & tried to argue with everyone who bought the pies & DEMANDED that the little old lady show us her business license. He would not let it go & we basically had to drag him away. That night we ate the pies & I rolled poorly for my constitution check & became addicted to the pies. Luckily, we passed the storefront the next day & everyone was very cool about stopping by to get more, except the Warlock. Eventually, this tantrum went as far as bluffing that he was going to storm off on his own, backing down when everyone else refused to follow him. We went to the shop, finally rolled well enough to clock the old ladies were a trio of hags & the pies were made of children’s bones. I know “metagaming” is a complicated topic, but damn, sometimes you really need the dice to tell the story. That fight was fun as hell & we were all pretty glad it shook out the way it did, but the Warlock gets razzed to this day about asking a little old lady with a traveling cart for her fucking business license.

Blanketcape

I played Curse of Strahd online with a group of people I had met through a friend of a friend. One of the PCs was a Dragonborn fighter, played by a man who I later learned branded himself as the world’s first North Korean rapper on his SoundCloud account (he’s from the US but has family there). The rapping part is unrelated to the story but I feel like it’s just important flavor. He would routinely halt sessions to do one-on-one role play with the DM in a different location from the rest of the PCs. One time he put a guard to sleep so we could pass into a town, felt bad, doubled back after we had already left the area, waited until the guy woke up, and spent at least a half hour of real-life time asking this random guard NPC about his kids and giving him money while the rest of us waited in silence. In the death house he spent most encounters taking multiple turns to break random objects, hoping he’d find one that would magically end combat. It wasn’t his first time playing D&D so I have no idea why he thought this would work nearly every time. This culminated in a session where we were in the last room of the house, moments from escaping, but still in active combat, and he decided to dash to the basement over several turns and climb into the well. I guess he was hoping he would find a way to turn the spinning blades in the doorway off. There was nothing, and one of the other PCs died before he was able to return.

Cinnamon's #3 Fan

Hello Jake, Murph and Caldwell, and shello Emily! About ten years ago, a group I played with had a short lived Strahd campaign. While we never met the vampire himself, we did make it through the Death House. While the exact details are foggy now, our escape had my half-mist elf monster hunter Ranger carrying out the party's unconscious cleric. As we neared the exit, a swinging blade trap we had failed to disarm came for our necks! I rolled a nat 20, but the cleric failed with a disadvantage roll. The DM, wanting to honor both results, narrated that we both landed hard as I dived forward...but the cleric's leg fell to the ground nearby. She survived, and it led to an awesome scene where my character made her learn how to stand on her new prosthetic leg without help, because in Barovia, the only person you can count on is yourself. While the campaign fizzled out shortly after, it's still one of my favorite roleplay scenes I've ever done. (PS, I play on running I6 Ravenloft this halloween in Shadowdark, wish me luck!)

Maggie Robinson

My friends and I have just begun our journey into Barovia! At level 2, we had our first encounter with Strahd in which he tried to bite the neck of Father Donovich. My Grave Domain Cleric, who is on a quest to find out if her power comes from Pelor’s light or the Raven Queen’s darkness, felt she had no choice but to stop the attack. She hit Strahd for a whopping 9 damage with a Guiding Bolt. He proceeded to call her a “bug” and then shot her with a Ray of Frost. The damage equaled my cleric’s exact HP max, 13, and she was immediately knocked out cold (pun intended). My DM turned my impulsive decision into a really great bonding moment for the party and Ireena, and it was just altogether pretty funny. Shoutout to my amazing DM Maya, who told me I could keep listening to Trinyvale X Strahd because the way you guys played it did not reveal too many major spoilers lol

Grimma Lynx

So, in the most reccent run through of curse of Strahd I DM'd, my players lead a populist revolution. They made allies of everyone. The peasanty of valakye, the revenant knights, mordenkeinen, the abbey of beasts, iterally everyone. The last place they visited before going to ravenloft was the amber temple, and they even managed to take control of the shield guardian, and used it to transport the 2000 lbs of iron in its treasure room down the mountain. With it, the help of artisans, smiths, carpenters and the revenants, they outfitted an entire peasant army complete with ballistas and laid siege to Strahd's castle. I had to come up with mechanics to have their army battle an army of monsters under strahd's control. The armies had their own HP, and each unique group or named npc they had recruited had a one time special ability it could use to aid the party once in the encounter, all wirh the end goal of giving the party an opening to get past the main gates of the castle

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

I brought my Divine Soul sorcerer, Serah Fitzgerald into a Strahd campaign back when I was first getting into D&D. Serah was the head of an intercontinental coffee company who felt a loss of purpose. So when my DM gave her a love interest NPC while stuck in Barovia, Serah kinda fell hard. And when that NPC turned out to be Strahd in disguise, and Serah was the reincarnation of his lost love? She decided to use her divine spark to find a way to save him. Sure, my DM kinda made me the main character of the campaign which maybe wasn't great for the other players. But I had a blast.

Cullen Driscoll

I was playing a Loxodon light cleric named Wumbo-Jumbo a earnest and true champion of a church that believed that the reason Pelor was an Elephant and that was why he was described as being "bigger than man". Strahd gave him an ivory Hairbrush and he crashed out

Christina S

When my players finally agreed to help bring Marina to Vallaki, they decided they wanted a “distraction” Marina to walk out into the mists instead. They spent a full 45 minutes trying to persuade the women of Barovia to put on a red wig and walk in the opposite direction, and went through NINE different women because NPCs kept being deeply insulted by them. This quest finally ended when the cleric convinced a prostitute to give him a handjob behind the building, and I guess the party got distracted.

Johnny_Johnster

First time I RP'd Strahd was in a combat situation where the players were fighting something else and he was there just to kill a minion who had betrayed him and joined the players. I intentionally played Strahd to not attack the players because they were still low level. The players tried so hard to save that minion while also dealing with the immediate threat, but they could do nothing to stop him. The power trip I got as the DM playing as Strahd is a high I'll forever chase

BarbF

Hey there big dogs (and little dog Jake), I'm playing as a batfolk druid (using halfling stats!) in a party with my best friend, brother, and husband. When we entered the first town, I split off to investigate some wailing while my party went to the tavern. I went to join them, but as I was approaching my chaos gremlin husband (playing a kenku rogue), told the barkeep there was a vampire at the door. I was almost attacked and killed while trying to tell them I was a fruit bat, not a vampire bat, and we subsequently pissed off the Vistani owners and were kicked out of the bar. Now we don't know if the Vistani will let us into their camp or if Madam Eva will even talk to us!

Mr. Sandman

Not a Strahd story exactly, but a tale about the shortest character arc I’ve ever seen—belonging to a PC in a Curse of Strahd campaign I ran years ago. Gardain the Pure was a cleric of the god of light. His entire backstory and gimmick revolved around his love for dogs. He wore a dog pendant. He talked about dogs constantly. Dogs were his thing. In the very first session, while the party was exploring the village of Barovia, Gardain encountered a mastiff guarding a door that hid an important plot hook. My master plan was to tie his love of dogs into the moment—maybe even give him a companion. He rolled Animal Handling. Natural one. The dog bit him. Without hesitation, he immediately killed the dog - citing that "The darkness is corrupting him". Then he looked at the table and announced, completely seriously, that he was now Gardain the Impure.

Ken W

When the PCs in my game got to Ravenloft, the Bard animated a chair almost immediately. "Chairold" (pronounced like Harold and Chair mashed together) made it through the rest of the campaign, including the final fight with Strahd. Stories are still told of Chairold's bravery to this day.

Morb

In one of my Multiverse campaigns highly inspired by the Loki TV show, my players ended up going to Barovia because their BBEG had messed up the timeline in Barovia by making it so Tatyana had become a vampire and become Strahd’s bride, but in doing so she betray’s Strahd and banished him from Barovia, becoming the Queen of Ravenloft. The Party had to team up with a de-powered Strahd to get his throne back, but even after finishing that section of the campaign, they loved roleplaying with Strahd so much that I made it so that Strahd became a “variant” and became their permanent companion and my dm pc. I got to go really deep into Strahd’s shame about Sergei and the anger he felt for not being loved by his parents. My favorite DM PC I’ve ever played.

Tylerscer

Sup little pups, when I ran strahd I did the whole amber temple with all the possible dark gifts. My players took almost every single one of them. They all went in like normal players and came out eyeless, winged, monstrosities that could see into the next dimension. One of them was a barbarian that literally didn't believe in magic but then became a spell slinging borderline lich.

Alexandra Ferguson

I’m two years into a Strahd campaign. Thus far we’ve lost several PCs by bullying a greasy teen village while the party was split and using a wizard’s arcane defences against attacking werewolves without realising the structural damage being done until rocks fell. We’ve also made an elaborate gown, got overly involved in local politics, and drowned a lot of people in a lake. What we haven’t done? Engaged with Strahd at all. I suspect we have at least two more years to go…

Spencer Mosher

I ran a group of 4 from level 2 to level 8 with some character deaths a along the way. But they finally had their dinner with strahd where he offered each of them everything they wanted. 3 out of 4 accepted. My favorite was a dhampir who wanted revenge on one of strahds spawn and guaranteed protection for their recently adopted child from old bone grinder. So strahd offered power and his word that he wouldn't lay a finger on the child. When they accepted strahd actually gave them some of his blood. So now this character got to describe his revenge..... then strahd locked him into old bone grinder with the child (he couldn't defy because he was now one of strahds) let him roll a d100 for how many days he resisted from eating his adopted child. Game wise we did a time skip because we had lost 3 of 4 characters and it fizzled out due to scheduling but my favorite part was each character that accepted a deal with strahd was now a major threat in borovia and the dhampir had replaced the hags at old bone grinder and is taking children from borovia village trying to fill the empty void in his chest.

Nick S

The Village of Shreksville I've been running Strahd for my friends and their preteen kids as an intro to D&D for them and my first time DMing. Early on in Vallaki, I mentioned the village of Krezk, which is not the easiest to pronounce. So, I'm sure I butchered it. Later on in the session my friend asked, "What was that other town called? Shreksville???" Needless to say everyone erupted in laughter, and it has not been called Krezk since. Cut to the present, I am now building the village of Shreksville. An ogre hermit, an awakened donkey, an awakened cat that walks on two legs, and Burgomaster Farquad. Please help me build Shreksville. This is the location of the Abbey and the mongrelfolk in our game. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Lady Jacqueline P

I've only played Strahd once and my DM started us in the Death House at level one. All three party members were healers and in the first session all three of us went down to 0 HP at least once each. But we'd all heard the stories about the module so we came into session two ready to try again only to get another party wipe in the basement. We did not have a session three after goblins took us out down there.

ZoeyHorse (Afterdark)

Hi friends! My favorite Strahd moment was when the party rolled religion checks to identify the effigee to the mother of night in the werewolf den. Two party members, a Tiefling (named Sarkin Richman) and Owlin Ranger (named Luzon Strigadee) both rolled a nat 1. The DM (me!!) narrated that they both thought that statue was of their mother. This immediately shifted into them thinking that they were long lost siblings, which became a running bit throughout the campaign. This got even more fun as it was later revealed that the Luzon's actual sister had been trapped in Bariovia and turned into a Vampire Spawn, leading to a family reunion(?). Other great bits are the multiple coups the party have executed in the different towns, and the adoption of an animated suit of armour, lovingly christened "Guy Armour." Lots of love, Zoey P.S can one of you say "Sarkin Richman".

Ali

We were playing Death House and while most of the party were talking to Rose and Thorn at the attic for the first time and they were learning a lot of the house's lore, one player (let's call him John) asked if he could take the kids' bones and put them in a bed sheet. I said sure, assuming he wanted to take the bones with him (maybe suspecting there will be a chance to bury them) or just hide them from the children. I continued to talk to the party when suddenly John interrupted the conversation and said he pours the oil from some lamps on the sheets. I asked him if he was 100% sure he wanted to do that as the action's results would be irreversible and he said he knows what he's doing because his character's mom is a druid and performs funeral rites often. Other players then chimed in wanting to stop him, they rolled initiative and went before John so he was stopped from burning the bones. Thank gods because I was going to rule that because the bones are lost, they can never be put in their designated final resting place so the kids' souls are unable to rest and doomed. Apart from that the other players were IN THE MIDDLE OF TALKING to the NPCs when John decided to burn them away which would cut the convo in the middle without learning most useful stuff. All ended well but to this day John is a bit salty and thinks his plan was good and he should have been able to perform it as his character was the expert in the matter (John is playing a druid, we also have a cleric and a paladin in the party)

Daave

I played Strahd with the first committed DnD group of my adult life. Played as the happy-go-lucky boy wizard/necromancer Demian De'Morte, the son of a loving mother and estranged demonic father. His mother always told him to get out into the world and make friends (look mom, I made friends at the cemetery!), so he did venture out with a paladin sworn to stamp out abominations, and a dwarf cleric and future queen. Demian almost instantly perma-died in the 2nd session of a campaign because of a banshee, dealt with his dad issues and claimed his dark destiny for his own, and raised Strahd's table and dragon skull into a pet mount named "Bonezy". He loved his friends the whole time doing it, all the way up to the final battle in which our paladin got his biggest wish. It was truly one of my favorite campaigns with a very dear group of friends. Years later, our DM for the Strahd campaign was taking another party through the adventure and asked to share the character of Demian in his afterlife, as a great and powerful lich and warden of Barovia, to which I gladly agreed. I would play Demian in our adventures in life, and our DM plays him in his afterlife. I truly cherish this character and the memories we share together in real life about this wonderful game.

Mark Marinic

In the distant mists of 2020, my friends and I started an online, cross-timezone game of Curse of Strahd. I rolled up my all-time favourite character: Rorimac Appleblossom, the Halfling Ranger. Rori was a ray of sunshine upon the land of Barovia, starting every interaction with kindness and understanding, but on the road to Vallaki our DM threw some kind of poisonous bug at us. The venom turned Rori's cherubic face transparent, revealing the horrific visage of muscle and cartilage beneath. My Poor Baby had disadvantage on all future charisma checks until I could find a cure, which was, seemingly, totally unknown to the people of Barovia. I request the intercession of the highest court. Justices, Juke (I want to say?), I ask you: was my DM right to lean into the horror of the setting, or was my tonally inconsistent cutie-patootie unjustly fugly-fied? I await your inevitable verdict. PS: Brado, I love you Big Dog, no matter which of us comes out on top of this.

Alex Warres

When I played Strahd, the other 3 members of my party decided (despite my DM’s heavy warnings) that it would be a great idea to fight Strahd as soon as they discovered his castle. My bard shamefully turned invisible and slunk away as they were brutally slaughtered.

Chad Rhiness

I ran Strahd during covid-times and it was an ironic bright spot in all of our lives. Three players -- Taz the War Cleric, Belanor von Gyllenhaal the Ranger/Paladin, and Churg Jurg III the Warlock. A few things: - They got into an early fight with an Assassin on the road. I think part of the Vistani Bandits. They barely survived and found a valuable rug that they lugged around Barovia for the rest of the adventure. - Our Ranger made a deal with the Night Mother, swearing himself to her, becoming her Paladin and a Werewolf in the process. I eventually allowed him to use his smites at range with his crossbow. DO NOT DO THIS. Crossbow expert + divine smite broke my game. - The crew spent most of their journey with Rudolf van Richten -- basically CoS's version of an aging Van Helsing. In triplet fashion, they were very rude to this man. Our Warlock eventually found himself cornered by Strahd in Ravenloft and made a deal to sacrifice Rudolf to save himself. This conversation all happened in Strahd's bathtub. - Rudolf had a Sabertooth tiger (this is in the module). Despite betraying van Richten, they kept the tiger until the very end of the campaign. They named it "My Little Kitty Cat." - After Strahd, I tried to steer the campaign toward a continued hunt of the famous "Universal Monsters." They killed the Creature from the Black Lagoon, defeated Doctor Frankenstein and were on their way to the Mummy when they pulled one of those cards from the deck of many things that totally flips your game. So they ended up in the Feywild saving somebody from being trapped in a gem. - Eventually we ended up back at Ravenloft and finished the campaign fighting Strahd, Lord of Hell (basically a toned down Orcus) on his Bone Dragon on the roof of the castle. I love those characters. I love Strahd. I'll never forget that crew and our time in Barovia.

Iida

Greetings from Finland! Our party managed to trigger fight with Strahd earlier than we expected. We had just found the sun sword from the crypts, and decided to check out some more crypts before short rest. Well, we tumbled into Strahd's horses crypt, it attacked us, we killed it, Strahd got vere very angry and attacked us before we got time to attune to the sun sword or cure our wounds. We did win eventually, but battle was definitely harder than it could have been. During the campaing our wizard also took way too many dark gifts and turned evil, so our cleric and paladin had to do intervention to keep him with us

Ziel R.

Reginald VelStrahjson

Bep Bingus

One friend played death house (opening level 1 module), planning on a full strahd campaign after, but her group fizzled. A year or so later, my current D&D group started a new stahd campaign and we had her character join with her backstory being that she escaped barovia years ago, then came back to finish the job with our current group. We even ran a campaign about what her character did between the two strahds that took place in Sigil.

Kambuzi

We may not have founded a SpudFuckers but my warlock did run a pyramid scheme. Started out as trying to recruit more followers for his patron and ended up with a mass of villager NPCs following my word and making donations to "our God". When the Burgermaster of Vallaki was murdered in our campaign I took that as an opportunity to rig the election for his replacement by having my followers stuff the ballots.

Jenny Jones

A hag's curse left our Paladin's soul stuck in her husband's body. The party convinced the Abbott to transfer her soul into Vasilka's body and her husband's soul from a soul jar back into his own body. Now we have a flesh golem Paladin who looks like the Bride of Strahdenstein.

anna

I still feel bad about what I did to Doru and Donavich. When we went to the church in Barovia, we could tell something was off, but Donavich was not budging. We checked around town and found out Doru had gone missing. I asked Ireena if she had any pictures of him, and she said no, but my DM off-hand mentioned there was an engraving of his mother on her gravestone. She thought I was looking for clues to find Doru and did not realize what I planned to do with Alter Self. I used this to turn into Donavich’s wife, and then through a series of insane rolls, convinced him I had come back to him to understand where our son was. I did not realize how fucked up this was until he went into despair about being haunted by his dead wife, but by that point, we were in too deep. While this was happening, my party failed on every single stealth roll to find Doru and were caught by the two of us. They still did end up putting Doru out of his misery eventually, I dropped the disguise to help, and Donavich ran away so I never got to apologize to him. Maybe it is better I never had the chance.

Canis Corax

Hard to choose just one story but I think this was our most iconic moment. Our party arrived at the Festival of the Sun in Vallaki, where the burgomaster was struggling to set the wicker sun ablaze due to the rain. Our sorcerer, intending to help out, cast firebolt, but rolled a nat 1 and hit the burgomaster's wife instead. Chaos ensued, and our party was swarmed by angry guards and confused citizens. We were getting absolutely whomped. Our kenku warlock dimension-doored through a random window in an attempt to hide. Thanks to a random encounter roll, he found himself amidst a group of cultists summoning a demon. The warlock channeled his demonic patron and spoke to the cultists in infernal, convincing them to leave the building and fight on our side. Without their help, we would have had a TPK. The event marked a turning point for most of our PCs as we realized just how dangerous Barovia can be. It has been a few years but we still razz the player who set the Burgomaster's wife on fire.

Brandon Woods

We had a server with multiple campaigns running under one DM come together in a server wide event where we tried to take down Strahd in one night, searching for the artifacts inside Castle Ravenloft in multiple teams of 3 or 4 triggering every trap, finding every boss/minion and Strahd possibly appearing around every corner it was a hilarious and chaotic event that saw everyone die except Strahd himself

Sunspotz

I’ve been playing in an online CoS campaign for over 4 years now! Our party (Goliath Cleric, Elf Rogue, Halfling Monk, Half Orc Druid, Dwarven Sorceress, and Human Bard) refers to themselves as “The Sluts” because of our sorceress’ chainmail crop top with the word written on it. Most of the other players are irl escape room enthusiasts so unfortunately for our DM we spend as many sessions as possible exploring every nook and cranny of every house, temple, and castle; hence the four year campaign. We also spent an entire session trying (and succeeding with a Nat 20 medicine check) to pierce our dwarven sorcereress’ belly bottom with a Slaad’s brain gem. I’d have to say the biggest twist we dealt with was learning that my Goliath Cleric Pc’s situationship ( the elven rogue Pc and now Ex-situationship) had made a deal with Strahd and has been working as a very unhelpful spy for the vampire lord for almost our entire campaign! Unfortunately our DM had put a hard final session date of March 14th for us to storm Castle Ravenloft and defeat Strahd before time runs out! But we’re all excited since it’s the first time we’re going to play in person.

Amelia Dev

for some reason we ended up all deciding that whenever one of us went to the bathroom, we all had to go to the bathroom together, usually while holding hands. strahd was not impressed

Sean Vazquez

I kidnapped my players into Barovia in the midst of a longer campaign, and being unable to leave heightened the tension for the whole way through. When they entered Strahd’s castle for the dinner, the party put in an elaborate fashion show with each player designing a costume and writing a performance. This served as a distraction while the party sorcerer confronted one of Strahd’s wives in the ethereal plane.

Carissa C

It's become a running bit that Strahd cannot stand the bagpipes that the dwarf bard plays so anytime the bard tries to entice Strahd by playing his bagpipes, I get to tell everyone that Strahd rolls his eyes and looks very displeased and it's been fun. Maybe one of these times Strahd will come around on the bagpipes?

Ben Kaufman

Orzo Kobayashi or How I Stopped Running it Grimdark and had Some Fun: When my players first got to Vallaki, it was early in the campaign and I was taking running the module really seriously. I was making them roll the random encounters constantly on the road, came up with an exchange rate for wolf pelts, and was quickly running out of steam after the fourth encounter with 1d6 direwolves, 3d6 wolves, or 1d6 werewolves in human form. Entering the big town, I told my players that they could go shopping for armor and the party asked the logical question: What is this armorer's name? I desperately searched through the physical book, as I had the idea to link whatever NPC the party met to the encounter with Arabelle and Bluto north of town by having it be Bluto's brother. But Triplets, for the life of me I could not find the description of the encounter to get Bluto's last name. After what felt like an eternity of turning pages, I said the first name that came to mind based on my dinner and recently watching Star Trek, Orzo Kobayashi. My players were wildly enthusiastic about meeting this portly jovial Italian man randomly dropped into dour and dreary Barovia who was excited to trade them gear. Their delight gave me the confidence to just have fun with the setting and reorient the campaign to what my players and I enjoy and it's been a great 3 years. During a longer break in our regular sessions, I wrote and ran a Mario-esque side quest in the sewers of Vallaki where Orzo claimed his birthright in the mushroom kingdom by defeating a Young Krakken (i.e. Blooper) and a homebrew Bowser. One of my players loves him so much, he put him into his pirate campaign as a member of our ship's crew.

Snackonomics

Hello lovely people! In my Strahd campaign my players decided to jump the head of the guards (Izek) in an alley because of his creepy Ireena doll collection. They managed to make a getaway after cutting his demon arm off. They took that with him and it grew into a full demon that tried to murder while they're were fighting evil druids and the Gulthias Tree. They were not amused, but I thought it was hilarious.

Rob

My Strahd campaign's highlight was far and away when the party found a huge stockpile of treasure in the Amber Temple, which in the module is on top of a mountain guarded by a Roc. Despite my reminders that there is nothing worth buying in Barovia, they were determined to get the treasure down the mountain. So our druid wild-shaped into a whale, and they stuffed as much treasure as could fit inside his mouth. The wizard then cast Fly on the whale, and they began riding the treasure-filled whale down from the mountain heights, forcing me to improvise a scenario in which the Roc started chasing them, and every failed roll on their part caused more treasure to spill out of the whale's mouth. The chase ended when the wizard cast Wall of Force, and the Roc smashed right into it and gave up afterwards. They made it down to the valley with several thousand gold coins, only to be disappointed when, as I had said, there was nothing worth buying.

okiedokeTM

For the Vineyard fight against Baba Lesaga, our DM statted out every. single. member. of the Matrikov family— down to the children NPCs who couldn’t even do anything— and had them each take a turn in combat. Plus individual turns for 10+ evil animated trees, lair actions for the hut, and effects of the crop field catching fire and burning down completely if we didn’t stop it. One player suggested using hoard mechanics and the DM bullied her out of the group. The combat took three 4-hour sessions to finish. Table obviously broke up after that. I was so unspeakably relieved when the triplets showed up and ended the ritual in one round lol.

Pablo

Shello triplets and druncle Caldwell! Our would-be case comes to you from a spooky church-turned-Airbnb in the woods of New York, where we continued our year-long Curse of Strahd campaign. Early in the campaign our Marina/Ireena become a maternal figure to our party's goblin monk, Kalambity. In return, Kalambity tried to teach her how to defend herself in battle, but alas, she showed no aptitude for neither blade nor magic, so instead we would just park her in a Tiny Hut whenever we went to do anything dangerous. This dynamic took a dramatic turn during our DnD church trip, when Kalambity decided to play a game of cards with Ireena to pass the time… with a modified Deck of Many Things he recently swiped from Strahd's castle. Our monk drew cards for himself and was happy with the results, while the remaining players drew cards for Ireena. She became eerily serene, but the DM did not reveal what had transpired until our next battle: instead of hiding like normal, Ireena simply said, 'the time for Violence is Now' and proceeded to roll two nat 20's with Sneak Attack to obliterate a ghost. Justices, one of the cards we drew for her was the Sun, instantly granting her two levels of Rogue. Kalambity was ecstatic, finally his adoptive mother could defend herself and grow even stronger through future battles! But our DM said no, she would not gain any more levels after this. We were originally going to bring this to DnD Court, but together we compromised on a narratively sensical reading of the cards: Ireena is now an Echo Knight Fighter, fighting alongside Tatiana’s spirit against the psychotic whims of Dnd’s biggest incel. Kalambity is very proud.

Michael K

In relation to the triplets running away from Strahd instead of fighting him initially - when I DM'd Strahd I made the huge mistake of Strahd charming Ireena and taking her with him when he first encountered the players (when he "welcomes them to Barovia"). I thought for SURE the players would argue or fight back to take her, but after the session I asked "why didn't you guys try to argue?" one of the players exclaimed "we're level 3 and that guy is literally drawn onto the DM screen. No way we were going to fight him." A lesson learned and it was really interesting trying to find a way to not have Ireena just fully be a vampire the next time they saw her!

Scottee

In our Strahdpaign, I played a druid named Fenrir. There were two major highlights: we got invited to dinner by Rahadin, except when we stumbled across him, he was swallowing an entire fish whole. That freaked us out, so we attacked him and we found the invitation on his body. As an apology, I Reincarnated him and he was a Deep Gnome for the rest of the campaign. Also! One of the Dark Gifts is a True Rez spell WITHOUT the 200 year time limit. I got the idea to use it on Sergei's body when we found him in the catacombs and he helped us defeat Strahd! Irina/Marina was still around in Vallaki, so we sorta got the Perfect Ending by reuniting them and leaving Ravenloft in their hands. I'm curious if Caldwell had any plans for if the Triplets took that True Rez and who they might have revived!

Jägernaut

Originally, I wanted to play Strahd along the lines of Dio from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (even going so far as to describe him as "exuding a bewitching sensuality"). His first interaction with the party, however, I pretty much just defaulted to the only voice I can do, which is basically a super heavy Southern gentleman kind of accent. Think a combination of Foghorn Leghorn, Colonel Sanders, and Leonardo DiCaprio's character from Django Unchained. Did I take a little inspiration from Murph's vampires in campaign 1? Maybe. It made some situations pretty silly that would have otherwise been serious, but even the DM has to have fun sometimes.

Bryan Eck

I did a mini Strahd campaign while our main DM was away fighting fires and doing cleanup out west. One of my favorite highlights was I put on a wrestling tournament using the Eldermourne boxing mechanics. The player who won was the tournament's anonymous heel "Mr. Shop" (he went to the neighboring store and got a paper bag for his mask). For the rest of the campaign we would all act very suspicious whenever he would pick up a bag since he crit on his disguise.

Dakota Smithson

For my first time, DM I did the curse of Stradh campaign for my wife a bard , her younger brother a ranger and a friend from work a fighter. When the party finished Svalich woods and made it to vallaki the festival of the blazing sun was being held, I describe the villagers as cheering wildly at a somber parade for no reason even though everyone looks to be suffering. My wife with a nat 20 charisma roll started an uprising, and the festival turned into a roast of the baron Vargas. I haven’t fully Been able to figure out how to continue without him as a plot hook to have the players fight off strahd’s drakness. I fear what may happen to Father Petrovich.

Dean Barr

At the start of Strahd a party member wanted to switch characters so conspired with the DM to have a dramatic death. Slight problem is that my Asimar Tempest Cleric on a mission from God got a hit on Strahd before he ran away after the story beat in question during the stage exit. My cleric now marches around Barovia, confident that Strahd is scared of him and the party. Hags have been attacked, beheaded and burned. Werewolves tamed, revenants destroyed, Abbots abolished and Barons beheaded all based on an unknown to him false sense of confidence. I know some lucky dice and party tactics have saw the gang through so far but the question remains when he will get humbled and then I have to roleplay an existential crisis. Both he and I are unprepared, may Valkur have mercy on us both.

Vinnyorcharles

The party went to the Amber Temple to help an NPC revive his sister. Well, they all found the sarcophagi that give you a boon but turn you evil. Everyone but the cleric, a tight grandma named Mary Berry, thought this was a good idea. This resulted in an almost entirely evil party, and the breaking point for the cleric was when they found a staff on the corpse of a wizard. The artificer sent his homonculus to pick up the staff in secret. The homonculus screamed "Power! Power!" and then lost control of the staff when he blasted a cone of cold, hitting itself and the entire party, nearly killing the cleric. This caused the cleric to quit the party while they were in the temple. The player decided that her temporary character would be Johnny Daytona, a regular human adventurer. This is a reference to What We Do in the Shadows, because her new character was a vampire sent by Strahd to steal the boon of resurrection. While the party was talking to the lich, Johnny turned invisible, stole the boon, and teleported out before he could be stopped. P.S. Johnny appeared in the final fight with Strahd, was paralyzed, and unceremoniously murdered by the hastened barbarian for his crimes.

Adriana

We didn't realize the Were-Ravens were good guys. We went to the tavern, and they gave us a room, and we were discussing the next steps, and noticed a bird hovering by the window. Up until this point, birds had meant Strahd surveillance, so everyone was freaking out that he was listening, and I was playing a gloomstalker ranger, so I took out my bow and shot it. When it turned back into a person after my crit things got awkward. Long story short, we got run out of the tavern, and it made getting their help at the world of wines later in the story way more difficult, but also very fun.

Paula TW

This is sooo funny omg. I could’ve played a million games and never thought to smuggle money out with a flying whale

Alexandra Roemer

Myself (Warlock), my fellow adventurers (Fighter, Cleric, Bard), and Ireena were chasing after some vampire spawn who had stolen the bag containing the bones of St. Andral through the streets of Vallaki. We were doing our best to offensively take down as many spawn as possible while also defending the villagers from being attacked. During the melee, Crown of Madness was cast on the vampire spawn that was holding the bag of bones and was told to drop the bag and attack one of its fellow Spawn. I was then able to use Mage Hand from my position to grab the bag and give it to Ireena. The fight was nearly over when in the sky, descending down from the dark stormy sky on his flaming horse Bucephalus, was Strahd. It then became a race to get to St. Andrals Church to reconsecrate it before Strahd could reach Ireena. I cast Invisibility on Ireena and cast Disguise Self with my Eldritch Invocation to look like Ireena, while the real Ireena headed towards the back entrance of the church. Unfortunately Strahd found the rest of us, saw through my disguise and stabbed his sword into my side screaming “I will not be fooled by cheap tricks!” and then, leaving me very wounded, he cast Fireball on the other members of our party dropping them all to 0 HP. Fortunately, Ireena was able to make it inside. The bones were replaced and a wave of holy energy was sent out upsetting Strahd who then got in our fighter's face. Our fighter then spit in Strahd's face to which Strahd ripped out a chunk of our fighter's scalp, got on top of Bucephalous and flew into the night having had his fun with us.

Joe's Writing Corner

To the Two Crew, I offer a tale revealing the true horrors, not of Barovia, but of modern slang. My players met Strahd early in the campaign. Naturally, they did as heroes do and challenged him. I was stoked. I got to have my cool anime boss moment, where he mops the floor with them, but leaves them alive to 'play more games'. The fear of Strahd is fully set in, both in universe and out. They play normally after that, quiet and careful, but then they find the Tome of Strahd. They read of Strahd's depravity and his obsession with Tatiana, and the lengths he's willing to go imprison her in his demented 'love'. 'Oh, okay, he's an incel, got it.' 'No he has brides, doesn't he? He's a simp.' 'Simpcel.' 'Simpcel!' I was powerless. There was no word that could accurately sum up Strahd more quickly than 'simpcel', and there was also no word more devestating to the horror element of the character. They continued to have fun, rallying allies and armies to the cause and laying siege to Ravenloft, but in the final confrontation with Strahd, when he had drained his brother's corpse of blood to become an even fouler eldritch being, I got hit, not with fear, but 'Whoah, CLASSIC simpcel behavior.' Strahd was slain ignobly, as is the fate of all simpcels. I leave you all with this. Words are powerful, they can be funny, they can raise or obliterate the mood on whim, but sometimes, just sometimes, I maybe wish that people would keep some words to themselves.

Gicky

I ran the Death House once where all my players latched on to the possible connection between the Durst family of the Death House, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizket. I caved and themed the house to be a 2000 era frat party. My players decided to sport baseball caps and big baggy jeans and walk around saying "its been one of those days". I made the shambling mound at the bottom of the house the mosh pit at wood stock 99. I couldn't bring it back from there so we never ended up playing again :(

ChocolatePI

I decided to run Strahd for my DND group and my first experience as a GM. I was hoping a stright and structed adventure would help my focus on the mechanics side of prep and not so much story telling from scratch. Instead my players had no interest in killing Strahd, and killed Ireena on sight. While frustrated at the time that my lore NPC got iced for a bit, the campaign ended up being very fun with the players destroying the sun sword and helping Strahd destroy uprisings from vilage folk.

Ian Thomas

Halfway through the burgermeisters village we ran into an impasse: half the party wanted to use the burger’s daughter as bait for strahd and the other half saw that (probably rightly) as a bit evil! PvP ensued and two chromatic orbs later my barbarian was down and making death saves. Our death cleric sat on his chest and watched the life leave his eyes, and a second party member died and was forced to roll death saves with no one to help til he died.

Chuck Bosworth

To our defeated Druncle and the victorious Triplets, I present to you a Strahd story through the looking glass-ass. We were nearing the end of the campaign and exploring the Amber Temple, specifically the lich’s lair. My character, Tisdale the Weird, a charlatan fortune-teller turned divination wizard, was very interested in the lich’s spellbook, but the campaign text clearly states “The lich attacks anyone who tries to take its spellbook,” so our DM made it obvious to us that he guarded it closely. This lich has been here so long that he has even forgotten his name, and restoring his memories can earn his favor. While contemplating our party’s own lost memories, our DM described the god Lathander freezing the lich in time and providing key information to the player whose character was concluding their arc. This was an awesome moment full of narrative exposition and character reveals that lasted several minutes. As Lathander concluded his tale, our DM described the time-stop of the lich coming to an end. It was at this point that I, as Tisdale, shouted, “Oh noooo, the spellbook is gone!” and the table erupted in laughter. While I felt a little bad about taking advantage of the DM’s description of the narrative for personal gain, our entire table couldn’t stop laughing. I went on to describe how Tisdale had shoved it into his Bag of Holding, then utilized portent rolls and his Charlatan background to succeed on all the necessary checks to deceive the old lich. Thank you for listening and I hope that this tale is worthy enough to be considered to join the ranks of the Hamburglars.

kimikoroi

The first DND campaign I ever played was Curse of Strahd and it went terribly. The DM hadn't done the best job pacing us, so by the time we reached the final battle we were super underpowered. The DM's solution to this was to make us all level 20 just before we started combat. I remember being so stressed out and confused by all my bard spells that I spent a solid 20 minutes trying to cast wall of fire, mainly because I had no idea how big a foot is supposed to be (I'm British). After my turn I announced I was going to take a quick bathroom break and when I returned, I was informed by the DM that they had killed Strahd while I was pissing. To say it felt anticlimactic was an understatement. Still, there must have been something I enjoyed about DND because I decided to keep playing it for 6 years straight despite my awful first experience.

lawless-crows

Picture this: the first summer after lockdown, freshly finishing out school working in a microbrewery with your close friends. You close in the evening, shut off the lights, and travel to Barovia A monk, a bard, a barbarian, and a cleric, most of us never before playing. We take on the Death House (tutorial in the module). Learning the boundaries of this new fantastic world, we explored, finding a bathroom and strangely, a kettle inside. What ever could this be for? There’s no toilet so clearly the kettle is to pee in. Our dm, exasperated, begged us to move on. Being cheeky, our cleric picked up the kettle to carry, declaring he needed a new toilet anyway. Cheeky players get cheeky consequences. The kettle was cursed, and could not be dropped. Only in a natural disaster circumstance could the kettle be lost, and each day that passed in our adventure would be another layer of toxicity and pain added to the consequence. In game days pass, weeks even. We don’t forget and yet never roll a nat 1. But luck has to leave eventually. Town square of Vallaki, the entire active gaurd. Each of our party goes down except for one. The cleric rolls a death save. Natural one. The soul begins to ascend, the piss kettle explodes. It takes out every single remaining guard, saving the party from a TPK. The souls returns, and in thanks, the cleric declares a new god. Strahd hates to see the Piss Kettle Cleric coming

Jonah Wilkinson

The first campaign I ran as a baby DM was Curse of Strahd and I thought it would be cool to tie my characters to Barovia through their backstories (which I admit, failed spectacularly). One of my players was a the child of a Vistani and a Dusk Elf that was was abandoned on the material plane so they wouldn't be stuck in the mist. The only thing connecting that player to their parents was a sunburst amulet. This amulet had no mechanical bearing on the game and was purely for character. During one session, I had our friend come in to play an agent of strahd that appeared as a doll that looked like Irina. I had it clear before hand that this player was not coming in as a companion, but was effectively a co-DM. Near the end of the session, the Irina doll (a thief rogue) stole the amulet and escaped. I had set it up to be a chase where they hunted the doll down and discovered that the amulet was important (effectively, it could be used to traverse the mist). Instead, the party let her escape and resigned to have lost the amulet. Everyone praised the heel turn in the session and I felt pretty good about where the story was going, despite the inaction. The next day, however, the player who lost the amulet came over to my house and literally cried for an hour, saying that they felt betrayed and hurt, even after I apologized and explained why I set it up this way. To make amends, I offered to retcon the escape and say they retrieved the amulet before the doll could get away. They agreed to it, but the reaction killed any joy I had for running the game and we never played Strahd again.

lawless-crows

“Piss kettle” immediately became our groupchat name and it still is almost 5 years later

Austin Winslow

We had a lot of fun during this campaign. Strahd had a doppelgänger minion who kept infiltrating the party so we started coming up with code phrases like “strahds mom is hot” and other things his minions wouldn’t want to say. When we went to dinner at the castle we clogged all his toilets. My tabaxi monk also stole and wore the wedding dress. And then we were at the final battle with probably 2 sessions left and our DM disappeared off the face of the earth, deleted most of his online accounts, and blocked us all on the ones he didn’t.

Tim

I ran Strahd with three of my friends and we had a blast. In my game, I gave my players the Tome of Strahd pretty early on in the campaign. In the module, it says that Strahd covets the tome, so I had him try to steal it while the party was walking through the woods. Everyone failed the perception check to see Strahd, except for Ogleg Gelgo, a cultist from Death House that one of my players convinced to come with us. He got a nat 20 and of course spotted Strahd. I think I had Strahd fight for a round and then he polymorphed into a giant crow and flew away. Another standout was when my players fought the Baba Yaga and her hut in the Ruins of Berez and didn't heed what I thought was a very obvious hint that they should go in the hut and pull a gem out its socket to de-power the hut. They did not heed said hint and they were all knocked out. To avoid a TPK, I made it so that the Baba Yaga turned all the players into goats, which my players kind of seemed to love roleplaying as. They eventually escaped when the ravens came to rescue them and were turned back into their former selves.

Chief Parma John (Nate B.)

In our campaign the DM tried to kill Ireena! Strahd was played as a more violent and vengeful villain (with a modified 2024 umbral lord stat block to match). We fought strahd from the top of the castle to the bottom using his phase through walls ability. One of our party members had been secretly (to the characters) charmed by Strahd so we had to contend with both during our final battle.

Rohan Lall

To the managerial staff at Spudfucker's: Strahd was me and my table's first full campaign, and I was made the DM. It was honestly perfect for learning how to DM. We had everything: tragic backstories, ominous mist, morally gray NPCs… and just the right amount of absolute nonsense. The tone stayed balanced for most of the campaign. They followed the Tarokka reading. They dined with Strahd. They survived the Amber Temple. They gathered allies. By the time we hit the endgame, I was READY. Picture it: The war room. The wereravens. The villagers of Barovia. Representatives from Vallaki and Krezk. The revenants of Argynvostholt standing in silvered armor. I had prepped a multi-stage siege. Army mechanics. Battlefield morale. Strategic objectives. Phases of assault. I had flowcharts. I had contingency plans. I had probably over-prepped, but I was proud of it. My players listened carefully to all of this. Then they said: “…What if we sneak into Ravenloft as new chefs?” I blinked. They reasoned, quite logically, that Strahd obviously has kitchen staff. Therefore, they would infiltrate Castle Ravenloft disguised as mustachioed culinary professionals and lace his next meal with garlic. Not just the meal. Garlic everywhere. In the castle. In the hallways. In the vents. Garlic warfare. I decided, alright, fuck it, let dice Christ decide. And then? Nat 20. Nat 20. Another Nat 20. Suddenly I’m roleplaying suspicious kitchen staff. They’re arguing about seasoning ratios in fake accents. One of them is aggressively kneading dough while trying to look inconspicuous. Another is asking where Strahd prefers his garlic minced. Eventually, because their planning was about as coherent as mine at that point, they got caught. Strahd was not, in fact, defeated by marinara.

Cristian Herrera

This Strahd story is how I accidentally killed a Fane. Our DM was running an encounter to restore the swamp fane’s power. In my character’s hand I held her heart, corrupted by the Baba Lysaga who we had recently defeated. During a ritual to restore her power, the aforementioned hag appeared in front of me. Suddenly my own hand bursts from her chest and begins reaching for the heart. I was unsure on how to proceed with the ritual, so I do the only thing that makes sense at the moment: “I take a bite.” I made a bad move to bite down on the corrupted heart. This is, decidedly, not how to restore a fane’s power. After I made a few successful saving throws my character survived the ordeal but the swamp fane did not. I stole her remaining power away, gaining a few benefits like boosted AC and “a dump-truck ass” while also losing a potential ally and pissing off her sisters. When later asked why I did that I started my explanation with “Well in Kingdom Hearts…” this led to some well-earned razzing, as there is definitely no eating of hearts in that video game. I just thought the ritual needed a sacrifice like Sora using the dark keyblade in Hollow Bastion. PS this moment became so iconic for our campaign, we had art commissioned for the scene after the campaign ended.

Ben Delahay

1/4/24. D&D Court: Invisible T-Rexes, Potion Cocktails, and A Visit to Swords R’ Us. I came before Dice Christ after I rolled 8 Nat 20s that meant nothing and then didn’t hit a single enemy for the rest of our 13 hour session spanning 2 days. Murph rolled a 2 on the die and took my curse; for 2 years, I was finally rolling well. Since you all finished Strahd, I have not rolled above a 5 during a D&D session. The Curse is Back. I figured I should let you know that night wasn’t pleasant for anyone. This is the story of how in the midst of my despair as Dice Christ abandoned me we lost Ireena. My partner was playing a Phantom Rogue Ghostwise Halfling named Shyla. Shyla struggled at the beginning of the campaign bc a lot of enemies were resisting her abilities. They felt helpless and when a Dark Power reached out to help they took it. Vaund the Evasive struck a deal with Shyla granting them a crossbow made of their own flesh and bone. The sad thing was that this still provided benefits that were resisted by several enemies putting Shyla in a position where they continued to ask for more. Finally, when we found out Van Richten was able to force the Warforged in our party to follow orders stripping him of his free will Shyla snapped. Shyla made a deal that would allow them to break Richten’s control. However, Vaund would be allowed to fire one shot from the crossbow. Shyla and Ireena were very close. Shyla consistently protected her, defended her, and supported her. I don’t know if Ireena loved her, but Shyla certainly came to love Ireena over the course of the campaign. During the final assault on Castle Ravenloft, standing on the walls of the castle we encountered the man who killed my mentor (and the ghost that used to possess my body): Rahadin. However, Rahadin’s monologue and my vengeance were cut short when Vaund fired a crossbow bolt through Ireena’s neck. I leapt from the tower in order to retrieve our only way to revive her, but this was the point in the night where my luck had soured. All of our luck had soured. I was unable to retrieve the gems we needed for spell components within a minute for revivify. Ireena tragically died. We killed Strahd before her soul could be trapped, and the rest of us did what we could to try to find a way to resurrect her. Unfortunately, Shyla was never able to find a way before dying of old age. SPAR the Warforged would eventually power off one final time, and the soul of a young trainee within him would be too weak to go on. Finally, after everyone had died. My monk became the next Dread Power. Zhudun The Corpse Star and Neal would carve out a dread realm in the Feywild. Neal would live his life as a kindly baker until a civilization grew powerful enough and a tyrant would emerge. Then, Neal as the embodiment of the clean slate brought upon by winter would tear it apart brick by brick leaving no survivors. Then, the cycle would repeat forever until one day there would hopefully be a world with no tyrants. I hope you enjoyed this tale of woe. Maybe my curse is a punishment for how badly things went or the fact that I willingly worked with a guy called The Corpse Star. He was a good guy though, and saved Neal’s situationship so you’ve gotta respect him.

Mathieu Grangé

Dear Duncula, Here is a story from my CoS campaign I run. My players once solved a Castle Ravenloft problem by throwing the only two characters who could fix it over a 40ft wide 500ft deep chasm (filled with mist, not croissants). They had stolen Argynvost’s skull and reached the courtyard, only to find the drawbridge raised and the portcullis sealed. Half the party was already outside using gaseous form. Unfortunately, that half included the only two people who could cast dispel magic: Sir Godfrey Gwillym, revenant paladin of Argynvost, and the party’s cleric. The player who cast gaseous form was out of spell slots. So my players decided the obvious solution was to throw Sir Godfrey across. I asked if they were sure. I told them the DC was 25 (Athletics). They went for it. I described this solemn, two-centuries-old undead knight being lined up like a javelin. They took a running start. They rolled a total of 18. He did not make it. He fell screaming and produced a knight-shaped hole in the mist. There was a long silence at the table. Then someone said, “Okay. Let’s try with the cleric.” I lowered the DC to 22 since they’d “calibrated.” They launched him. This time he landed, cast dispel magic, and lowered the bridge. The party was eventually reunited with Godfrey who was saved by a hidden but watchful wareraven during his fall.

TJ

At the very end of our Strahd campaign, right when we were about to confront Strahd in his Castle, our DM suddenly decided to introduce Vecna as the actual BBEG, which resulted in us very strangely fighting alongside Strahd. So in the final battle, they brought in a "guest" PC to play Strahd, who none of us had ever met or heard of before. "Strahd" both attacked us and then tried to buff our characters against Vecna. And in the end, the DM made Vecna disappear, and then strangely made us roll wisdom saving throws to see if we were charmed by Strahd so we wouldn't kill the guest PC "Strahd." We all failed the high DC saving throw. We all sat there dumbfounded, and needless to say, we didn't continue playing after that.

AutoReroll

My Strahd session ended a month ago (Fighter turned into a giant and hit him with a bag if 20 alchemists fires) and it got pretty crazy. It got so crazy in fact, that the group garnered a reputation. Depending on the faction they were speaking to, they were: - The Cinderkin - Sangele Dulche (Sweetbloods) - The Packstabbers - The Potlickers - Hollow Lucked But the main name for the group ended up being The Spillfolk. I even had the hags write a nasty folk song and teach it to the local children in their dreams so they would occasionally hear children singing "The Mess of The Spillfolk. From then on, they were much more aware of their actions and became much more heroic.

Austin Tussing

Dear Druncula and Triplets, This story happens at the climax of our Strahd campaign. The sorcerer, David Blackstone, had found a Broom of Flying from the hags and liked to fly around and shoot off spells. The party was exploring around Castle Ravenloft, looking to take out the Jewel Heart. Strahd had been keeping an eye on the party, and David noticed him flying outside of the castle, looking through a window. David flew outside into a howling storm, where Strahd managed to grapple David and began attacking him, while the rest of the party was inside and unable to assist. Alone and in melee range with Strahd, David was quickly outmatched and ripped off of his broom. The GMs (we had two) alternated playing Strahd with a sort of Jekyll and Hyde duality. Currently, it was angry Strahd - and angry Strahd realized he has resistance to bludgeoning damage. Strahd kept ahold of David and jumped off the roof, ending his own fly spell. It was a 100 foot fall for 10d6 bludgeoning damage, which Strahd was happy to tank. The GMs set the stakes for what could be instant death for David (massive damage rules), and we rolled exactly one damage less than that number. With David's neck barely holding together from the impact, our monk wall-ran down the castle and managed to heal David from this meteor slam into the stones. Strahd enjoyed toying with the party like a cat with a rodent, and scheming, patient Strahd was impressed with their moxie and let the party continue on. It wasn't long after this that they ended up heading down to the crypts, finding Sergei's +2 Plate armor, and looting that. They figured that since they had made use of so many resources, now was the perfect time for a long rest... in the tomb of Strahd's brother. Angry Strahd enjoyed ambushing the party once again, setting up an epic final showdown in the crypts.

ZZYZZXX

To the owners of the new hit chain restraint Spüdfuckers: My Strahd experience was my second time ever playing DnD and I didn’t know we were playing any module until I got to the session. For background I was told that were going to do an all rouge campaign for shits and giggles so I was expecting some sort of heist or assassination based gameplay. Imagine my surprise when our group of 3 level one rouges received a dinner invite from the reclusive lord Strahd (which even as a newbie DnD player I recognized the name) and were whisked away in a magic bank of fog to Barovia as soon as we exited the tavern. We began walking down a foggy, lantern lit path when howls sounded out of the darkness and we were attacked by 4 dire wolves (keep in mind we had a collective health pool of like 27 HP) and we were all instantly killed in the first round of combat. After we looked at the dm to see if he was joking or not he closed the module and said “well you guys made it to like page 3” and then we went home. That was the last time I played dnd and after hearing the triplets go through the story I wonder why our dm thought 3 level 1 rouges had any chance against the vampire lord. Love the show so much thank you for letting me live my dnd life through you guys

Ilxie Archfey of Dreams. Back aboard The Stormborn

Curse of Strahd was the first long-term campaign my group of friends and I ever played. Our DM went all out, majorly adding to the winding story of Barovia and all trapped within. This was a full level 1 to level 20 campaign for my friends and I, and lives on in near mythic status for us. I played a Circle of Dreams Druid, while the rest of the party consisted of an Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter, a Forge Domain Cleric, and a Bladesinger Wizard. Our campaign had it all: the creation of a new archfey, the birth of a new god, becoming the leader of the werewolves as Ulfhedinn, mysterious messages from future selves, betrayal in the Amber Temple, and of course, Strahd’s defeat. With that being said, I want to share the story of how we slam-dunked on our DM for one of the final fights. Our party had been taking out Strahd’s top minions in preparation for our final assault on Ravenloft. Our latest target, Gravestorm, was a dracholich in service to Strahd who rarely left his lair. Us, not wanting to get TPK’d so close to the end of the campaign began to think of clever strategies. This culminated in our party standing in the Magnificent Mansion of our wizard, Elbeau, who loved making each of the rooms themed based on real-life movies. We all took our places. Elbeau cast “Gate,” naming Gravestorm as the target. Gravestorm then appeared in the middle of the Space Jam arena, where our party, in Tune Squad jerseys, began to lay into him. We proceeded to listen to the Space Jam theme for an hour straight as each of our characters tore into this Dracolich, now stripped of lair actions, until a delayed blast fireball ended the encounter. Our DM thankfully thought this was clever and funny, considering how seriously we took the campaign otherwise, but has been on high alert for shenanigans like this ever since. It’s easily one of the most memorable moments of playing D&D for me and never fails to make me laugh. This Curse of Strahd campaign has since kicked off three other major campaigns that have built off of the actions of our legendary characters in Barovia and the effects of the slow, multidimensional infection of the supposedly imprisoned Dark Powers in far-off lands like Eberron. Our current campaign, which has been running for 2 years, is nearing its completion and will tie up the events of the past 8 years of multi-campaign story telling, with cameos abound. It’s been an amazing ride! Shout out to our DM, Steven, for many years of incredible adventures.

Pierre Blondelle

Every year we have an in-person, day long one-shot. Two years ago we did Strahd Must Die Tonight, it's basically just Castle Ravenloft in 4 hours, real time. Our friend Val had almost never played before so we let her join mid-game as Ireena, we just gave her the stat block. Fast forward to the final fight. It's intense, Strahd took a lot of damage but so did the party, it could go either way. I'm the DM, I have Strahd tell Ireena she can save her friends if she just joins him. She spits in his face instead! Strahd tries to leave to regain some health but he can't shapeshift because he's in magical sunlight. Ireena gets an attack of opportunity, does an insane amount of damage with the Sunsword, and Strahd just dies there, absolutely humiliated and completely vanquished by Ireena herself.

Hannah Caringal

My halfling bard accepted the dark gift of Seriach and gained two awesome hellhounds in the Amber Temple. About 10 minutes later, I failed a wisdom save and became a succubus and lost my character so I had to roll a new one.

Natalie S.

One of our PCs had tragically died in Vallaki after an untimely bout with some vampire spawn. The table was crushed since it happened so early in the game - except, suspiciously, for the DM and the player. It was weird how little they seemed to care, but I figured, it's not my character, so I shrugged it off. The next game, the player and the DM were practically BUZZING with excitement. She introduced her new character - a gothic blonde dhampir with golden eyes and a black military jacket. Suspiciously familiar... As if she heard my doubts, the PC then whipped out a magic mirror like a phone (didn't know we were allowed those) and straight up called Dracula, who, turns out, was her DAD. The DM had a HUGE grin as we listened to the PC talk to her big brother Alucard Castlevania and how he has beef with Strahd, and basically explained to us via this mirror FaceTime session that Castlevania was basically canon now in our game. Worst part is, not everyone at the table even knew what Castlevania was! My poor friends sat there SO confused as the DM and this PC gushed over Dadcula and Alucard for the rest of the session. Weird vibe!

Pierre Blondelle

PS : Val still plays with us to this day and even DMs Lost Mines of Phandelver sometimes <3

Konnor Wall

Dear Spudfuckers enterprises When meeting ezmereld our fighter failed a check on the door to her carriage. Which set off her trap of 100 alchemist fires, leaving all of us knocked out at the verge of death. The only person to survive was the oat gooner himself, Ismark. Also, almost every random encounter check we had was wolves. I’m talking five or six full-size wolves. Every time we were in the woods. It got so bad. We strung up their heads on our backpacks and believed that there was a wolf deity hunting us.

Janel Flanagan

DM here! In a party of genre-appropriate characters (monster hunter, necromancer, barbarian), my wife's character has been a source of absolute delight and dismay: Balderdash, an obnoxious harengon (bunny) glamour bard with an accordion who's only goal is to write and perform a scathing play about Strahd and make him watch it. My wife has stated that she will do this even if it kills her character, because he's a 'little bitch'.

LeCurve52

Our DM included a plotline about a young woman going missing from the town of Barovia and our Paladin took it on as basically his personal quest. During the dinner at Castle Ravenloft, we discovered that he had been keeping her there as his you-know-what. The rest of our party distracted Strahd while our Paladin went to find and free the woman, and they ended up having sex in Strahd’s bed. We told Strahd about right before we killed him. He was so shocked and upset that we would be such rude guests. The campaign continued after Strahd and the paladin ended up marrying the woman we rescued and our Warlock took Strahd’s place and turned all of Barovia into a company similar to Amazon.

Drunkle Dan

Greetings Caldwell, Jake, Murph—and wait… who the shell is that? Could it be Shellmily Asked-for-it? My lvl 5 party of four killed Strahd in less than two rounds of combat by luring him into a trap. In a surprise round they cast water wall, centering Strahd’s body in line with the wall, used a held action to freeze him in the wall with ray of frost, which triggered another held action to hit him with moonbeam (to prevent him from shapeshifting). Afterwards, the fighter and paladin walloped Strahd's exposed head with divine smites and Sunsword attacks. They took Strahd out in 2 rounds of combat. The pitiful creature was able to flee with his misty escape after dropping to 0 hit points, but boy that was a hard day for this DM.

Dr. B

So many but you asked for short so here goes only two: 1) Strahd (and many other NPCs) was gender-flipped, leading to Countess Strahd and her "love" Aaron (gender-flipped Irena). One of the only not gender-flipped NPCs, was Sergei, Strahd's brother and Aaron's true love, giving us the wonderful canonically Bisexual Aaron/Irena 2) At one point our DM made a Beholder appear to drag us back in time to the inciting incident of the Curse of Strahd because the beholder wanted to steal Strahd's power. Full marks for making us intimately care about the lore of the campaign in that moment, but failing grade for thinking that we would ever side with Strahd, even against a Beholder.

Elsa Miesch

I played a high elf barbarian whose older brothers used to bully her and caused her to leave her family's house in shame. In Barovia, we met Milivoj, a boy who we suspected of stealing bones in the cemetery. While following him, I discovered that he was stealing to help feed his little siblings and my character was so touched by his story (and the discovery that older brothers could be nice) that I sneaked out during the night to leave gold for him anonymously (the rest of my party didn't care too much about poor Milivoj). This of course did not go well and we ended up in the Burgomaster's house, attacked by swarms of bats and vampire spawns and were almost TPKed by the time the sun rose. It was only my second campaign and I felt so bad about endangering my party that I wrote an apology poem in character with verses dedicated for each member of my party for the following session and read it aloud to everybody. This, of course, did not go unrazzed, but it is still my favorite memory from this campaign!

Victor T (Balnor's Boy)

I made the mistake of letting my party gamble and roll for a magic item in the treasure room with all rarities possible. They, of course, rolled an Artifact and they rolled the Orrery of the Wanderer which is an Artifact that has essentially 6 magic items that comprise it, which have benefits such as portals, plane shifting, time rewinding, and one item called the rotor of return that says “ you can unerringly recall any event that took place within the previous 30 days” but has different wording than keen mind (You can accurately recall anything you have seen or heard within the past month.) in that it does not specify that it needs to be an event seen by the user. Needless to say, the final fight was trivialized but this item has marked the transition from Strahd to a campaign where literally almost every powerful demigod and god now has eyes on the party and will be hunting down or trying to bargain with the party. So, a blessing and a curse to me I guess.

Clemming

One of my players was an actual battle rapper and played a bard where he would do improvised disses for vicious mockery. In the parties first battle with strahd the player dissed Strahd so harshly that Strahd needed to kill the character to resolve how badly he had been razzed and maintain his menace. I had the character come back through the aid of the dark powers and eventually they got their revenge as a rapping revenant.

shrimpy_senpai

Howdy there cuties! This is a story of the blessed and cursed vasilka I'm a player in a curse of strahd campaign and I loved a direction my dm went it with her story. Vasilka is not just a husk of a woman but is a very animated lovely one with a huge heart so huge she wants to extend that love to the dark lord himself through marriage. A very strange sentiment to an even stranger truth. Vasilka was actually a plant by rahadin who created her to corrupt the abbot's magic and bring him to ruin. She unaware the whole time she was ailing her beloved Abbot. Magic manipulation insist they are family and time made that true. In the end a vasilka was shut down with anti magic circle by the enraged abbot while we the players put down her corrupted father. To this day she sleeps unactivated and we unknowing if her will is truly golden and if her intentions to love strahd are truly her own or more manipulation of rahadin. We will awaken her one day to find out.

Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat

How my party handled Old Bonegrinder: my trio of weenies- a tiefling warlock charlatan pretending to be a priest, an EdgyTM halfling rogue, and a hagkin witch (played by a former Strahd DM)- traveling with twin warriors Ismark and Ireena, knew that trying to face a hag coven on their own was suicide and took time to plan their attack. First, the warlock rolled a nat 20 on his history check to see what he knew about hags. Second, he summoned his familiar (an infernal screech owl named Philomena) and chatted with a raven over the gate, who told her that Morgantha left for an hour every morning to sell dream pastries in Barovia Village. The witch magically FaceTimed the her grandmother who, after chastising her for leaving without a note and not calling home, gave them some crucial information about approaching the coven. The next morning, they hid until Morgantha had disappeared for the village. They got past the gaggle of guard geese-hydras with squirrel meat hunted by the familiar, and Ismark and Ireena lay in wait, out of sight, while our trio approached the door. The warlock rolled outrageously high to deceive the remaining hag sisters that they were business investors looking to expand and franchise the hags’ pastries to all of Faerun, and they had brought traditional offering of a gift — a child (actually the rogue halfling in disguise.) The usually quiet witch piped up with a “HIMYNAMEISBEANDIP” in the twangiest, fastest voice I’ve ever heard out of nowhere, which effectively derailed the table for several minutes. The hags gratefully took the “child” upstairs to put away in the cages, which he easily lockpicked himself out of once the hag left. The rogue then freed the other two children, snooped around the upper parts of the windmill, and covered the place in lamp oil and blasting powder. The warlock and witch kept the hags busy with business talk until the rogue was done, at which point the witch booked it out of there, the warlock set the hags and building on fire, and then Misty Stepped out. The twins bolted from hiding to help bar and block the door so the hags couldn’t escape. Meanwhile the rogue was breaking open a window and getting the two children successfully out it, only to roll badly for his own escape and fall into a pile of goose shit. The gaggle of goose-hydras gave them some trouble, but the windmill was fully up in flames by the time Morgantha came back the next round. The party kept her from consuming the children for power, and defeated Morgantha without any casualties. I was very proud of them.

randomideaguy

I showed up in Barovia with my copy of Twilight, looking for the Vampire Con. I became the bane of my DM by casting Mold Earth and burying people under five feet of dirt.

Doctor Ransom

We also jumped Izek in the back alleys of Vallaki except we left him with his head split open.

Laurawr

Dear Ultimate Power Couple, Sweet Blue Hole, and that guy that helps with Jill and Tuckers baby My nepo baby Cleric of Lolth is on a mission to convert the land of Barovia into her skittery embrace. In the city of Barovia we went to interrogate Dorru in Father Donovichs basement but ended up killing him after he attacked us. When reporting back to Donovich about killing his son I tried to convince him that his son had been turned because The Morning Lord abandoned him and in Lolths grace she intervened with the gift of mercy for poor Dorru. I rolled a nat 20 persuasion check—converting Donovich and therefore the town of Barovia and got a rad boon from my goddess. Our game is still on going so I’m excited to see if this effects play down the line too Ps, my cleric almost ended up joining the hag coven too, since they were a group of strong independent powerful women, but decided against it after realizing they were about to eat a girl too, not just a boy

OHMYGODATRUCK

Strahd was my group's first campaign together 10 years ago. What started as 5 fresh faced adventurers ended as 2 insanely disfigured adventurers (Rogue, Druid), 2 clean holy boys (Cleric, Paladin), and 1 demi-lich (Sorc). Most notable highlights: - The Cleric carried dead bodies for the first 5 sessions hoping to resurrect them. I had no idea how far I was from a resurrection spell. At least it was a conversation starter. - The Druid, a player without a malicious bone in their body, kept turning into a Giant Elk in cramped spaces during fights. In Old Bonegrinder this split the party mid Hag fight. Kicking off a game of chutes and ladders as some of us tried to find ways to get back into the fight by jumping out of windows or climbing the outside of the windmill. We almost TPK'd. - We pulled Vasilka as our companion. Our DM ruled her weight to be 1 ton to explain why she hit so hard. This backfired immediately when we tried to cross a river and the whole session broke down into magic math for four hours. It was later hand waved away. She was the undisputed MVP for most of the campaign. - We watched Victor blow himself up with his teleport spell. Whoops. Thankfully the Burger Master of Vilaki was super evil or else it would've been an awkward dinner. - Before entering the Amber Temple we talked about how bad the blessings would be. Everyone got curious. Two sessions later the Druid and Rogue have two blessings each and the Sorc took ALL of the others. She grew bone wings and flew off to be a lich. (Player had to leave the campaign) - Armed with the Sun Sword, Haste, and a Daylight spell held by the Cleric, the Paladin did something like 200 points of damage in the first round of combat against Strahd. We went to Ravenloft last. It felt cathartic. A massive shout out to our DM who kept adding homebrewed events and characters in. After the campaign ended the group thought it was all module and had no idea he'd been in the background silently plugging things in the whole time. He slam dunked it.

Laurawr

Bard/cleric multiclass

nullfi3d

In my first adventure into Barovia, I was an artificer in a party with a wizard, cleric, and barbarian. Our horrors began in the Winery, where we spent 2 several-hour-long sessions stuck fighting monsters and clearing out the winery. At the end, we finally killed an evil druid that was poisoning the wine. Our wizard took the druid’s staff, and we left. However, the staff quickly started to corrupt the wizard’s mind. This was already a problem, since he had several dreams where he was visited by Strahd, and seemed to develop a crush. However, our party was invited to have dinner with Vallaki’s baroness that night, and they needed to prepare. So, to deal with this staff, the party split. The wizard and barbarian stayed in Vallaki, helping the wizard recover from the staff’s corruption. The cleric and I, both at level 3, went out alone back to the Winery to break the staff and full clear its curse. Turns out a massive fucking sentient tree was there waiting for us the moment we broke the staff. We had to try and kill it, but it did not go well. We had to be deus-ex-machina saved by a wandering traveller. I have been terrified of that winery ever since. I’m currently in a different campaign of Strahd, and I was SO weary this time. The cleric’s player is also in this game, and was exactly the same.

DorkRoll

Monkey story time! My character, Rorik the Dragonborn War Cleric, accidentally insulted Piccolo, the pet monkey of master toymaker Blinsky. Unfortunately for Rorik, Piccolo turned out to be a vengeful lich merely masquerading as a mischievous monkey. After several narrow escapes, Piccolo eventually challenged Rorik to a duel to the death, or Piccolo would kill an important NPC. Rorik accepted, much to my party's dismay. What my party didn't remember was that Rorik had previously disarmed an NPC of a doomsday book filled front to back with explosive Glyphs of Warding. My DM did remember, and thought to call my bluff. But HE forgot was that the previous session Rorik had cast Death Ward on himself! One tossed book and one massive explosion later, the duel "to the death" condition technically fulfilled after Rorik died in the blast only to be brought back by Death Ward. My party finished Piccolo off for a total victory! Good times for all. Except Piccolo.

Evil Anagram

I played a Dwarf Cleric named Stumpy in our Strahd campaign, and I took the Heavy Armor Master feat to reduce incoming bludgeoning damage. My DM ruled that this would apply to falling damage even though that fudges the rules a bit, so I insisted on leaving buildings from the second-floor window. Like Jens, we had a streak of trying to solve problems by burning down buildings, including a tree house that a coven of hags was living in. That killed the "burn everything down" play because the hags teleported out and nearly killed us while we saved the orphans we could hear screaming inside. Apparently, burning everything down was a bad plan.

Fewzie7

The Eulogy of Haz the Horse I have been running Curse of Strahd, using Dragnacartas Reloaded (shout out!) for the past year. The paladin missed a few sessions and had to join the party in vallaki, so I had Ismark lend this player a horse to meet the others. He encountered wolves on the road (heavily bloodied from a previous fight) that injured the horse so the paladin decided to "mercy kill" it and get rations of horse meat. Later in the session someone made a joke about the Horse being Ireena's pet and as a group they decided to name it after our paladins players name (Haz), so I ran with it, resulting in the party casting sending to let Ismark know the horse was safe while lying to Ireena that the horse was back home. So for in game days real life months they have been feeding Ireena meat from her horse without telling her. Now almost a year later, the party returned to the Village of Barovia where obviously Ireena and Ismark both learned of their lies. There was a very intense and dramatic scene of Ireena feeing betrayed by the party, for lying to her about not only killing the horse but Feeding It To Her. There was also a reveal that the horse was a gift from Ireena's deceased mother! Ultimately the result was some great role play and (almost!) tears at the table as our sorcerer's Very Close Friendship with Ireena came into question. Eventually everyone had a very in depth apology to Ireena about the whole situation, but “Not to eat a dead horse” (rather than beat) has become part of our vocabulary now.

Fewzie7

Fingers crossed for this one! I’ve been waiting for Haz the horse to get his moment in the spotlight

JonesyBoy

Strahd is my white whale. I got a chance to play virtually with a "professional DM". Well the DM was running strahd with his friends and they all wanted to be Animal People - Centaur, Rabbit guy, Tortle and Elephant guy...and my grimmdark Rogue-Barian (I was testing something leave me alone). Any way we TPK'd in Death House because "horses can't go up stairs".

Nick Nelson

Hey there, Vampire Slayers. Listen here for a tale of derring do and an absolutely womping. Part way through running Curse of Strahd, my players had so far avoided actually going to the castle, ignoring all of the invitations and opportunities to do so. While they were in the Abbey, I put a teleportation circle in the attic that was intended to be the way Strahd would commute to the wedding, courtesy of the Abbott. My players used it and found it connected to a circle in the Castle’s catacombs, they plundered for a bit before returning to the Abbey the same way they came in. I also, as a treat, gave them a scroll of teleportation circle, if they ever wanted to use it again. Later, in a fight with Druids on Yester Hill, Strahd shows up. I thought this would be scary and maybe they’d run, but instead the players fully stood their ground, empowered by the Sun Sword. They killed Strahd and he poofed into mist. They knew he’d respawn, but also they were all beat to hell. They made a gut check decision to do the suicide run and they had the wizard use the scroll to teleport them back into the catacombs and kill Strahd. A really awesome moment but absolutely not the final fight I had expected.

Katie James

Hey there centaurs, I'm playing in a CoS campaign with my sister, partner and brother-in-law. We successfully located the bones of St Andral in the coffin maker's shop and our rogue rolled several very high stealth checks to sneak in and get them. The rest of the party (fighter and cleric) decided that we needed to know why the coffin maker stole the bones in the first place, so kicked down his door while the rogue was (again, successfully) sneaking around upstairs. The cleric then decides to make a -1 charisma intimidation check by using thaumaturgy to yell "BONE MAN WHERE ARE MY BONES" at the top of his lungs. This, of course, wakes up every single vampire in the coffin maker's shop, who descend on us like, well, a swarm of vampires. A series of bad rolls and one very kind DM later, we are forced to return the bones and leave the place with absolutely nothing except our lives the knowledge that there are indeed vampires in the miserable little town of Vallaki.

Robynn

My players (with the help of lolth and a planes cutter dagger) managed to escape Barovia without killing Strahd, they then used infernal chains (given to them by Zariel) to lock Strahd up in a shed created by the Baba Yaga. Now almost 20+ sessions later they are waking strahd up to help them fight the impending doom of Kas and Vecna. Straddy is a big simp for my players Drow dampire ranger so he happily agreed to help, probably with a cost but we haven’t gotten that far yet lol but I’m down for any ideas 💡

Robynn

We definitely did a homebrew version of curse of strahd 😂 ALSO!! Strahd also did a welcome to Barovia drag/strip show va blade style for my players upon entering Barovia 🫣😂

HGB

During our strahd campaign we found a grey bag of tricks, an item that lets you summon 1 of 8 animals randomly a few times each day. These animals became our unwitting trap detectors on many occasions. We lost many giant badgers to obvious traps that we just couldn’t get around or disarm. Later, we get to the amber vaults where you can gain the dark powers of the gods sealed there. Now we all wanted the powers but not the downsides they came with. So to test what power each one gave we sent in our summoned giant badger. After the first one the badger began to fly. After the second it became evil and could cast lightning bolt. Which it did immediately, hitting 3 of us and knocking the cleric unconscious before we managed to stop it. I can’t blame the badger, we definitely deserved it.

Katie M

My group played Strahd when it first released for 5e, and it was our first time playing 5e as well. It was a wild campaign. At one point early on, our barbarian got in a one on one fight with an enchanted broom, and developed a phobia about brooms that carried through the rest of the campaign. Our ranger decided to try to be a hero, and broke into a building and ended up in a 5-on-1 fight with vampire spawn where he didn’t call for help for 3 rounds, so our characters had no idea what was going on. When we finally ran in, he’d been taken down, so our cleric cast Magic Circle around us at the door, and we took them down from range. The same cleric thought we were being threatened by the Bürgermeister, and upcast a Guiding Bolt that took him down in one hit, so we almost had to fight the town guard. During a different fight with vampire spawn, our warlock cast Mask of Many Faces to make himself look like Strahd, rolled a nat 20 deception, and convinced one of them to attack his companions. We also did the Heart of Sorrow tower, which took an entire session because none of us could pass a dex check and kept getting thrown off, until someone figured out to crawl. Duncle can take comfort in knowing he’s not the only DM to get whomped in the Strahd fight, as our party absolutely destroyed him, and our DM (my husband) rolled like dogshit. I have more stories, but these are some highlights.

Fistpumpfabio

Pretty quickly spotted and attacked one of the bone grinder hags when we entered Barovia. Actually almost killed them, but they escaped, not before placing a 3 day death curse on us. Without the ability to fight the full coven or remove the curse within that time limit, we ended up trading Ireena to Strahd for him to kill the hags for us. Crazy moment, especially since we never got far enough in the campaign to rescue her.

KelCello

I joined a Curse of Strahd campaign with Melrose, a druid-bard multiclass who was strictly vegetarian thanks to his years living in the Feywild. Our party had narrowly survived the blight attacks on the Wizard of Wines and successfully defeated the druids at Yester Hill, obtaining the Gulthias Staff in the process. It made the most sense for Melrose to wield the staff, so I attuned to it back at the winery. My DM flavored its effects as giving Melrose a taste for blood, and I roleplayed Melrose absentmindedly eating meat at the celebratory feast, then reacting in horror, deciding to spend the night sleeping amongst the grapes to "reconnect with the plants." My DM, true to the module, rolled a random encounter for each hour Melrose would have been asleep outside, and, long story short, my beautiful boy was mauled to death by a pack of wolves. It was my first ever character death, and my DM's first time killing a PC. I continued playing with a new character who ended up being one of my favorite characters I've ever played, but Melrose's memory stayed with the party throughout the rest of the game as a grim reminder of the horrors of Barovia.

Delta Hangingwithtens

Hey there, it’s Delta Hangingwithtens with my cluster of cousins. We’re still going through Curse of Strahd, and I want to share our funnies. In our first session, my character found an agate. Throughout the campaign, our warlock (who worships someone named “Mr. Cloud”) has been referring to it as “The Agate in your pocket” and says that it talks to her. My character is now convinced that this agate can and does talk to him as well. So now it’s a running bit to confer with the agate in my pocket before i make any big decision. Also, our warlock calls Ismarck “Ishmael”, and when our bard saw Strahd talking to Irina, he cast shatter on Strahd to which I promptly looked at Cousin DM and said “I cast Sanctuary on myself and prepare to run” That’s all. XOXO

Eamon Sullivan

I played in a Curse of Strahd game in my high school D&D club, which was my first D&D game as a player (I had GM’d a small game in the past), and I come with the story of the room of holding. The party began combat with the Abbot and . Our DM declared that the combat was in a 40 ft square room. We had a magnetic blackboard and magnets that we used as miniatures. I was new to the blackboard, and decided to draw a large square to represent the room. On the Abbot’s first turn at the beginning of the round, he called in Zoominoids (mongrelfolk) to fill the room and attack the party. The DM decided that we would use 10 ft ‘squares’ for the encounter, instead of the normal 5 ft of D&D. There were no combat squares, merely the general impression of how big a square would be based on the magnet sizes. This was when I realized that the room I drew was too large, and incredibly massive with this scaling change. Around two dozen zoominoids fit inside the room, overwhelming the party. The 10 ft scale also completely broke the party’s ability to hit the zoominoids with AOE’s, and for around half the party to get close enough to the Abbot to hit him. All those zoominoids also had their own turns, slowing everything down greatly. Eventually, the Abbot went down, thanks to a large party, and the remaining Zoominoids fled, but I am still annoyed with how that combat went. I may have messed up the map, but the DM’s strange call magnified my mistake into a near catastrophe.

Neal Cragg

I ran Strahd for some friends over Discord during Covid lockdown; players of varying experience levels whose characters had all been transported to the demiplane. By far the funniest part of the campaign was from their time in Vallaki- the Feast of St Andral went down exactly how the module outlines, but the party decided to take the craven approach, fleeing the city as it was burning around them. It became a running joke that the party would actively try to change the subject anytime an NPC brought up Vallaki- the greatest shame of their “heroes.” The campaign also spawned the greatest group-chat name in use to this day: “Spooky Gothic Roleplay (Mildly Sexual)”

Mirra Palindrome

Hello lovelies! Hi Jake, I’m a DM and I’ve run Curse of Strahd several times, including currently, and I’ve really enjoyed listening to your journey through the mists. One funny pattern I’ve noticed at my tables is that every time I run the module, someone ends up falling in love with Ireena. It truly does not matter what their original plan was. A few examples: • An evil warlock whose goal was to corrupt Ireena for his patron, a different vampire lord outside Barovia. He spent time getting close to her, ended up genuinely caring about her, and eventually changed his class to focus on protecting her instead. • A blood hunter werewolf whose main objective was to find his pack and assert dominance. He began protecting Ireena, taught her how to use a sword, encouraged her to stand up to Strahd, and ultimately sacrificed himself in the final fight to keep her safe. • A lawful evil fiend warlock who was committed to doing terrible things. Ireena told him she believed he was good deep down, and it completely shifted how the player approached the character from that point on. I’m not sure what it is, but Ireena consistently brings out unexpected depth in my players’ characters. Strahd may be the tragic romantic lead of Barovia, but at my tables, he has some serious competition. Sometimes I wish I had even a fraction of Ireena’s apparent charisma.

Dermoptera

In undergrad, I used to run Castle Ravenloft as a one-shot each Halloween. One year, one of my players used an Alter Self magic item or potion to pretend to be Irena, then used her Invoke Duplicity feature so that there were three Irenas running around the castle at the same time. I couldn't roll above a 10 all night, so Strahd just kept trying to charm the elven cleric with an absurdly high wisdom save and advantage against charm effects and failing, which was funny every singly time.

Evan Laney

I have two quick stories from the final battle with Strahd in my campaign. 1. The druid in the party cast a spell to awaken a tree, and the wizard cast Danse Macabre to resurrect 5 NPCs that they had killed as zombies. The zombies rode on the tree into Castle Ravenloft. Later, the wizard was flying after Strahd and was disarmed of his sword, which fell toward the ground. The wizard asked if one of the zombies in the tree could try to catch the sword. I said, "Sure, roll a sleight of hand check for the zombie," and the player crit. 2. Earlier in the fight, Strahd had grappled the fighter, who was wielding the sunblade, with a legendary action. On his turn, Strahd cast Dimension Door to teleport 400 feet above the castle with the fighter, and then dropped him. The fighter was a shadow knight (inspired by Hank Hogfish!) and simply swapped places with his shadow in the castle instead of falling to his death. That was the moment when I knew Strahd was doomed.

Mister_Darkly

I was the DM for a CoS campaign that ran for about four years and ended after 86 sessions. Our group was so invested we quickly pivoted to playing online during lockdown, and our campaign finished on Roll20. I never liked how the book simply ended with "Strahd returns after X amount of years and the story starts again", it felt like such a disappointing way to end four years of story. So, I decided that my players could permanently save Barovia by having a party member become the Dark Lord instead of Strahd ("the Dutchman must have a captain" sort of vibe). The players chose to give Barovia to the Dusk Elf Ranger in the party ; the only adventurer native to Barovia. There were many checks involved with disastrous outcomes possible, but in the end they succeeded and the Elf became a benelovent "Lord" of Barovia, shifting it from a Domain of Dread into a "Feywild Domain" where Dusk Elves could repopulate and become the beautiful Eladrin they once were. The last tableau we narrated was a beautiful wild valley with a night full of stars, the Beacon of Argynvost shining in the middle of the woods, it's light falling on the ruins of Castle Ravenloft covered in vines and moss.

Jennifer

We had a Druid that did mostly AOE damage, and a barbarian that couldn’t help but run directly into that affected area. Over the course of the 1.5 year campaign, I think the barbarian took more damage from our Druid than anything Barovia threw at us. At the wizards of the wine, our barbarian had to lock himself in the outhouse after being poisoned by THREE batches of spoiled wine (he needed to make sure if any of them were salvageable). In that time, we were attacked by twig blights outside, and our Druid used thunderwave. The outhouse was unfortunately caught in the crossfire, and our DM lovingly described how our barbarian ragdolled and clipped through the side of the outhouse like a broken Bethesda video game.

Ian Hudson

Strahd? Never heard of it. But I am in the process of running curse of Tradson- the story of a coal company’s scion holding dominion over a tiny holler named Barrow’s Gap in a loose approximation of 1920s Appalachia. Tradson is a smooth talking southern “gentleman” and the party is made up of: - a preacher’s daughter cleric with an unhealthy obsession with him; - an arakokra rogue described as “ the Philadelphia Eagles mascot, but homeless;” -a bard whiskey aficionado looking for a choice vintage rumored to be on the Tradson estate; and - a bro-barian frat dude from the university of South Carolina who fell into a time warp (he’s a women’s studies major and Merina is hooking up with him) Will they also get a side-quest from Rattic S. Phinch, my ratfolk lawyer that appears in every campaign I’m a part of? Most assuredly!

Jennifer

(Apologies if this posted twice, my first attempt was possibly nerfed by work wifi)

Miranda G

Thanks to a typo our discord server for our whole CoS campaign was “Cruise of Strahd” 🛳️🏝️

Brooke

The game I was playing in we only ever got to the first town before our group fell apart. I was the only girl in the group and when our DM introduced the character of Marina, a tragic figure haunted by Strahd in her dreams and perpetually terrified, not a one of them was moved. They were dead set on leaving her behind in the village because they thought she was making it all up. When she arrived in your campaign it was intensely validating to see that my urge to protect her was indeed correct.

Maia Costea

For us, the story got derailed as early as Barovia, because during the Burgermeister's church burial, Strahd showed up and accidentally KILLED MARYNA with an AoE spell and OOPS where do we go from here xD The DM kindly let my moon druid spend all of my spell slots to attempt a spellcasting roll to bring her back, like a bootleg Revivify, but we always felt like that was a little cheap. Looking back, he agrees that he was a very fresh DM and he should have let her die.

Gina Talcott

As soon as my players learned Strahd could turn into a bat he became "the batman" (and occasionally the mist man)

Melvincat

The real curse of Strahd for our group is divorce. When we started playing 5 years ago (this campaign is still ongoing), our DM and one of the players after 6months went through a divorce. Last month, as we were about to face Strahd, two more players decided that it was time to also divorce. Now my partner and I are the only ones left in the party who haven’t separated. The real question is, will Strahd defeat our relationship before we defeat him? Will we be able to break the love curse that rules Barovia or will it break us!

GrinningGator

In the middle of my group's fight with Strahd, he was flung out of a window, polymorphed into a monkey, and fell to the castle grounds of Ravenloft. Instead of immediately returning to us to resume combat, we heard the adamantine door of his treasure room slam shut, as Strahd decided to rest before resuming his fight with us. Unfortunately for him, we had a Way of Shadow Monk that could teleport into the room through the arrow slits who, once he acquired an Alchemy Jug lying in the room, poured oil onto the floor of the room before lighting it and teleporting out, smoking Strahd out and resuming the fight.

Theodore Giesen

I have a confession: I'm a player in a playthrough of Strahd right now and my DM was not very happy with me when I told him I was listening through an actual-play of CoS. He forbade me from listening to the rest of the campaign, but I have secretly been keeping up. Dice Christ forgive me. Edit: Also worth noting that my character is the Burgomaster of Barovia.

John Caputo

My curse of strahdge story is simultaneously the story of how my online D&D group got AWESOME. After years and years of wanting to find a group for dnd, COVID and Reddit provided a really great opportunity— a channel being constructed for players over 30. I immediately signed up and was put with a big group doing CoS. Over the first few weeks, the group winnowed down to five. I was playing a draconic sorcerer with 20 CHA. Unfortunately, there was a player in the group who was super obnoxious— he insisted on being the person talking to all npcs, despite being a variant human hag fighter with maybe 10 charisma. He sucked up every molecule of air in the room. He had a full plan, and let no one in on what the plan was. The final straw came when he sent a list of all the dark powers from the Amber Temple to our DM and told them exactly which dark powers he wanted. None of the rest of us were really talking to each other yet— this guy really did occupy all of the space in the room— but one day our dm came into channel and said [problem player] has been kicked off the server, both for cheating in this game and also for being creepy to other women in the channel. He’s been banned from the discord. Since then, we finished strahd, I ran a three year epic of Descent into Avernus, and now we’re about seven levels into an Matt Colville adventure called Where Evil Lives, where I get to play my first evil character. The group is amazing! But without that first problem player, we never would’ve gotten here.

Henry F McCormack

After DMing CoS my friends no longer trust me. In the beginning of our campaign, when the party first got to the village of Barovia they encountered a man on the side of the road being attacked by wolves named Vasili. They saved him despite him being clumsy and not too bright they took a liking to him and brought him along on most of their adventures in Barovia. When they didn't bring him they often caught him up on what he missed when they had to leave him behind. I had my players answer questions between sessions in character that might be things they would talk about around the campfire while he was there. At one point detect good and evil was cast and he was discovered to be undead. He claimed to be a zombie, and that he used a magical ring to appear as a human. They did no insight checks, only asked him if his dick still worked. After 2 years of running the campaign the party went into the Ravenloft chapel to save Irina from Strahd. Only to see their friend Vasili standing at the alter. He took the ring off and flung it at their feet, revealing himself to be Strahd. I got to do a whole villain monologue. Now I'm running two separate campaigns and in both my players are now skeptical of every NPC I introduce.

John Caputo

Oh fuck this idea is INCREDIBLE. If I ever get to run it, I’m stealing this!

Brett the Breton of High Rock

In our campaign we did the prologue that's meant to get you from level one to level three and at the end you get the deed to the Old Bone Grinder. After that our crew got obsessed with buying up and getting the deeds to as much real estate in Burovia. So everywhere we went we kept asking what land or houses were on the market

Ed M.

This is likely a story for a D&D Court submission, but it's a Strahd story for sure. I played CoS with my college friends a couple of years ago. We got to the dream pastries, which our DM modeled after mandymods's rules. My Dragonborn didn't care about the increasing signs that these meat pies were human meat. I argued that it was fine, because I'm a Dragonborn, not a humanly race. A dragon would eat a human, and they're just as intelligent as humans. My fellow players (Gnome, Aasimar, Tortle) brought up a few good points: one, my character was a paladin, so it's probably not good to be eating people anyways; and two, we later had another friend join, and he played as a kid who was about to be turned into meat. I had to leave the party not long after, but I believe I had backed off on my pro-meat pie stance by then. I'm not sure if I was a bloodthirsty monster, or if I had a point. Sometimes, I lie awake at night, and I can still taste the meat pies...

Britt Z

In our CoS campaign that recently wrapped up, my character, who was a city ranger (her occupation was a rat catcher) assumed that the zombies and vampires were just normal people on drugs. She referred to them as "tweakers". When Strahd eventually showed up in his fine clothing and smooth speech, she dubbed him as the "pimp drug lord" since they found out he had consorts too. After the campaign was completed, the DM said that the free people of Barovia didn't call him by name but the "pimp." Made my heart so happy.

Maryellen Malone

In my COS campaign, I am playing an aging grung paladin named Croaker. During our first encounter with Strahd, I passed a deception check to convince him that I was actually a small green human child named big green.

Spencer P

While searching for our party’s fated ally, Esmerelda, we found her empty wagon outside of Vallaki. Multiple failed perception, investigation, and slight of hand checks from our party (including Ireena) led to a massive explosion as the multitude of booby-trapped alchemists' fire flasks inside the wagon detonated all at once. The explosion outright killed Ireena and downed four of our five person party. The remaining member was a ranger with no healing spells or potions, so our DM graciously took pity on us and let us re-wind time to prevent our campaign prematurely ending. P.S: Earlier in the campaign we forgot that Strahd even had a last name and were very confused when faced with a monologuing vampire spawn threatening us in the name of Von Zarovich, much to our DM’s disappointment.

Daveman

Hello to all wise members of NADDPOD... and Jake (sorry if we we aren't bullying you this week). Our dnd party is fairly small, just 3 of us including the DM. I was playing a wide-eyed, halfling, cleric named Kurt Cost who worshiped the god of debts and the other player played a grizzled, 1000-yard-staring, war vet, Dragonborn fighter. And when we finally made it to the Wizard of Wines, we did not have as pleasant of a welcome as the triplets. When we arrived, the DM pulled out a map of the first floor of the house with a bit of the surrounding area. The two of us (with zero indication from the DM) thought this was going to be a Nazi Zombie house defense encounter. So we spent almost all of our resources boarding the doors and windows, setting traps, and scanning the fields for undead. I then went to go upstairs to see if there was any other furniture we can use to turn into barricades. To my utter shock and dismay, there was a whole gaggle of druids and twig blights hiding in the master bedroom. As you can imagine, running was difficult with everything boarded. So I ran down and we tried to fight. It ended with me escaping through a small whole only a halfling could fit through and the fighter holding them off and eventually falling. With half the party dead, we sat in silence for a second and the player said, "I don't remember any of that from Call of Duty Zombies at all." We all laughed and rolled up a new character but that was the first (and far from the last) close call.

Trickonometry

I run a Castle Ravenloft one-shot every Halloween, and it’s crazy how much the Strahd fight can vary! The first year, the players snuck up on Strahd in the Ossuary, and a Paladin got a critical hit on a Divine Smite with the Sunsword… and Strahd never even had the chance to make an attack, he was dead in 6 seconds flat. This last year? One PC died, one PC was bleeding out, and the Barbarian was mind controlled, nearly killing the other two survivors - only thanks to some high roll damage by the wizard were they able to strike down the Devil Strahd. That said? Every time they still go to dinner, and over half the groups discover what happens if they try playing the organ (and it’s never attempted by players from previous years). I’ve loved listening to the triplets go through this world, can’t wait to hear them take on Prismeer!

Jane Paintrain

A butler for Lady Wachter asked the party to change into proper attire before meeting with her. The party sorcerer Prim pressed him as to why they had change. The butler calmly explained that their clothes were dirty. Prim then set him on fire with a cantrip, killing the commoner NPC instantly.

RecsBecs

I played Curse of Strahd in a family campaign over Zoom in 2020. My newest uncle DM-ed me and 4 other relatives. Everyone was new to D&D except me, and I constantly had to tell myself to not be a know-it-all and let people have fun, even if it's "technically incorrect." We used XP-leveling, except no one knew how to level up. Soon, we were level 9, and my family members didn't know that they should've chosen a subclass. Unfortunately, the campaign died out: we were in wildly different timezones (US and Australia), and my uncle started having health issues. But it was fun while it lasted, and we had some good bonding time in an otherwise scary year. NADDPOD is the first time I've let myself learn CoS spoilers, which I had been avoiding just in case the family game ever started again.

Crumb Gunderson

Not a strahd story, but just watched the 1992 Dracula film w Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, & Gary Oldman and it honestly wasn’t terrible but had soooo many epic 90s movie magic moments that I know the View Crew (or mixed bag crü) would absolutely love (or hate?) Werewolf / vampire costumes 👌 Winona’s English accent 👌 Gary Oldman’s Dracula 👌 The Texan 👌

Todd Bryanton

One of my players planted a bean from a “Bag of Beans” underneath the Strahd statue on Yester Hill. He rolled a d100, and as a result, a statue of the PC burst out of the ground, destroying and replacing the Strahd statue. The druids in the area began worshipping the PC as their new leader, and he tried converting people to his rival cult for the rest of the campaign.

Bajpie

My friends and I have been in a three year long Strahd campaign, which we have all greatly enjoyed but has gone a bit long. One of my friends plays a revenant rogue (formerly human but was struck down by a flying broom in our first session) and she opted for an alert feat rather than dark vision. However, between the dungeon crawling and us generally playing quite cautiously, our main stealth-er and investigator being blind in the dark has certainly slowed down our game. This came to a head recently, in about the 45th of our 48 total sessions, when we finally had reached the amber vault. While we were slowly ambling our way through, our rogue, fed up and burnt out, just asked our DM “How much do you want us to finish the game” essentially asking for dark vision so we can just go through and finish the game. Our dm, also a bit burnt out, then narrated some wizard (I think from BG3) popped into the realm momentarily and threw a pair of dark vision goggles at her. We have not yet finished, but it certainly has streamlined the dungeon crawling

zak

Howdy Drunkle, naughty nephews and nieces. Curse of Strahd was the first thing I ever ran as a DM, I began with the optional House of Death. My party opened a closet and encountered an animated broom, I thought this was be a fun, silly encounter that would break up the tension I'd been building, we rolled for initiative and my party rolled high, "oh well it'll probably get to do something before it dies" I thought; up first was the Bard, Dragonborn named Draknar, his fist move? "It's still in the closet right? Can I just...close the door" I thought about it and agreed, I then rolled to see if the broom could open the door, with a minus to the check and disadvantage, because it was a fucking broom, it of course failed, my very first DM whomping, a D&D memory I love that still makes me laugh.

Emil

My level six players tried to climb the southern cliff (1,00 foot drop) to sneak into the castle. I put a few token vampire spawn about halfway up to give it a little pepper, and when they pushed one over the edge, I made an offhand flavor comment along the lines of, "You see him vanish into the mist." Something about the way I said it made everyone convinced that there was, like, a portal down there or something to jump into? I had them roll perception to dissuade them, and they all rolled so low that my saying they saw nothing only further convinced them. Thinking he was outsmarting me, the fighter jumped over the edge. I think he made a snarky one-liner? If he did, it wasn't very memorable. I fought so hard to save him. I made him not fall until the end of the round; everyone was too far away to reach him. I improvised a dexterity check to grab onto a root or something; natural one. I said, "We can retcon this," and he got offended and said, "I stand by my rolls and RP." I accepted defeat, and he fell five hundred feet to his death, far out of reach of either of the healers, rolled a six and a natural one on his death saves, and died. I tried one last time to have a demonic presence they had contended with before offer him a deal to come back to life, and he declined. I wrote a little funeral scene for the next session, but the rest of his party decided it was unwise to retrieve his corpse, and so they never had a funeral or talked about him again.

Janaga

I started the campaign as a bard. When we encountered twig blights I for some reason became endeared to them, "adopting" one that I named Twiggy. It kept wanting to drink blood which I had to keep swatting away. When that bard died the party was happy to be rid of Twiggy. However, my barbarian who came in after ALSO liked the blight, whom he called Tree Child, and refused to part with, even secretly feeding it his own blood at night. Tree Child supposedly died when we set off the alchemist fire trap (along with another party member), but in a surprise twist came back several sessions later, albeit incredibly damaged, and with some friends in a ritual. The end of the ritual saw our little blight grow into a gargatuan tree monstrosity (A monstrositree if you will). We thought we were suddenly so bad ass rolling up on Strahd with a tree nearly as big as his castle, and I felt so vindicated, only for the DM to go, "well he doesn't fit in the castle, so he will leave you here and go terrorize the country side." It was hilarious. I think the DM just recently got a mini of a giant treant and wanted to bust it out briefly for fun. We got pictures of all our minis with the giant treant. Good times.

Lucas Machi

Oooo one of my favorite DnD moments of all time happened while I was DMing Curse of Strahd! One of my player’s backstories was that they were a self made monster hunter, who had been reading up on the works of Van Richten after a tragic incident where their young son was turned into a vampire and the player was forced to kill them. Because of this, children always were a soft spot for them in the campaign, so I had a plan to use this to control a climatic scene… We’re behind the winery, fighting evil druids, Effigy of Strahd is about to come to life… it’s going to be an extremely hard fight (one of the characters actually died in that fight) Before the players leave the winery, a woman, tears in her eyes pleads with the players to save her infant child who was kidnapped by the druids. The player who had the backstory swears on her life she will return with the child so this mother doesn’t have to bear the pain of losing a child like she did. Players arrive and meet one of Strahd’s wives for the first time. She’s floating in the air, holding the baby while the tension for the fight is building and shits about to go down. So here’s the thing, I never INTENDED for the players to fight Strahd’s bride here. I had planned to have one of the wereravens make a move that would have caused the baby to fall (hoping the players would save them) and kick off the fight. At that point Strahd’s bride was going to fuck off for a while. Instead… Strahd’s bride is floating in the sky holding a baby, taunting the party, going in a bit on the player too. Im about to do the kick off with the wereravens when… Player: Is… is that child part of this ritual? Or is this just a means to control us? Bride: *chuckles* Well… the child isn’t part of the ritual 😉 Player: I’d like to call lightning on her and the child. I’m STUNNED as I describe the bolt of lightning hitting this vampire and the baby immediately turning to ash with one final cry. The bride is SURPRISED to say the least, the wereravens are SHOCKED. The party is SURPRISED. Fight kicks off, and now this INCREDIBLY difficult fight also has a pissed off vampire bride in it for the players to contend with as well. That was one of the most dramatic moments I’ve ever DM’d. It lead to a bunch of hardcore roleplay scenes later too. The party’s paladin was litterally ripped in half by the effigy and while the party RUSHED his body to the abbot to bargain with him for a revive dead… they passed the winery where the mother ran to the player with such hope in her eyes, just for the player to coldly tell her “I killed your child” as the party dragged her away to the abbey. Every time they returned to the winery afterwards was full of tension between these characters and dramatic conversations about greater good, forgiveness, and hatred. “I know you’re the heroes of this land. I know you’re the only ones who stand a chance to defeat Strahd and rid us of this curse… but how am I… how am I supposed to thank you, the woman who murdered my child? How am I supposed to call you my hero, when I hate you.”

Bajpie

Literally why would she be lying

華偉 曾

Curse of Strahd: Brothers Reunited (Not Strahd) Our barbarian, Billy, a werewolf shifter, came from a different universe to Barovia in search of his two lost brothers. Our DM was doing Dice Christ's work when he wove Billy's brothers into the story so naturally. One brother had been magically charmed by Strahd and became one of his bodyguards, while the other became the leader of the werewolf rebellions. When Billy learned Strahd and Sergei's backstory, he got pissed and declared, "Brothers should support one another!" and convinced the talking sunsword to reforged itself into a pair of sunclaws. Our Marina died early in the campaign when she was caught in a crossfireball. upon reviving her, our DM specifically asked which soul we wanted to bring back. We chose Tatyana (Marina's original soul) who finally stood up to Strahd. In the end, the three brothers were reunited and returned home together, and Strahd died of heartbreak after Tatyana told him to eat shit.

Paul Zurawski

Cursed of Strahd was the first module campaign I ran with my playgroup that started during covid. As soon as they arrived in the Village of Borovia, the party went straight to the burgomaster's house, picked the lock and decided to hang out. While looking around, they found his body in the basement and decided to burn it. Ismark comes home and finds all these strangers there whom jump him, beat him up and tie him up. While this happening, Ireena (who was hiding from everyone in the house) took off running and the party chased after, shooting arrows and spells at her as she ran. At this point I had to end the session and restart the campaign because I couldn't figure how to get the story back on track

catchTwentythree

Our team, the Drac Pack, contained among others a werewolf Blood Hunter implied to be descended from the Belmont clan and a warlock who eventually discovered he was the reincarnation of Sergey von Zarovich. Among our greatest feats, we usurped the Burogmaster of Vallaki and replaced him with Periwimple, who we gave a Headband of Intellect, we also slaughtered the witch coven in the greatest masterstroke I've ever enjoyed. We snuck up to their windmill and our cleric cast a sphere of Silence that covered the entire building, at which point our melee characters simply rushed in to turn the windmill into a blender in just a few rounds. It was extremely satisfying to pull off one absolute whomping in Curse of Strahd.

Lance Park

The best moment my cleric had in that adventure was clearing out a werewolf Den. At the last spot with the matriarch werewolf i managed to get a jump on her, I crit on a 4th lvl guiding bolt in the surprise round, then in the first round before the rest of the party goes I get ANOTHER guiding bolt on her.

CampFIRE Canada

Ran this campaign as dm and player like 5 times. RAW once and some fun run throughs the other times.. some highlights.. Fed Parriwimble to Doru(convinced parri that doru wanted to play hide and seek) so the store was unguarded and robbed it. , took over vallaki as its ruler, murdered the watchur family and lived in the mansion, took victor to study under mad mage, created a sun lance with blinksy using the sun sword, glass lenses like a telescope to focus the light in a beam, got wine flowing again to win favor of the towns folk again, got rid of the baron, made friends with iszek, set up logging camps, mines, better armies, city counsel, always killed the Abbott, at height of power and control of vallaki to the point strahd couldn't even intervene, set up trade runs out of the mists with friendly vistani, siege weapons against the castle... lots of fun to be had.

Zon

In the village of Barovia there is a building dedicated to an NPC who is missing their daughter. Haunting screams throughout the town and all that jazz. I believe it asked for a roll to decide how often the screams echo throughout the town. Anyway, when the party went to investigate there wasn't much to show them beyond a slight hint that strahd had been here. Therefore I decided to create my own monster; a monster devised from the reoccurring doll theme. It was a toy story 1 inspired doll head spider using doll parts as it limbs that came rolling down the the stairs to ambush the party, while they attempted to deal with the grieving mother. It was then I found out one of my players had a deadly fear of dolls, who promptly went absolutely ape shit on the monster. They also cast hold person on the mother, and killed her out of fear of her being an even more powerful hidden boss. I leveled with the party after, and let them know that in MY Barovia fear is simply fear, and you will/might make mistakes on your fear. Live in it, live with it.

Jackson Hurley

[Concentration is Important] -Strahd polymorphed my ranger into a flea. -I was biting our wizard for 1hp per turn. -They were trying to concentrate on the Dawn spell to stop Strahd regenerating... -If he wanted to concentrate on spells, why have such tasty blood???

SortaDwarven

I ran Curse of Strahd once, and in a fit of hubris, knew I had only 8 sessions to complete as much of the campaign as possible. In order to achieve this, I obviously had to streamline huge swaths of the campaign. We began playing RP and downtime moments on Discord so we could run combats exclusively during the sessions, and I went ahead using a gratuitous amount of cutaways to establish the cast of Castle Ravenloft. For instance, at the end of the first session Strahd hurled a plot hook NPC off of the tower, ensuring his villainous and brutal reputation early on. In the final session, I had to manage the final Castle Ravenloft battle by switching systems entirely to Dread, a horror RPG played not with dice, but by pulling blocks from a Jenga tower. If the tower falls, the person pulling the block typically dies. I gave the players 3 "Hit Points," to survive extra falls, or they could spend them to emulate their PC abilities, allowing them to make extra pulls, save other players, or cast spells to bypass obstacles without pulling from the tower. I improvised a deadly encounter across the Castle with Strahd and his minions, showing off as many dangerous set pieces, with Strahd appearing often out of the wall to taunt and threaten the characters. Our heroes were victorious, but the final encounter was incredibly tense as each pull led them closer to disaster. I love D&D, but Dread has a special place in my heart for perfect Horror one-shots, and I recommend it to anyone looking to strike fear into the hearts of their players.

Jackson Hurley

[Table Split but we're all still friends] Got to the fucking Amber Temple and it became an arms race of who could take the most dark gifts - anyway RIP Maevelda Pankhurst-Shromp and Pixie Ladygarden, you both slayed

ASHNRider

I ran it once, it died after 2 sessions cus one of my players decided to kidnap one of the ladies out of her house and like parade her around, we did the death house the first session and everything. Crazy ass session

James Happ

Early on in the campaign, the party nearly killed a kelp monster I had secretly designed to be Fiona Wachter’s phylactery (they didn’t know yet she was a Lich). One of the PCs died in the fight before the kelp monster fled back under Lake Zarovich. The party always wished they were big dogs and chased after it to kill it. They ended up going back in time to this moment late in the campaign as level 5s again after a lucky draw of the Fate card from Baba Yaga’s deck of many things, killing the kelp monster and making one of our favourite moments of the campaign.

Jackson Hurley

Excerpt from our group chat titled 'The Good Boys' circa 2018 - Strahd final battle: Ranger: if you all go down, Morty (Mordenkainen) will crack the nuke staff Cleric: it's our Hail Mary, or as I like to call it - Hail Morty Wizard: I can get to Strahd and use it but then I'm gone, but happy to do that cos I'm useless anyway Cleric: wait one more round Ranger: you're not useless, you are a good boy 🙏 Wizard: Okie Dokie (I believe the Good Boys was a reference to the girls at the table betraying the party to Strahd and becoming the Bad Girls)

Leeza

My husband DMed Curse of Strahd for his friends and me during the pandemic. While the usual shenanigans are nothing new, two moments stood out. One was while in Vallaki, the party already talked to the burgomaestre and Fiona Wachter, who was planning to overthrow him. We were given a clear choice of which person to help out. Then we learned about the Wizards of Wine having ran out of alcohol. We immediately jumped on the chance to leave Vallaki, thereby sealing the village’s fate of burning down, all the while chanting, “booze cruise” and planning a Catalina Wine Mixer. The other moment was saving Lydia Petrovna, the burgomastre’s wife, from the burning town. We took her back to Wizards of Wine where she stayed for the rest of the campaign, drinking copious amounts of wine. She earned the name “Wine Mom” where she made wood burnings of cheesy signs like “Live, Laugh, Wine”. When we saved the orphan werewolf children, Lydia became the foster mom. By the end of the campaign, we helped her become the new burgomaestre.

Renee Wild

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH STRAHD - BUT it happened today. Emily, I’m a yoga teacher and I use “The Twinkling Lights of Galaderon” for savasana and today a second person asked about the song and told me they went on a little journey and saw a story in their mind. Just thought you’d like to know that your music is giving people a beautiful experience out in the world :)

Joy Ferguson

I was inspired by this series and started a Strahd campaign! We’ve had one session. My cousin is playing a Paladin PhD student trying to finish a dissertation on Barovia without being able to contact his advisor outside the valley. My sister is playing a murderous autognome with a vendetta against her creator’s HOA. In the first session, they all almost died facing a Druid and some twig blights in a random encounter. Here’s to the second session keeping them more alive . . .

Lukas Gerhold

My group is from central Europe, so "burgomaster" and "piccolo" didn't rattle us. What did rattle us however was the over-tuned start of the campaign. Many PCs died, but every rosy-cheeked Halfling cobbler was replaced by a flavorless Vampire slaying machine. So when Strahd tried to intimidate our fully rested party in Vallaki, he got his bell rung in three rounds of crit-filled combat, which might have served as a case study for the 2024 smite rework. Amidst a tidal wave of DM sweat, we now learned that, no Strahd wasn't actually the Big Bad of the adventure titled "Curse of Strahd". To his credit, our DM managed to lead the adventure to a satisfying conclusion, even with Strahd being little more than a pawn in his own game.

NADDPOD

Do Dinosaurs Belong in Strahd? I know, a topic that's hotly debated, and many will call what I allowed blasphemy. One of my PCs was playing a Druid from Chult (Home of Dinosaurs, Undead, and Tombs of Annihilation) so I allowed him to wild shape into a select few Dinosaurs in the campaign. The party were mid-feast of St Andrall, they had to get Ireena to the church for safety; the party were then outraged when the Druid was fired upon by guards in Vallaki when, from the guards perspective, a giant monster lizard appeared, stamping through town, being ridden by the ranger. The druid did chose more subtle wild shapes from then on.

Proopypants

Dinosaurs mentioned! 🚨🚨🚨 🦕🦕🦕

NADDPOD

You go Clem 🤩👃🏻

Puck

I played in a Strahd campaign once where we had discussed ahead of time, in great detail, that this was going to be a horror-forward campaign with our DM doing a lot work to add more horror elements (she killed it, btw; one time I literally gagged while she described something happening to my PC). One player got super invested immediately in the chat, and he really pushed for his PC and another PC to have an entangled backstory and be engaged to each other, so the other player really built his PC's personality/motivations around that dynamic. Then DM started us off with Death House, and that player refused to have his character enter the house because he "didn't like scary things"?? He didn't even join the discord call, and just insisted over text that his character was "keeping watch outside". Needless to say, by the time we made it out, he and his PC were long gone. (Also, now the player whose character was engaged to his is engaged to me in real life!)

Samuel

I allowed the bard in my party to take a homebrew spell called Image Capture. Basically just a magical Polaroid camera. Just a fun flavor spell right? I thought so until he used it to mass produce copies of the Tomb of Strahd and roasted the Devil Strahd for being an incel

snax4evry1

I joined my DND crew from a game store discord server looking for an extra strahd player and i’ve always wanted to do the campaign! as we started playing and started dying in the death house opening our dm played a really cool rule where if your character died you could either let go of your soul and i assume make a cool character or take a boon/bane trait. my character essentially lost her mind and started to hear voices, someone else grew gills, another lost his mouth and had to learn how to communicate without talking. since everyone reincarnates in barovia i thought it was a really cool mechanic to keep your character going. we never finished the campaign since the dm had to move and now almost 4 years later the group has grown and changed a bit but we have still never finished the curse of strahd and constantly are trying to restart it.

Philip Crowe

My players called him Straddy. I made some alterations to the story of the campaign, to remove the creepiest of his intentions towards Ireena, and made it so he wanted her not to force a marriage but because she had incredible potential as a wizard, which he wanted to use to break out of Barovia. The penultimate battle was against Ireena, corrupted by the amber temple using her anger against the party after they (believing it was a trap) prevented her escape from Barovia at the Krezk fountain. After they defeated her Strahd swooped in and stole her power. So they were facing a Strand that was also empowered as a wizard. It was a difficult fight, one player even had to use an ability I'd given them which made them particularly powerful against Strahd but would cost them their life once the battle was complete. But two particularly mean spirited abilities I added were an amber chandelier, which would counterspell any counterspells cast by the party using it's reaction (there had been plenty of counterspell chains in this campaign) and a legendary action I found delightful. Strahd could cast magic missile. Only at first level. But a spell that could instantly give three failed death saves. The party triumphed, against this form and the others (video game style multistage boss fight) but it was a close battle, and there were few things in Barovia the party hated as much as that chandelier.

Val

Our chaotic party never met Father Donovich. Instead, we killed Doru after a near TPK, and had to flee the church. My Dungeon Husband tried to narratively re-rail us by planting evidence in the room that Doru was related to the priest. To avoid a catastrophic first impression, we snuck out of the church (Hamburgaler-style) to DIY the BurgerMaster’s funeral, knowing we had no alibi and now, no allies

Jessica Yphantides

Victor became our NPC (like your Ezmeralda) and he was like a son to us. Late in the campaign Strahd disguised Victor to look like him & we attacked & killed him before we realized. Absolutely devastating.

baerzerker90

We were level 3, a party of adventurers newly-arrived in Barovia. Despite our DM’s best efforts telling the party to make “setting appropriate” characters, our group included a halfling surfer-dude barbarian (we’ll call him “Murph”), and a sci-fi warforged named F-42. Tasked with investigating a wickerman ritual atop a nearby hill, our party had been warned by Strahd not to interfere. Ignoring his warning, our party climbed to the top of the ritual site. Below, Murph could see the vampire lord, sitting atop a flaming warhorse staring pensively out into the mist. Without consulting the party and seeking only to “hang loose,” Murph threw a javelin at Strahd which sailed over his head into the mist. Our characters then had to stand by and watch as the big bad of our campaign beat our tank to death in a single round of combat and rode off. While the DM was able to use this moment to teach a valuable lesson to our tank, the group struggled on for a few more months before succumbing to the true curse of Strahd: DM burnout.

TMJ2008

Howdy there oh great potaters (like dictator, but potato, get it?) of Spuddfuckers fame! In my run of Strahd that I ran, I could talk about the tortle monk based on Oogway from Kung Fu Panda that was oh so ready to call Strahd his dark lord. I could talk about the player who reskinned a merfolk to be a Murlok from WoW that got hit by lightning so hard fighting barbarians and druids that he disintegrated. I could talk about the way my party decided to fire bomb a coffin makers home because they heard there were vampire spawn in the basement and “anybody else in there is dead probably also evil anyway”. But the thing I remember most from my run was how my players decided to start a rebellion in Vallaki and install Gadov Blinksy, the toy maker, as burgomeister instead. Apparently, they liked how I played him so much (funny, friendly, amusing accent and referred to himself in the third person) that they were convinced he’d make a better burgomeister than the current head of Vallaki. With a nat 20 persuasion check, they made him believe it too. Cut to three sessions, a shadow campaign to the residents of Vallaki, a secret plot to attack the burgomeister’s mansion and a Beauty and the beast style mob scene except the mob is right and the Beast gets executed (thin analogy, I know) later, and Blinksy now benevolently rules Vallaki beside the old burgomeister’s wife who decided that her husband sucked. Blinksy even adopted the weird son because he’s just that sort of cool dude. And I rolled an epilogue to see how things went and Blinksy turned out to be a better husband, father and burgomeister than the previous one ever was.

Julian Benchimol

The first and ONLY time I ran through Strahd. There were 6 of us total playing with 2014 rules and we got roughly a 3rd of the way through the campaign. The first hiccup came from our DM who saw "tarot card reading" and thought it would be fun to give all of us the Deck of Many More Things . I being still relatively new to the group and DND as a whole was skeptical to pull cards because I loved my character and didn't want something bad to happen! But after watching my party have fun, I decided to test fate (literally) and pulled the Fate Card, which I held on to for a while in hopes that I could use it against Strahd. Fast Forward to what would be our last session, we returned from the Abbey to Vallaki only to find that Strahd's forces had ransacked and left no one. I used the Fate card to reverse the attack, we saved the village, and all was well. Then our DM dropped the bomb that we would be ending the campaign here since 2024 rules were coming out, and they wanted to switch over, so us being us, decided to say fuck it and pull the entire Deck of Many Things round robin style. By the end, my character's and another party member's soul had been sent to a gem while my physical body had been turned to stone. Meanwhile the rest of our party kept pulling cards, which ended with one of them being chained and a slime cube spawned right on top of them, ending them. But we still had a mission to kill Strahd, so using the Door card, we were able to cast gate and after passing a DC 25, the final party member was able to pull Tiamat into Barovia. All in all it was a really funny send off to a campaign and I do hope to revisit it in completion!

AtheK

I’m running the module for my wife and her friends now, while they were level 5 I realized the festival of the Blazing Sun would be our Halloween session! So I grabbed a monster I really wanted to try out, the Relentless Slasher from Van Richten’s, and let it loose in Vallaki while playing the Halloween soundtrack as background music. They successfully lured it away from the crowds, and had to chase it int a spooky abandoned house where it almost one shot my wife’s character! In the end they got the best of it, and joyfully discovered it was powered by the first of the lost winery gems! 10/10 would use movie slashers again

Edward Smith

Ran Strahd with my fiancée and 2 best buds. What a module! Some highlights: After the lawful good paladin discovered he was addicted to child meat (moon pies), he demanded the party go and deal with the hags of ole bonegrinder. Two hags escaped to the ethereal plane, and the party spent the next 11 in game days under threat from the hags rematerialising and casting magic missle), thereby insta-killing any party member or ally. They also couldn’t sleep outside of hallowed ground. None of us can hear “x gon give it to you” (the song I played when they finally figured out how to beat the final hag) without thinking about witches now. Beat strahd because he failed an insight check: they sent him a letter that Lady Watcher had signed and ambushed him when he turned up Convinced the players that the only way Ireena would be safe was if she married Vasili Von Holtz (aka Strahd). Now any time I have an NPC who is too helpful they have a conversation about whether I’m “doing it again”.

Russell Vigil

My group was made up of my immediate family members. We played through the death house part of the module to get to level 3. Through riffing between my sister and I we established my reborn sentient magic cloak (astral self monk) was naively being exploited by her kobold mastermind rogue. In the basement of the death house some disembodied voices told us to sacrifice someone. The only two people at the altar were my character and my sisters. I did a whole bit about convincing myself to sacrifice her only for some teary eyed confessions that we were each other's only real friends and that we wouldn't be swayed dark powers to murder each other.

Jen

PhD&D My players skipped Barovia village entirely so I made Ireena look like one of the players, which made Izek's creepy dolls much creepier. Another player started a race war in Krezk by fireballing it while disguise-selfed as a dusk elf... Finally, I managed to tempt our artificer to put on Strahd's armour and didn't reveal it was animated until the final fight.

Jen

The same player who started the race war tricked another player into eat the child meat dream pasties by pretending to be the ghost of his dead wife.

Tylerscer

I gave my players a case of "Green Cow" and treated it pretty similar to Crowcacola. It gave them haste but they had to make a con save. There depending on how they did it could have given them exhaustion or damage like a heart attack. The dc was really low but increased every time they drank one

remmingitis

One of my players wanted very badly to have a one night stand with Rictavio, a bard normally found in Vallaki. Said player has not yet realized that they fucked Dr. Rudolph Van Richten, in disguise.

Hunter

We had 6 PCs in our group and for some reason our DM allowed 3 of us to be clerics. In the final battle, Strahd did give us a good fight but it was absolutely hilarious when the 3 clerics were lined up in initiative and just continually spammed guiding bolt. Decent radiant damage and two of them would get advantage because of the ones before them lmao.

LoCo0119

This will be super quick, my party went up the spire to destroy The Heart of Sorrow and while in the spire vampire spawn attacked. Quickly my Paladin decided it was worth it to grapple one of the spawn and throw themselves down the spire shaft... the Paladin survived the fall, the vampire spawn did not. This became a huge part of the Paladins identity. #LongLiveTokTheGreen

Mr. Mate of Cappy B of the Schooner Lewis R French

At the end of our last winter session, I was nominated by all to be good enough to DM next. I hate this show so much that I listen to it more than music most weeks, so, I've defintely been excited to walk my friends through the whole kitten cabootle of the Curse of Strahd campaign. Then this fall we adopted a young boatcat and named him Strahd, StrahddyV, or Strahd Von Cutiepie and everythings been great! But one day CappyB looks at me and says "Oh god, Did we name our baby after the fantasy version of an evil bloodthristy tyrant?!" We cried What have we done!?! It's never actually been a problem because most people irl don't know about the atrocoties that Strahd has committed so I can say "Strahd is like a Dracula" and they'll smile & nod.. But I can't help but worry about the psychological damage we might be doing to the young lad. Beyond that, I'd rather not have to admit that I didn't think that part through when naming him, if it ever does come up, so any advice would be greatly appreciated <3

Pamphleteer

I don't have a long story, just wanted to say that my druid's best nat 20 in our Strahd campaign was to throw a dream pastry at one of the hags at Old Bonegrinder

Donnie K

We just finished a Strahd campaign that lasted more than four years due to us only playing every other week at best, and all of us having stupid schedules. In session 1, back in July of 2021, the druid picked up a dried carrot and mused about if it would count as a wooden stake in regards to staking a vampire. He put it in his bag and didn't mention it again. Then, over four years later, he gets the final blow on Strahd with Moonbeam, and narrated his kill by saying he ran at Strahd while he was sizzling in the light and drove the carrot through his heart.

Mazzifer

In the final fight of my Strahd game, our fight was also in the catacombs with the teleporting mechanics Caldwell mentioned in a previous recording. Out of pure frustration my undead kobold Rune Knight fighter ripped a door off a coffin and threw it at Strahd at near point blank range. This ended up being the second to last attack leaving Strahd at 5 hp.

Jonathan Duke Williams

My players upper decked Von Holtz’s toilet after breaking into his manor. I certainly didn’t expect that.m They suspected him of stealing the bones that protect the church in Vallaki, and after thinking he might just be a rich asshole, they shit in his toilet tank, and stole his stuff. They haven’t met him yet but hated his portrait on the wall. I’m planning on him mentioning that incident sometime when he finally meets them but knowing they did that to Strahd is kinda hilarious to me and I kinda hope they do it in castle Ravenloft too.

Benjamin Hake

In our game, Strahd's name is Strahd Von Is-a-Bitch, and Baba Lasaga is Baby Lasagna. We have made every NPC disappointed in us, several party members have become werewolves, and My rogue is debating joining Strahd due to our party's incompetence. Strahd will likely kill us soon.

SarahD

After the battle at the Abbey, one of my table mates wanted to piss off the side of the mountain in a sign of disrespect maybe? DM made him roll a dexterity check, and he rolled a Nat 1, resulting in a gust of wind blowing back up at him. Long story short, he was covered in urine for a few sessions 😂

Sedric Gold

I plan to run Strahd very soon for my friends and when they get to the Abbey, I'm gonna make the golem bride super petty and straight up hate Ireena but with a Siri robot voice

sonnishine

My party met with Lady Watcher, who tried to get us to join her coup against the Baron of Valloki. We stayed neutral as she wanted to appease Strahd, and that did not fly by any of us. We left town for a side quest, and by the time we came back Lady Watcher had started her coup during one of the town’s bonfire-themed festivals. All was not well! As the festival got rained out, Izek killed the baron in one swing, proclaiming Lady Watcher was in charge to the whole town. My party made a very public case to Izek how he would be better suited to lead Valloki, as we did not trust Lady Watcher at all. We were ready to throw hands with Lady Watcher and Izek, so we rolled initiative. In a stroke of luck, we successfully convinced Izek to counter coup the coup, and he went first. He killed Lady Watcher on his turn, and became Baron of Valloki! He remained a great ally to us the whole campaign, and even helped in our final battle with Strahd.

Jared G

Wanted to try a module for the first time, chose strahd. Players have there first encounter of the module against a pack of wolves. Wild magic sorcerer casts mage armor, triggers a wild magic surge, rolls an 8, “You cast fireball as a 3rd-level spell centered on yourself.” Sorcerer is killed outright, the monk and the cleric are making death saves both roll poorly and die. Curse of Strahd gets put on the shelf.

Bright Morning

CoS was the first campaign me and my group of friends ever finished. I was lucky enough to play with a couple experienced players and some newbies, which included my partner Sam. Needless to say it was pretty much chaos from the jump. My party robbed the first shop they entered in Barovia castle town using the sleep spell. Half the party got addicted to dream pastries. Pretty quickly after that i learned my lesson and stopped planning sessions so rigidly. Tbh i started the campaign by following the book to a T, but ended up just using the module as a suggestion by the end. The party later threatened the burgomaster over Vallaki in his own mansion, which lead to a thrilling chase encounter out of town riding in Ezmerelda’s tricked out wizard wagon. They whomped my homebrew Strahd who had 3 stages (111hp Wizard form with strong damaging spells and teleports. 222hp Soldier form, with strong melee attacks with character movement skills. And 333hp vampire who could charm and summon bats). Couldn’t have done it without the Strahd subreddit!

Papervirse

strahd cucked my aunt's husband and now he's my uncle, true story

Jacob Shaffer

I got the run it as a weekend-long cabin trip with my friends! Our paladin was always after more power and he had his alignment changed by a Dark Gift in the Amber Temple so he was evil as we went into the final battle. Strahd got his ass handed to him by a combo of Sunsword and Light Domain Cleric, so the climax of the weekend became when the paladin killed the Bard's dog, drank his blood, and started turning into a new vampire lord. The bard immediately Dimension Door'd off the cliff of Castle Ravenloft with the Paladin in tow, dropped him a thousand feet to his death, and then bamf'd his way back up to be caught by the Cleric at the last second.

Adrian

My story is one of snatching victory in the hands of defeat and then an incredibly sad ending where my character, who was in a relantionship with Ireena, fell into the control of the dark power and ended up attacking the party. The fight with Strahd was vicious, him using movement to regenerate and pahse through walls in the catacombs, he would peek out, attack, and fade back in. The fight continued unto the chapel, after he defeated us and he was about to marry Ireena/Tatyana, but we interrupted the wedding. 5 outta 5 party members and Ireena, except the druid Summon, Ezmeralda and Van Richten where down. The druid Summon give it the last hit which took him to 0 and into mist form. We went into his coffin, I convinced his second in command to let us pass and end his curse. And then, since my character had accepted a dark gift (the same as onyx, the 30hp one) but went down multiple times, I had to do multiple charisma saves or be consumed by the dark powers, and I failed. So at the eve of victory, the party had to put me down, and we narrated a combat in which Ireena tried to hug me, and the DM allowed me a free oportunity attack against her, which I took, but it wasn't even with a weapon, I did a backhand attack. And then, my warrior dwarf friend was the last one to put me down. It was extremely sad and poetic.

Val

Strahd was our 2nd arc. Our DM didn’t reveal it was CoS, but let us test re-classing to soften the de-leveling blow and add flavor. Our half-orc barbarian masterfully narrated his mysterious and suspicious Paladin-turn. He spun his personality to full performative born-again Christian to cope with losing his second attack. He still led the charge immediately attacking Doru in the Church of Barovia, while wearing a ‘He Is Risen’ tank top. Old habits die hard.

Jade Finch

In our campaign the finale was Strahd's wedding with Ireena. My cleric had been romancing Esmeralda so we got married with a ceremony spell right before and crashed Strahd's wedding in our own wedding gowns!

Dani

Strahd was defeated by Moonshine’s certified BBEG killer: chill touch

Panner_Samuel

Hello lovely triplets and the best DM ever! I have been running my COS campaign for almost two years now! I have home brewed the tomb of Stradh to be even more messier, the paladin of my group has their hands on it and every long rest they are able to make a wisdom saving throw to sit down with it, and if they pass, they are able to look through certain memories of the undead king from a third point of view and see how he used to act BUT if thy fail (which they have been choosing to auto fail) they see it all from STRADHS perspective and are feeling his pain and starting to loose their own self, not knowing if they are the paladin they came to this land as, or if they are the right full king of the lan

Panner_Samuel

My players came into dinner and were going to play nice but I ended up having one of their favorite npcs be one of Stradhs minions and let’s just say, two of my players died because they were NOT supposed to fight him yet

Panner_Samuel

During the fight with the Angel at the Abby, I ended up having the morning lord actualy speak to my warlock and cleric at the table! He informed them that the Angel was being manipulated to hurt others even though he thinks he is helping. They had a choice to spare or mercy kill him, but they spared the Angel and proceeded to watch as he ripped his wings off after learning how evil he had become. But they saved his life!

Panner_Samuel

I ended up bringing Glade Rosell into my story as a “nice Paladin helper” who ended up betraying them and they WHOMPEDHIS ASS SO BAD

Panner_Samuel

My players call themselves the burogmaster killers because they keep accidently killing them

Basel Ballywick

When our party finally fought Strahd, it was an amazing combat and the DM played Strahd very smartly. The battle lasted 46 rounds, across 3 sessions for almost 9 hours. Strahd unleashed dozens of minions on us - including potent undead versions of the party members he'd previously killed - and took us across 3 floors of the castle. By the end we had depleted almost all our resources, spell slots, and rages. When Strahd finally died, it was the MOST satisfying win I think I've ever had in a D&D game.

Seth

My dm captured me(bard) and another player for the Strahd dinner invitation. While there a e discovered that one of my characters siblings had followed the party to barovia and now was one of Strahds potential wives. Entire new character motivation unlocked as I berated the Vampire lord about how he could possibly give her any sort of life and what he was going to give the family for the betrothal. Very fun.

Toxic Yobo

I’ve actually been apart of two Strahd campaigns, the first game we instantly found the secret passages to where we needed to go and resurrected the dragon skull to fight with us. We womped strahd with three melee fighters that swarmed him while my owlin wizard got bit by bats. The dragon then turned on me after realising the large amount of dark gifts my character accepted, we then womped the dragon. The second campaign actually ended with Strahd charming and marrying Ireena. We ended up defeating Strahd and escaping but Strahd achieved his goals. Some of those characters have continued on to our current session of Vecna lives! It was interesting in seeing how the two games felt completely different from each other. Especially since the first party was a lot more powerful

Lucas Copeland-Nguyen

I have DM'd one and am playing in another current Cursive Strahd campaign. In my current playthrough, we went to Vallaki and met Mr. "All Is Well" himself, the burgermeister of Vallaki. We did attend his Festival of the Sun and got pretty weirded out, especially when one peasant who accidentally laughed at Vallakovich got hauled away to prison for it. After a series of investigations that also revealed a butcher who was selling human meat, we ended up infiltrating the burgomeister's mansion, with my two companions running wild interference on the guards outside (including our half-orc Cleric pissing his pants on purpose to draw attention). My character, a deep gnome Rogue with a Kiwi accent named Rocky, sneaked in and saw a meeting of the burgomeister and other nobles talking shit about how they were running the town. So I did what any normal, corrupted-by-Barovia PC would do: I threw down a sachet of blasting powder into the room they were meeting and set it on fire, blowing up the mansion as I walked away (and took some fire damage on a failed DEX save running out). We're not welcome in Vallaki anymore in this campaign.

King of the City Pigeons

When I DM’d my crew through Stradh, they also burned down the Abbey…and I really didn’t judge them for it. They killed the Abbott and the mongrelfolk would have just run wild and kill a bunch of people. So…with all the mongerlfolk trapped in the abbey…they burned the mother down. Kinda badass moment….SOOOO DARK

Philipp Radler

We are currently playing Strahd and I think it's safe to say we have expanded a bit on the original material, since we are playing this campaign for 8 years. Our DM has added arcs in the fey wild, time travel to learn about the history of Barovia and many encounters with all kinds of gods (Try, Lolth, Muradin) as well as a quick trip to Hell. This campaign has been the centrepoint of a wonderful friendship and has taken longer than my PhD. Right now we are on our way to Ravenloft with our walking fortress (ah yes, Howls moving castle) and we are ready to kick Strands ass or be getting the womping of a lifetime. Favourite moment in the campaign was either a wonderfully romantic orchestrated orgy between the bishops creatures (lovingly called Bo's) and tons of Pigs our Beastmaster ranger got as a diversion (praised be the Nat 20) or the immediate blowing up of Van Richtens tower with an "exploratory" fireball. I so look forward to finally listen to how you ended the triplets trip tio Barovia. Greetings from Balnors original home in Austria.

Jake Akin

On the road to Vallaki, my players stopped to rest for the night and rolled a wild encounter table resulting in an attack by swarms of bats. They were already tired and beaten up from some kind of battle they got into before, so they were really feeling the Barovian drag. The Halfling Cleric in the party "Dinkleton Pinkleton" (religious snake oil salesman who stumbled into actually becoming a chosen of his God) asked to roll Animal Handling to see if he knew that bats were scared of owls, succeeded, cast thaumaturgy and yelled "HOOT!" as loud as he could, at which point I rolled a Constitution save for every swarm of bats and they ALL failed. Scared those damn sky rodents right away. I still laugh thinking about it. All hail Dink!

Kyle Suchey

This isn’t my story but a story I heard while doing some matching strahd tattoos on some friends that just finished a campaign. Apparently during dinner the dm offhandedly “yes anded” the fact that all of Strahds silverware was actually silver. The wizard took note of this and catered his spells accordingly. This lead to strahd being defeated in a maelstrom of flying silverware in less than 30 minutes of real time after a 2 year long campaign.

Zinsky

In the final battle with Strahd, my players too had looted his vault prior to the encounter and found the Helm of Brilliance. They rolled well on the dice, getting around sixty total gems total. As the players encountered Strahd at the Heart of Sorrow at the top of his tower, vampire swarm crawled up the walls and floating axes surrounded the party. Strahd made his big speech and hit the character with the helm with a fire spell. The PC failed. Nat One. Immediately the helm exploded, dealing 60 radiant damage to almost every single thing in the area. It bisected all the vampire spawn and also sadly Ireena. I played Strahd constantly worried that his presence would kill Ireena, and this threw both him and me as the DM into madness.

ciphonn

What is it about Yester Hill that makes DMs invent drugs that are not in the campaign module? When I ran strahd(my first campaign as a dm) I too, like my Druncle, created a substance called Crix (powdery substance that would give certain buffs) that the druids were using and making at yesterhill

Doctor Ransom

Damn dude!?! 8 years?? That’s crazy. We finished our campaign after playing 32 sessions over 9 months and went to every location. Props to your DM for getting a hella mileage outta Strahd.

Philipp Radler

That's usually the reaction we get :D was a fantastic time, but the amount of extra lore by our DM is hard to keep track of. Also the amount of goofing off delayed us a lot ;)

Gabriel Babbitt

I don't have a funny moment per se, but I am the primary DM in my group and needed a break from our fully Homebrew campaign. I decided to try to run a pre-written believing it would be easier, and I picked Strahd not knowing what all was involved. I tried to run it straight from the book and quickly realized that there was a ton of work still needed, and it ended up being way more than my homebrew campaign due to the studying and still needing lots of writing. I got a little frustrated with it thinking I could run it straight from the book and after about 8 sessions and quit. So many loose ends and unexplained details that the DM is supposed to flesh out or remove entirely. After listening to your version, you've really inspired me to revisit it and go in with a fresh perspective, I think I could do a much better job with it and have more fun with it now. 🤟

David Fryauf

Our DM reworked the main relationships in the campaign so that Sergei was Strahd's boyfriend and Tatyana was their bestie and occasional third, all while they were in the army together. LOTS of drama and yearning! Strahd is trying to resurrect Sergei, and all the ghost knights in Argynvost have major petty drama with each other because they've spent so long together they've all dated each other. In another twist, our tiefling cleric just accepted an invitation from Strahd to go to Ravenloft alone because they want to romance him REAL bad... and Strahd seems into it. The rest of our party has yet to catch up and it's gonna be wild when we all meet up in Ravenloft and try to save our friend/kill their boyfriend? No idea, lol. Also, immediately when we got into Barovia, our Storm Sorcerer exotic dancer who uses cock magic to transfix his foes absolutely blasted the first wereraven we saw into smithereens, so that's been wild to deal with. Personally, my character has decided if she ends up a ghost in Barovia she's gonna bone the druid ghost guy near Yester Hill (not sure if he's in the real campaign, but our DM made him hot so it's gonna go down).

BystanderEffect

Our party was in Barovia when we heard about Rictavio’s Saber-tooth tiger. My circle of stars druid was not going to stand for this beast to be locked in a cage and our party set out to save the beast. This all happened during the festival for the dawn god. After creating a distraction by casting a minor illusion to make it appear as though sunlight was peaking through the clouds, we snuck off. My druid, Kyssys rolled a nat 20 lock picking check and the tiger burst out. Before I could do an animal handling check to befriend the tiger, Ricatavio and the towns guard appeared to apprehend Irena. Kyssys sacrificed herself and was imprisoned as well, the tiger rampaged and broke through the towns gate decimating about half of the guards. When the party cane to rescue me and Irena from Izek, we destroyed the other half of the guards, leaving the town without any defences against strahd, all because my PC wanted to befriend an armoured kitty cat.

Mezunbie17

Greetings justices, who are off-duty and thus all equally lowly, Curse of Strahd was the first time our entire party had ever played D&D. Here are three highlights: Our party druid early on rolled a nat 20 on an animal handling check to befriend a dire wolf, who was named Warwick and travelled with us. When we learned of the werewolf cave, we figured that if we got the leader of the werewolf pack to bite Warwick, he might experience reverse lycanthropy and become part human. However, when we approached the cave a random encounter roll saw our party flanked by 12 werewolves who promptly tried to kill us. Our sorcerer died, Warwick ran off never to be seen again, and we avoided a TPK by the skin of our teeth. Vallaki was a shit show. When we first entered and saw the burgomaster dragging a townsfolk behind his horse, our new barbarian PC said he wanted to “hit him off his horse”. After a successful hit and rolling high damage, our DM announced the burgomaster had just been killed in one punch. (This was not the PCs intention but we didn’t know about declaring non-lethal damage yet). The entire town guard descended on us; my fighter and our paladin fled, while the T-Rex polymorphed druid, monk, and barbarian killed every single guard in town. We left that night and never returned to Vallaki. By the time we faced Strahd, we had passed every single milestone in the book and were level 13 - way overleveled for the encounter with magic items out the wazoo. To balance, our DM created a homebrew monster: Strahd had stolen all five of the bodies of the PCs who died during the campaign and stitched them together into one super-frankenstein, who tormented us with our failings as it tried to kill us. Mechanically, it had class abilities from all five of those PCs (monk, barbarian, paladin, wizard, druid) and could switch between them 1/turn.

Riley Wesson

Upon reaching Velaki and running the wrong way of the Bergomeister there, we were recruited by a Lady Fiona Walkter, who welcomed us to the resistance to take back Velaki. We were so scared of the Bergomeister’s muscle, Isek, that we followed her into a basement where we witnessed a creepy ritual and slowly realized we were in over our heads. Upon leaving the mansion we were confronted by the tow guards, and as Fiona and the resistance started to fight back, our party all looked at each other and decided Fiona and her people were hella sketch so we turned on them in the middle of the fight. This resulted in there later being a play put on by the local orphanage at the Festival of The Blazing Sun reenacting our “accomplishments”. Needless to say, we were not the most decisive of parties and had a multitude of incidents like this.

Josh

One of our party members, Jillian jamjar, refused to stop accepting dark gifts in the amber vault, eventually the DM just had to take his character sheet and said he was fully corrupted, we ended up running a mini campaign after strahd to kill him as a boss fight.

Stuart Urquhart

I have for you a classic underdog story! Actually, its more of an undercat story, really. We had a Bard-barian in the party who was a big Leonin (cat man) who only wore jorts and an axe/guitar. His mission in life was to perform in every city in the world... alphabetically. So by the start of the campaign he'd gotten to 'B-a.' The problem was that his build was so incredibly weak build that we all agreed he counted as half a PC for balance purposes. His entire schtick was grappling people, dragging them around, and throwing them into environmental hazards, which is cool but quite weak in a game where a sword deals a d8 damage where a campfire deals a d6... or so we thought. We'd gotten a Scroll of Magic Circle, which I'd always thought was a weak Spell (1 hour cast time for a visible trap) until we realized it could be flipped inside out, and stacked inside a Silence bubble (Dispel Magic has a verbal component) meaning once a creature was in there, there's literally no way out. Reenter our Barbarian. We greased that bad boy up with all the movement buffs and anti-charm effects we could muster, and then he basically dragged Strahd into the circle like a rag doll. What followed was an ass beating so one-sided that I worried my plan had killed not only Strahd, but the vibe of the session. Fortunately, our DM had prepared some other huge story payoffs, so it ended up a great time!

Reese

I planned a big party to play the Strahd campaign, a whole day event. Strahd all day! I bought/made a bunch of items for the party to use, a tarokka deck, the Gulthias staff, different rings and amulets. I bought a long folding table to give us more room to play! The day comes, it’s Saturday morning, a beautiful day! I hear a knock on the door, I’m excited and it’s a delivery guy dropping off my wifes online order. They never came. Then they all text me, “oh yeah, i forgot that was today” — “i think i’m coming down with something” — “i drank too much last night”. I think my wife pitied me so much that day that she sat down and played a couple hours with my very half hearted DM self. It’s okay to laugh, i laugh sometimes too. Oh the heartbreak

Daoloth

This is a story im sure Murph will appreciate as a creepy doll hater: My party's bard became fast friends with Piddlewick junior the creepy animated puppet after they found him in a closet at the bonegrinder. He would do mischevious things like make threatening jokes directed at other party members, occasionally shoot them with darts when they weren't looking, or hide their gear. When the party would get upset, all Piddlewick had to do was a little tap dance and tell a couple jokes and the bard would be ready to defend him to the death. I turned him into a familiar for my bard a-la Glass Ass and he accompanied them to Strahds castle promising to show them all of the secret passages. This never transpired as he was unceremoniously crushed by the counterweight from the hidden elevator trap, much to the bards dismay and the rest of the party's delight

ehjs

I made up an NPC that was running from wolves that was just a very pathetic Galear type character. Strahd came to the funeral like in your campaign, but introduced himself to the PCs and said “Barovia can require decisive actions. Who is your party leader?” And I knew they would go for the cuck-of-a-man instead of electing themselves. Strahd then looked at the NPC and said “a group here is only as strong as its weakest member, who is yours?” And he couldn’t figure out an answer and said “everyone is really strong and kind” so Strahd replied “then it is you, so called leader.” And grabbed him by the head and smashed his skull into a tombstone and walked away by stating “I look forward to seeing you again, and I hope I have eliminated your weaknesses early, to propel you forward in my homeland. Until we meet again….”

DungeonMama

Our game was decidedly more grim than the triplets (not surprising). We got so deep into our game that we ended up with two different groups, one playing in the distant past and the rest of us in present-day Barovia. We've been playing since September of 2020 and are still playing in a very expanded setting and most have played multiple characters over the course of the game. Notes of interest: - We traveled to the feywild with the Tome of Strahd (that we call the Tome of Echoes) to freeze time while we used the book to journey into past memories of Strahd and our party members, memories that were often informed by the alt group playing in the distant past. - We ended up adopting Piddlewick, who like to pull bouquets of paper flowers out of his pockets - We overthrew the burgomaster of Vallaki after aligning with someone we thought would be a better leader for the city, only to have that person begin torching the city to "purge the old blood." We then had to flee while the whole city burned down lol - We have pronounced it "Val-uh-kai" the whole time and never imagined we were mispronunciating it

DungeonMama

Holy shit, what level were you at?

Skyler G.

Not a story per se, but I just wanted to give props to my DM for crafting an amazing world that combines Strahd and Spelljammer (aka Strahdjammer, cue Space Jam music).

Basel Ballywick

We were 10th level and a party of 4 (bladesinger wizard, totem warrior barbarian, circle of stars druid, and fiend patron warlock).

ToobaPhish

This was during the battle of yester hill our DM used the wrong map. The map in question was not to scale, each square was 50 feet, we literally had to dash to move one square. It was torture. 4 Pc's died including my new character who was introduced in that fight. It took 6 sessions that spanned about 3 irl months. We are all good friends and after words we got our razzing rights and now constantly bring it up

alwayshome

I am OBSESSED with this idea. Very jealous of your players.