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I'm excited to share the seventh public installment of my revised Curse of Strahd guide, Curse of Strahd: Reloaded. This new release contains Arc O: Dinner with the Devil, which includes:

  • Road to Ravenloft. New encounters with Arrigal, Doru and Father Donavich, the skeletal rider, and Strahd's black carriage.

  • Meeting the Brides. An all-new "cocktail hour" with Strahd's consorts, including a hunt for a secret traitor who can assist the players in planning their heist of Ravenloft.

  • Dinner with Strahd. A tense dining experience with Strahd, followed by a tour of the castle's public areas and a high-stakes test of the players' ethics.

  • The Nightmare. An overnight stay at Castle Ravenloft, including a nightmare sequence featuring the history of the castle and the tormented spirit of Varushka, a former servant.

In addition, this new update contains a number of edits, tweaks, and additions to previously released portions of the guide. You can find a full changelog here.

Click here to read about the new update.


Please also note that I've removed the vestigial Arc D: The Tome of Strahd, which I merged with Arc H: The Lost Soul several updates ago.

Thank you to all of the readers and playtesters who provided suggestions and feedback following the previous public release!

As always, I want your feedback and comments to help make this guide the best it can be. Is the adventure fun? Is the content accessible? Is there anything missing, or anything I can do better? Please let me know any and everything I can do to improve!

Thank you always to everyone who has supported this project, as well as to my incredible patrons for their support.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Cheers,
Dragna

Comments

Søren Andersen

Hi Dragna. I Really like All your work. Playing this chapter now, and My players are so confused when they are caught i the nigthmare. I have a question for you. Why do Varushka have two different statblocks in the chapter?

DragnaCarta

Hey Søren, and glad you like the guide! I'm sorry to hear your players were confused - do you think the guide requires any revisions? To answer your question - Varushka is a two-phased boss like most of the boss fights in Reloaded. It looks like I forgot to add her second-phase transformation as a feature in her first-phase statblock, so I'll be sure to fix that in the next update!

Søren Andersen

Hi Dragna. My players were confused in a really good way and they got paranoid every time they entered a new layer and couldn't figure out, what chance was coming. I also liked Pidlewick here. He is fun to play. Thet gave him the ability to speak with the help of a special voicebox that they found in Blinksys Toystore. Which one of the statblocks is the first in Varushkas phase?

DragnaCarta

Ah, gotcha; love that paranoia. Glad everyone enjoyed Pidlwick as well! "Nightmare Maid" is the first phase, and "Soul of Despair" is the second.

Phillip Hazlet

I ran part of this last night. My players loved it. One PC went disguised as Ireena and the player said she was scared the whole time. Flavor description text I read and extra personality/play notes helped bring the consorts to life. Lightning to the tower really surprised them and my old school 1e player thought the witch/construction crew was really interesting. Thank you for the notes on questions Strahd can ask to keep players talking and show what he cares about. I loved the puzzle box in the carriage. Players had fun with it too. I thought it was a little too obvious and would take seconds. It was appropriately difficult and took them a few minutes to puzzle through. Perfect. I ran it 3 hours from leaving Vallaki, encounter with rider, carriage, arrival, dinner, tour, lightning. Description of the paths NPCs take on tours is insanely useful. I’m definitely coming back for more :)

DragnaCarta

Fantastic! Thank you for running through all that; I always enjoy hearing how sessions unfold and how players react. Hope you and the players enjoy Varushka's Nightmare, and the heist afterward!