Immersion in your D&D game. It’s one of the most sought after and asked about topics in the whole DMing Multiverse. The real trick always lies in how well you can tie together all the seemingly disparate pieces of your group – characters, backstories, motivations, and adventures – into one cohesive, epic story. In this … Read more
It’s easily one of the most iconic settings in all of D&D history and we’ve gone into detail about how we homebrewed sections of Curse of Strahd for our table. But, what do you do when the long-running adventure you’ve been running ends at around 10th level? How do you handle it when your players want to continue with this set of characters and take it all the way to epic tiers?
“The four ancient stones near the windmill were erected centuries ago by the valley’s original human inhabitants. Each moss-covered stone bears a crude carving of a city, each of which is associated with a different season. The city of winter is shown covered in snow. The city of spring is arrayed in flowers. The city of summer has a sunburst overhead, and the city of autumn is covered in leaves. If the characters ask any of the priests or scholarly NPCs in Barovia about the stones, the characters are told that ancient legends tell of the Four Cities, said to be the cities of Paradise where the Morninglord, Mother Night, and the other ancient gods first dwelled.” – Curse of Strahd
5e’s Curse of Strahd contains a double entendre. While it seems as if the big bad Lord of Barovia is the curse that follows the players around, the deeper truth is that the curse is his own. He cannot leave. Barovia is his prison. Having just completed our run of this infamous adventure, I found an even deeper curse lying within the module: Strahd just isn’t powerful enough to handle the heat of the epic, final battle when the players are level appropriate and have recovered the artifacts.
You hear The 3 Wise DMs talk about our games all the time, but what do our players really think? In this episode, we have 6 of the 7 players from Curse of Strahd on to get honest with DM Dave about what they thought of his campaign! Along the way, we get into whether you should leave your Tarokka reading random, The Death House, what it was like playing in a low-magic setting, slow leveling, the Amber Temple and much more!
How do you run a vampire-laden, gothic horror Christmas one-shot, you ask? Quite easily, actually. One has to look no further than the Joe Hill novel, and later television show, NOS4A2. Charlie Manx. Abducted children. Christmasland. A chance to run my Curse of Strahd party against a vampire almost as powerful as the published CR 15 Strahd. So, in its entirety, here is 3WD’s Christmas gift to all of you – a joyful, dread, merry and gothic one-shot that checks all the boxes for vampires and Christmas!
Ding dong, Strahd is dead! He was thrown down from a pillar and we smashed his head! And with that epic victory, the 3 Wise DMs are finally able to talk about their review of D&D 5E’s Curse of Strahd, including their thoughts on what worked, why and the adjustments DM Dave made.
discussion centered around the costume dinner party I threw when the players finally accepted the dinner invitation from the Master of Ravenloft, Count Strahd von Zarovich. With all of the players buying in and coming in costume, the table was set for what is, arguably, THE set piece for the entire adventure. What followed was a wonderful session full of tension, dread, laughs and a knock-down, drag-out Round 1 to the epic conclusion of our Curse of Strahd. Here are some points to consider when really playing up the immersion during your horror games.
It’s the scary season around our gaming tables, and that brings up one of the age-old questions about DMing: Can you reasonably expect to scare adult roleplaying gamers? Maybe, maybe not. But what you can definitely do is remove the illusion that they’re in control. Undermine that false comfort that their characters will be OK. Whether you’re threatening their hit points, sanity or character attachments, if you can shake the players’ sense of security, then you can scare them — and that’s what Halloween gaming is all about.
Whether you’re playing a book Dungeons & Dragons campaign or just have big plans for a couple uglies in the Monster Manual, there’s a level window where your PCs will have a good, balanced encounter with those threats. But what do you do when the party isn’t in that window?
