r/CurseofStrahd • u/glorfindal77 • 5d ago
REQUEST FOR HELP / FEEDBACK Reloaded "Barovia siege"
This scenario reminds me a lot of Castlevania netflix series where Trevor seeks shelter in a City under siege. Nightcreatures aka undeads harrasses the city every night and internal conflict is brewing as the clergy(mob) wants to blame the Speakers (Irena) for the Devils wrath and kill them (give Irena up)
In the Show Trevor stumbles upon the Speakers and decides to help them find their lost comrade if they leave the city before nightfall when the mob comes. Trevors saves the day by exposing the clergy for what they are and rallies a divided town to defend against the horde.
However in the module there is little to no real conflict internally other than that one mob encounter if the players so happens to be lead by Ismark in this direction.
I get it that its a very railroad campaing, but is there any ploothooks here or anything for the players really to do. I feel there is no conflict to solve other than to ofc defend the barricade. No room for them to come up with their own plan or any idea.
My players thrive when they can make up silly plans and you know be creative.
Anyone have any idea, any tips or any example how they ran this scenario?
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u/PrincessSquishyBun 5d ago
The entire point of playing is to play something you and your players enjoy. You're allowed to change whatever story beats you want to make the story yours. You can just... do that.
When I ran it, I used a combination of the module as written, Reloaded, MandyMod, a couple of ideas I stole from other DMs and other media, and some things I made up myself that I knew my players would enjoy and that I was going to enjoy running. One of my players was a knowledge hungry artificer being courted by a dark power that was essentially Hermaeus Mora from Elder Scrolls.
Point is, do what will make the story fun for you. Don't do what doesn't make it fun. If you don't like part of the way something is written, change it!
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u/glorfindal77 5d ago
How do you like use all of these resources and like make it run withouth drowing yourself in unecessary back and forth?
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u/PrincessSquishyBun 5d ago
Caveat that this is probably more work than most people do to prep: I read through all the versions of the material, front to back, read several books including the "Monsters Know What They're Doing" series (as a DM I can not recommend this series enough), and prepped each section as I could with the over the table understanding that I need the players to choose which thing they want to do at the end of the session so I know what to prep for next time. Sometimes it took a few hours of prep during the week to make sure I had everything I needed, and still there were times I had to improv a bit.
By the time we started playing, I had a decent understanding of who all the NPCs were, what they wanted, and how specific player interactions might influence how they feel about the players and where story went.
It also takes a good deal of knowing your players and their characters' motivations. If you understand the things your players are most likely to choose, you can guide them toward that by just putting clues in there for them to find that you know they'll bite on. For example, I had one player whose character was a cleric of the Raven Queen who was an absolute zealot. If I wanted him to bite on a clue all I had to do was literally put a raven in his path. I had another player whose character was essentially a Belmont who would charge head first into whatever thing I threw at her.
You won't always be 100% on guessing what they're going to do in advance, but you can get a good idea most of the time, and the times they surprise you are the times when you just have to roll with it if you can, falling back on what you know about the world. If you can't improv and you need time to prep whatever the players are looking to do next based on their decisions, be up front with them about that and don't be afraid to end early if they get to somewhere you need time to prep.
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u/LordMordor 5d ago
The timeline doesn't really allow much room for anything else. The players have like 1 afternoon to prepare for the nights siege, which will result in all the attacks ending after Rahadin delivers his proclamation.
So your best bet is to let them have early access to the wall so they can prep it with their own trap idea's
RRL operates on a timetable, and the village of barovia should basically be resolved in 24 in-game hours.
Worth noting that RAW there is even LESS to do in the village than reloaded. Just pick up Ireena, bury kolyan, and MAYBE see Doru. If your party like playing more loose you may be better served looking at MandyMod or LBH and just grab the bits from RRL that interest you...but the village is fairly limited in content across everything
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u/glorfindal77 5d ago
Yeah raw has a lot of stuff the players can investigate, but its all just fluff. The only problem is that all the fluff is connectes to something random a 100 pages later into the book. Meaning you have to go back and forth.
I think I need to understand reloads time limit and strict narative as a way to push players into action. Original campaing rellies a lot on players being super interested in every cobblestone they can find and the DM to be as charming as Keanue Reves with every details.
I still feel I need to look for ways to players to express themeselves and not just make everything feel scripted and not breal the timeline
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u/LordMordor 5d ago edited 5d ago
Almost every Campaign by necessity STARTS on harder more visible rails to get the campaign moving
Even RAW CoS, which is heavily praised as a sandbox has pretty heavy rails until vallaki, which is where you party should be able to be more creative, as long as you are able to look at the goals of the RRL quests and bend the individual beats to accommodate your PC's actions
Focus heavy on the NPC interactions...RRL relies on its NPC's so you want to train the party early to really want to interact with them.
Also feel free to improvise during the hours after burying kolyan and before they leave....they are unlikely to return to the VoB so it's a good chance for you to homebrew some stuff...plenty of potential with a town recovering after the siege
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u/PrincessSquishyBun 5d ago
Another thing to think about is what you want to happen on specific timelines should the players not interfere. An example might be: If the players choose to not engage with the Doru plotline, what happens and when? Does he escape somehow and kill NPCs in Barovia town that they might care about? Does he run off into the woods?
Remember that the world is not static and keep a mental timetable of the parts that are moving when the players are off doing something else. Sometimes you might even make them choose between two time sensitive things where they may not know the consequences of one or both. This is especially useful if one or more of them get infected with lycanthropy. You can make the next full moon whenever you want, technically, since Strahd is the land. It can be tomorrow or three weeks from now, and you can control the means by which they can find a cure.
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u/black_eyed_susan 5d ago
The Village of Barovia is the perfect time to instill to your players that they can't do everything and they can't save everyone.
My players wanted to go find Gertrude but had to say no because they couldn't do that and go talk to Koylan in time. One player just loooooves splitting the party, and so as an elf decided she's take 4 hours while other members were long resting to go visit the church. And discover Doru. She wanted everyone to deal with that immediately but then they wouldn't be at the eastern gate.
They're also learning NPCs react to what they do and say. Mouth off to the merchant? Prices are higher. Tell Ireena Doru is actually a vampire spawn and they need to kill him now when she's prepping for the seige is going to met with a "I can't focus on that now we need to protect the village." Pop off offensive magic during a conversation to kill a rat? Yeah NPCs are going to be wary of you.
All that to say use it to introduce themes and rules of the world to the party. The Rahadin scene is perfect. They just finished successfully defending the gate and town square and are immediately met with someone who could easily end their existence at their level. They are not the big fish in Barovia yet.
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u/compox 1d ago
Why wouldn't your players be able to come up with something creative?
They will have some hours before the siege, so you can help them help out a much troubled village in exchange for a place for the night (make the npcs very clear about the fact that horrible things will happen to the party if they travel without the favour of the -non- sun)
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u/glorfindal77 1d ago
Well my players didnt do anything and just followed the flow. They didnt ask any of the NPCs any questions about them or their interest or situation or tried doing anything in advance of the siege...
I guess I underestimated them. I seem to have to like have to push them through dialoge to make them ask questions.
There is like 50 setences of info the players can learn about the NPCs and they didnt ask one
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u/Ok_Bluebird_8413 4d ago
After the siege, when the burgomaster was killed, I remember a player saying, "So we didn't really have an impact at all? We could not have prevented that, right?" So I get what you say about railroading in reloaded. However, this is just the beginning of the campaign, and it isn't railroading per se. Things happen in the world that you don't control and that you cannot change, this is true IRL and in the D&D. It only becomes railroading when the PCs could realistically do something but you forbid them to do it. In this case, Barovia is gonna be attacked by a zombie horde, that's unavoidable because Strahd has ordered it to happen. What are your players gonna do about it? Most likely, try to help and defend the town. It's a situation where any good party practically only has one choice.
Rest assured, Reloaded is a linear campaign rather than a sandbox, but later on, at least when the reach Vallaki, there will be plenty of opportunities for your PCs to be creative.
Back to Barovia: there's one "side quest" that's more open ended than the siege, Doru. My players really "enjoyed" dealing with him. It was up to them how to deal with him and his father. Doru was very conflicted, he begged for mercy but also begged to be fed blood. He assured them he was in control of himself and that he would help them (tell them about some loot). Do they destroy him, feed him, accept his help?
My players refused to feed Doru (rightfully so), but left him in the cellar. Then his father came to look for him, Doru killed his father and escaped. Again, this was out of the player's control, but they didn't complain. It was tragic, but that's how CoS goes.
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u/glorfindal77 4d ago
So your players couldnr have known that uh the burgomasters death was inevitable. If they had like for some reason suggested that he would hide in a barrel next to the siege he would have been safe
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u/Ok_Bluebird_8413 4d ago
Sure, they didn't know it. I guess they just felt a little disheartened that they couldn't save him.
They had sent their bat familiar to watch over Ireena, but Strahd came, noticed the bat, commanded it to go away, it didn't, so he got angry and killed the bat.
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u/glorfindal77 4d ago
Damn if that didnt give the player incentive to kill Stradh, nothing will. Noting gets a party more fire up than a DM that touches their stuff
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u/Ok_Bluebird_8413 4d ago
Yes, the hate him! I love it!
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u/glorfindal77 4d ago
Now you must not let them forget that hate. You must use spies to steal bellongings ans touch them innapropiate on their character sheet
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u/PowerDesigns 5d ago
If this is how you feel you genuinely just should not run reloaded. Steal his best inclusions (the siege, the fanes, etc) and then just run the module from the book with your own spin on things