Bonus Content: Barovia

So I've been running Curse of Strahd. We just finished Death House. One of my players was switching characters, so his old one got kidnapped. I had an entire adventure planned on tracking him down, which my players deftly sidestepped.

It happens. Instead they decided to play around in Barovia.

So, for those of you that don't know, Barovia is a small village filled with villagers that are terrified of Strahd. None of the regular villagers want to interact with the characters at all, and most are so scared of Strahd that they don't even leave their homes. That's what the book says.

Worse, in the book there is hardly any action at all. This is the first real place that introduces Ravenloft, and I get that the book is trying to slam home how hopeless Barovia's plight is. But the only two possibly threatening encounters are a vampire spawn and a list of random encounters - both of which probably aren't going to come up.

I'll talk more in a future post about how I ran the session and what I put together. But, like, really. I love this setting so much, but this book is just terrible from front to back. I sort of wish that I hadn't bought it, and just improved my way through a Ravenloft game instead.