Dungeons & Dragons: Curse of Strahd Review

Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

Pros:

• Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition) now with 3D
• Lots of good descriptions of the dark location of Barovia
• Strahd is back and he's still deadly
• It's a dark adventure with great atmosphere

Could Go Either Way:

• It's a retelling of Ravenloft with a bit more (if you already have your own conversion of I6, it may be hard to persuade you)
• Not much new stuff in terms of mechanics (though there are some new monsters)
• Adventure is open ended and requires serious Dungeon Master preparation (for those who like the control, it's a massive pro)

Cons:

• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

The cover of Curse of Strahd.

Introduction

The Dungeons & Dragons 5^th edition adventure Curse of Strahd was released on March 15^th, 2016. I'm a bit late with my review, but I figure it's better late than never. Truthfully, I was looking forward to this adventure. I was happy to seeing that Strahd was back in this edition of D&D and wanted to see what the adventure was like, given its 256 page length compared to I6: Ravenloft's 39 pages.

Overall, I liked the adventure, though I didn't get a change to run through it as thoroughly as my previous reviews. I have, however, run a conversion of I6 and a couple of parts of this adventure. Curse of Strahd has great atmosphere and is one of those adventures that gives a lot to work with, inspires, and has those special memorable moments. It is heavily based on I6, particularly castle Ravenloft itself, but it is significantly bigger than I6 and leaves what worked. I feel it's a bit too early to say for sure, but so far it has left a good impression on me and may be my favourite adventure yet (I have a bit of a soft spot for Ravenloft) despite the adventures released so far being solid. 

The Adventure

New Player Options

There is not much here. There is one new background and some new magic items. I personally like this as it prevents bloat. There are also some new trinkets, which are always appreciated. Having tables of random items is a big blessing to a Dungeon Master and I tend to reuse them.

New Monsters

There are a few monsters provided for this adventure, as we've come to expect. They are well fitted to the adventure and there aren't too many. This adventure, even at the level of monsters, tries its best to be creepy just like the module that inspired it. Quite a few of them are specific NPCs and a lot of material is given for playing them.

What You Need to Play

The Monster Manual, Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide are referenced at the start of the adventure. With the SRD, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide I don't think you'll be missing anything except player options (I find this kind of thing can be easily house ruled). You can also get by mostly with the SRD, basic rules, Princes of the Apocalypse supplement and the adventure but molds (hazards in the Dungeon Master's Guide) will need to be house ruled. There might be a couple of other things that I didn't notice but I think that most of the adventure will run fine.

The Adventure Itself

Curse of Strahd is an adventure that takes players from levels 1 to level 10. The introduction adventure Death House does a good job of quickly leveling players up to 3^rd level, which as usual is where the adventure really gets going. Out of all of the officially published adventures so far, Death House is my favourite introduction adventure (I reviewed it here). However, it seems like they can level just fine if they don't do the adventure and instead poke around the country side and town. You may want to try to chase the characters into town by using wolves or something (even if they don't run, it'll be good experience points). If they are smart, they'll be able to find enemies they can handle and run if they bite off too much. There is one other thing involving Death House which I list under “Notes” that gave me a bit of pause.

The adventure is very open ended and free form. The characters are free to wander the area as they see fit in pursuit of their goal (though, due to level, some places may not be feasible). As a result, it provides for many roleplay opportunities and a lot of choice for the players. There is a heavy focus on characters within the world. Strahd, as expected, gets a lot of pages devoted to him. The entire adventure helps to build him up. Other characters also get fleshed out and help make the adventure an entertaining read. There is combat but it doesn't feel as much of a dungeon delve as some of the previous adventures.

The Dungeon Master plays an incredibly large role in this adventure and so do the players. Making the villains menacing and smart is essential to the success of this adventure. There is also a large emphasis on horror and suspense with many suggestions for doing so. There are also many situations and locations that are creepy as written and with a Dungeon Master can become even more so. One of the themes here is Gothic horror and it does a good job of it.

The combat encounters and environments work well together. The locations and environments are well described and help build that Gothic horror element up for this adventure. They are also quite diverse and feel so thanks to all of the emphasis on roleplay and creepiness. The adventure also has the feeling of an uphill battle until the end. In general, it is deadly and all of this fits the theme very well.

There are a few pages of handouts at the end of the book. I like being able to show handouts like this and it really adds something to see letters from the characters with different writing styles. They also provide a black and white PDF of them so that you can cut them out and use them when needed (see "Free Stuff" below). I hope they do similar things for later adventures. 

As usual, I'll try to talk about the plot only in broad strokes. Reading this adventure, it was very nostalgic for me and the plot is major reason for that. It is very character and theme driven, and fits beautifully in the world created. It's very hard to separate the characters and location from the plot. It's also very memorable. It's hard to find someone who has played through Ravenloft and doesn't remember Strahd. This adventure was a great tribute that old adventure.

The adventure leaves many things intact from the modules that inspired it, including room descriptions. The large use of the previous material is something I liked to see instead of change for change's sake, but it also makes it harder to argue to buy this adventure if you already converted the old. It is nicely put together and contains characters that did not feature in the original module but did appear in other Ravenloft material in 2nd and 3rd edition D&D. It also has some thing that I think are new (I don't seem to recall them from earlier Ravenloft material). You can still make an argument for the adventure due to its production values, changes (just to see what was changed if you are an expert on the setting), and bringing in of new material, but it will be a harder argument to make when you can house rule it yourself and may prefer your version anyway. 

If you are a new Dungeon Master, my suggestion for you is a bit mixed. If you are prepared to put the time in, this adventure will run beautifully. You need to have a feel for the location and the characters. You'll need to understand the characters and get into their skin to really give it justice. As a new Dungeon Master, this will take longer and be tougher. However, there is so much to work with that I feel the results will be very memorable and enjoyable. Remember to take the advice present in the boom and try to build up the creepiness as well as the characters. To make the adventure amazing, those need to be well developed. The adventure itself puts a lot of choice in the hands of the player. Dealing with this may have a bit of a learning curve but it can be done by new Dungeon Masters, especially if you have a good feel for the material and have references on hand.

Miniatures from Castle Ravenloft Board Game

If you have or wanted to get the Castle Ravenloft board game, the miniatures would work fairly nicely for this adventure. The zombie miniatures in particular are very versatile since they can be used for zombies, wights, and even vampire spawn in a pinch and still look relatively close. The main problem with using miniatures from the board game is that there aren't enough. Many encounters have more than 3 zombies so substitutions will be needed. If you prefer to use a mixture of tokens and miniatures, there is still a reason to get the board game and use the pieces along with the tokens you have. If you want only want to use miniatures, though you get a lot of miniatures for the price, there won't be enough to run the adventure without a second board game (I'd look at the other adventure system board games and see what can be used) or a Dungeon Command set. Due to this cost, I can't recommend it just for this one adventure. You'd need to either really want to have miniatures for future games (the board games aren't cheap though, when on sale, they are around the cost of a book in this edition) or like the board game itself for me to recommend it to you (I personally like the board game though I've added my own rules over time). I'd say probably about half of the miniatures wouldn't be used over the course of the adventure, but they are all good and can easily find use over a campaign or multiple campaigns (wraiths/ghosts, kobolds, Dracolich, etc.).

The Art and Book Build Quality

The art through the book is what we've come to expect. It's good and there is a lot of it. As usual, I love the environment art. There are also some very nice pictures featuring Strahd, including the cover. I've included one of my favourites from the adventure below. A lot of the other pictures are more stylized but there are a number of realistic style pictures and the stylized pictures aren't too stylized for my taste. To see what I mean, consult the maps in the free package on the Wizards of the Coast website. The 3D maps that Ravenloft was known for are in this book and still look great. There is something special about that 3D style that I really like.

The illustration of the gates of Barovia. It looks even better in the book. 

The condition of the book was much better than my Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. The only slight problem is that the pages are a little wavy but that has always improved with a little time for me so far. The binding is great and none of the pages were stuck together.

This time, there is a tear away poster map of Castle Ravenloft and the villages. I found this to be very helpful, particularly for Castle Ravenloft. I've run the adventure before but I still find difficulty keeping the map straight without it in front of me (the way staircases go, passages connect and magic features are in the castle makes it easy to get disoriented). The maps here are mostly taken from the book itself (except one that you can do without, all noted in the Table of Contents) but having them in one place is very handy and means a lot less page flipping back and forth.

Price

For the suggested retail price of this product, you can check here. The cost is the same we are used to for adventures of this size at $50 in the States and $64 in Canada. However, as usual, most places have the book at a lower price. Doing a quick search, it is possible to find this book at around $32 ($48 at Chapters was the lowest I could find in Canada since it looks like the exchange rate hit hard).

What I felt was Missing

A PDF of the adventure would be nice (like always I mention this). Having the supplement containing all of the creatures to run the adventure would also be nice. It was much nicer from a buyer perspective when all that was needed was the adventure. The rest would be provided by the supplement online and the basic rules (now we have the SRD but it doesn't cover everything).

If you plan to run the combat on a grid, you will have to figure it out yourself. There are no grids provided with the adventure or in the online materials (as of this piece being published). You can find the artist and buy the maps there, but some (Ravenloft) will be missing. You will still need to resize them too. I'd suggest having some kind of printable tiles that you can then lay out and even tape together for some big important rooms.

Free Stuff

Wizards of the Coast were nice enough to provide some material for free through their website as usual. There is the typical supplement for the new player options. I'm particularly happy to see this because there was nothing for Rage of Demons. They also supplied the handouts section in PDF form (I love this since I can print them, cut them out, and hand as needed) but they are in black and white instead of colour. Some maps are also provided in a black and white as well. They do not have any of the letters corresponding to locations so they are meant for players. There are no maps of Ravenloft itself (for player maps, I think this is fine since it leaves it being mysterious). Even this, however, is helpful.

If you want to see what the writing is like without buying the adventure, either taking part in the Adventurers League events or running the Death House free adventure (I reviewed it here) will give you an idea of what to expect. Running Death House is very enjoyable and requires no cost (if you don't have dice, there are dice rollers online).

They have stopped having a supplement containing the creatures features in the adventure since Princes of the Apocalypse (something I really miss since it was super convenient for searching). This does mean that buying the monster manual is recommended in the book. However, the SRD has been released for free and covers most of the creatures in the adventure. The ones that I noticed isn't covered are the blights. You'll need to look in the Princes of the Apocalypse supplement to find Revenants. There is also mention made to traps contained in the Dungeon Master's Guide, but the SRD seems to work fine except for desecrated ground (this would need to be house rules or found in the Dungeon Master's Guide). If you really don't want to buy the core books but want to run this adventure, you can get by with a little house ruling, the SRD and previous supplements. It's easier with the core books and generally, they are solid.

Summary

Overall, this may be my favourite adventure yet published in this edition. Ravenloft is back with special care given to show it in its old glory. Though it includes much of what was included in I6 (with some changes), quite a bit was added (comparing the 39 page length of I6 to the 256 length of Curse of Strahd gives you an idea of how much was added). If you are already an expert on Ravenloft thanks to the previous edition material, it will be harder to find a reason for you to try this adventure since you can convert and house rule something similar. You may be curious enough to see what they changed to get it anyway. The adventure is deadly and open ended (it'll require some serious Dungeon Master prep to run smoothly and may require some quick improvisation based on character actions) but addresses its themes very well and provides inspiration for the Dungeon Master. It also has many great opportunities for roleplaying and many beautifully creepy sequences. If you aren't scared away by the price tag or the open endedness and love your undead adventures with a touch of creepy, I think you'll like this. It is, however, heavily dependent on the Dungeon Master due to the emphasis on roleplay and creepiness. All in all, I'd say this is a welcome tribute to Ravenloft.

Other Stuff

• Reading over this book, I only remember 2 typos and they were very minor
• This adventure is deadly
• The adventure, though very open ended, provides a lot of inspiration making it a not bad but difficult choice for new Dungeon Masters
• Revenants are in the Princes of the Apocalypse supplement that you can get from http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/princes-apocalypse
• Free stuff is at http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/curse-strahd
• Death House is described as an optional mini-adventure, but the map still lists it as a location. I assume that what they meant is that the house is still there and can be explored but running it as a quest with milestones, the fog part and the luring part is optional. If done that way, the players choose to do it or not and can escape. Or can the Dungeon Master choose to exclude it if the party is high enough level and treat it the same way as the rest (roll on the table)? I don't like this second option since it takes away one of the most interesting features of the town (also, treasure). 
• In some cases, those who didn't notice are surprised. In others, if anyone in the party notices, no one is surprised. It seems that the Dungeon Master is free to decide surprise as they want and I'd recommend doing so instead interpreting the stealth rules to the letter.