DragnaCarta Explains: How To Prep Vallaki (In One Hour Or Less)
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- Join DragnaCarta, the DM of "Twice Bitten", who explains to how to prepare for Vallaki in an hour or less!
Originally a Fireside Chat during episode 12 of Twice Bitten.
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So as a DM who is about to run this in less than an hour from now, this is suspicously timed XD
My group is probably going to be there this Saturday haha they just got done with some windmill fun and my cleric just found out he has been eating ground up children... Suspicious indeed
Haha same lmao I've run two sessions so far
So, how did it go? :D
This is awesome!
I would love to listen to any of your (and MandyMod's) megathread posts if you ever do such a thing!
Thanks for the great video!
Last night I continued Curse of Strahd, and it was the scariest session yet! The group arrived in Vallaki and had a really good time meeting Izek Strazni, talking about the weird festivities and meeting the NPC’s in the inn. They even went to the evening sermon at the Church of Saint Andral, where I got a chance to flex my Midnight Mass sermon muscles. The players even found it inspiring for their pc’s. I knew I had to give them as many upward beats as possible.
Then came the bones of Saint Adral’s quest. They went to the coffin maker, and opened a crate…
For those who don’t know, there are 6 vampire spawn in there, an absolutely lethal encounter. Luckily I am an experienced DM, and they were pretty smart. They realized they were in over their heads and started the retreat. I told them that they could make it out, but at a story cost. The scene was perfect.
The heroes ran through the streets of Vallaki to the church, which they believed would be a save place. The vampires ran across the roofs chasing them, and as the PC’s unleashed some ranged attacks, I ruled that it gave them some space to run ahead. Then I had the vampires be attacked by ravens. With all that, the heroes reached the church and shoved the bones of the Saint into Father Lucien’s hands. They rang the church bell and after that looked out from the bell tower to see what was happening outside. Four guards came running to the church, and only one made it to the door. The survivor knocked on the door in a panic, and the players let him in. A vampire hand came through the door, and promptly started burning reaching into hallowed ground.
Then they stayed in the church until the morning. When the morning mass began, many civilians came to the Church to learn what happened. The Father began to explain until the Baron came. He gave a short speech about “All Will Be Well”, and immediately the Father redacted any mention of danger.
My players found that to be very unsettling. I laid the “There never was a war with Eurasia” on thick.
The heroes went back to the tavern and one of the PC’s wanted to help the innkeeper with making breakfast. During this he noticed the man limping a bit. I decided that Urwin the innkeeper would have fought against the vampire spawns in raven form. The PC asked why he was limping. I was just vague enough with the answer that the heroes knew what was up.
We ended the session with Urwin and Danika telling the heroes they were part of the Keepers of the Feather. Cut to black.
What a rush!
I must say that it was a blast to roleplay the colorful NPC’s of Vallaki and setting up other story beats. The adventure module makes it so easy to prep and run. I have never ran a published campaign like this, and I am really seeing the advantages. There are secrets ready to serve in the chapter beginning too.
I also can’t stress enough that if I had less experience, the TPK would probably have happened. Now instead I used everything I was given to characterize the town and its awful baron. The heroes have suffered a downward beat, a big one: a retreat. However learning from Sly Flourish’s talk about downward and upward beats helped me understand that I had to give the players something to make the hurt go away. It was so much fun. The players are really enjoying it.
A great call NOT to overload the PC’s with hooks. The players already felt overwhelmed with directions to go, and I haven’t told them about the Vistani camp, Argynvoltholt or de Mad Mage yet.
Lazy prep works!
This is great and very useful to DM's going into this part of the campaign. Please keep it up and possibly do many of the other areas in Barovia!
Didn't realize this was DragnaCarta at first. Then got super excited. This man is amazing. And to be honest just seeing everything in a list form like that really puts my mind at ease and really makes you see the scale of the town. I might start making more lists. 🤔
I need more of these, please! :C
Fantastic, thanks so much!
This fantastic, I would love to see more location break downs in this way. 😮
Great video!
This helped. Thanks!
As a major procrastinator, sir you are a saint!
Thank you! Glad to do what I can to help :)
Would you please also add the script for the lazydm part to use as quick guide? That would be awesome to have printed
No hooks include Blinsky Toys? What about the doll that looks like Gertruda? What about the fact that he's a red herring for Madam Eva's card reading about the "man with the monkey"?