We had a Curse of Strahd session a little over a week ago! The party continues to explore Argynvostholt as they try to unravel the mysteries of Barovia.

In this series, I’m writing about how I prep my monthly CoS sessions and the results of that preparation. I’ve learned a lot about effective session prep, especially while using a prewritten adventure!

What I prepped:

  • Recap

This session’s recap:

Today is your eleventh day in Barovia, a cursed land ruled by the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich. After a run-in with Baba Lysaga, the witch of Berez, you took refuge in a mansion named Argynvostholt. You discovered that the mansion belonged to Argynvost, a silver dragon who took the guise of a human and founded the Order of the Silver Dragon, a knightly order that was defeated by Strahd when he was mortal. You explored the mansion and met Vladimir Horngaard, an undead knight formerly of the Order of the Silver Dragon. You have just exited the mausoleum in the mansion’s graveyard and saw the apparition of a man in an upper room. You have explored much of but not all of the mansion.  

It’s not as tightly written as I would have liked. I think I meant to edit it more before the session started?

There’s a balance between keeping the overarching plot in mind and reminding players of the details of last session. I think when it comes down to it, this recap fulfilled that purpose.

  • Argynvostholt special event

There are a few special events that can happen as the characters explore the mansion, so I picked one and waited for the right moment to deploy it. I like giving people time to talk over events and try to figure stuff out, but there’s a difference between that and letting them go around in circles.

  • Phantom knight stat block

It’s useful to review condition immunities and damage immunities/resistances, because that’s one of the harder things to retcon if you get it wrong in the middle of combat. Curse of Strahd features many different undead creatures with various immunities/resistances/vulnerabilities, so this helps me remind myself which ones apply to the creatures I’ll be running

What I improvised:

  • The problem of the spirit of Argynvost

I think the players didn’t feel much of a sense of resolution from exploring Argynvostholt. The mysteries are still there. They’ve uncovered a lot of the mansion’s secrets, but they don’t have what they need to follow along with what Argynvost wants (yet).

I’m not sure what I can do in these situations. On one hand, I want to be able to say, “Yes, that’s the answer, that’s exactly what you need to do.” But on the other hand, the characters don’t have anyone who would actually know that. The mysteries are meant to be solved. So I try to carefully measure what information I give for skill checks to reveal knowledge.

What I will prep for next time:

  • Potential paths forward

The party can leave the mansion whenever they want, so I’ll have to prepare for a couple different scenarios, depending on which area they want to visit next. The party has hit several of the areas of interest in Barovia, but there are still some notable exceptions. I also reminded them that even though this is a sandbox adventure, things will escalate the longer they stay in Barovia.

  • Strahd’s plans

On that note, I need to decide how long Strahd is going to keep watching the PCs until he intervenes once more—either personally or though one of his agents.

Next session is March, so next CoS post will be in the next few weeks!