One bard's take on D&D and other things
October—the perfect month for Curse of Strahd! Sirya continues her escape from Castle Ravenloft and her pursuer, the vampire spawn Alexander. Meanwhile, Kara and the rest of the party check in on Sirya with magic and decide what they’re going to do.
In these session prep posts, I go over what I did to prepare for my monthly CoS sessions. I also talk a bit about what happened and what I need to prep for next time!
Continue readingA lot happened in this April’s Curse of Strahd session, so let’s try to unpack some of it.
Continue readingIt’s been a while since our last one, but finally we could all hop on and do another Curse of Strahd session!
In this series, I’m writing about how I prep my monthly CoS sessions and the results of that preparation. I’ve been able to learn a lot about how I need to prep generally and for this specific group.
Continue readingIt’s July, but here’s how last month’s Curse of Strahd session went!
In this series, I’m writing about how I prep my monthly CoS sessions and the results of that preparation. I’ve been able to learn a lot about how I need to prep generally and for this specific group.
Continue readingThis time, we got to one of the coolest parts of Curse of Strahd’s rising action—the tarokka card reading. The party had a few questions for Madam Eva as well, as they attempt to unravel the tangled fates that reach throughout Barovia.
In this series, I’m talking about how I prep my monthly CoS sessions and the results of that preparation. I’m learning a lot about what works for me and my group!
Continue readingThe Curse of Strahd campaign is going strong, complete with a new ally and a close brush with death. Here, I’ll talk about what I did to prepare for the session and discuss how that turned out!
Continue readingAdventure design has a lot of moving parts, so using a pre-written module can make things a lot easier. Additionally, your party might be excited to take on iconic D&D villains like the fearsome Tiamat in the “Tyranny of Dragons” storyline, the deadly Acererak of Tomb of Annihilation, the cunning Count Strahd in Curse of Strahd, and so on.
As the Dungeon Master, you get to bring these (and many other) characters to life—an opportunity that can be both exhilarating and intimidating. Running NPCs from a module feels a little different than running NPCs of your own creation, so let’s talk about how you can prepare to run them!
Continue readingThe Curse of Strahd campaign had a break in February, but we’re back into it now! The fates conspired to ensure I also didn’t have very much prep time for this session. Let’s get into how that prep turned out!
Continue readingThe great thing about published adventures is that, generally, the maps are already drawn. The important areas of the adventure already have their requisite furnishings and encounters placed. You don’t have to worry about visualizing the space around your adventurers; the adventure designers have done that work for you.
But, how do you use these maps? More than that, how do you run these maps? Let’s talk about it!
Continue readingHey! This year, I’m trying to get better at session prep, so we’ll be talking about it every time I run a session.
For last week’s Curse of Strahd session, I didn’t have a ton of time to prep stuff. But, here’s what I did.
Continue reading© 2024 The Friendly Bard's Companion to Various Things
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
