I really enjoy the audio book narration by R McDowell. The chapter where Strahd hunts down and deals with [the traitor] is fantastic

I enjoy (no spoilers) The Ba'al Verzi that he gets the dagger from. The interactions are sublime.

7:16 FALSE. First off, Orasnou didn't exist until it was introduced in the 5e Adventurer's League campaign Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts. Several of the villages you mentioned simply aren't physically located on the map produced by Mike Schley. FYI, that map is more or less Central Barovia, it is not the entire country. Krofburg is indeed located in the area where Mike made his map. It's on the NE face of Mt. Ghakis. The "Flaw in the Slaw" is that the WotC editorial staff did not do their research and tell Mike about all of the things that belonged on the map in the area that he was mapping. (Zero shock, right?) No fault of Mike's, whatsoever. FYI, I'm working on an updated version that has the missing elements. So yeah. Nothing was officially discarded, WotC dropped the ball. 9:08 24 novels. 9:21 Jander Sunstar was not named ironically. Someone on the WotC editorial staff got a hair up their rear when they found out that Strahd was by canon the first named vampire in the D&D universe. He had some hair-brained idea about putting a named vampire in another timeline that would have made him Strahd's elder. I told him that that made about as much sense as saying that some Junior Space Ranger was the first vampire. ...Next thing you know, Jander Sunstar was birthed. Of course, said WotC employee stuck his own foot in his proverbial canon, because he said that Jander became interested in Strahd due to Jander's love being tormented due to being born with just a shard of Tatyanna's soul. Which is all very interesting, but makes it necessary that Strahd was already a vampire for some time before Jander's love could have acquired said shard, and so Strahd remains the senior vampire. 9:28 Yep. Nope. Strahd is the Elder. Forgotten fact: the fanes were mentioned very very early in the canon. In fact, the first time they were mentioned, Lathander was named. In the earliest days of ancient Barovia, the area's druids and the priests of Lathander teamed up to build the monolithic structures. This tells us two things. 1) Barovia is indeed from Faerun. 2) Jander Sunstar was not the founder of the worship of the Morning Lord in Barovia. Although there are several examples of the Morning Lord existing in Barovia before Jander Sunstar, this incident is the oldest in the timeline. (Technically 3 things, the battle of good and evil in Barovia dates back to the dawn of recorded history.) Oh, also, the fanes which are mentioned in CoS are based on the content from 4e Expedition to Ravenloft.. and there are 3 of them, the mountain fane, the swamp fane, and the forest fane. Of course, they aren't the only ones, they are just the three named here. Actually.. nearly ALL of the new content in CoS was ripped out of 4e. The rest of it was the genius of Chris Perkins and the Hickmans. :)

I DNFed that one shortly after he got to Barovia. Not entirely sure, but it didn't grab me.

Good luck and have fun!

Oh, dammit! Than you. Can't believe I messed that one up. I'll update the description with a correction.

Thanks for the info!

Heck yeah!

Indeed it was. I shall live in shame.

@@LunchBreakHeroes To err is human, to arr is pirate.

First full campaign

What would you prefer they’d done differently?

@@LunchBreakHeroes I prefer the dread domains to be pocket dimensions, instead of being part of a larger continent. The way dread domains are created and how they're cut off from everything outside themselves lends itself better to that kind of interpretation. Where travel is disorienting and isn't meant to make any sense. Taking the road past Krezk could be just as likely to lead to Harakir as it is to lead to Richmulot, or Borca, or Lamordia. The only way to control it would be with a mist talisman.

@orgixvi3 I do not disagree with you. The 5e interpretation of the domains’ separation does this pretty well.