We expanded Barovia, but we added new locations. Strahd didn't create Barovia. He's trapped there like we are. So there's remnants of shrines and holy places frequented by travelers. Strahd would have destroyed them like he did The Silver Knights. Destroying them didn't deconsecrate the ground. So there were places where he couldn't see us. We also had nature trying to reclaim the land. So random beds of flowers and groves of trees that aren't infested with evil.

Really well articulated points. My first thought was about encounters in the night, but I totally glossed over the idea that long rests would be more plentiful. I guess you would need to pair a larger Barovia with rules that you must be somewhere "safe" to gain long rest benefits? Things like Van Richtens hideout, inside city walls, or in the werewolf lair on friendly terms.

I increased the size of the map and use gritty realism rules (long rests are a week), because I want to create situations where the party needs to choose between staying ahead of events and getting a long rest. It also makes things like the hags sapping their max hp every night really dangerous.

Are you telling me you can eldritch blast across hexes?

Sometimes the places where they hide information amazes me. A lot of this I would miss very very very easily!

Your train is on the wrong track: Mike's map displays pre-conjunction Central Barovia at 46.5 hexes high = 11.625 miles North to South by 72.85 hexes across = 18.2 mi (@ 0.25mi/hex) East to West. (GIVEN, this is north central Barovia, NOT the entire width of Barovia. (Most people miss that tidbit entirely.) Realms of Terror has pre-conjunction Barovia at 52 miles high x 57 miles wide, and a breadth of about 35.7 hexes = 71.4 miles from the northwestern tip to the southeastern tip. A later 2nd Ed Ravenloft boxed set has post-conjunction Barovia at ~66 miles north-south by ~80 miles across (Post-conjunction Barovia absorbed Gundarak, and had a few other minor border changes, so it's not a 1 to 1 comparison.)(The scale on that boxed set is REALLY corny, that's why the measurements for this set are reported as about (~) 66x80 miles.) Actual Wallachia = 426km = 264.7 mi So yes, for historical precision, Mike Schley's map of Central Barovia should be scaled up precisely 4 times. For further reference.. the original i6 map of the Barovian Basin is a lie. Tracy Hickman had to scale his original map down multiple times, because in that day, TSR was scared to death that no one would want to (buy) play the game if it lasted longer than one evening. What you see in i6 is the tiniest map possible, that could represent a feasible the countryside of Barovia as described. That is all. Its actual scale is meaningless. Throughout Barovian canon, we are told to lean on the Historical Vlad Draculae where the Barovian lore is lacking. That is because Strahd = Vlad. You see, Strahd is not Bram Stoker's Dracula. Strahd is the historical Vlad Draculae, who then gets transformed in to a vampire. Brilliant, right? There is even a Ravenloft Guide to Transylvania. However, contrary to popular belief, Dracula didn't reside in Transylvania. His personal castle, and his castle fortifications were all in Walachia. So, if we use the size of Walachia to scale the (full) maps of the older versions of Barovia, which pictured the entire country.. we can deduce that we simply need to scale up Mike's map of Central Barovia to 4x to get to the correct size. You see? Also, as others have pointed out, your characters don't get a successful long rest if they're (low-level and) between villages. They get harried and harassed by any number of undead critters roaming the Barovian countryside at night. Someone compiled a tome of all of the creatures found in Barovia by canon, and there are over 300 of them. (Try fitting THAT in a 10x20 square mile block!) Anyway, the bestiary is on DMsGuild, so just look it up and grab it there. :)

I was about to put it bigger and after I eared your argument I think you are right. Putting short distance put extra stress on the grp. The only thing about that is the master must be very prepared to answer any decision the party would go with. Their will be no time for any reminder or preparation between the game. Sounds more funny like that thx

Great vid, didn’t know any of these and I thought I’d devoured the entire book

mate please, in the future, theres 3 minutes of you saying "people make maps bigger that could be bad" and just edging us on why, at least say sort of reasoning so I can decide on if there is anysense to it,

The way I do long rests is that the hags are worshippers of dendar and every night the serpent devours the dreams of all barovians. So noone gets to long rest, ever. Unless they eat one of the dream pastries. It's evil, and I love it.

I don't really count miles. I'm very geographically impeded. I can't understand distances or spaces at all. I made the trip from the village of barovia to vallaki to last 3 days because it suited me narratively. I might be on the wrong but the players have not complained or appear to be any bothered by it

great video. The idea about vilnius is actually pretty good. About strahd's minions I think this is intended. It's a tragic villain, in the end, he's just alone, he has no more allies, no friends, noone to mourn his death, all he has is his ungodly powers and oh boy is he going to unleash their full potential unto the players. It's a high stakes tragic ending for a horror campaign. As it should be.

Great video, do you have a favorite homebrew to add to the adventure? I added a whole dragon zombie buried beneath Vallaki.

Great vid! The Patrina stuff is definitely a good shout as her and Kasimir's info is soo spread out over the book. Also love hearing you hired a romani sensitivity consultant for your published material! I'd be curious re a Strahd combat video around your experience of his wall phasing ability as the community often seems pretty divided on this and how much 'fun' it is if you really play smart with it.

Interesting video, good points. Have you ever ran Death House or the House of Lament from Van Richten's guide? I'm interested in running those adventures in my campaign.

Humor helps to relieve the tension of a horror game. Tension and release repeat, that's what keeps the horror up, so well done :)

I'm really enjoying watching your backlog of content! This is such a nice channel. Keep it up :)

I didn’t even think about the hit die situation, I always figured the intimate size of Barovia was meant to facilitate the time crunch element of the adventure. If you make the map too big then you’ll disincentivize exploration since the players won’t want to get too far away from Strahd’s castle once they hit the final count down.

I would say that a neat solution could be that you cannot gain the benefits of a long rest outside of a a 'sanctuary', and then certain locations count as sanctuaries, such as towns, and perhaps the vistani camp and the winery after it's free of the pest. So then you have the same problems for player resources as a smaller map, but you get to make it more reasonable for Ireena needing an escort to Vallaki, when she can't just have a day's stroll over yonder.

Could always just pull the 2e and 3e map which is 2x as big as the curse of strahd module and has 2 more cities and extra content. The map in the curse of strahd module isnt rhe whole domain, it just the portion you play in.

Great collection of resources! It sometimes helps to have these kinds of lists in video format instead of just a post to read. I am about to run CoS so your content has found me at the best possible time! Your videos give me a lot to think about but not in an overwhelming manner, and before I forget, the cat cameos are amazing! Also, I love the spoiler alert for Harry Potter 😂

Great vid! Very thoughtful.

I am sorry but I think you are completely wrong in your judgement on this topic. I have to disagree in regards to you having more hit dice if you make the map bigger. If you make it bigger so on average the party has to spend 1 night outside, the whole point is that there will be some type of encounter that makes it impossible to have a long rest. Strahd is not going to allow the party to go off on some boy scout overnight camping trip. If you can get from the village of Barovia to Vallaki in just a daytime hop down the road, Ismark could have easily gotten his sister to Vallaki without the party's help. Trade between the towns would be easier. You need a nighttime on the road to not just be scarier for the party but for the citizens as well. Making it an overnight excursion through the dangerous Svalich woods is what makes each location an island surround by a sea of terror. It makes the party think and prepare before heading out each time. Making multiple trips back and forth between locations becomes far more dangerous. There are enough possible oitdoor encounters within the game and plenty of gothic horror troupes out there to ensure that each night is something different and depending on the status, health and condition of the party. As for your point that once they survive outside because younare jotngonna TPK them with some wolves, well first off if it is still early in the game mayne they will TPK unless they run on the road back towards the village barovia and even if they do best them they are not gonna think "That wasn't so bad" as you state. They are going to think "Shit evey time we are stuck iutside at night something attacks us and we get no rest." I am not trying to be mean or anything but even after hearing you out, and actually even more.than before your opinion, I think the exact opposite is true. Making it bigger is not only better it is necessary.

I made 1 hour per hex, makes every major location 1 to 2 days travel from any other safe haven. Enough for a random encounter or two, without getting tedious.

Barovia village cannot be very far from the Durst Mill. You know very well why.

I love your cat so much! She deserves the world. How weird, I was looking at this artifact just last night and I managed to come up with yet another way to work in something involving Azalin. The basic idea is the final soul that was trapped, the Lich, is Azalin himself. And it is, of course, another escape attempt. Basically getting himself trapped in the Tarokka deck of a Vistana who can in theory leave the Demiplane of Dread and essentially be smuggled out. I like Azalin too much...

Stretching it too much makes Barovia feeltoo empty. However RAW, its just a short afternoon hike to take Ireena to Vallaki.

The players only get rests if you let them. Just make sure any night outside a proper building is a deadly encounter. Preferably forcing the players to make a mad dash for the nearest village in the dark. The map shouldn't be too big, it is a prison after all. It should be just large enough so that they have to make choice between camping outside or risking exhaustion to make it to the next village😈

I'm running CoS but using the old edition lore, and lore from the "I, Strahd" novels. I tripled the distance to 0.75 miles per hex. My research indicated this was ideal if I wanted distances to reflect the novels. I also reduced the frequency of random encounters to reflect this. However, I am also using slower healing, so that they have to use their hit dice to heal, even on a long rest. Often they can still get to a location without a long rest, if they're willing to risk some exhaustion from pushing themselves. They've only camped in the wild once so far. But still, this video was helpful in the sense that I am better forewarned about the unintended consequences of my decision.

I enlarged the map to 1 miles/hexagon and you are right, a bigger map offers more long rests....thats' why i incorporated a lot of adapted 3.5e undead monsters from the Libris Mortis....even experienced players were surprised and those old school monsters tend to do semi-permanent damages to stats like the Skin Kites for instance... Players were afraid of encountering those monsters that could severely damage the party effectiveness for days. I also used mental breakdown counters to add that "Darkest dungeon" feeling.

The tiny scale is absurd to imagine the trees, mountains, lakes, buildings etc, and imagine how much of it you could see on the horizon line into the "distance". It doesn't make sense for it to be so short

The unknown is more terrifying than the known.

You know, some of the stuff back from World of Warcraft's Darkmoone Faire might also be interesting to work into things

For specifically the problem of recovering all resources on every journey, you could patch this by making Long Rest outside of towns be less effective. There are several rules variants for this I've heard of already, but an extreme one is for a Short Rest to take overnight and a Long Rest to take a week specifically in a comfortable inn / big camp / whatever. This doesn't help with the other issues you raised though.

I use to run a large map of curse of strahd made travel between towns days/weeks instead of minutes or hours, and my players loved it, it just depends on the player if your players are ok with a harder feeling campaign.

Thanks for the opinion piece. It isn't a PoV I've heard argued before and there's a lot of valid points to be had from it. As for the other "controversy" videos, I think one of the best things you can do is deliberate if the takes have anything new or revitalizing to add to the discussion (like this one did.) Providing those nuggets that haven't been iterated to death makes dealing with opinion backlash easier.

Definitely some good points there, makes the idea of expanding the map not as cut-and-dry. I also like the pulpy feel that can be brought about by mad dashes between the settlements, rather than trepidatious journeys.

In my very first D&D game the DM ran CoS and read the map wrong. He assumed 1 Hex = 1 day of travel. It took us 4 or 5 game sessions to get from the village of Barovia to Vallaki, and those sessions were boring. Just wandering along the path with occasional random encounters. The firs 1-2 were fun, but then it just became quite monotonous.

Honestly, I think it's supposed to be tiny. Staying outside in Barovia might be scary, but being at the locations isn't less scary, once you get to know the people

Some good points, I will probably not go bigger than double when I run CoS.

Humour can make the horror more grounded for sure

Really appreciate this video. I’m really interested in the Carnival setting but haven’t found a ton of resources to help inspire encounters

I'm going to reveal what I did for this campaign. I didn't like it as written. I ran it as the first campaign for a new group I formed 2 years ago butI had to change things a lot. As written the entire campaign is basically Dracula's story which was boring to me and it also takes ideas from other horror stories like Frankenstein. So I just removed or replaced things. Goodbye Van Ritchen aka Van Helsing. Goodbye Abbot and his Bride. Goodbye Ezmerelda, and Ireena aka Mina. All this was also before Van Ricthen's Guide came out as well. It got released when we were halfway through the campaign. I made this all a larger campaign that used CoS as the major jumping off point to something bigger. The premise was, what if one of the Dark Powers was trying to regain their godhood by creating new worshipers. This Dark Power had been secretly experimenting with ways within the domain of dread to obtain followers. So I stole the idea from Sunless Citadel where there is a tree deep in this lair. The tree has fruits that turn those who eat them into mindless worshippers. The big bad leader for this portion is the first worshipper on this plane. I had the adventure start out with the players being prisoners who escaped. Once they got through that, they would be whisked away to Barovia at level 3. Now in Barovia I needed to do something about Ireena. Here is where I had one of the female PCs suddenly develop red hair. In folklore red hair is seen as a bad omen. Tatyana had red hair so Strahd's obsession with trying to find her reborn I decided led to a string of women that had red hair being taken, developing this superstition about red hair being bad. Tatyana's soul was just waiting for someone new to enter the domain and one of the PC's had this bad luck. Because this made the town of Barovia somewhat useless, I decided to remake that part too. I used the concept of a ravenloft adventure from 2E where a woman is set to be killed due to a high priest blaming her for a curse. It all is false of course and the real instigator of everything is the high priest himself due to a daughter he abandoned as a baby. However My players kind of blew past everything I prepared and decided while questioning the priest they would try to use Charm Person on him which failed (he is a cleric with high wis save after all) and blew the whole thing up and they had to flee the town. The hag's hut got changed. I kept it as a windmill but instead of hags I had it be a Lamia. She was a worshipper of this Dark Power that wants to be a god again and as Lamia are part of desert culture folklore, I decided she would have been from Har'akir which is where I was going to take the players at the end of Curse of Strahd as a surprise. This was the first hint in that direction because her type of monster had no place here and I also dropped some symbology for Har'akir as being on her person. At the windmill the lamia is using children as labor and as 'ingredients' for making those special cakes mixed with the fruit of the same tree the party saw in Sunless Citadel. All attempts to destroy this tree result in failure. Also this tree is a not quite perfected attempt at produce fruit that affects the mind. This one only works on the still developing minds of children and even then not all of them. The perfected version was the one they had first encountered so the party is essentially working backwards. After this I still used a lot of the same stuff in the campaign book for the important elements. I introduced other things I found on the internet for CoS like the Three Fanes which would be the party's way of further restoring Barovia and weakening Strahd. Since I removed Van Ritchen, instead of his wagon area I used that Puppet Darklord from old Ravenloft, Maligno, in this section. You know that murderbot in Strahd's Castle? He was the first attempt at making a sentient puppet. Maligno was the second attempt who later imprisoned the druid master who made him and is now trying to make children 'happy' by turning them into mindless puppets. This wagon area was now a stage where people would be coming to witness a puppet show. Here is where I also hooked the abbot in. The abbot is a fallen celestial creature who tried to kill Strahd and failed. Strahd tortured him for his amusement, ripping off his wings, and then when he grew bored, let him go. Now this 'abbot' runs the prison and still tries to help the people but is also quite insane too. He works with Maligno unwittingly. See the Abbot's monestary is a former prison for the criminally insane. Their ghosts still linger but his presence keeps them from hurting the town (not that he knows this). But Maligno is using their haunted remains (bone splinters) by embedding it into marionettes. This marionettes can inject little needles into its victims to make others more submissive. Once Maligno makes them, he gives some of them to the abbot who gives them to the kids of the village as presents. So the PCs now are involved in stopping this plot. I also replaced Mordenkainen with my own archmage NPC from my own homebrew world. She is a war criminal that got sent to this domain. Strahd's brides also got changed based on other stuff I found. They were boring as vampire spawn so I made them full vampires who Strahd had allowed control over specific creatures of Barovia although he could assert control back if he wanted to. One controlled bats, the other wolves and the last rats. The one in control of rats though resented being given control over vermin and was the traitor seeking to replace Strahd someday. This allowed me to work in some angles for the party working with her. So in the end after the party righted all the wrongs and everything was good, they still had the unanswered questions about the Lamia and the tree with the 'groovy fruits' they called it. As tried to leave Barovia, the mists reformed and they found themselves in Har'akir. This is where I basically made many things up as we went. We still had the same darklord and I used the old adventure for Har'Akir as my baseline for what was I was going to do. So we still had Anhktepot and Senmet here. But inserted was another one of the trees. This was the original try but the tree produced terrible fruit that changed people. The Dark Power's worshipper that is here is mutated and curses her. But this worshipper had an apprentice that still believed who escaped Har'Akir (remember the Lamia?) and tried again elsewhere. Once the party dealt with things here they left and found themselves in Tepest. In Tepest I wholly made up things. Here Mother Lorinda is an avatar of the Dark Power. They also encountered again my Archmage who had escaped Barovia with the party but I decided time works differently on the domains of dread so she had been in Tepest for hundreds of years and is now dying of old age (she is a gnome) whereas the party hasn't aged at all. The campaign ended at this stage. During the final battle against this dark power, one of the party members struck a deal with another dark power for its help when the party was having a rough time. So once they beat the BBEG and everyone was finally able to leaving the domains of dread, this party member plus murderbot (who they still had) got instead taken to Falkovia and landed right in the middle of a wave of zombies. The end.

I've always wanted to know how people responded to the changes for this domain, so I'll be watching this vid for sure, just a few thoughts before I do, you mentioned looking up the 2e material for Falkovinia so you know how it used to be. I find a lot of the 5e changes to be very abrupt and I often don't like the direction, and at first I was the same way about Falkovinia, but then when I thought about it, I honestly was never going to run Falkovinia as written anyway, like you can make a good story in that setting but the idea of taking a group of players through that experience is really not appealing to me, the biggest thing being the rampant SA and genuinely nazi levels of other evil shit going on. So on one hand, I'm excited for someone besides Vlad to be in charge of the domain, but on the other hand it's confusing to me just why zombie apocalypse was the theme, I mean Necropolis and Sourangne are both crawling with zombies, I always thought that it would be cool for the Vampyre "gangs" to have a potential darklord amongst them who takes over in Vlads place and it becomes something similar to original Falkovinia but kind of in the way the vampires in Blade use the humans as cattle, rather than the whole domain being a murder/r*pe survival room. But I'm interested to see your thoughts on what they did do with it so here we go!

Good balance between random and rigged

Really helpful vid! I’m very interested in running a Sorrowsworn encounter now. Could I ask what level your group was when you ran the Carnival?

Any advice on music use for specific areas around Barovia? Struggling to piece a soundtrack together :p

Old Bonegrinder is supposed to be a non-combat encounter and should be unwinnable if players "fight" it because the hags can always just escape into the Ethereal plane if the players prove to be a serious threat. It's the DM's prerogative to ignore their Etherealness ability and treat it like a straightforward combat encounter, but I find it more interesting for the Hags to be a challenge that cannot be beaten in a straight up fight... some possible interesting scenarios that could arise: 1. Players are haunted by the night hags after offending them which gives them a deeper motivation to recover the bones of St. Andral since a reconsecrated church also keeps the night hags out. 2. Players have to agree to a hag deal to stop the hauntings which can create a real moral dilemma for them. 3. Players can work with Van Richten or Ezmerelda to set a trap for the Hags using a Glyph of Warding armed with a Magic Circle spell that prevents them from escaping. Many more possibilities...

Thanks for making this content! I've been looking for resources to tie in Curse of Strahd to Wild Beyond the Witchlight and this is the best tie in I've found. :D

So, I'm just gonna give a couple of thoughts that I hope will be useful. This is very shallow seeming in terms of content, it's described as the story so far but then you omit sections of the story. Don't "maybe tell it another time", script and structure it so you can deliver it clearly. If you can't recall a name pause the video, research it and insert it with a little editing. Highlight which parts of your campaign were plucked directly from all the sources you listed last video, show maps of the sections you describe so it's more evocative. Take more time and give more detail, the whole of Curse of Strahd shouldn't be that short, this is your chance to let each one really shine. Hi from r/Ravenloft by the way.